At first it was cute when the neighborhood kids came to visit Turtle, but now it's getting annoying. I made the mistake of letting them play my Playstation once, now they're over every day. They hardly even pay attention to Turtle anymore. They just want to play videogames and eat my food. One of the kids even tried opening my door to let himself in without even knocking. Ugh. I have started using excuses like, "Turtle is sleeping, you'll have to come back later", but Turtle doesn't know how to play along with it. He gets up and meets them at the door with his tail wagging.

Today, I vowed to not answer the door if they knocked, but one of them caught me while I was putting out the trash. Soon I will have to resort to harsher measures.

My dog Turtle was viciously attacked by my neighbor's dog. He is alive and will recover, but it has been a tough week.

Last Saturday, I flew to San Francisco to help my friend Beth drive across the country; she is moving to the Philadelphia area. We planed to take a leisurely trip along I-80 and stop at all of the usual tourist spots. The first night we made it to Reno. The second night, as we were arriving in Salt Lake City, I got a call from Emily.

She was out walking the dogs in the alley behind our house. The neighbor's large, wild dogs broke away from his control and jumped on Turtle, biting him and tearing a huge gash across his back. The guy didn't do anything to try to get his dogs off Turtle, but another neighbor saw the attack and kicked the dogs until they let go. Emily rushed him to the vet. When she called me, they didn't think he had a good chance of surviving. They were able to stabilize him that night and the next day he seemed strong enough to undergo surgery.

The vet cleaned out his wounds and stapled him shut. He stayed there for a few days recovering and gaining strength. Meanwhile, Beth and I drove from Salt Lake City to DC in two days. I was incredibly worried about Turtle and I felt horrible that Emily had to deal with it by herself. I just wanted to be back with them. Beth and I got in to DC on Tuesday night; Wednesday Turtle was ready to come home.

The last few days Emily and I have been keeping up with his rigorous schedule of medicines and warm compresses. He is spending most of his time in bed resting, but does go walk around in the yard a few times a day. Our neighbors have been great. Many of them have come over to visit him and bring treats. Even some of the neighborhood kids have stopped by. Turtle will need one more surgery and a long period of recovery, but he will eventually be ok.

I spent the beginning of last week in Pennsylvania shooting a story for the PBS NewsHour about the Democratic Senate primary race between Arlen Specter and Joe Sestak. I went with producer Sarah Clune and correspondent Judy Woodruff, who were both really great to work with. Sarah was incredibly organized - the essential quality of a good producer.

Most of the days were spent following the candidate to their rallies. I have attended many rallies for presidential candidates, but I can't remember ever going to a rally for a congressional candidate. They were hilarious. Joe Sestak gave a speech in a suburb outside of Philadelphia from the bed of a pickup truck. Arlen Specter gave one in a union hall where there were more people on stage than in the audience. Sarah and I felt really bad for him after that one.

Unfortunately, some of my favorite footage didn't make it into the piece. We spent a couple hours at the famous Pat's cheese-steak restaurant. I got some great shots from inside the kitchen of them cooking the meat and making the sandwiches and we shot some vox pops with the customers, but the segment got cut. We also spent a lot of time trying to get nice shots of the skyline. I got some from the Phillies stadium and some from the top of a parking garage at Drexel University, but those didn't make it into the piece either.

Like most of these trips, the days were packed. When we were done shooting, I couldn't just go to sleep. I still had to offload all of the footage from my camera to external hard drive for Sarah to log and transcribe. Monday we left the hotel at 7:30am, shot all day, interviewed Joe Sestak at 9:00 that night and didn't get to bed until 2:00am Tuesday. I shot over six hours of material and WETA shot a couple more, but when it was done being edited, the piece was only ten minutes long.

Here's a link to the video.

