I’ve spent a lot of the last few days in front of my laptop reading up on Photoshop. It’s not so bad, I spend a good portion of the day sitting in a hammock chair or a chaise lounge outside on the deck at the cabin in Idyllwild. What did we do before WiFi? Perhaps a self portrait is in order, maybe tomorrow so that it can truly be appreciated. I think I’m starting to get a hang of some of the Photoshop basics. I’ve really struggle with tweaking color in photographs, but I think my skills are coming along. I’ve learned to make subtle adjustments. My latest effort can be seen on my flickr site including a before and after shot, and for bonus points I posted another shot where I edited out a couple distracting objects. I actually like the photo with the distracting objects left in the best, removing them was more to see if and how well I could do it. I’ll let you figure out what two objects I removed. Anyway, I think I’m starting to finally starting to get a hang of tweaking colors to achieve realistic albeit better than originally shot colors.

I did take a little break yesterday to break out the power tools and build a little step for the the garage. I should explain that it used to be the garage and was recently converted into more of a storage room, hence the french doors on the “garage”. I’m sure I could have built the step with a hammer and saw, but it was one of the last construction projects before I go so I needlessly broke out the sliding compound miter, table saw, pneumatic air gun and cordless circular saw. Fun! Anyway, the step should help dramatically reduce that amount of dirt, pine needles, etc. that have been getting tracked into the room. I just made it out of some extra 2×4’s that were just taking up space on the deck. I still need to rebuild the railing on the front stairs… maybe later today.

I’ve spent the last six days living out of my girlfriend Elena’s apartment. I don’t know if she realize its the longest consecutive time we’ve spent together in the same place, excluding vacations. It was actually nice and relaxing, which isn’t necessarily what I would have expected. I tend to find being around other people for prolonged periods of time to become irritating. I like my space, mostly because I like being able to be selfish. Which is not to say I don’t like being generous, I think I’m a fairly generous friend and boyfriend. There are just times I want to do what I want to do without regard or concern for others, that’s what I mean by selfish.

Which leads me to Yoga. Yoga, which I love, is an inherently selfish endeavor, but one which is for altruistic ends. Taking the time to nurture oneself and focus entirely on the better met of oneself is key to become a less selfish person in the world. More on this and how infrequently I’ve been practicing later.

On the artistic front I bought a camera, a Nikon D50, and have ordered my dream lens, a Nikon 18-200 VR. Which with luck should arrive soon. The combination of which I hope will suit me perfectly for my travels.

On the getting the hack out of town front. I’m still in SoCal, back in Idyllwild after the aforementioned six days in Long Beach. I’ve decided, which really means among everything else going on it slipped me mind, that I want to get the air conditioning running on my van before I head across the county. The irony is that, while I always wanted to get it working, I wouldn’t have cared to much if I’d hit the road in the early spring like I’d planned… now in the middle of summer it seems much more desirable even though I’ve lived without it for six years. So next week, sometime shortly after the fourth of July, the van should finally be 100% ready to go. At which point I’ll be out of reasons not to be living on the road.

I haven’t posted in three months, actually the truth is I just backdated the first post to mark the beginning of my year off, but I had intended to start blogging that day and obviously haven’t… So this one post is going to cover everything that’s been going on the last three months… sort of.

First I have been trying to sell my home. In the five years I’ve owned it it’s nearly doubled in value and I decided it would be better and simpler to sell it than try to deal with leasing it out while traveling. I’d always planned on holding onto it forever and leasing it, but the realities of leasing and managing it while overseas convinced my otherwise, besides it’s not a “bad” time to sell a home. Of course with it having been on the market for 4 months I’m now thinking again about leasing it and wish I had gotten it on the market a month earlier…

Second I have done some of the things I’d planned for my first couple months off. Lots of relaxing, a significant amount of time at my family’s cabin in Idyllwild, and moving everything I own out of the condo. The highlight was certainly the week in Vail the last week of March, more on that some other time perhaps.

Finally, my travel plans are firming up, a little. I’ll head out of Southern California next week and slowly make my way up the coast to San Francisco where I’ll visit with friends around the time of the 4th of July. From there I head to Colorado, probably via Yosemite, where I’ll visit for a week or two with family and friends and get to Pennsylvania early in August. I’ll spend most of August around there and in October will drive through the NE to visit friends along the way with the turnaround point being Quebec City. I’ll head back to the outskirts of Philadelphia where in late November or early December I’ll be leaving my dog with my friends before flying to Asia with one little backpack and a whole lot of dreams.