What does poison oak look like?

I know the blog is terrible need of an update. What can I say? I’ve been busy, but I am also at odds over the idea. Isn’t a blog essentially an act of ego? Well maybe I’ve just been mostly busy, and somewhat lazy.

My time in Lincoln is coming closer to it’s end and hopefully that means that I am getting closer to coming home, though it still feels like a month away even if it is just over a week. I have been busying myself with riding this past week and have gotten out for a few great rides in the Lincoln area. I broke down and bought a set of cross tires - off road tires for road bikes - and took to the trails around town which has been a great escape from the thoughts of work and office politics which seem to permeate my thoughts when I am shooting.

Lately I have been dwelling on an incident that happened in the office a couple of weeks ago when I was very publicly excluded from the congratulations for a recent success, a project which I spent six weeks working on. It’s unnerving how easily these things come between me and my day or how dominant that inner dialogue becomes; what we would have said given the opportunity to say it.

A few days ago the heat broke and leveled off at about 85 and I got to head out for a ride through the trees. Somewhere along the trail that inner dialogue drowned in the sound of the cicadas in the trees and the rumble and whistles of a near by train. There I was suddenly giddy, spontaneously smiling and laughing, the world had disappeared except for the hard brown earth and the verdant green of Wilderness Park. Nothing mattered in that moment, not work, not disinterested clients and not loneliness. In the park, on the trails, I suddenly felt very connected to everyone else on the trails, everyone I crossed and everyone who had left their tracks before me. The only thing left to worry about was whether or not that last grove I rode through was poison oak. I guess I should find out what poison oak looks like.

On Friday night a colleague and I returned to a restaurant in Lincoln which I had been to twice before. It can be a great local place with nice food and warm service but on Friday I came to wonder if the restaurant experience is on a sliding scale. The first time you go to a restaurant, a decent one anyway, they treat you great, the food is good and the service is attentive, they want you to come back. When you go back the second time the restaurant is grateful and rewards you for returning. The service is even more attentive, water glasses never get past half full, the bread is warm when it hits the table, and your wine glass is a little fuller than it should be. But all bets are off for the third visit. They impress you on the first visit, reward you for the second, but by the third they know you’re coming back, so you’ll have to endure what ever service they can spare for the night! Oh well.

The picture is from the Mill coffeehouse, not the place in question, in the Haymarket in Lincoln. It’s a great local place, good coffee and free internet access. It’s just a cool place to hang out and, as Steve Li can attest, attracts a nice looking crowd. Not that I would notice such things!