Thursday, March 31, 2005


Where VW Bugs Go to Die, 2005 Posted by Hello

Keep your religious bullshit out of politics.

Yep, I'll say it again. Wherever religion and politics become bedmates, chaos ensues. I am acutely reminded of this in recent days with the nearly inescapable inundation of Fox News bites (Fair and Balanced? Just who the hell are they kidding?)about the Terri Schiavo controversy. A recent piece by Daniel Shore on NPR drew some interesting comparisons between that situation and the declining health of the Pope. What does the Pope do when his health becomes so poor that he can no longer communicate his wishes? Strangely enough, back around 1980 the Pope was quoted as saying (I'm quoting loosely here) that taking extraordinary measures to extend life through artifical means was as dishonourable in the eyes of God as it was to take it prematurely. If that isn't enough to baffle the sheep of the flock, I don't know what is.

In my mind, though, one of the best thoughts on this subject came from a Catholic priest himself. He was recalling how his grandmother had cared for her sister as she was dying, feeding her little bits of soup and broth. The doctor suggested that a feeding tube could be inserted into her sister's nose to aid in getting nourishment into her. The priest's grandmother told the doctor he could take that tube and stick it somewhere else - the woman was dying, and who on earth were they to stand in the way of her joining God for her reward in heaven? Eminently sensible, I should think.

All those nutters protesting outside of Terri Schiavo's hospice, getting themselves arrested even while her parents beseeched them to behave themselves, prove yet again that media hype and the interference of moral agendas on the legal system and political process does nothing to forward reason.

I was reminded through all of this, yet again, of how pervasive religious agendas in world politics has become. There are those who would chalk up my fears here to conspiracy theories, but one doesn't have to dig very far to learn that organizations not only exist, but are highly mobilized to push their agendas onto not only the U.S. political stage, but to propagate their conservative-religious right-US centric contempt of the any other beliefs throughout the rest of the world. Ever heard of 'The Family'? Take a look at this article that appeared a few years ago in Harper's.

Tuesday, March 29, 2005


Rose Trellis, Vanderbilt Estate, Hyde Park, New York, 2005 Posted by Hello

Easily Annoyed, Again

Grrr. Grrr. Grrr.

1. Got rear-ended on the way to the gym this morning. Pissed me off.
2. Got into fight with English-impaired Albanian receptionist who is utterly disinclined to learn things she needs to know to do her job effectively. Pissed me off.
3. Got distasteful phone call from marketing department informing me the image I've been using for the last two years to build a brand on is not cleared for such usage (despite the fact I was told it was two years ago). Pissed me off.

Monday, March 28, 2005


Stairway Overlooking the Hudson River, Vanderbilt Estate, Hyde Park, New York, 2005 Posted by Hello

You Can't Stop Spring

It's raining, raining hard. We get so many kinds of rain back home, I'd forgotten them all, like how the Inuit have 20 words for snow, or something like that. There's the usual curling fog with rain so fine it's hardly more than a pervasive mist. There are the musical plunk-plunk-plunk drops that hit the back of your neck and drip down your shirt for an icy surprise. There's light rain versus heavy showers and light showers versus heavy rain. Don't know the difference? It's the size of the drops - showers are finer drops than rain, so you can have heavy showers - lots of light drops - or light rain - fewer heavy-sized drops.

When you're under the canopy of cedars and firs in the rainforest, the rain barely touches you, but the humidity invades every inch of your skin, leaving your face dewy soft, and sometimes wrinkling your fingers like a long hot soak in the tub.

It's raining hard here now, washing away the soot-encrusted lumps of snow. It's like seeing the world take a much needed bath. These grey days used to depress me back home, but today, I'm cheering on the rain. Rain harder! Take the snow away! It's time for spring - bring it on!

Friday, March 25, 2005


Ock on Moose Hill, 2005 Posted by Hello

The Princess and the Pea

Never mind the agony of de feet...nothing is more irritating than having something that shouldn't be there lodged up the inside of your gums. I returned yesterday to the dentist to determine why my gums had totally swollen up after root canal #5. A thorough search by the dental assistant determined than pebble-sized bits of the bonding concrete used in the crown had migrated northward. Extricated, relief followed. I'm looking forward to eating something really hard and crunchy tonight!

On second thought...maybe I shouldn't tempt fate so soon? Patience has never been a strong point.

