- mike lee - baltimore

People are gettin' down to the Bee Gees inside while the roars of jets landing at Reagan Airport echo past the boat. Not only is it sunny, but there's an excellent cool breeze.

- mike lee - washington, dc

Once again I'm on a boat cruise with co-workers--this time it's our company subsidiary instead of Integrated Communications. These are scenes from the party boat "Celebrity" as it glides south down the Potomac River.

- mike lee - washington, dc

I met up with Keri (a.k.a. Trixie Little) and Adam (a.k.a The Evil Tapdancing Hate Monkey) tonight at the Papermoon Diner to talk about turning the history of the characters in their neo-burlesque stage act into a series of silent movie stills. It was good to finally meet Adam as he wasn't able to be in my first photo shoot with Keri where she posed as a showgirl and domestic diva. This new project takes my photographic work into the exciting realm of pre-visualized images that tell a story.

- mike lee - baltimore

Tonight, I took a first close look at the giant sculpture that was placed in front of Baltimore Penn Station back in June. The 51' brushed aluminum statue is titled Male/Female, by artist Jonathan Borofsky (see this City Paper article for background), and is the intersection of male and female cutout silhouettes accented by pulsing LED heartlight. The piece cost $750,000 in private funds to build and was donated by the Municipal Arts Society of Baltimore, which hopes the piece will provoke discussion (it has), and attract tourists (we'll see).

This bizarre installation is just too large for the space around it, and the figure clashes horribly with the architecture of the station building. But I say don't stop now. Let's light it up with flickering orange floodlights and call it Burning Man/Woman. Then we might actually attract an interesting crowd.

- mike lee - baltimore

The rest of the family is nesting at home while I ride the commuter train to Washington, D.C. and work. My laptop reading is October's WIRED and the 10/4 issue of the New Yorker.

In WIRED, I read about titanium and polyester mesh breast implants, how Japanese teen girls are using lenticular privacy screens on their cell phones, the problem of applying metadata to the growing tide of personal digital photographs and the Sidekick II.

Wired generally likes the new Sidekick, and says it is both "wired" and "tired." The Sidekick is wired because it has "easy-to-use interface, full messaging features, spacious keyboard and syncs with Outlook." It's tired because it's "a bit large and geeky, difficult to place a call without opening it up (but can be done), and draws strange looks when used as a phone."

The New Yorker has a summary of the history of the Ansari X Prize, which may be claimed today.

- mike lee - washington, dc

The plane of tired passengers finally dropped through a low strata of light rain clouds. The plane yawed a little on its final approach, but I didn't feel much wind when we stepped down onto the tarmac. The full moon, tonight's beacon of good weather to come, appeared briefly while we grabbed our bags. Now to satellite parking.

- mike lee - bwi airport

Shoehorned into the flying pencil that is American Eagle to take off shortly. It's going to be a late night after we land at BWI as we are going back down south 20 minutes by car to picl up baby and then heading back up to Baltimore.

- mike lee - boston

We're still at Logan Airport. I've got a processed food dinner, my laptop is plugged into a power outlet and there's WiFi. Our flight has been delayed about an hour, but that let's us conveniently hop over the remains of Hurricane Jeanne. Check out the info graphic I whipped up. Now the airline is saying our flight is oversold and are asking two people to take a 9:30 flight to Washington, D.C. and then bus it back to Baltimore. Right.

- mike lee - boston

The last breaths of Hurricane Jeanne are sweeping through New England today dropping periods of heavy rain. This gave me a good excuse to run into Bentley's campus bookstore to pick up a couple logo'd umbrellas and a teddy bear for Baby Cianna. The conference sessions have been thought provoking this morning, and after lunch, some of us got a tour of the university's very sophisticated usability testing facility. The two Town Hall discussions are about to begin and I'm going to catch one more talk before we have to head to the airport at 4pm.

- mike lee - waltham, ma