I got a new haircut and colored it a little different a few weeks ago......I think that will be my mission this weekend. Take some self portraits for a new DeviantID. Besides, that will give me really good reason to play around with the new wireless remote I got for my camera! YAY!!


Wow. It's 1 o'clock in the morning, I've been up since 6 o'clock yesterday, worked a nine hour shift and have to be back to work at 8am. I don't think I'm going to be able to sleep at this point - I've been wired for sound all day (only had one cup of coffee this morning rather than my customary 3 or 4). Maybe it's the weather. We had a bit of a thaw on Sunday then it dropped right back down into the lower teens with a wind chill below zero and it just started to snow again about an hour ago. Or maybe its the tension and stress or the fact that I've been feeling a little sick all day. For whatever reason I can never, ever sleep when I'm sick. It doesn't matter, I'll be paying for it later.

I feel lazy because I haven't been on here in such a long time, but I know that I've been anything but lazy. I can honestly say that I hate the holiday season. Nine years of working in the retail business have absolutely ruined any kind of holiday spirit that I might have so 'bah-humbug' I say to all the gift-shopping crazy people that have a shitfit about getting something in particular on sale for so-and-so as a Christmas gift! Who cares! Armageddon will not rain down upon your head if your kid doesn't find a Wii under the tree on Christmas morning - and if it does, then your kid is really spoiled and needs an attitude adjustment. Either way, I'll be glad when it's well into January - the stress is wreaking hell on my body.

Myself, I don't really care about the presents. I just really like to enjoy dinner with my family and sit around playing games or watching a movie together or watching Kevin, my dad and grandpa all slowly fall asleep in their own little corner of the living room after eating too much food while the rest of us gather in the kitchen to swap stories and catch up with each other over coffee. It's a good time. I wish we could do it more often than just on holidays, but of course everybody is busy, myself included. Between work and trying to keep up with normal everyday stuff and Kevin playing almost three times as many gigs as he usually does and squeezing in a little time to work on wedding plans, I'm amazed that I have any free time at all. But, it happens and the wedding plans are finally starting to move along again.

My parents booked the hall and paid for my dress. I think I finally found a caterer that will be able to offer a menu that I'll be happy with and I'll be going downstate with my bridesmaids to look at dresses next month. So, what I really need to get to now is finishing off the guest list, which is giving me a coronary right now. It's going to be a really big party - that's all I can say.

Speaking of weddings, though. I did shoot a wedding this last weekend for the little sister of a good friend of mine. It was a blast! I know both the bride and groom fairly well (as well as most of the bridal party), so It was a very relaxed and easy job and so much fun. The photos turned out great too. I was very pleased that I did so well with such a limited amount of equipment. Since I bought the Rebel Xsi I haven't had a whole lot of money to put into rebuilding my system but I'll definitely be working on that soon. I need a new flash a few more filters and a wide angle lens to do want I really would want to for most weddings and well as some portable studio lights. But, I've ordered some books and I've been doing some of my homework on shooting digital. This is my first DSLR so a lot of things are still new to me but that's just half the excitement. Hopefully I can get the rest of the equipment I really need before I have to shoot another wedding.

Sometimes the universe will push us in directions that we aren't sure we want to go. And it doesn't seem to matter whether that direction was somewhere you were thinking about going anyway or somewhere completely outside your comfort zone - you still end up feeling like an unprepared actor shoved out on stage and told to ad lib your way through a scene on the premiere night of the show. The whole situation is uncomfortable, even if it is somewhat familiar.

As I'm sure most of you that read my journals know, I finally updated my camera system in July when I purchased a Canon DSLR Xsi. The only difference between it and the 40D really is how many shots per second you can take in continuous shooting mode. All in all a very nice camera and I absolutely love the time and money that it saves me in processing and editing the images. With better quality images, the instant gratification of a digital system as well as the overall cost efficiency I started to consider going back to shooting wedding photography.

A few years ago I took on weddings while I was still shooting film and was quickly overwhelmed by the stress. It bothered me that I didn't know how the photos would turn out. I also invested massive amounts of time and money processing the film, converting that into digital files, editing those and then printing them out. With a DSLR I can shoot however many photographs I want and know if that shot will work right away. If it doesn't, just shoot it again. Mounds of stress instantly removed! This is all obvious stuff. Wedding photography will still be a lot of work even with a digital system, so I was still deliberating whether or not to step back into that particular madness when I was asked by a coworker if I would shoot her wedding for her. Her request came completely out of nowhere! I haven't shot a wedding in at least 3 years. I told her I would think about it and give an answer by the end of the week. I took the job.

About a week later I was asked by another coworker who happens to be my friend's little sister if I would shoot her wedding this December. It doesn't give me much time to get ready but it's a small wedding and she doesn't want anything big or fancy for the photographs. It will be a good practice session for me to become accustomed to the flow again.

Still, everything happened so quickly from the time that I first started toying with the idea of getting back into wedding photography to picking up two of them within a week of each other. I'm still a little shocked and somewhat amused at such a turn of events, but I think that this time I'll be ready to handle it all and keep doing it. Who knows? Perhaps this will be the release that I need to finally get more of my work out in the public eye.

It has been a very long week. Work, doctor's visits and various social obligations have kept me busy everyday this week and yet I feel like I haven't done a damn thing. The apartment has been neglected due to both Kevin and myself having such a massive number of things to do this week and that in itself is enough to make me feel unproductive. It's funny that I measure my sense of accomplishment on how well my home is kept, but it's important to me. I want this place to be clean, comfortable, organized and welcoming. We don't have house guests very often, but it is much nicer to come home to a tidy place that you've custom created for you own comfort and know when you go to bed that everything is as it should be within that small little world. Sadly, there is only so much time in the day and one can only take so much before needing to just sit down and veg for a while. And that is precisely what today was all about for me.

I slept until noon today, something that I haven't been able to do for weeks and it was marvelous. Coffee and a bowl of oatmeal were a wonderful and warm start to this windy, chilly day and I spent a good hour or so just sitting on the couch reading Eldest, (which I am rereading before I delve into Brisingr). Then, I spent some time loading some new photographs onto my deviantART account and generally geeking out on the computer. By then, my future mother-in-law had called to say that she was in town and would like to take us out for dinner. We went to The Courtyard, an excellent Italian Ristorante across from the lake and had a nice time catching up with each other. I absolutely adore Kevin's mother. She's very sweet and wonderfully pleasant to be around and her fiancé is a very wise and energetic man. And now, after dinner I am back at home in the most comfortable clothes I have sipping on Chamomile tea and catching up with everyone online. It's been a lovely day.

Why is that first week back to work always such hell? I was gone for almost two weeks and I go back to work only to be thrown into the biggest mess of shit that needed to be taken care of immediately. This week was made even busier by that fact that the Haunted House opened this Friday and I work there so there were last minute preparations, getting fitted for costumes and all of my other social obligations. So just about everyday has be "run, run, run"! My house was trashed, the sink broke, laundry desperately needed to be done.......GRRRR! I'm going back on vacation!

Other than that, Kevin and both felt well enough by the end of last week to go do something. We drove up to Mackinac and toke a ferry to the Island. It was a good time and a nice relaxing day. It was great to take our time puttering around at the little shops and such. And Kevin took me back to the middle of the Island to look at the cemeteries. That was very cool! Some of the stones there are so ancient and it was so beautifully quiet there without the buzz of traffic nearby or bustling people and city life. We did find an interesting trio of graves - the woman had died during childbirth, her child died six months later and her husband was buried next to her almost 20 years later.....he never remarried. Sometimes it's amazing the stories you can discover among the dead.