Today we are snowshoeing above Grand Lake. It’s another perfect day, with on signs of bad weather. I wish I could stay up here for a few weeks.

(That’s Scott and Teresa there in this picture.)

While Denver gets slammed with snow, we have great weather up here.

A huge storm is coming, but we’re on our way to Grand Lake anyway. We’re actually looking forward to getting snowed in…

Third state on my four-state journey: Colorado! And I happened to run into Vince here…

What’s a trip to the South without a visit to a Waffle House? A crappy one, that’s what!

Don’t be fooled by my dad’s expression; this was some awesome BBQ at Jack’s on Broadway in downtown Nashville. Yummy!

My sister’s doggie wishes everyone a Merry Christmas!

Our family road trip to Graceland went awry because we left Nashville too late. So we went straight to Tunica, where we’re staying tonight. We’ll have to hit Elvis’ pad tomorrow.

I am off today for a couple weeks of holiday fun. I may post from my cell phone. Regardless, I wish all one and a half of you Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!

Yes, it is sad but true: Chococat has gone to the great beyond.

Well, maybe that’s not exactly true. Chococat is missing. Lost for good.

On my trip to Paris, I somehow misplaced or lost Chococat. I discovered this the day Sylvia and I moved from the Radisson to the New York Hotel. I could not for the life of me remember when I’d last seen it. Her. Him. Whatever it was. Did I take it off before going to sleep that first night? Did I not put it on the next morning? Or did Chococat snap off my wrist somewhere in Paris the night before? Or—HORRORS!—somewhere in the New York Hotel? I hope for Chococat’s sake it’s been lost in Paris. How much cooler than would be.

Before leaving the Radisson, before I even realized Chococat was gone, I had triple-checked the room for anything I might have left behind. I did not see Chococat then. Had I put it on already that morning and lost it somewhere? Did it come off setting up the equipment for the show? In the hall when I changed form my sweatshirt to the t-shirt because there was no A/C on in the ballroom?

As with any missing item or person, there are many questions.

The very, very sad thing is that I had retired Chococat earlier that week. Chococat is part of my costume in the not-so-secret sitcom project, and since it was starting to crack and crumble, I was going to only wear it for shoots. But just before leaving for Paris, I thought it’d be nice to take Chococat around the world. One last, fun trip to see exciting lands!

In fact, on the Parking Spot shuttle between the garage and the terminal, the only other passenger, a nice woman, commented on how cute Chococat was. From there, we had a nice conversation until the woman got off at Terminal 1 to fly to Albuquerque, New Mexico, for a spa trip. Chococat was the most conversation-inducing item of clothing I’ve ever worn, even more than my “I Heart Jesus Minnesota” t-shirt.

Oh, the pain! The sadness! Why did I not leave Chococat safe and snug in L.A.? My months-long attempts to find a replacement Chococat have been fruitless. The woman on the parking shuttle told me to keep looking, and I guess I will. But isn’t that like trying to replace a dog with a new puppy? I’m not sure it’d be the same, a brand new Chococat bracelet.

Woe is me.

WAIT A MINUTE! What’s that on eBay? Could it be…? It looks the same, but the picture does not show the colorful flower snaps… Maybe I’ll get a new puppy after all.

My friend Jin Ah was telling me that her already fashionable daughter was worried sick that Santa would bring her the wrong color shoes with all the wrong charms attached to it.

“Don’t worry, he will know,” said the tired mom.

“But HOW? HOW will he know?” the daughter insisted.

“Fine, do you want me to call him to make sure.”

“You mean YOU have his number!?!?”

It’s so cute how kids believe without a shadow of a doubt in such things. How I envy their innocence. I never believed in Santa Claus. I’ve always known it was just a hoax to get kids to behave. Tho once I did put my tooth in a sealed envelope under my pillow – just as a test, of course.  You can’t imagine just how unbelievably dumbfounded I was the next day when I unsealed the envelope to find a shiny dollar coin instead.

A tooth fairy?? For realz??

My whole world shook apart as my mind raced with crazy and daringÂthoughts that maybe there was indeed some magic left in this world. But within that same minute, I also consider that perhaps my mom replaced the tooth in the middle of night with the coin in a newly sealed envelope – tho that was so not like her to go through all that, I thought.

So the next time I lost my tooth, I tested my theory by tucking away my tooth under my pillow – but this time, I did not tell my mother… or father… or sister.

Of course, it was that next morning that finally killed off any remaining traces in me of whatever it is in kids that encourages them to ask, “But HOW? HOW WILL HE KNOW?”

I am off on a short work trip to Paris. This time, because of the duration and the lack of opportunity to see many sights, I’m not going to create a Europe LIVE! or France LIVE!

Nope, now that I’ve got a new gallery, why not put it to use? So I’ll be putting pictures up every (hopefully) day.

In fact, I am posting this while flying up in the air! I am currently over Newfoundland, 35,000 feet up, and the first round of pictures have been posted from the sky!!!!!

How’s that for exclamation points?

The exciting things about this trip so far: I get to finally fly on a 747 again! I get to fly Lufthansa! I have a new camera!

I was offered a non-stop from LAX to Paris, but it was on Delta. Ever since they deleted 28,000 miles of mine, I have refused to fly them. So while I have to stop over in Germany on both departing and returning trips, it’s okay. Besides, it’s Lufthansa! The cool seats we get are… but you’ll see some of that in the gallery.

So go visit the France 2006 album. To make sure you don’t miss a moment, subscribe to the RSS feed for the album, or the RSS feed for the whole gallery (while you’re in The Lobby).

It used to be, back in the day, that you had to keep graphics on the Web as tiny as possible—in dimensions, to some extent, but more in data size. Well, screw all that! It’s almost 8 years later, and it’s time to throw all that moth-eaten caution to the wind!

Yes, I have a gallery. A high-bandwidth monstrosity of a gallery.

Click the link, the banner pic above, or on the Photo Wren wherever you see him on my site (such as the top of this page).

So far, I only have pictures up from Thanksgiving, but I intend to use the gallery to post more pictures than I have in recent years. As much as I love creating “guided experiential photo essays” like Lake Powell ’05, they take a lot of time and work, and I seem to not have as much of that as I used to. So now I intend to toss any ol’ collection of pictures up and let you sort through them all. I feel audiences appreciate their entertainment more when they work for it.

I say that in jest. In fact, I hope the gallery will be an interesting place to go. Maybe I can’t create a story as much in that format, but I can post full-size (or, at least, larger-size) pictures, and you, as a visitor, can browse them at your own pace, and even select pics to download or print via ShutterFly or other online print services. Isn’t that simply the bee’s knees?

Of course, Steve’s Snapshots has RSS feeds galore, so you can keep abreast of any additions in the coming eons.

Now, I just have to work out some final design issues (like getting rid of those ugly little icons that were too poorly designed to even work on dark backgrounds), but overall, I’m very happy with the results.

I will not divulge how much longer it took to prep Steve’s Snapshots than it would have taken to create a page for Lake Powell ’06, which is still on my invisible to do list. In fact, it took me until… what is it now, 3:12am? It took me many hours tonight to get the entire rest of my site ready for this new section. It’s quite a chore to make sure icons get added, the Library gets revamped, the old main page gets archived, and a new main page gets created. I had to create a whole new page for Shü und Belt since that’s important enough to keep around for good. Even the Peeps got moved! Well, not technically moved, but the link to them…

YAWN! Geez. It’s bad enough to be boring during the day, but at 3:19 in the morning? I seem to have cascaded into mundanity. Off to bed with me, and off to the gallery with you! Shoo!