Portland, Ore.

They always say the best camera is the one you have with you, right?

I don't always have my DSLR with me -- OK, I rarely have my DSLR with me -- but my phone? Always.

My friend Jen and I took a quick vacation to Portland this month, and I snapped these and uploaded them to Instagram.

Pardon the the gruesome ones; one of our stops was to Portland's Pecularium, a novelty shop that bills itself as a museum of oddities. (For the record, it's kitschy, DIY and delightful, and I bought a book there that was illustrated by Columbus native Thom Lessner.)

I am still alive.

Updating this blog moved very low on my priority list. For what reason, I don't know, but I'll assume the Susannah Elliott of two years ago had a good one.

I'm back for now, though!

To mark my return, I want to share something I worked on for about a year.

This video is made up of clips I recorded every day for a year. Each clip is 1.25 seconds long because I thought the brain needed that extra .25 to process the images that were being shown. The video was shot using a Samsung Galaxy S3. The songs used are I'm Not Talking by A.C. Newman and War Bonds by The Ridges*.


One Second A Day from Xana on Vimeo.

Many days, I forgot to record until I was home doing boring things. I regret some of the video-conversion decisions I made early on, which compromised the image quality. But because it would have taken so many hours of extra work to correct my mistake, I left it as is. 

It was a good learning experience, and the video I've been working on for 2014 (Jan. 1, 2014, to Jan. 1, 2015) is, so far, much more clear and steady. However, I'll admit that the process is less exciting to me now that I'm on my second go-around.

I also decided that this next one will be just one second a day -- like, actually a second and not 1.25 seconds -- because 10 minutes is a long time for a video that, according to my dad, is a "year-long selfie."


*
Check out A.C. Newman on iTunes
Check out The Ridges at bandcamp and Daytrotter

I fell behind on my photo-a-day resolution -- a certain puppy has a taste for external hard drive cords. So I owe the blog several photos this time. Today's theme is Italy, where I visited my sister a few months ago.

The photo above is of a street in Pompeii. At the time, we were a little bit lost (our Rick Steves audio tour didn't have the best directions) and we were scrambling to get out of the city's ruins before 6, when we'd have to pay an extra 20 Euro for our car's parking spot -- which, I want to mention, seemed to be directly on the patio of a pizza place.

This photo below is of a very convincing Michael Jackson impersonator in Rome. My sister was concerned that he might have been a victim of human trafficking. Regardless, he was a fantastic dancer with cleverly orchestrated costume changes.



Here's my nephew Elliott, playing with his cars, which he was doing maybe 80 percent of the time I was visiting.



Here's roly-poly, smiley Marshall...


My sister with my nephew on their balcony in Naples:


My pretty sister in windy Sorrento:


And, finally, Napoli at sunset, with bonus toddler and trike:

Get me out of here

At the butterfly house at the Cox Arboretum in Dayton, Ohio.

Here's an oldie from 2009: This cocker spaniel is Bailey. He's just hanging out with his people in Jackson, Ohio.

My nephew, Marshall

The grass is always greener

In June 2011, I lived in a historic urban neighborhood where people shouted on the sidewalks at night, delicious Greek food was 50 steps from the back door, and I had this semi-backyard. Now, I live in a quiet, suburban apartment complex where a short drive in any direction leads to a big-box store, but also the cuisine of at least 10 different ethnicities.

I miss this walnut-riddled, gravel monstrosity all the time, but I suppose the grass is always greener.

Chihuly trivia

I kind of think it's cheating to act as if a cool-looking photo has anything to do with the photographer if the only thing it's capturing is someone else's artwork. So, all credit to Dale Chihuly, who made a pretty cool-looking glass ceiling at the Franklin Park Conservatory.

By the way, did you know that Frasier Crane has a Chihuly sculpture beside the fireplace in his Seattle apartment? Now you know.

Route 35 from Chillicothe to Jackson, Ohio.

She believes in Cleveland

Here's my friend Ana when I visited her in Cleveland last year.