This week...

(A holiday card for Lindsay... she puts up with a lot)

* Submit work to a show


* Buy Fujifilm 200 Instax instant camera (ie Polaroid)


* Post Christmas pictures on Facebook


* Seriously, clean off desk in kitchen... for real


* Make a dentist appointment





Just for this week... give me a break!

New Year's Resolutions

I hate resolutions. I have a feeling that many blog posts about resolutions for New Year's start out this way. What's the point of many a resolution when you know it's bound to fail. Why not just make a list of things that you'd like to get around to... or write down a couple of things you think you'd want to do if time and circumstance were on your side. Not as much pressure, right?

So here are a couple of things that I want to think about accomplishing at some point in the next year... in no particular order.

• Print images from my Salton Sea negative file
• Hang a show of my Salton Sea photographs in the fall
• Submit work to 5 shows (not at the Craft Studio)
• Sew- or at least use the sewing machine without fear of sewing my fingers together
• Cut down on buying plastics
• Work on number two
• Spend money more wisely
• Finish my wedding album (printing, arranging and gluing)
• Be a better manager at work
• Finding new recipes and foods that I like
• Be kind to my mother (she does a lot)
• Be patient with Sally (she's very little)
• Kiss Joe more (he deserves it)
• Move through space
• Take time for me
• Post more on this blog...

It's not that I don't like birthdays but in general birthdays don't like me.  There are so many random strange things that happen on my birthday that sweat pants, a nice comfy bed and a good book seem to be the only things that can't spoil the day.  Maybe I just get disappointed easily.  Maybe I am cursed for silly, ridiculous and completely random things to happen to me on my birthday.

This year the fiascos include:

• Wanting cupcakes from Uprise only to find that the cupcake of the day was peanut butter with maple brown sugar frosting. 
  
• Why it's a fiasco: I don't really love cupcakes in the first place (but the apple pie that I really want for my birthday will be served on Thanksgiving) and I loathe peanut butter 75% of the time.
  
• Receiving a balloon that said: Happy Birthday (on side one) birthday boy (on side two).  Mom didn't see side two when she bought the balloon.
  
• Why it's a fiasco: I'm not a boy.
  
• The Bean was still crying when I got back from dinner with Joe at 9pm.
• Why it's a fiasco: I went to go put her to sleep and by 10pm when I put her in the crib, I crawled into my bed without having my chocolate cream pie (brought home from the Old 63 Diner).  No candles, no singing... just snoring.
• The next morning I discovered that my pie was no longer in the refrigerator
• Why it's a fiasco: my mother mistakenly ate my birthday pie.

So there it is folks, no major disasters... just the usual random things that make me wish I stayed in bed with my book.

* the good things: Us Weekly, a peppermint patty, flowers, silly cards, lots of birthday wishes, and monkeys with hats!

"Don't go through life with your eyes closed, even though you may have chosen photography as your vocation. The machine may see for you, but its eye is dead. Your eye should furnish it with life. But don't believe that all open eyes see. Seeing needs practice- just like photography itself."

Alfred Stieglitz, Steiglitz on Photography, Aperture, 2000.

"It's the way to educate your eyes. Stare."

Walker Evans

If I had more time in my day

If I had more time in my day I would...

1. learn how to sew and then sew things

2. go for a walk to the trail

3. take the dog to the dog park and then run after her when she runs away

4. let the bean use crayons and markers

5. find new recipes and cook them

6. learn the bean's crazy moon language

The What for today.

I guess the point of a blog is that you update it enough to have it be relevant to your life... 

Here's the what:

I'm watching Return of the Jedi on Spike.  

I love Star Wars.  

I get giddy when I hear: It's a TRAP! from Admiral Akbar.

Sally is asleep.

I woke up with a migraine and it never really went away.

I hosted a speaker for a training that no one in the department wanted to attend.

Our speaker rocked and even if no one else got anything out of it... I did.

I wanted to throw up but managed to force myself into a nap which, as usual, solved all of my migraine issues.

I just finished two hours of work from home so that I'm not sooo behind after tomorrow's all day training.

Becoming  a better person is priceless... just a little stressful when you have other deadlines.

California

Pictures from recent trip to California that I LOVE. There are lots more but this is what I've got for now...