First is called “You Are What You Eat”–Mark Menjivar’s project of photographing the insides of refrigerators of people around the country. It’s strangely fascinating to look inside strangers’ fridges. Check it out here: You are what you eat.

And then a photographer in Brooklyn, Jennifer Causey, who is working on a project called the Makers, featuring people who make things by hand. Her photographs are beautiful, as are the people and things featured in them.

These two photos are NOT MINE…they are Jennifer Causey’s from the Makers project.

People, I am no sports photographer. These were hard! But here they are in all their seven-foot glory.

And if you live in Houston, check out the J–they have some really great programs and camps. www.jcchouston.org

I’ll be mostly offline for the next few days but I’ll return emails when I get back. Until then, here’s Lyle sharing his strawberry muffin with the world. (He has a muffin and a bagel BOTH, because that’s how he likes it.)

This week it was Jeff’s cousin and his wife and son who came to visit from Colorado. They nearly ended up living here themselves a few years ago–Josh is a pilot and he had just gotten hired at Continental (which is based here) when September 11 happened, and they laid him off before he even started. So they stayed in Colorado after all.

While they were here, we took the kids to a mall with an two-story indoor carousel, which was a little bit scary to them at first but in the end they both liked it.

We also went to see the Menil Collection, which is a free museum in a very cool building in Montrose. Sadly they don’t allow photos inside, so I can’t show you how cool the space is. It’s a very varied and eclectic collection of art–definitely worth seeing. If you live here, you should go. And if you don’t live here, you should remember it in case you ever find yourself in Houston with a free afternoon.

The outside of the building was pretty cool, too, so we walked around with our cameras taking pictures outside before we left. Michael got this shot of me in action, because he thought it was funny that I was taking a picture of basically nothing.

Here’s the photo I took of “nothing.” I like it.

So a belated happy holidays to everyone, and watch this space for more posts soon.

We had no power and they were still saying it could be 2-4 weeks before all neighborhoods have power again, so Lyle and I left yesterday and drove up to my mom’s in Dallas, where there is electricity and food aplenty. Before we left, I sat in line for 2 hours at the only gas station I could find with any gas.

Here are two photos taken from our 13th floor apartment the night before Ike hit. These were taken just a couple minutes apart, the first looking west, and second looking southeast.

The hurricane hit us overnight, knocking out our power (including water in our 13th floor apartment), making a lot of noise, and generally being very nasty. It blew out the windows in the lobby, and then the lobby flooded, and you could hear (and feel) the air blowing like mad even in the hallway outside the doors. Finally the wind died down, the rain slowly stopped, and the flooding in the streets subsided pretty quickly.

At our new house we met lots of our neighbors as we were all outside cleaning up debris. They loaned us rakes and ladders and even offered food. And one of our neighbors has a good sense of humor.

The worst of it in the area I’m in is supposed to be very strong winds, not flooding. They’re telling people to expect to be without electricity for at least a few days. I’ll post again when I can. Good luck to everyone in the Houston area! See you on the other side of my first hurricane…