"Dad, can I climb on this?"

"Yeah, I guess so. Do you need me to pick you up?"

"No, I can do it!"

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Nikon D40, Nikkor 35mm f/1.8 DX
f/2.8, 1/640, ISO 400

You know, when I'm at home I don't much care for grilling—standing around my back yard by myself just never strikes me as a good time. Something about being out in nature, though, makes it a lot more appealing. In this case, though, not so appealing that I wasn't just fine with my friend taking care of the whole thing. It was for the best, really—my grilling results are decidedly inconsistent.

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Nikon D40, Nikkor 35mm f/1.8 DX
f/2, 1/1600, ISO 400.

I've been kind of swamped with business-related stuff lately, which has left me with little time for personal photography stuff. We did an overnight camping trip to Lake Morena this past weekend with some friends, which gave me the chance to relax and shoot for myself.

I suppose this is kind of a mundane shot, but the more I look at it, the more I like it.

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Nikon D40, Nikkor 35mm f/1.8 DX
f/8, 1/160, ISO 200

...even if he doesn't really know what "appreciate" means.

From the looks of things, the alums from my school must be doing pretty well for themselves. Well, right on.

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Nikon D40, Nikkor 35mm f/1.8 DX
f/2.8, 1/2500, ISO 200

As the final capstone to my visit back to college, we went with some friends to our favorite burger joint from back in the day. The burgers and milkshakes were just the way I remembered them. It's nice to know that at least a few things around there are still the same.

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Nikon D40, Nikkor 35mm f/1.8 DX
f/2.8, 1/160, ISO 200

Yes, that is a cheeseburger with pastrami on it. The restaurant where I took this picture opened in my junior or senior year of college, and since I ate there many times back then, it's only natural that it was one of the stops on the nostalgia tour that was my alumni weekend. The burger didn't hurt me nearly as much as I thought it might.

Oh, and that plate of fries you can kind of see in the background? I mistakenly ordered two of them—one for me and one for Juliette—since that was the small size. I ate the whole thing, of course.

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Nikon D40, Nikkor 35mm f/1.8 DX
f/2, 1/125, ISO 200

My 10-year college reunion was this past weekend. Being there again after ten years really drove it home for me how strange a place college is.

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Nikon D40, Nikkor 35mm f/1.8 DX
f/1.8, 1/400, ISO 200

Our daily trips to the pool while we were on vacation seem to have helped Jason overcome the fear he had of being on his back in the water. It's made rinsing his hair a lot easier.

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Nikon D40, Nikkor 50mm f/1.4G
f/2.8, 1/125, ISO 200
Vivitar DF-383 @ TTL, bounced off the ceiling

You might think that we'd have saved our big fancy dinner (at which, miraculously, Jason was very well-behaved) for our last night on vacation, but we actually did it on our second-to-last night. We timed it just right to catch a nice sunset. Of course, I was more interested in looking elsewhere.

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Nikon D40, Nikkor 35mm f/1.8 DX
f/2.8, 1/320, ISO 200