We spent the weekend in Northern California at what is now one of our favorite destinations – Terramare. This amazing property is locate in Gualala – directly across the street from one of our other favorite places – St. Orres. The house features sweeping views from its perch on a cliff high above the thundering waves of the Pacific Ocean.

Kelly was smart enough to invite our dear friends Jeff and Wendy who helped make our first visit to Terramare especially memorable. We were worried about the unpredictable weather, but as you can see from some of the photos even that worked in our favor. Throw in a day trip to Mendocino, dinner at St. Orres, and you have one incredible weekend. Wow!

He also has a lot of stuff. So much stuff that I suggested to him at his 70th birthday bash today that we need to do some serious shooting before this special place disappears forever. He suggested a coffee table book, and I think that’s a teriffic idea. You see, his unique home/workshop/museum is on the endangered list. It may be only a matter of time before developers have their way with the eclectic artist community that has thrived for many years on 5th Avenue west of Embarcadero – the home of some of the most interesting people we’ve ever met and some of the best parties we’ve ever attended.

I don’t yet have all the details on the fate of this wonderful place. I’ll see what I can learn and post my findings here.

The Bay Area has seen some very interesting weather in the last few weeks. We’ve seen way more than average rainfall and below normal temperatures. I’ve been feeing bad about not getting out to shoot some pictures of the snow, the rainbows or gorgeous fluffy clouds we so rarely see in the Bay Area. Well, this morning I came up with a way to capture some of our weird weather without getting wet – or even leaving my chair!

First, I grabbed the current weather image every sixty seconds from to the Lawrence Hall of Science WebCam using wget on one of my Linux boxes. This camera produces much better image quality than the average webcam, and it would be difficult to find to a more scenic overview of the Bay Area.

After I had gathered up a few hundred Images, I used the powerful and cool Graphic Converter on my wife’s Mac Mini to produce a Quicktime movie of a day’s worth of spectacular Bay Area weather. The results are so awesome that I will definitely do this again!

I noticed tonight that our trip to the Philippines has caused an increase in the amount of traffic to thedude.com. At first, I thought it was because of Grant’s awesome photos, but it’s more likely to be because of friskodude’s recent post, which seems to be working its way around the web. Thanks Carl!

As you know, thedude was not the only person with a camera on the Philippines trip. Here are a few of my favorite shots by Grant Goya – in no particular order.

Grant shoots with a Canon 5D. I think his camera outperforms my Nikon D2X in almost every category. Dammit!

One thing we found in ample supply during our visit to the Philippines was food. I can say without a doubt that we were never hungry during out trip – not for one single minute. Our incredibly gracious hosts saw to it that we were always within arm’s reach of mass quantities of food. This day we visited the beautiful Barin family mango orchard where we were treated to a roast pig, fresh tilapia, boiled shrimp, crab, roasted eggplant, sticky rice, bottomless bowls of soup, some sort of delicious beef dish, endless San Miguel beers, the “world’s tenderest chicken™” and, oh yes – fresh mangos.

After the feast thedude took Kelly for brief but hair-raising spin around the property in a tricycle.

Let’s take a short break from our Philippines trip to wish our dear friend Ben a happy birthday. Ben prepared some of the best food ever for her own birthday party. As you can see, she also provided the entertainment.

Happy Birthday, Ben! We love you. You are truly one in a million. :-)

More pictures here.