Thursday, March 24, 2005


Italian Easter Eggs, 2005 Posted by Hello

Rooting for a Cure

Root canal. The very phrase sparks shivers up the spines of the uninitiated, and the unfortunate few who have had bad experiences. Yesterday I went for RC #5 (and the second in the last few months), owing to a situation where I developed extreme sensitivity on one side of my mouth. Somehow two teeth had developed cracks and I couldn't even chew on that side any more. The first root canal didn't complete the job, so I got in the chair again yesterday for the second one.

First, the good news. It does appear that the root canal has taken care of the heat/cold/sweet sensitivity problem. I can swish ice cold water around my entire mouth now without feeling like someone is stabbing my brain with an ice pick.

The bad news: I can't even close my mouth or bite down. I've never had a problem with a crown before, and this one seems to fit like a glove too, but for some reason all the gums around it have swollen right up and any pressure on it is excruciating.

Before you start making rash assumptions about my dental upkeep, you should know I'm a religious twice-a-day brusher AND flosser who gets check ups every six months on schedule and never misses a cleaning. A few sad brushes with fate - including dodging a snowball in ninth grade only to land face-first into a frozen metal stair rail - have landed me in the dentist chair for numerous repair jobs. Call it bad luck, I guess.

In the meantime, I apologize to all of you for being such a sourpuss. I have a propensity for crankiness as it is, but I'm really trying not to let this take me there. Bear with me.

Tuesday, March 22, 2005


Brite Cleaners, 2005 Posted by Hello

Sunday Services

Another observation I made upon moving from Canada to the U.S. was that Americans were far more religious, or at least more public about their religious affiliations. Religion also plays a more prominent role in politics here, despite notions about the separation of church and state. This is not to say that Canadians do not consider religion important - many do, although most of those were admittedly outside of my social circle. The difference I found is that Canadians, in general, are far more private about their spiritual beliefs and not as apt to discuss them publicly. It's not shame or hesitancy - it's just a sense that religion is a very personal matter and something one doesn't share with casual acquaintances, much less strangers.

Perhaps this is less and less so now...it's been five years since I lived in Canada and there are political and religious movements there too which run parallel to what I see happening in the U.S. with the rise of the religious right-wing. When I talk to my friends and family, however, things sound much the same as ever, so I'm left believing that that sense of privacy with regards to religion still exists.

So it was last Sunday - Palm Sunday, by the Christian calendar - that I happened to be helping Craig hanging insulation in the ceiling of the room currently under construction (known affectionately as 'the shed room', since historically it was little more than a storage shed). We had the radio on and were listening to NPR, which was broadcasting a non-denominational Palm Sunday service from the chapel at Boston College, where there is a School of Theology. A little background is now in order.

Craig was raised Catholic but has somewhat recovered, and now is essentially an atheist. His parents are still practising Catholics, and his only brother has become an active Baptist in California. I was given a more prototypical Canadian upbringing - christened in the Anglican Church of Canada (that's similar to the Episcopalians in the U.S.), but never attended church or Sunday school with my family. I flirted briefly with the church in my teen years when I dated the son of a pastor, but now I'm completely non-Christian in my beliefs.

We were listening to the service, which was about as white bread as you could imagine. The subject was 'the power of humility', and Craig and I were making remarks about it as we struggled with stapling the insulation to the new beams and nailing up furring strips from which the ceiling would hang. The minister delivering the sermon was weaving scripture and politics throughout, calling the U.S. presence in Iraq 'messianic in the way of David', as opposed to messianic in the way of teaching, which Jesus was. I was rolling my eyes and grumbling about this tacit religious approval of the Iraq situation. I said, as I've said before, that wherever religion and politics become closely intertwined, chaos ensues. It's a polarizing, dangerous combination, which only seems to feed upon itself until people grow ever bitter and more divided than ever. Wherever it happens, there's nothing but a big mess.

Craig says that as far as he's concerned, life is short and we only go around once, and it seems like a big waste of time to him to be spending a few hours a week in church when, hey, we could be having so much fun hanging insulation, ha ha ha. Still, he likes listening to a good sermon if it's well-delivered. This one wasn't particularly great, and we started speculating why we weren't hearing a sermon being delivered at some southern gospel church, where the ministers always seem really passionate in their delivery.