Last week the Prime Minster of Singapore was in town for the Nuclear Summit. Actually, just about all the world leaders were in town, but I was shooting for Singapore based Channel News Asia, so he was the one I was focused on (Singaporeans just call him "PM" - like "Let's go film PM giving a speech"). The Nuclear Summit was held at the Washington Convention Center and they had the whole place fenced off for a few blocks in every direction. It was a huge pain trying to get into the convention center, because there was only one entrance and it was nowhere near the metro or any other convenient access point. I spent most of my time carrying my heavy gear in a large circle around the building. When I did get inside, the shooting schedule was a bit frantic. I had to run from PM's meeting with Hillary Clinton to the Group Photo with all the world leaders, to the Plenary Meeting, to PM's meeting with the Crown Prince of UAE and back to the media center to send everything. On Tuesday, Obama gave his big wrap up speech, which I filmed from the "cuts riser" off to the side of the stage. The riser was mobbed by still photographers, many of whom acted like it was a trampoline, making it hard for me to get steady shots. Finally the CNN cameraman and I yelled at them enough times to make them stand still and we were able to get some nice shots of the President.

On Wednesday, I followed PM to Chicago along with a hoard of Singaporean journalists and his large delegation. We covered his speeches, his meeting with Richard Daily (it was fun going to Daily's office), his meeting with the President of the University of Chicago and his lunch with Singaporean ex-pats. But the highlight of the trip was, of course, the food. I brought the journalists to Due's for deep dish pizza the first night we were there. They loved it and wanted more. The next night we tried to go to Gino's East, but it was closed by the time we got there around 11pm, so we went to Giordano's instead. After two nights of deep dish pizza, I couldn't look at a slice of pizza for days (a rarity for me). I got back into DC on Saturday and had barely enough time to rest, before starting another hectic week.

Tuesday was The Week Magazine's awards dinner. I was in charge of our technical operations, which meant setting up the cameras, switcher, record deck, live digitize computer and live streaming computer. The event itself was interesting - it was headlined by Rahm Emanuel and featured a panel discussion with Rep. Eric Cantor, Senator Amy Klobuchar, Gov. Ed Rendell and Steve Schmidt. Afterward, Kate and I were at the office until 5:30am editing video segments for their website.

The rest of the week was spent shooting interviews with Sen. Inhoff, Gov. Pataki, Dick Morris and Grover Norquist, chasing around people in whale costumes for an anti-whaling documentary and crash editing a video for the Lowell School that we shot a year ago, but have basically forgotten about until now. Hopefully this coming week will be a bit less hectic.

My mom was in town for the AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) meeting last week. I was there to shoot the Netanyahu speech. They let all of the journalists in early and gave us a disgusting (although I'm not complaining because it was free) dinner. When they let the general public in, I was sitting at the press tables talking to some journalists. I watched my mom climb onto the press riser and ask the other camera-people about me. When she couldn't find me, she left something near my camera. Finally I went over and met her. She had brought me a sandwich wrapped in a napkin. They all laughed, but said that they have Jewish mothers as well, so they understand.

Tuesday I went to NYC for the day to shoot an interview with Karl Rove for Politico.com. I took the 8:00am Acela train up there with all of my gear - two full light kits, camera, tripod, laptop, microphones and a ton of other stuff. Last time I was up there, I learned the hard way that some of the escalators in Penn Station are too narrow for my gear cart. This time I got off the train and headed straight for the freight elevator. About 15 other people seemed to think I knew what I was doing, so they followed me on. When the elevator was full, someone pressed the button. Nothing happened. They manually closed the doors. Still nothing. Everyone started looking at me, expecting me to know how to operate it. I just shrugged. They noticed a rope hanging from a cage door and pulled it down. Finally the elevator started moving. We went up to the top and the doors opened into what looked like a freight dock. So they decided to close the doors and go back down. Everyone got off where they started, looking a bit discouraged.

The interview was conducted at the Simon and Schuster office, located across the street from Rockefeller Center. I met Nathan, the B-camera operator, an hour and a half before the shoot was meant to start. It takes at least an hour to set up a decent looking two camera shoot. While we were setting up, there was a woman standing around chatting with us who I assumed was Rove's press secretary. I didn't pay much attention to her at first, but she started talking about all of her recent press appearances and I suddenly realized who she was - Dana Perino, the White House Press Secretary under G.W. Bush!

