So… Tessa, Tony and I spent the Thanksgiving holiday in Boston with one of Tessa’s friends from NYU Law. We got to eat a gourmet Thanksgiving dinner (with shrimp, scallop and halibut Ceviche for an appetizer, which is amazing!) and saw a bit of the city and surrounding area. We went to Gloucester and Rockport and spent about 10 minutes on a beach while Tony ran free (or, more precisely, tried to run back to the parking lot where the car was, as it was about twenty degrees near the water). We also got to experience a high-school reunion of sorts, which was interesting and made me feel quite old.

In other news:

Bradley and Dara came down for poker night last week, and Dara succeeded in winning two tournaments. I want a rematch!

I’ve been working on a couple of new websites, etc. - links posted soon, as the artists really know what they’re doing. There is nothing better than having clients that make great work.

Only three more weeks of school in this semester! (I’m going to go take something for my heartburn right now.)

Back up to Bronxville on Saturday night for a real party.

And by real, I mean a party that starts off right: with a visit from the fire department (or fire brigade, as Ben calls them).

The photograph only makes us look like bigger morons, as it doesn’t show the fire’s initial magnificence (and by the time I thought to take some photos, the fire and smoke had already gone down quite a bit). However, it was sufficiently scary enough to call in the professionals. What had started as an ingenious attempt at cleaning the gas grill (scrape, then burn off the residue) resulted in the grease trap below the grill catching fire, and sending plumes of smelly, black smoke into the house and neighborhood. Lesson: clean the grease trap!

Anyway, the police and fire department were very nice, and even carried the grill off the porch and into the yard, and tried very hard to not snicker at the idiots. (As soon as the first cop got there and saw me standing on the porch with my camera, he told me “well, taking pictures isn’t going to help,” and remarked to the firemen something along the lines of “they started a fire so they could take pictures of it,” making me feel doubly incompetent. I tried to explain that I only picked up the camera after we had called for help - there wasn’t anything else to do but wait anyway - but he had already moved on, realizing he was probably dealing with art students.)

After our “incident,” the rest of the night was spent very predictably: eating a lot of food and consuming a fair amount of alcohol. As this was Tony’s first party - and his first time with a number of other dogs (Ben’s parents’ dogs Minnie and Pip, and Ben and Amanda’s dog Louise) - Tessa and I also spent a good deal of time making sure he wasn’t going to get stepped on or try to nose-dive off of the porch stairs. Most of our concerns were unwarranted; Tony did very well (aside from some what is now typical roughhousing between he and Louise) and was cooed, ooohed and ahhed at by everyone there.

By the end of the night (or the beginning of the morning), Tessa and Tony had been partied out, and spent some time on the basement couch while the remaining boys (er… men?) played some very rousing games of ping-pong, pool and foosball (parents’ houses are great).

Bronxville is a town (or, as they refer to themselves, a village) about 25 minutes north of New York City by rail. Ben’s parents live there, and they have a beautiful old house on an idyllic street in an impossibly manicured neighborhood.

There are certainly notes of Stepford there, and everyone drives a really, really nice car. There are houses like castles. I got the feeling that I could probably sleep outside all night and feel entirely safe (except for the possibility of being perceived as homeless, and booted out of town, back to NYC where they belong).

Bronxville is an uber-suburb, and I get the feeling the PTA probably runs much like the mob - highly organized and above the law - but it is also a beautiful town, full of incredible architecture (where there aren’t strip-mall boutique stores) and a quietness (I heard crickets!) that I’ve come to miss an awful lot living in Brooklyn.

Ben and Amanda had me up for dinner - steaks! on the grill! on the porch! (other things I miss an awful lot) - and Tessa, Tony and I are going back tonight for a parents’ house party (sans parents, of course). Nothing like doing what you did in high school to make you feel younger and older at the same time.

Yesterday, Tessa, Anna and I went to Coney Island for the afternoon. I got to eat a double cheeseburger at Nathan’s (which is waaaay better than the hot dogs), and we sat in the sand. The weather is always much nicer out there than it is away from the ocean, and it was actually a little too cold for me to go swimming (I’m a cold water wuss).

On the way home from Coney Island I always want to fall asleep on the F train. I’m never sure if it’s the beach or the hamburger.

This has probably been one of the best vacation weekends I’ve had in a long time. Most of my work is done on my big summer web-type jobs (and now it’s time to start on your sites, Ben and Bradley!) - and my 29th birthday was on Friday, so starting Thursday evening I decided to take a few days off (and that meant no emails, no internet, and NO WORK).

How soup dumplings and a Bessa-R makes Ben feel

Thursday night started with drinks at Double Happiness, a hard-to-find underground (literally) bar with a happy hour that helped ease the slightly expensive drinks, and then dinner at Joe’s Shanghai for soup dumplings - which rivaled New Green Bo in tastiness. It was pretty touristy, but still seemed pretty authentic. After that, Ben and Amanda had me over for some delicious Basil Hayden Bourbon.

How a little too much Basil Hayden’s makes Justin feel

Most of Friday I napped. With the air conditioner on, even! (I figure I get one day a year, I’ve rationalized, to lay in a climate-controlled stupor - at Con Edison’s highly unreasonable rates, we can’t really afford more than one or two days of coolness.)