So how do I feel? Well, Canadian that I am, I've deliberately skirted around it throughout this post, playing my religious cards more closely to my chest. Craig is very honest about his beliefs but completely non-judgemental of those of others - he believes religion is very personal and one size doesn't fit all. Me...I believe there's some greater intelligence, some energy if you will, that makes sense of this universe and everything in it, but it isn't some great old hairy Jehovah flying around the clouds. I know I am a little more judgemental about religious people - I find it hard to understand why people feel the need to cling to formal religion when all it seems to do is bring intense misery, inequity, violence, and despair into this world. My first thoughts for anyone who embraces formal religion are rather contemptuous (and this tendency of mine is the prime reason I am very careful not to let first impressions rule me, since I know it is rash and incomplete). I tend to mellow out a little more when I hear more of what they have to say and how it is part of their life, but in the end I cannot be converted, and still find it difficult to understand how anyone can turn their life over to tenets of someone else's making.

Monday, March 21, 2005


Motorhead, 2003 Posted by Hello

Not-So-Cute Things Cats Do

I noted that recent blogs of my classmate Christina and her husband have illustrated their current attempts to integrate a new cat into a household of existing cats. For those of you who have never attempted this, I assure you it is not for the faint-hearted, and even the most optimistic Pollyanna is bound to find this process exceedingly frustrating. It can also be potentially expensive, to the magnitude of becoming the sole supporter of your veterinarian's penchant for new BMWs.

Christina and Alex: please, kids, I am not trying to pee in your corn flakes. While I have been unsuccessful in three separate attempts to do this, your situation has one major difference - you already have multiple cats. I have a theory that bringing in a new cat to a home with more than one cat to begin with is easier than trying to do it where one cat rules the roost alone.

The first two attempts I made were to bring younger cats into the home I had with Cally, my little ginger cookie who passed away last year. In both scenarios, Cally became withdrawn and sullen; she was not exactly the alpha type to begin with, and rambunctious kittens were just too much to ask of her. When I moved in with Craig, she was for the first time put into the role of the new cat on the block - and Motorhead, Craig's cat, was not impressed to say the least. We tried everything - but as they vet said, the older they are to begin with, the harder it is to make the adjustment. By this time, Cally was 17 and in poor health and not in any shape to defend herself, especially against a cat twice her size. They remained in separate quarters until Cally passed away, but not before a chance encounter resulted in Cally's leg torn open and a $500 trip to the vet. I don't blame Motorhead for it; she was merely asserting her turf rights, and behaving like any cat in that situation could be expected to do. Cally's tissue-thin skin didn't stand a chance.

We've decided Motorhead will remain an only cat unless some extremely pressing circumstances dictate otherwise. The same goes for the dog - no others while she's still with us. When the time comes to bring new animals into our lives, we plan to do them in small groups, so that they will learn to share their territory from the beginning and be more accommodating of newcomers as time goes on.

And for those of you staring at that picture up there and wondering whether our abuse of our animals might play any role in their behaviour - Motorhead actually likes being held up and swung like that. Really, she does.

Friday, March 18, 2005


Madonna and Child, 2005 Posted by Hello

Veering Towards Luddism

Argh, a trying couple of days. No sooner do I return from the road trip to South Carolina than my work computer decides to curl into a ball and die. I suppose I should be thankful it was 'only' the motherboard, and I didn't lose any files...and if I'm smart, I guess I'll be backing up those files ASAP. Still, it was two days without a computer, in a job where I rely on it for 99% of my work.

When I got it back, I loaded my new Photoshop CS software, eager to start working on files when not at my photography class. Naturally, nothing is going right there either. For some reason Photoshop seems to want nothing to do with my raw format files. I haven't yet reached the point of being willing to get soaked to the tune of $39 for a service help call, but I'm going to have to find someone who knows how to sort this out because I am completely flummoxed.

In some ways, being without the computer here for the last couple of days was a good thing to happen. I was forced to contend with things I always put off - like filing. Remember those piles of work that were on my desk the other week? They're not here anymore! They're all properly filed or reorganized into a work folder for me to tackle. I have real estate on my desk - it appears that it is some kind of wood-grain laminate. I cleared out my filing cabinets and realized I actually DO have space in there - I just needed to get rid of a lot of junk. My bookshelves were likewise renovated. I stopped short of the desk drawers...I don't know why, I just didn't feel like I could have absolutely everything pristine. Besides, I know what's in the drawers. CDs, diskettes, paperclips, random numbers scribbled on scraps of paper, and a small pharmacy. All in all, though, being without the computer was a cathartic experience I recommend heartily to anyone feeling overwhelmed by the state of their office. Just not more than once every year or so.

