It is Friday evening, and I am sitting next to an open window with a Kirkland beer and a slice of pizza. Max is asleep because I've painstakingly trained him to fall asleep by 8:00PM to allow me time to take care of household duties while I am a single parent for the summer. Meridith, sadly, is not with me, but, happily, is doing work that I'm extraordinarily proud of in NYC.

Lately, I've been enjoying listening to Slate's The Gist with Mike Pesca and The New York Times' The Daily as my daily news podcasts (all this Russia stuff is nuts!). Because I spend a fair amount of time alone lately, I have been listening to a lot of podcasts. In addition to the news podcasts, I've really liked Philosophy Bites. They did a terrific episode on swearing. I'm a big believer in swearing. I've been wondering how to deal with swearing as Max becomes more and more able to repeat words that he hears. A terse version of my view is that words do not contain inherent moral value, but the way that you treat people, including observing social norms, matters quite a lot. And this podcast provides a great framework for working through the idea of your little one witnessing you stub your toe and yelling "FUCK".

In other news, I just got some scans back from the lab, and for the most part I'm really happy with them. I sent out two rolls of Kodak Ektar (color reversal film) and two rolls of HP5 Plus (B&W). I got back a lot of lovely photos, but also the realization that I'm not good enough at eyeballing the exposure to shoot something with as limited dynamic range as Ektar (I think I'll stick to Portra 400 or its Fujifilm equivalent from now on).

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Since--and even before!--Max was born, Scout has had to adjust to a new way of life. Specifically one that involved her getting a lot less attention. For a working dog like her, that was no easy task, but Meri and I have been very impressed with how she has risen to the occasion. In celebration of Scout, here is a collection of pictures I've taken of her with my Mamiya TLR. Each is a scan from a 6x6 negative.