thedude.com

We don’t see many squirrels in our concrete jungle, so we were pleasantly surprised to spot this little fellow out our second floor window.

These images were shot on the roof on May 7, 2000. A lot has changed since then.

Rendered with AutoPano Pro - this pano never looked so good.

Need I say more?

It turns out that all of my shoes have black soles, so I borrowed these from my neighbor Steve for today’s cruise and brunch at the Corinthian Yacht Club in Tiburon with John and Laurel. What a gorgeous day!!

If you just gotta see more shots from our afternoon cruise, click here.

There was a small fire early this morning in our building’s new restaurant. It looks like a bucket of kitchen rags smoldered for hours before creating just enough heat to cause a sprinkler head to blow in the kitchen area of our favorite eatery.

The fire and smoke caused far less damage than the deluge of water from the sprinkler head. The restaurant will be closed for a few days while they replace a water-damaged wall.

I was extremely sleepy at 5:30 this morning when I took these, which probably explains why I didn’t shoot more of them.

I saw Eloisa this afternoon, and she seemed to be in pretty good spirits. We look forward to seeing MoNO open again soon!

My wonderful friend Olive needed a picture to accompany an article she wrote for a blog, so we went outside with the long lens and had some fun.

The Grand Opening at our favorite new restaurant appeared to be a smashing success. Lots of delicious food, wine and a few of our favorite neighbors. Thanks, Todd and Eloisa!

BTW, I went “old school” when I shot these. Just to see what kind of results I could get, I mounted an older Nikkor 50 mm 1.4 lens and focused manually! It was a lot of fun, and when I got the focus right, the results are very pleasing. This old lens looks great at 4.0! The only bad part is that it takes two hands to do this, so I couldn’t easily carry a glass of wine while shooting.

View the rest of the images from the Grand Opening here or here.

Olive and an over-abundance of hair products? How could that not lead to some fun?

Want more fun? Click here.

Our Dear neighbors brought their parents up to meet thedude and Kellster. What a great-looking group!

The new restaurant opened its doors for dinner last night. The invitation-only event, held primarily for residents of the building, neighbors and close friends, was a smashing success. I can say without reservation that the food and wine at our new restaurant is excellent. It was also a blast to hang out with some of my favorite people - my neighbors! We will definitely be having dinner at MoNo soon. Saturday night, to be precise. See you there!

I had to work at home today so that I could be here to deal with a few building issues. That’s the bad news. The good news is that I finally had the chance to eat lunch at Mono - the highly-anticipated new restaurant in our building. I am thrilled to report that everything about lunch was excellent. The shots above show proud chef Todd Wilson and his classy interpretation of a grilled cheese sandwich. I was so hungry that I forgot to take a picture of my chicken sandwich before tearing into it. It was delicious.

These are among the first shots taken with my new Nikon D3 and 14-24 mm lens. Two things stand out. The first is the sharpness of this amazing lens. The second not-so-obvious thing is that these images were shot at an ISO setting of 1600. Wow! This camera will change the way I shoot.

Lucky for me, the owners of the restaurant noticed my new camera and offered me the chance to do some photography for their web site in exchange for food and wine. Hm… How long do you think I had to ponder this one?

Our car was stolen out of our garage today. We’re trying to convince ourselves that it doesn’t matter. It’s just a car - we’ll get another one. Of course, it’s not that easy. We really liked this car a lot. It’s been reliable and fun for 7 years, and we kept it in immaculate condition.

Now we hope that we never see it again. Neither of us wants to see our old friend with so much as a scratch on her. Boo-hoo. :(