Then Friday night Tessa and I went to our favorite Indian restaurant, the Raj Mahal, and then back over to Brooklyn for the rest of the evening at Barcade, an old video game and beer bar. I got to sample about 8 different beers (that I remember) including one called Blithering Idiot from the Weyerbacher Brewing Co. that was awfully delicious. I also sampled a cask ale (Hooker’s Irish Red, the Dogfish Head Indian Brown (which is one of my favorite beers now), and more that I don’t recall… (I was also bought shots, and I believe that may have led to a memorable, but not rememberable evening). There was also Asteroids, Arkanoid, Spyhunter, and a couple games of Super Mario Bros.

On Saturday, we went to see The Bourne Ultimatum, which, despite the title (seems almost like a parody), was a very entertaining film with a really good fight scene in it. Then, I met up with Michael, Andrea, and her brother Ryan (who is visiting from Nebraska), for some Thai food and then drinks at one of our favorite places, Port 41, which is one of the strangest (and sometimes bizarrely scariest) bars in NYC.

Then today, Tessa’s friend Anna flew in, and we ate hummus and babaghanouj from Zaytoons at Fort Greene Park.

I had so much fun I am now absolutely exhausted, and actually ready to get back to work.

We also have an important update to our apartment which will be posted soon!

Here’s a link to a story comparing SF to NYC (story is from Aug. 05). How does your city compare to another city? I was going to say I missed the cool breezes of Nebraska after sitting in my Brooklyn apartment office all morning, already drenched with sweat (and it’s not even that hot here yet). But wait a sec… Nebraska is probably worse right now heat-wise than NYC is. Maybe we should all move to SF.

So I just read Bruce Schneier’s interview with the head of the TSA, and am anxious for the next installment.

Coming back to NYC from Omaha was made incredibly frustrating because a TSA employee thought that she needed to open the protective package around every roll of undeveloped 120 film in order to check it for dangerous substances. (I had asked for a hand-check because the X-ray machines are now indeed strong enough to expose normal speed film, despite what the signs and screeners tell you - it looks like a wave of color shift across the roll, and makes for pretty unusable negatives.)

When I saw her opening all my film, I asked what on earth was she doing - and she looked at me like I was the idiot. “I’ve got to check the film,” was all she said. After I told her that my film had been checked at LaGuardia and in Minneapolis (two cities just probably maybe ahead of Omaha on the terrists’ blow-up list) without opening every single roll, she turned a little red, and kept on going. (She must have had job training with everyone else in the current administration: stay the course, even if it makes no sense.)

I decided against throwing a tantrum because I know (and have heard stories) about low-level authority-hungry security people.

However. The point is, the interview that Schneier conducts is actually quite enlightening so far and seems to validate some of the possibly idiotic steps the TSA has taken over the last few years in its attempt to thwart the bad guys.

So, after almost a month, I’m starting to get back on track with everything. Apologies to my dear and faithful readers (all 6 of you) - work and travel and work and work all seemed to get in the way of staying on top of my blog. But I’m back! And ready to begin some more! (Please try to contain yourselves.)

I was in my very favorite Nebraska for a couple of weeks, and ended up contracting a type of dysentery while there. I’ve got three words for you, dysentery: Oh, My, and God.

In case you’re wondering: no, I did not break any axles, kill any buffalo, or fall into the river in an attempt to cross with a heavy wagon. However, I did spend a week on my parents’ basement floor and had a horribly explosive 4th of July. (In Austin’s words, it was a “real ‘bum’mer.”) (Indeed.)

And apparently, my blog contracted it too - good ol’ WordPress managed a fantastic update resulting in a disconnection from my database and a whole crapload (!) of errors. Thus the change in format - I moved into a new theme (which is the old, old, old default version of WordPress, and might look familiar to reader’s of John’s blog).

Anyway - as I mentioned, I’ve been working A LOT lately, trying to make up for being in school during most of the year, and I’ve been busy shooting quite a bit of film too. Unfortunately, I’ve not been shooting much digital, and until I get some scans done, I’ve got nothing exciting to post image-wise. I’ll try to work on it - I do have some pictures of Nebraska, including pictures of Professor Murder (a.k.a. Tina Bear, MD), and a wonderful series of images depicting Brendan searching for golf balls in shrubbery.

Okay… back to work…

1. Done with school.

2. Will have new photo groups up soon at justinkohmetscher.com (and I absolutely want to do some trades - email me and tell me what you’d like).

3. Did I mention that I’m done with school?

4. Working on some jobs.

5. Working on some bigger jobs.

6. Working A LOT.

7. Authenticity is the new irony? How will this affect the hipster mustache?

8. The computer has 2 gigabytes of RAM now, and is much much much faster.

9. Seriously: authenticity is the new irony? Do I have to start going to church to be an atheist now, or what?

10. Considering buying a new office chair. Any suggestions?

I am now officially “getting on” (not to be confused with “getting it on”) in years; I’m the proud owner of a pair of house slippers (my first!) bought off ebay. When I wear them with boxer shorts and a zip-up sweater I look kind of like Mister Rogers, if Mister Rogers had been drinking and then lost his pants and sense of decorum.

As I was writing this post, my mom emailed me this photograph she took while in Texas a little while ago:

Apparently, there is a patterned boy somewhere over there.