If anyone out there knows how to forcefeed .CR2 files into Photoshop CS, drop me a line, will ya?

Tuesday, March 15, 2005


Chili Cheese A-Plenty, 2005 Posted by Hello


Call it Out! 2005 Posted by Hello


Westy at the Beacon Drive-In, Spartanburg, SC, 2005 Posted by Hello

Road Trip Destination: South Carolina and Back

Last night we returned from our most ambitious joint road trip to date: flying down to South Carolina to pick up a VW Vanagon purchased online, sight unseen, and drive it 1300-odd miles back home...and odd miles they were indeed.

There will be numerous pictures and anecdotes about this trip over the next while - there's no way I could list everything at once. The trip wasn't without its wrinkles, naturally. The Westy misbehaved off and on during the trip, misfiring and losing power intermittently, only to have it return. It didn't stop us, however, from traipsing from one podunk backwater to the next and finding silliness in a million random things.

Awards go to:

Best Real Estate Agent Name on a Billboard: Jack Lingo (I can just picture what this guy looks like, right down to his cheesy moustache and fake Rolex).

Worst Place to Drive a Temperamental Vehicle and Risk Breaking Down: the road along the Alligator River in North Carolina. No shoulder on the road, swamp all around, no cell phone signals, no signs of life anywhere - except possibly alligators.

Best Highway Religious Wisdom: "Nothing provokes Satan like the cross." Sounds to me like the answer would be to get rid of all those crosses.

Worst Local Comfort Food Ever: (tie) Grits (the South) and Scrapple (Pennsylvania/Maryland/mid-Atlantic). If wild animals won't eat the lips and asshole of a pig, people shouldn't either.

Most Colourful Local Experience: The Beacon Drive-In, Spartanburg, South Carolina. One meal's enough for two, and the iced tea is some of the best I've ever had, but the reason to go is to hear the old guy at the front yell 'Caaaaalll it ouuuuuuttt!!!' to the folks over the steam tables in the back.

Worst Beachfront Campground: Delaware Shores State Park. This place had all the charm of a KOA made entirely of pre-stressed concrete and surrounded by construction zones.

Best Reason to Stop Shaving and Start Smoking Again: Volkswagen engines with mysterious and inexplicable quirks.

Many thanks to the people who supported us along the way: Awful Arthur's in Kill Devil Hills, NC (half price raw oysters!), the Milford Diner in Milford, DE (always eat where the locals eat), Bahama Mamas in Ocean City, MD (go crab go), the pregnant waitress at the Waffle House in Virginia Beach, VA (thanks for the phone book), the kind folks at The Bug House in Virginia Beach (and everyone who led us there). Thanks for the parts and letting Craig roll up his sleeves and get out his wrenches in the parking lot.

And finally - the best reason to go on a road trip south in early Spring: missing over a foot of snow that dumped on your lawn while you were away (thanks guys, for feeding the cat and dog and ploughing the driveway for us)!

Wednesday, March 09, 2005


Snowdrop, 2004 Posted by Hello

The Neverending Winter

Back home in Victoria, the Annual Flower Count has already been completed - an exercise where the city asks its citizens to report the number of blossoms in their yard, so that it can gloat to the rest of the nation, which is still shovelling out mountains of snow, that winters are mild in Victoria. It is an inexact science - estimating the number of candy-coloured blossoms on the Japanese cherry and plum trees - do you count the ones hanging over your neighbour's yard, or on the boulevards? No matter - go ahead and count them, count them twice if you will. The point is to be able to call your cousin Ethel in Barrie, Ontario and tell them that you're gassing up the lawnmower while the fragrance of thirty-seven gazillion flowers wafts through your home, doors and windows open to let the fresh air in.

Ethel fumes as you gloat and slams down the phone, yelling at her husband. "Walter, next winter we're headed to Florida!"

Well, somehow, I've become Ethel. Winter shows no signs of giving way to spring here yet. Last night another eight inches dropped on us, with wind gusts well over 50 mph. The drifts have buried me in the driveway.