Rove arrived right on time for the interview. I asked Tammy, the executive producer, to clap to help me sync the cameras in post production. Rove took it upon himself to clap and he thought it was the funniest thing he'd ever seen. He kept clapping and yelling things like "quiet on the set" until we were ready to start. Towards the end of the interview we were really rushed for time, because Rove had to be at the Charlie Rose show. Suddenly one of his assistants walked right into the shot and stood behind him typing on her blackberry. I could have killed her. We had no time to re-ask the question, so there was nothing I could do to fix the shot. Click here to watch the full interview.

Wednesday, I spent all day editing. That night I went to the premier of the new Discovery Channel series 'Life'. It was a great event. They had the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra playing the score for the screening and the food was outstanding. They served fried mac n' cheese balls, sweet potato fries and mini cheese burgers before the screening and sushi, steak, stir fry, and all kinds of delicious desserts afterwords. Plus there was a full open bar the whole time.

Friday I shot an interview with Rep. Kingston from Georgia. When I got there, I learned that they wanted to move the interview to the Capitol Building. As we headed downstairs to the underground tram, which connects the Rayburn Building to the Capitol, he grabbed my light kit. It was really nice of him, but I really didn't want him to carry it. Especially because it is by far my heaviest piece of gear. I asked for it back a few times, but he wouldn't relent. He ended it carrying it on the tram and all the way to the Capitol.

Last Friday was the latest interview in Politico's Inside Obama's Washington series. This time it was with White House budget director, Peter Orszag. The interview was conducted in one of the War Rooms in the Old Executive Office Building. This was the third "War Room" we've shot in. The shoot went well, but I made the mistake of telling the producer that I would send her approval copies before finishing the edit. The problem was that I forgot how long it takes to export preview copies. So I started editing in the afternoon, but didn't leave work until 11:30pm.

I've spent all this week editing the Legal Momentum video that I shot in NYC. It has been a long, labor intensive project, as all corporate videos are. Most of the video was pretty easy to edit, but one section has caused a ton of problems. It's a section about domestic violence, but we obviously can't show pictures of spousal abuse. The rest of the video I've been able to use generic shots of women when I didn't know what else to show, but I can't do that for this section. Finally, one of my co-workers had the idea to show closeups of a woman's hands doing domestic chores. So I shot some video of Kate washing dishes and making tea. It sort of worked, but we'll see what the client thinks. I hope they like it, because the video is suppose to be done early next week and I don't have anything else that I can use.

Emily's sister Rebecca got Married in Cincinnati last week. Em, Kat and I left DC on Tuesday, the day of the second big snow storm. We decided that it would be too dangerous to drive north through the blizzard, so we went south instead. Tuesday night we stayed in Knoxville (yeah, we went that far south) and left for Cincinnati the next morning. We stopped for lunch at a small diner in Lexington, Kentucky, which made everyone sick. Emily and Kat then had to check out every little boutique in the city before getting back on the road.

We arrived in Cincinnati in time for them to go to the bridal shower. I ate Gold Star chili (bad idea) and read Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations in the hotel room. Thursday, we helped them set up the reception hall and went to the rehearsal.

Friday, I went to Skyline Chili with Todd, Tom and Dan to avenge my initial experience with Cincinnati chili. This time it was much better. It may have been the fact that the restaurant seemed more hygienic and the people handling the food wore gloves, but it did seem like the food was actually better.

That night was the wedding. The service was held in a church and they decided to do the entire Catholic mass. Emily and I kept ourselves entertained during the service by taking lots of pictures. The reception was held at a site near our hotel. Emily's aunt wasn't feeling well and wanted to go back to her room, but she wouldn't leave until she got a piece of cake. So throughout the toasts, she stood next to the cake with her plate and fork at the ready. I think she got a piece before the bride and groom even got theirs. The rest of the wedding went off without a hitch and everyone had fun.

We took the northerly route home and continued our quest to stop at every Starbucks on the route (or at least that's what it felt like). In West Virginia, we followed the map to what was suppose to be a Starbucks in Wheeling. We ended up at a casino. It was the strangest thing; the people looked like zombies. They were all staring slack-jawed into their slot machines, only moving one finger to press the button. The repetitive tones played by the machines seemed to hypnotize them. I don't think we could have pulled them away from the games if we tried. I met a guy with a custom made, air-brushed shirt that said "Diceman N' Da House".

