dan and I drove to monterey on sunday

it's spring but the maple is still in fall

this is the side entrance to the business school

so yeah the weather cleared up. this is the backdoor to the administration building.

thanks, kjelle

Click because it's Friday.

I am still amazed I get to live in california where winter looks like this

yeah, it's funny

reflection

fall in winter

one year later

like I said: rain

whatever it is in the middle of that tree, it looks like a bird in flight

it's been raining a lot lately (II)

orchid

this is from moss landing too, but on the beach

Another thing: I just got myself an account for Photoshop.com. It's free. They let you store photos online, and you can also do basic editing right there on the same site. That's really practical if you want to resize images for posting somewhere, like on your blog.

I'm back, sort of

So, I've been a bad blogger recently. The quarter started, and I've been busy with that. And I've spent most of my computer time updating my photo sites. I'm obsessed with the Hipstamatic application for the Iphone, and I post photos on my homepage, on Flickr, and on my smugmug pages daily.

I love the quality of the hipstamatics, and the fact that you don't have complete control over what you're doing. I've had to unlearn always angling for the pretty framing.

The photo above is from a cemetery in Moss Landing, Calif. Moss Landing is on the coast, north of Monterey but south of Watsonville. Lots of Italian, Portuguese, and Mexican immigrants around there have been, and are, working in farming and fishing. There were lots of Catholic gravesite traditions: fake flowers, angels, and madonnas.

dreary

spring is coming slowly

wild wood

thursday, 1pm

The other day I stopped by 7-11 on my way to work to get some gum. As I parked I noticed a man getting out of his car next to me. I pegged him as some sort of business guy: Dress pants, dress shoes, shirt and tie.

We walked into the store. He headed for the refrigerated section, I for the gum aisle.

We reached the check-out line at the same time. He was getting orange juice and breath mints. Healthy habits, I thought.

Then I realized that there was an air of booze and cigarettes around him. He smelled like a bar.

He probably keeps the vodka in the car.

california in january

Girls I meet walking across campus:

flip-flops, t-shirts, no jackets

Me:

thick wool winter coat

big wollen scarf

doc marten's boots

cambria

So, Dan and I went on a road trip the week before Christmas. We took off from the Bay Area, and drove south. Our first stop was Monterey, where we stayed at a hotel with a fireplace in each room. That was pretty much all I wanted from the vacation.

It didn't rain, we walked a lot and had a lot of good food. They sold tamales in the street at the farmer's market.

From Monterey we drove further south, and ended up i Cambria, Calif. It's a cute little town where you can easily imagine yourself living. It looks like a lot of people run little businesses out of their houses. There are artists, and designers, coffee shops and restaurants.

Main street runs parallel to Highway 1, and that's where all the restaurants are. We had a super breakfast, and a cozy dinner.

There are lots of hotels in Cambria. We stayed at one called Cambria Palms. It wasn't a random choice, we had actually been invited to come and check it out, and we didn't pay for the two nights we stayed there.

The place is owned and run by a young couple from Santa Barbara, and they are renovating and updating a classic California motel. It's cool, and it's going to be even cooler as they keep working, you can tell.

Hearst Castle is close by, so we went there. The view from there is amazing, and the house is crazy.

While on the trip I became obsessed with the Hipstamatic app for the iphone. Hence the photos. It's all I've been doing since.

new times, new brooms, as the swedes say

So, it's a new year, and I thought it would be fitting to overhaul my homepage. I've had some major issues with PC to mac web hosting compatibility, so for now the homepage is here: http://web.me.com/charlottakratz/homepage/front.html. It's not the most elegant of URLs, but hopefully I'll get it sorted out. Let me know what you think, and let me know if you spot any weirdness. (And please please let me know if you can help with getting the iweb page to use my charlottakratz.com domain name.)

iphoneography

Here is a cool photo project, where people were invited to manipulate the same image, using their iphones.