Some weeks ago Craig bought a VW Vanagon online - in South Carolina. We are about to head down there to pick it up and drive it home. We seem to have established an annual pattern of going off in search of spring at this time of year, when winter has become nearly unbearable. We are going to have to work to get our car out of the driveway just to get to the airport. Even so, it seems even the deep south is experiencing very cool temperatures right now, and there is a very good chance that we will encounter a lot more cold and snow on our drive back from SC than we had counted on. Well, all roadtrips are adventures, and sometimes the more unpredictable and frought with disaster they are, the better. If nothing else, I am hoping for some excellent photo opportunities while on the road.

Wish us well - I'll see you all again next week.

Tuesday, March 08, 2005


Guard Llama, 2005 Posted by Hello

Exponential Accumulations

Work and snow. Both seem to be piling up at alarming rates. There is now officially 13 inches (that's 33 cm for all you folks back home) of paper piled up beside me. I estimated that there was about 4 inches of snow on the ground this morning, and the first flakes of the estimated 6-10 inches that are expected to fall today have just begun floating down from the sky. By dawn, I anticipate both piles - work and snow - will be equal.

Where the math begins to get a little tricky is in the estimation of melt rates and the number of hours that need to be put in to get the levels of both snow and work down to zero again. I am not a mathematician, and those of you out there with more knowledge than me in this area are welcome to jump in on this.

Snow is the more straightforward of the two, but less predictable. We have no idea when Mother Nature is going to get off her ass and blow a little warmth this way. For all I know, this snow could still be here in August. We can make a pre-emptive strike, however, and remove the snow manually. This, of course, does not make it disappear, except from view.

Work is more problematic. As we established in an earlier post, doing work breeds more work, so careful handling of this pile is necessary if it is not to grow. Like the snow, it can be manually removed and placed into the circular file, from whence Debbie the Custodian will take it out of my sight at 4:30 today. But like the snow, that doesn't really remove the work - just makes it harder to complete. Some of it will be rendered obsolete eventually, altered by its time and position in the pile, much like metamorphic rock formations. I think the key is to be very selective about which work to do, being sure not to stimulate any further work in the process.

The snow is starting to stick outside already. Another piece of paper has landed on my desk. I am convinced that there is a correlation.

Monday, March 07, 2005


Lamb, 2005 Posted by Hello

My Internal Meat Hypocrisy

I believe that humans are physically designed to be omnivores. I believe this because of the kind of teeth we have been given, the design of our bodies, and the kinds of digestive acids we have to process food. I also think that a lot of people eat far more meat than their bodies really require. It's all about balance. Too much of anything, or a lack of something, and our bodies begin to show signs of problems, whether its malnutrition or high cholesterol or diabetes or scurvy or whatever.

When I was growing up, dinner was meat, a starch, and two vegetables - but the focus, always, was on the meat. That was the main course. Everything else is a 'side dish'. I think that sets up a mental hierarchy about what you consider to be the most important thing. These days, I eat mostly chicken and fish. Pork and beef are far more rare, perhaps once a month or so. Tofu and soy factor in, probably not as frequently as they should, as do other sources of proteins - beans and legumes. Still, there are days when I would like nothing better than a bloody steak.

Yesterday I visited the sheep farm down the road. The lambs have been coming for the past few weeks and I wanted to photograph them. They are so gentle, and curious - one kept trying to suck my thumb like a teat, while another sniffed the camera over and over so that I had to wipe its noseprints off the lens. Their breath was soft and warm. The youngest ones were still very unsteady on their legs, while the older ones pawed playfully at my legs with their hooves. It's times like these when I wonder how I could ever eat another bite of meat, because nearly every one of these lambs will soon be slaughtered.

It's some kind of cosmic joke - to be created to eat meat, among other things, but to have the propensity for developing emotional connections with animals. I could never draw the knife myself, so am I entitled to eat meat at all? I look at all the cuts of meat on the little pink styrofoam trays in the store and don't make the connection. There are no pictures of small, fuzzy lambs at the butcher - only of pork chops and rump roasts.

I know our neighbours with the sheep farm take very good care of their animals. They are raised with organic methods, are not penned in, and are free to roam as they will. I know also that when the time comes, they take the job of slaughtering the lambs very seriously and do it as quickly and painlessly as they can. I respect that, and yet I know we must be very different people. They can pick up that unstruggling lamb, look it in the eyes, and draw the knife. I would be haunted by that all my days.