I spent the last few days shooting in NYC. I love going there, but I hate dragging all the equipment around with me. This trip was worse than usual on the crap-I-had-to-drag-around front. I brought a light kit, two cameras, clothes, a tripod, a bag of peripherals and a laptop. So I had to take the train with a cart piled high with gear, a backpack and a tripod over my shoulder. Where are the sherpas when you need them?

Wednesday I met up with Erin, who works for Legal Momentum, a non profit which deals mostly with women's issues. We drove out to Queens to meet with a woman who works as an electrician and teaches at a local vocational high school. We interviewed her in the classroom and followed her around as she helped the students. The next stop was the Legal Momentum office in Manhattan. It was a huge challenge trying to find a parking spot. Eventually we gave up and paid $26(!) to park in a lot for three hours. I filmed them having a fake staff meeting and interviewed several of them about the organization.

When the shoot was over, I got a call from my office saying that I had to dress up for my shoot at the New York Stock Exchange the next day. Here's the thing, I'm a cameraman. I never have to dress up. I barely have any fancy clothes at home and I certainly didn't bring any of them to New York. So I called my friend Aaron and asked about the dress code at the NYSE. He said that he's always worn jeans when shooting there. I didn't want to take a chance, so I went clothes shopping. Too bad the stores were all closed by the time I started. I ended up going out to Brooklyn to meet Aaron at a bar and borrow a sport-coat from him. Thursday I went down to the NYSE at 8am. I wore the sport-coat and jeans and no one said a word.

I was there to shoot more B-roll to sell through Getty Images. My company has been making a few thousand dollars a month off some old standard definition footage, so we decided to get some new shots in HD. I wasn't suppose to be there until 9:00, but I arrived early because I knew it would take awhile to get through security. By 9:00 I was on a balcony overlooking the trading floor. They let me stay until 9:45, way longer than I expected. I got some great footage that I'm sure will pay my salary for years to come.

After leaving the stock exchange, I walked up to city hall and the courthouse. There wasn't much to shoot over there, so I set up on the Brooklyn Bridge and got some shots of women for the Legal Momentum video. Given the subject of the video it was perfectly acceptable to focus on women, but it still felt creepy.

I met Aaron at the United Nations building for lunch. It was actually harder to get in there than it was to get into the NYSE. Aaron had to carry the gear, because he has a "resident journalist" pass. I had some soup from the horrible little UN cafe and hung out with Sherwin the SABC correspondent, before heading back to Penn Station to catch my train home.

I spent all week shooting a new video series for Politico called Inside Obama's Washington. I worked with my favorite executive producer Tammy Haddad, Steve Mort (our shooter/editor/reporter from Orlando) and the people at Politico. We interviewed Arne Duncan (Education Secretary), Nancy Pelosi (Speaker of the House), Eric Cantor (House Minority Leader) and Dan Pfeiffer (White House Communications Director). The shooting and editing process took at least 16 hours for each video, so I was working from 8am to midnight everyday.

We had less than an hour to setup for each interview, which is really not enough time for a two camera shoot. The Arne Duncan interview was scheduled to begin at 8:30am, so Steve and I showed up at 6:45 hoping for extra setup time. Unfortunately we had to wait for the press person to arrive, chose a room, move a conference table, and argue with the producer about the location of flags and plants in the background. We were still rushing around adjusting lights when Duncan arrived, but we couldn't make him wait, so we had to drop everything and start the interview.

For Pelosi, we arrived at the Capitol building almost three hours early, made it through security fairly quickly and were able to start setting up two hours before the interview. Given we had the most time, her interview looks the best. Pelosi reminds me so much of my mother. Obviously their politics are much different, but their mannerisms are so similar.

The Cantor and Pfeiffer interviews were conducted on the same day, with only about an hour and a half between them. I brought extra cases for the lights, so we wouldn't have to worry about packing neatly. After the Cantor interview, we just through everything into the cases and ran to the White House as quickly as possible. Well we didn't actually run, we took a cab, but it was still a rush. That night we had to edit both videos, so I got Emily to come help. It was almost 1:00am by the time we got home.

