Where I Am: My house, in our dining room
What I’m Doing: Demonstrating what a normal head looks like when compared to my Easter Island-esque cranium
This marks the first appearance of my beautiful wife, Lisa, who complained of not being included in any of my photos despite the fact that there were only 8 taken. I’m honored that someone else besides me would show interest in this project, but mostly I’m relieved that at least there won’t be 365 poorly staged and photographed pictures centered on my big, fat, lonely head.
We are not dwarfs. Well, at least I’m not. I’m sitting on a chair in front of our kitchen counter and Lisa is hunched over beside me. When she stands upright she’s a little over 14 inches tall, so the angle is not as deceiving as one would think.
The reason we are sitting in front of our kitchen sink is, besides the fact that I needed a picture that wasn’t of me just standing around being uninteresting (which, it can be argued, I am doing here in a sitting position), that the template for the new counters are being done tomorrow and thus the old countertops have been relocated to a far less useful location.
The entire process of replacing the countertops seems designed to be inconvenient. The old countertops must be removed before the templating can be done (a process wherein cardboard is laid out on top of the cabinets and then cut to match its shape, which seems like a technique invented in Medieval monastery that remains unchanged to this day) and there’s a two week period during which the new counters are fabricated and you’re left counterless in the meantime. It’s like our kitchen appliances have been run out of town and set up a refugee camp on our dining room table.
We’re left without a kitchen sink (but still have a functioning dishwasher) as a result of this and thus will be doing the bulk of our dining for the next two weeks off of plastic. This is funny because Lisa has been trying to pawn off plastic dinnerware on me since New Year’s to get rid of the leftovers from the party and now, when we actually need and want to use it, we’ll have to buy more, which comes in party-sized quantities, so that the vicious cycle will continue long after the new cabinets are installed. I imagine I will be able to see through my cutlery well past Easter.
Today was my grandfather’s birthday, the first since he passed away last year. We headed down to my grandmother’s house to keep her company (and keep her mind off things) where we joined a crapload of people: my sisters Lizzie & Patti, my brother Mikey, as well as my Uncles Chris, Frankie, Eddie, Richie and John, my Aunts Carol, Patti, Danielle, Renee and Debbie and my cousins Frankie, Frankie (a third one), Danny, Kayla, Kelly, Angie, Tori, Chris and Skylar. That’s nowhere near close to a full house in my family, in fact it was a small gathering if anything.
Deja and Reg were nice enough to take care of Bowser when they got home and when we returned we went over to their house. They’re recently engaged and have just begun the wonderfully arduous and hate-inducing task of planning their wedding. There’s no visible bruising so unless they’ve gone at each other with wire hangers and phone books, they’ve managed to keep their fighting to a minimum, most likely because they’ve got a full two years to build up the kind of intense loathing for each other that only a wedding can inspire. They spent their night at an overly-crowded Bridal Convention and were seriously considering ditching the traditional church-and-banquet-hall stuffiness that we tried to avoid and taking their act on the road to Vegas. Lisa and I, being the loving supportive friends that we are, wholeheartedly encouraged them to pursue this. We were in no way motivated by the mind-boggling amount of booze, strippers and other debauchery that such a wedding would no doubt involve, but instead were looking out for the best interests of our dearest friends. It wasn’t huge gyrating Asian dirty pillows at all. Just love.
I am not, as is visible to any and all who view these pictures, a professional photographer. I’m not even an amateur photographer. I fiddle around with the exposure as if I know what I’m doing, try to keep my hand from shaking too much and keep my thumb extended; that’s the extent of my mastery of the craft. This project has forced me to confront the fact that I take really uninteresting photos as a general rule, the kind you use as a springboard for the memories and not something that really captures a moment in time all by itself. It’s also forced me to rethink something that I’ve otherwise been fine with: I’m a boring homebody. I’m sure I’ll get a few great shots on the various vacations I’ll be taking this year (Disney World, Vegas, Europe, Lake George) but if I don’t want 95% of my photos to be pictures of my head in one of the 7 rooms of my condo (eight if you count the hallway!) I’m going to have to get out more and learn to use my camera.
Let’s see how that goes. Don’t hold your breath.
