But the best part by far was our visit to one of my favorite wineries, Preston where one of their many cats was sleeping on a chair on top of a pile of eggs!

]]> http://www.caitlinchilds.com/family-wine-cats-and-egg-hatching/feed/ http://www.caitlinchilds.com/pumpkin-patch/ http://www.caitlinchilds.com/pumpkin-patch/#comments Tue, 21 Oct 2008 01:49:45 +0000 admin http://www.caitlinchilds.com/?p=52 This weekend my friend Rigel and I went out to Spring Hill Farms’ Peter Pumpkin Patch in Petaluma (say that 5 times fast!) with Rigel’s 1 year old daughter Akasha. Akasha loved the pumpkins and Rigel and I loved the homemade Pumpkin ice cream. We took the opportunity to take some pictures. I haven’t seen his yet, but here are mine!

This weekend was filled with friends old and new. I had a great time on Saturday night at the Section M reunion show at Daredevils & Queens, I took a lot of pictures, and made progress on my self-assigned task of getting less shy about taking pictures of people I don’t know. At the Section M Show a billion+1 people asked if anyone had taken my picture yet, I obliged several times and was surprised at the outcome.

On Sunday I spent most of the day at a memorial/wake for Dave Young, it was a sad day, but it was filled with friends, and I think it was as good as it could have been. I didn’t take any pictures at the wake, so these are all from Saturday’s event. Check out the rest of the set here.

This has to be the best mashup of internet memery and political humor ever. John McCain really should have known better to stand in front of a green screen by now, right?

This too, is amazing. An LA improv troup brings “One Day More” from Les Miserable to a faux Obama campaign office.

The benefit show for Free Mind Media was fantastic and I had a great time hanging out with so many awesome people. There were about a million bands and artists and we raised over 2 months of expenses for Free Mind in one night. I was honestly overwhelmed at the support and can’t wait for the next event Terrence and the folks at Tonegazer put on. I took a whole bunch of photos. I was mostly experimenting with my portrait lens and shooting without a flash, so some of them came out sharper than others. The lighting inside Daredevils & Queens was fantastic though (they are seriously the coolest hair salon ever) and I ended up liking the effect.

After leaving Arequipa 3 days ago, Elly and I booked a 2 day trek through the Colca Canyon. The bus ride was pretty brtual, 1am departure for a 5 hour trip on dirt roads. By the time we got to the town of Cabanacondor, the altitude was getting to me and I was feeling pretty terrible and ended up staying in town and slept for about 14 hours.

I met up with the group the next morning and we bussed out to Cruz del condor in time to see the amazing condors take their morning flight. The birds were fantastic, as was the canyon itself. I got some great photos of the birds and am really excited to have seen them.

Today I am in Nazca, with Elly and a friend we met during the Colca Canyon trek. We took a bus out to the Nazca lines this morning and saw some of them. And tonight we’re planning a trip to the Nazca Planetarium for a presentation on the history of the lines.

After a late night series of red eye flights with a stop over in El Salvador I made it to the Lima airport to be greeted by my friend Eleanor, complete with a handmade sign bearing my name.

Our day in Lima yesterday was fairly uneventful and didn´t really include much sightseeing. There were a series of strikes planned throughout the country and we were concerned about the possiblilty of not being able to get a taxi into the airport to get to Arequipa this morning because of the strike, so we opted to stay at the fancy hotel next to the airport instead. It was quite expensive, but ater 2.5 weeks of backpacking on Elly´s end and 15 hours of airports on mine, we were both pretty excited to enjoy the luxury of the hotel´s spa and comfy beds.

It sounds like the strikes were fairly uneventful in Lima though, we probably could have risked it and stayed further out but the risk of missing our flight was more important in the long run. In Arequipa so far there has been much more evidence of today´s strike. A lot of shops are closed and there were rocks blocking the streets on our way into town from the Airport. We were able to get a taxi but had to take some back roads to get to our hostel. It was definitely a bit tense for our driver.

While down in Bishop for my sisters wedding, I had the opportunity to check out a real California history landmark: the ghost town of Bodie, CA. Bodie had been a booming gold mining town in its day before being nearly leveled by a series of fires and ultimately abandoned. The eerie thing about the town was the amount of stuff left behind. The houses still had furniture, clothes, books, even bottles of drinks. All just left behind to stand as a testament to the strange frontier society.

My oldest sister got married down near Bishop 2 weeks ago. It was a great wedding and also served as a family reunion for both sides of the wedding party. I took a million photos, all of which are up on flickr.