The days that I am able to take a piece of meat and throw it on the grill without thinking about these things seem to grow fewer and fewer, yet I doubt I can ever give up meat entirely. I don't know how to reconcile this.

Friday, March 04, 2005

Message to George W. Bush

Just something I saw recently:

"Loyalty to a petrified opinion never broke a chain or freed a human spirit." -Mark Twain


Elm Park, Worcester, 2005 Posted by Hello

The Interloper Strikes Again

"Hey, come down here."

"What?"

"Come down here and tell me what you smell."

Oh geeze. OK. I head down to the kitchen and start smelling. Halfway through the kitchen, towards the laundry room and the back door, it hits me. Tomcat piss!

The Interloper returned in the night and left his calling card. He also devoured the contents of both the cat's and dog's foodbowls. Besides the aggravation and inconvenience of the smell of cat pee through the house (AGAIN!), my first thoughts - OK, my SECOND thoughts - were of the Interloper's welfare. We've had a lot of snow lately. It's a long way up from the junkyard, where he supposedly lives. He must be very, very hungry to make the trek up in this temperature. I couldn't begrudge him the meal.

You might ask - why do I feel this way about a strange cat coming in and pissing all over my floors, but I have almost zero concern for the damn squirrels that empty my feeders? Well, simple. IT'S A CAT (see earlier post on this subject if you're still unclear about where my loyalties lie).

After I filled the bowls back up again, and spread some pinesol over the linoleum (Craig's parents are coming to visit this evening, doesn't it just figure), we started thinking about how to deal with the Interloper. Try the Have-a-Heart trap? With our luck Motorhead (our cat) would find her way in there first. Stay tuned...

Thursday, March 03, 2005


Love Shines, 2005 Posted by Hello

Chocolate

It is scientifically accepted that chocolate is a kind of aphrodisiac, and has a similar effect on the brain as a sexual orgasm. It is also generally understood that women are more attuned to these effects than men, and hence are more likely to crave chocolate. And if you're a woman with a very healthy sexual appetite, well. It becomes very easy to want chocolate when you know it will produce those sexual-satisfaction kinds of feelings one can't indulge in in the workplace. It's your fix.

I'm suffering, as I write, from an acute craving for chocolate. I'm fending it off by reminding myself of two things: a) the dress I want to get into, and b) the fact that the chocolate in the vending machine on this floor is abominable. I am a snob about many things, and chocolate is on my top five list of things about which I am exceedingly snobby. Chocolate should involve all the senses: it should please the eye with a rich dark shine; it should inflame the nose with its fragrance; it should create a wave of pleasure rolling through the mouth. Sound like sex? Of course it does.

A package of M&Ms, or a Milky Way bar - even a dark one - cannot even come close to eliciting these kinds of reactions. They're stop gaps, teasers with a waxy texture devoid of the barest whiff of true chocolate decadence. They may hint at the pleasures of chocolate but they never satisfy. One tiny square of a bar such as a 70% cacao Valrhona has the ability to make my senses sing from head to toe. Reese's Peanut Butter Cups only make me swear at myself for giving into what I knew, all along, was a chocolate scam.

Still, I sit here tempted. The vending machine tells me that any chocolate, no matter how inferior, is better than no chocolate at all. I know it's lying to me, like so many lovers who took everything and gave nothing in return. Resist. Resist.

Wednesday, March 02, 2005


Love is Complicated, 2005 Posted by Hello

Tuesday, March 01, 2005

Light and form

OK, I could bitch more about work today, or even about getting more damned snow, but what would be the fun in that? Today I'm daydreaming about photographs I want to take, shots I want to set up. I've been preoccupied lately with the idea of shooting bodies, forms, behind some kind of veil or something that obscures detail. Flyscreens, gauze, definitely different fabrics. I see a lot of nudes, but not in overtly erotic ways, just more suggestions of form. I need to figure out how to light it. Moreover, I need to wait for warmer weather before I have a hope of talking someone into posing nude for me, since I think of doing this in the barn with the light that filters in from the upper windows in the afternoon. That barn is damned cold right now. Lots of ideas...need to start jotting them down, and then figuring out how to get people to model...

I bought a book on shooting nudes over the weekend - what I thought was interesting was that it had a whole section in the back explaining how every one of the shots was made - camera settings, film (no digital), lighting, etc. I have to spend some time with that while waiting for the warmer weather.