I shot a couple big interviews yesterday. One with Valerie Jarrett, an adviser to President Obama and one with Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner . Murry, a freelance cameraman I often work with, and I were at the front gate of the White House at 8:30am. It took awhile to get in, because they had to check the gear with a bomb dog and by hand. We finally got to the interview location, the War Room in the Old Executive Office Building at 9:00. We only had 30 minutes to set up for the two camera shoot. Normally it takes at least an hour. We were making final adjustments to the lights as she walked in. The interview itself went fine, but it took over an hour to clean up afterward.

At 2:00 we arrived at the moat entrance to the Treasury Department. This time it took even longer for the guards to look though our gear and bring over the bomb dog. Finally we made our way down the rough brick driveway and into the basement of the building. They certainly don't make it easy to bring in the equipment. This time we had an hour to set up, so we had time to fiddle with the lights. Lighting is usually the most fun part of a shoot and if there's time, I can spend hours getting it just right. Geithner arrived a little late and seemed to be in a better mood than the last shoot I did with him. He joked about not being able to get a reservation at a local Indian restaurant. I couldn't get a reservation there either, but you would think it would be easier for the Treasury Secretary. The interview was conducted by Mike Allen from the Politico. After 15 minutes, Geithner's press secretary motioned for us to wrap it up, but Mike was relentless. He kept going even after signaling he was finished by asking the "finally" question. Geithner didn't seem to mind though and Mike eventually concluded the interview. Look for them on the Politico website later this week. It may be picked up by the networks as well, but that remains to be seen.

I spent Thursday and Friday of last week in NYC shooting for the NewsHour. Thursday I shot in the Little Haiti section of Brooklyn. We tried to find a restaurant with a large number of Haitians who were effected by the earthquake, but the restaurants were deserted. We ended up at a Haitian radio station where people were gathered to find out information about their family members in Haiti. I shot some b-roll of the radio station and surrounding neighborhood, before getting an interview with the DJ. From there, we headed to the office of the nation's first Haitian city council member and conducted an interview outside of his office.

The producer at NewsHour arranged for us to feed the footage via satellite from a Hispanic TV station in Brooklyn. We got there ten minutes before our scheduled feed time and tried to connect the camera. It didn't work. They tried connecting it to various places in their network, but still no luck. We moved the camera into the control room and kept working on connecting to the satellite while our allotted time expired. Finally they gave up on a digital connection and switched to an analog output. The picture worked right away, but not the sound. They brought out old, scotch taped wires with the rubber stripped off and connected the audio. I quickly started sending the footage, but only one channel of audio was working at a time. I had to switch the audio cables back and forth to send the right channel until all of the footage was sent. It was a horribly nerve wrecking experience that I never want to repeat. I found out later that the people at the TV station had so much trouble connecting the camera, because they had never fed from a camera before. Their lack of experience was, of course, blamed on me.

Friday we shot a local city council meeting where it was announced that city workers could donate money to the relief effort directly from their paychecks. The Haitian city council member, who we interviewed Thursday, broke down crying when he started talking about his family members in Haiti. After the meeting, we went to a community market popular with the Caribbean diaspora. A white woman came and sat with us and told us about how she was sick of the 'white media'. She said that she couldn't read most publications or watch most TV stations because it was biased against people like herself. She went on to tell us about how she went to Nigeria and felt like she was at home. After freeing ourselves from her crazy stories, we went back to the TV station to feed the footage. This time they were ready and it went fine. Next time I need to send footage via satellite, I will make sure to go somewhere that has done it before.

Things are finally starting to calm down a bit at work. And by starting to calm down, I mean that I got a couple hours to go home after arriving at 6:00am and leaving at 8:00pm today. It's nice to be busy and all, but this is getting ridiculous.

Last month I shot an interview with Bill Clinton. It was conducted in NYC at the start of his Clinton Global Initiative event. I brought a bunch of lights up from DC and had Paige and Nathan bring some more. They only gave us an hour and a half to set up, which is not a lot for a big-name, two-camera shoot. When we were almost done setting up, they made us move the lights and cameras to the sides of the room to make way for catering. Twenty minutes before Clinton's arrival we were finally let back in the room to re-set everything. It was a mess. The interview went well though and he stayed around afterward to take pictures with us. The edit took a lot longer than I expected, because I was using a new camera and a new recording format. I ended up missing the last train back to DC and had to wait for the 1:30 bus. I didn't get back to DC until 7:30am, but there was so much going on at the office that I had to work all day. That was probably the worst part, but the best part was that the Colbert Report picked up a clip from the interview! Oh, and no one touched the catering.

