Sad Mang with Gang Rady

August 2013.  Karin says Chester is the most "Gangsta Dog in West LA".  He doesn't seem very enthusiastic, however.

The end of the summer of 2013 brought the inevitable "big visit" into my life - the thing that invariably happens when you move from one area you've been for most of your life to another some 3,000 miles away.  Karin and I combined all of our destinations together - for her, Los Angeles and Connecticut, where some of her relatives live, and for me, New Jersey, where my mother lives, and New York, where I went to college and know some people.  We went from LA to NJ to NY (Long Island) to NYC to CT (and in two different parts of CT).  It was a kind of exhausting two to three weeks, going from place to place so often - it was the first time I tried to do my job completely mobile, using Karin's Mac laptop (rather than the 23" 2007 imac I had been using at that point).  I got to see many friends and family, and I took many pictures and video.  Unfortunately, at the end, working hunched over a laptop in a variety of seating from place to place led me to having a rather severe muscle torque in my pelvis, which also caused me sciatica.  This happened a few days prior to flying back to OR (from CT, with a layover), and got much worse over the week after I returned, at one point leaving me to lie on the floor at all times during the day as it was the only position that didn't trigger severe pain.  It was at this time I found the time to do the bulk of reading for the "Song of Ice and Fire" book series.  It helped pass the time.  All in all, the trip was more expensive than I would have preferred it have been, but I suppose that is unavoidable when you go to one side of the country and back again with planes.  One day I will supercut all of the footage I took into a video, though I still haven't quite finished that project RE: my road trip to Portland, although it is 95% done, for the most part.