We see each other about once a year these days, so my trips down to South Carolina carry with them an odd urgency, but also a strange sense of detachment. The journeys are part house party, part family reunion and part anthropology experiment. It’s as if by seeing everyone as rarely as we do, when we are together you get a clearer glimpse of the ways we’re built the same.

By the end of the five days, I was ready to come back. The trip could not have been more perfectly timed, to be honest. It was wedged in between the end of my old employment and the beginning of the projects I’ve put in front of me, and so it created a natural scene change of sorts. For five days I didn’t see a cloud in the sky, and most of my thoughts were on the next meal or the next beer.

But by the end of it, I was ready to be back home. I’ve been away from South Carolina for so long, and return so infrequently now, that I carry with me very little of my daily life when I go back. It’s difficult to meld the two places and parts of me, and so they end up fighting for space and time.

Having returned, now back in D.C., it’s time to focus on the Mount Pleasant Project. It’s time to start doing the work I left work to do.

I actually began work a week ago, on the Friday before I left for South Carolina. Only a fool would get disheartened on the first day of a long project, but I have to admit that I started to feel signs of frustration just a few hours into the work.

Mentally, I have the idyllic picture in my head of my neighborhood

So I spent the last five days in a house on an inlet channel, drinking beer and fishing and eating everything my brother and his wife cook (they own a restaurant in upstate N.Y.) The result was a bizarre mix of massive party, odd family situation and relaxing vacation. Honestly, though, after five days I was ready to return home to my own life.

I’ll write more, eventually, on the trip and what it meant. For now, I’m looking forward to starting work on the MtP Project and reorienting everything else that I do here in D.C.

What does bother me - damnit - is that Sears decided not to show up for a scheduled repair. They just don’t come and don’t call - I called them and was told “rescheduling is the best option.” The other “option” however was simply that they wouldn’t come at all, because “really behind schedule” doesn’t actually mean they’re going to come.

Just insert a rant here about responsibility, corporate honesty and whatever here. Sears sucks.

So anyways, my head is pretty much splitting after the festivities last night. I went out with friends to celebrate my newly-minted unemployment, and it turned into a long night. Dr. Dremos and Ragtime in Arlington…I have vauge recollections of a glass dropping and shots.

Anyways, so in two days I’m leaving my job to work on a documetary project in Mount Pleasant. It’s where I live, and I think it’s a pretty amazing place. I also see significant changes coming in the next few years, and I’d like to document those changes and create a portrait of what’s there now.

So I was reading in the neighborhood’s online discussion forum, and the amount of political bitching is just off the scale, in my opinion. I know local politics get nasty, and maybe moreso for neighborhood politics, but an hour of reading www.mtpleasantdc.org/forum has really depressed me. Damnit.

On a plus side, someone turned on the air conditioning in the building and we’re doing an after-work happy hour…

The head of our office on Friday opted not to request air conditioning, to save costs. By coincidence, he’s taken the day off.

I can’t believe how companies treat their employees sometimes.

Despite that, I hear complains all the time about people who paid to have something framed and ended up paying an arm and a leg. The most common complain I hear is “I paid more to have it framed than I did for the print.” I’m not entirely sure what to say about that - if you’re willing to do the job yourself, you can save a lot of money. If not, be prepared to pay.

So, that said, I had a print of this photo made, to 20×30 inches. Now, while that’s not exactly behemoth size, it’s fairly large and it never crossed my mind I wouldn’t be able to buy a pre-made frame. But after vising several art stores and supply sites, I’ve pretty much come up blank aside from some truly crappy poster frames. Utrecht on New York Ave. goes to about 20×24, and Plaza Art down the street does about the same.

So I bought the materials I needed to construct the frame - this should be simple, really. You buy in sets what you need - two lengths of the framing material 20 inches long, and two that are 30 inches long. I bought some backing, some staples to hold things in place, wood glue, wire and eyelets for hanging. What’s left?

Glass. I’ve never bought just glass before, so I spent a while calling frame shops to see what a piece of 20×30 would cost me. About $20, apparently. So, assuming it all comes together, I should get the frame done for about $55 or so. That’s not a bad price, but then a friend sent me a link to some site, frameit.com or something, and I could have just had them mail it to me for $60…

As long as I value several hours of my time at less that $5, I’m still in good shape.

A corporate email I got yesterday: “We will have a meeting at 11:30 a.m. on Oct. 6 on several company changes that will not affect you…”

Excellent. Sounds like a great use of time.

I really don’t like football, but I do love to gamble. So combine boredom with a love for gambling, and my friend Dave and I started a website doing weekly picks. We suck, basically, but it is fun. We pick one or two games a week and sell it as a “can’t-lose, bet-the-farm lock.” Last season we went 3-14, which is pretty amazing seeing as you probably couldn’t do that if you tried. Dave and I like to joke that one day we’ll sell WeeklyLock.com and be sitting on a beach somewhere.

I went to dinner at Tonic last night, in Mount Pleasant. They run a Tuesday promotion: bottle of wine free with two entrees. The wine is as cheap as it gets, but the food is decent comfort food. I have pulled pork, and my girlfriend got porkchops. It wasn’t what I was expecting, but it wasn’t bad. The soup (tomato bisque) was actually really good.

I just submitted a question to the Post’s online chat with Alan Alda — “Would you really have leveled Toronto, if they didn’t surrender pronto?” Let’s see if this gets in.

We walk-stumbled to Julias Empanadas, only to find that the place was closed. Closed on a Monday night? Jumbo slice pizza it was, and I woke up with tomato stains on my shirt. Good start to the day.

I called the D.C. Public Library about exhibiting some of my photographs. The conversation went like this:

“We only do solo exhibits if the work is of great quality.”
[pause.]
“Ok.”

I mean, really, what do you say to that?

“What type of work is it?”
“Street photography.”
“And what type of work would you want to exhibit?”
[pause]
“Photography.”

I love my city…

Some of my work (http://www.teamwetdog.com) is currently showing at Bedrock Billiards, in Adams Morgan. It’s nice to see so much of it hanging in one spot, rather than simply posted to a web site or framed and propped against my living room walls. So far the response has been good. I’ve gotten a few inquiries about sales which I’m hoping pan out this week. But, as always, I’m trying not to count anything until the prints have been delivered and the check is cashed. The show should be up into mid-November.

Anyway, this past weekend was a great one. I joined some friends at (embaressingly) Bedrock for a happy hour Friday night. To be honest, I find it a bit odd to go there now that my stuff is on the walls. After several beers there we got empanadas at Julias and stopped in at Staccato for a bit. By the time I got home, nine drinks later, the whole evening started to get a little hazy.

Sunday I watched the Nationals play their last game of the season. It was a fitting 9-3 loss that came without dignity. We kept it tight until the end, when the Phillies got some hits and we replied by simply hitting their batters. The season ended, fittingly, with a Guzman strikeout, though it also ended on gorgeous day and with me standing in the interminable lines for one last italian sausage.

I was at RFK for the first pitch of the season, the last pitch of the season and a dozen or so games in between. I’ve never been a baseball fan, but it was tough to watch this season come to an end. Having a baseball team to follow was a new experience for me, and I think the team in general brought some excitement into the city. Despite the faltering finish, I’d call the season a huge success.