Christmas started in Chicago for us. Our flight out of Chicago was an early morning one, so we decided to hang out in the city the day before and stay at a hotel. As I’ve said before, Chicago is a great city with wonderful architecture. I brought my weird old camera with me. It used to be just old, but now it’s weird and old because ever since it got soaking wet it takes weird pictures, which actually turns out pretty cool. However, the fat blue stripe in the picture above is not the camera, it’s the shadow of a building behind the others, blocking the sun you see beaming around its sides. The weird pink is the camera, though.
We went to the Kristkindlemarkt, a bona fide German style market in a little square in the city. I didn’t get a picture of it but I did get a picture of these pigeons huddled around a flame like hobos around a fire. I don’t know what the flame is but I like to think it’s from the Olympic torch.
More pigeons. This is one of the booths that are by every bridge.
Attempted self portrait on the bridge. Only Daniel made it in. My weird old camera’s lens apparently has a closer view than I thought.
The view while sipping out drinks from the Signature Room in the Hancock Tower. The buildings all look like friends.
The sun created it’s own little trail reflecting off windows and buildings.
Then we flew to California! Those are some mountains. Or clouds. I’m not sure which.
The first day after we arrived we went to two breweries up near Santa Rosa, Red River Brewery and Bear Republic (the latter being everyone’s favorite). The guys got beer tasting flights like the above. The table was full of these tiny glasses.
In California we spent much time hanging out in front of one of my favorite fireplaces in the world. The whole 2.5 weeks were a blur of multiple Christmases, and seeing tons of people. It was just enough time to fill the soul up with everything happy and comfortable and family and california and beautiful to go back to Illinois ready to face winter and a lack of nature diversity.
Some time was spent hiking up to the old oak tree. It is a beautiful steadfast landmark in my mind, and our main source of the weather and smog report because from it you can see all the way to some valley – on a clear day.
On some of these walks we met some cows.
This is a portrait of Christmas at Duane’s. It somehow is a double negative of the Christmas tree and windows on one end of the room, and looking out two windows on the other end of the room at the fountain/flowerpot/pumpkincollection.
Christmas at my parents’ house. The hills aren’t green and that is weird for winter in California. It made it feel like summer. Also, this picture wasn’t taken with the weird old camera, but was edited with the amazing Picasa photo editing program! The latest version has all these styles you can apply to your pictures and it’s super fun. I took a bunch of family pictures for my friends and edited them all up with Picasa. Like this one.
So, belated Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