At the beginning of the month, we put on the First Draft of History event with the Atlantic Magazine. It was a forum for famous journalists to interview politicians and other newsmakers. Emily did most of the planning, design and production. She did a great job, but I don't think she had a single day off in September. She became the main point of contact for all of the people and organizations working on the event. In addition to being on the phone 12 hours a day, she designed all of the graphics and took over the Managing Editor's job for a couple weeks.

I was in charge of the video side of the event. I set up the control room, directed four cameras, and controlled the switched feed going to the major networks. I am not sure which networks showed our video, but I did see a clip on Countdown with Keith Olbermann.

There were some great guests at the event, including John McCain, Lindsey Graham (who comes to all of these events), General Petraeus, Alan Greenspan, Larry Summers, Tim Geithner, Janet Napolitano and CEOs from Google, AOL and Time Warner. Given this was the first time they have done this event, it went really well. The Atlantic is planning to do the event next year and I'm sure Emily is the first person they will call.

Yesterday I helped my friend Ted shoot some green-screen footage for Georgetown Basketball. This footage, plus some some stuff from the highlight reel will be played on the Jumbotron at their games. We used a 400 sqft freestanding green-screen, plus over 20 lights to fill the basketball court. The shoot went well, but I wish we could have hired some extra people to help us carry all the equipment. It took us six hours just to set everything up.

Today Emily and arrived at the office at 6:00am to shoot an hour long talk show about Hispanic American issues. Emily designed and constructed the set. I set up all the cameras, decks, monitors, sound equipment and switcher. We did it for the first time last week and we're suppose to do it every week from now on. I just hope that the set up will take less time in the coming weeks than it has for the last two.

Sorry I haven't updated much this month, but anyone following me on twitter should know what's going on in my life...

Our manager at work has been out of town for the last couple weeks. Emily has taken over all of the scheduling duties and she's doing a great job. Our co-workers are even starting to call her "boss". We also started working on a big event for the Atlantic Monthly. Well mostly Emily has been working on it. She is meeting with all of the big-wigs like David Bradley and helping to organize the whole thing.

I helped out another production company with a green-screen shoot in Baltimore. I always enjoy working with them, because their projects are so much different than ours. We do broadcast TV news, while they do mostly corporate videos. And I don't get to do many shoots in a proper studio. There are much fewer time constraints, so you get to spend hours tweaking the camera and lighting.

My Brazilian jiu-jitsu classes are going well. The school is very small, so there are usually just a few students. This is only my first month of classes. I have yet to learn many submissions and counters. Therefore, I spent most of the class either getting choked or with my joints being forced in the wrong directions. It's fun though.

I had a busy weekend. Saturday I had to film the President's sister, Maya Ng. She was at the opening to an exhibit of her mother's textile collection from Indonesia. She didn't show up for the press conference, so I almost left. But soon after I started shooting b-roll of the fabrics, she showed up. Immediately all of the reporters attacked her. Someone alerted me just as she walked in, so I was able to get in front of the crowd and get a good shot. She answered some questions and posed for photos while everyone stuck various recording devices in her face. She obviously wasn't use to the attention and didn't have any security to keep the rabid journalists at bay. As the crowd pushed forward she kept backing up, until she was finally behind one of the displays and almost against the wall. Everyone left when she stopped talking.

After the shoot I saw the latest Harry Potter movie, which was highly entertaining. Then I went straight from the movie to Buffalo Billiards to see the UFC pay-per-view event. Kat usually comes with me, but she decided to stay home. I met up with my new Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu teacher and watched the event with him and his friends. Did I mention that I started taking BJJ classes? Well I did and they are lots of fun.

Sunday, I helped my friend Aaron shoot a video for the Republican Liberty Caucus, of which he is deeply involved. We shot at my office where it was scorching hot; they leave the a/c off over the weekend. And the video lights made it even worse. Everyone was a bit testy because of the heat, but we got through one of the videos he wanted to do.

Emily picked me up from the office and we went to her mom and Tom's house for a joint birthday dinner. We were celebrating Emily's, her step-brother's, step-sister's and step-dad's birthdays. They made hot dogs and hamburgers on the grill and finished it off with brownies and yellow cake (two of my favorites).

Below are some photos I took of an apartment fire a couple blocks from my house.

Here are some photos from our trip to Mexico:

Yesterday, Emily and I spent the entire day sitting on the beach and reading our books. It was great! The resort has beds as well as regular lounge chairs on the beach. I spent a few hours napping on one of the beds under an umbrella.

Today we also spent the day at the beach. I decided to try sailing again. But this time, I had someone show me how to do it. I was able to go back and forth in front of the hotel a few times, but on my third turn I flipped the boat. It happened so quick that I didn´t even realize what was going on until I found myself in the water. My glasses fell off and started sinking. Somehow I was able to grab them before they were washed away. The instructor had to paddle out in a little kayak to help me turn it back over. I was able to sail past the hotel one more time, before making my entirely ungraceful landing on the shore.

Overall the trip has been really nice. We haven´t had to think about anything. There are eight restaurants, all of which are included in the price of the trip. The staff is wonderful and they take care of your every need. I imagine it´s like living in a very nice retirement home on the beach.

Emily and I arrived in Mexico last night. Our resort is beautiful, but the food is basically inedible. We spent all day today sitting on the beach or by the pool reading. I tried to sail a small, one person sailboat, but failed miserably. I thought that my sailing experience in Sudan would be sufficient, so I rented a boat from our hotel. The first time I got about 20 feet from shore, then headed into the wind and came right back to where I started. The second time, I went out much further, sailing parallel to the shore. When I passed the resort, I tried turning around and heading back. The wind took me right into the resort's swimming area. I narrowly dodged some swimmers and landed on the beach. Someone helped me pull the boat ashore so I could get someone to sail it back. The guy who rented me the boat seemed to have no problem zipping right back along the shore to the dock. When I get back to DC, I want to try taking some lessons.

Sorry for the lack of updates. Things have suddenly gotten really busy at work. Manalisi, the SABC correspondent, is back in town (and busier than ever) and we have a couple new clients. Emily has been doing about seven shoots a week for Newsmax.tv, a conservative website. Most of her shoots are with Republican members of the Senate and House. Last week, I came with her to interview Ron Paul, which was very exciting. Here are some photos from my recent shoots:





My upside-down tomato plant is doing great! I haven't had much luck growing tomatoes in the past, but this year I cut a hole in the bottom of a bucket and suspended it from the outside of our house. I let the tomatoes ripen on the vine and they are the most delicious I have ever tasted. Here are some photos of the plant and my pesto pasta with tomatoes:




Tomorrow we leave for our vacation in Mexico!

I have a love / hate relationship with the Fourth of July. The problem is that it gives my neighbors an excuse to light fireworks. They really take it too far. The "celebration" starts on July 1st and goes till July 7th. During this time, my dogs huddle in the corner shaking and refusing to eat or go outside.

We did manage to get out of the city for part of the day. Emily, Kat, Turtle, Piggy and I went hiking at Sugarloaf Mountain in Maryland. The hike down was great. Going back up, not so much. The route up the mountain didn't allow for a gradual incline. We were exhausted by the time we got back to the car. After the hike, we stopped at the Sugarloaf Mountain Vineyard for their Fourth of July celebration. They had a nice outdoor seating area, a delicious fruit and cheese plate and plenty of wines to taste.

Last night someone was setting off dynamite on the corner. Literally dynamite. It rattled all of the windows in the neighborhood and set off car alarms. I was unfortunate enough to be sitting on the porch for one of the explosions. My hearing will never be the same.

The people behind our house were blasting Michael Jackson's greatest hits at full volume. Kat saw a fat lady moonwalk across the alley. Judging by the abandoned cars in the ally, our neighbors clearly spend more money on fireworks than they do on car repairs.