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Tenacious C and the CR

The weekend at the coast was nice and relaxing. I don’t like the long drive, but I enjoy seeing family. My 6.5 month pregnant sister was in town for likely her final visit before my niece makes her grand entrance. We went maternity clothes shopping on Saturday in Corpus, but other than that, we just enjoyed some down time with conversation and games at the house. Georgia and my mom were walking through one of the spare bedrooms at my grandmothers and found some old photos of me in a display cube… stuff like my baby pic on a bear rug, my father and I on a motorcycle, etc. The one that really stood out was this one… my first exposure to Crown Royal. I was about 6 months old at the time of developing (the date on the framing), but my mother thinks I was probably closer to 4 or 5 months old in the photo. Just think… all this time I thought I drank it so much because it tasted good. Hehe.

Right.

So, this evening was a rather impromptu birthday dinner for my good friend, Ed. I wanted to do something special for his birthday (which was December 31), but have really just been so busy with life, the universe, and everything that the occation keeps slipping. I’ve been spread a little thin at work these days. The beginning of the year is hard enough, but my boss has me covering for another rep out of Chicago until he gets an engineer of his own. I honestly don’t mind a bit and am happy to help. I just find my days growing longer and more cluttered. Barrett came over this afternoon just as I was getting off work to catch up and spend some time with me tonight. He participated in Ed’s birthday night and stayed for a while back at my place afterwards for a long conversation. I should be exhausted at the moment, but I just can’t seem to fall asleep, so I decided to throw a few letters on the page for proof of life. I’m excited to finally see my prego sister this weekend… for the first time in nearly a year. I have some other travel coming up, but my schedule is a big jigsaw puzzle at the moment. If it weren’t for the automated calendar reminders, I’d likely be afk from RealLife™. I’ve noticed trends of wordiness swinging to aloof and often missing here over the last 6-ish years. Today, it’s not disinterest or even lack of content. It just comes down to time. I don’t make it. Sad, isn’t it?

mini-me

Yaarrrrrrr! I was amidst posting a lengthy entry last night before bed and my Vista system threw up the Blue Screen of Death. I was too tired to continue and quite frankly, I don’t really remember what I was getting at anyway.

The holidays are over and merely 10 days into the new year, the shock of 2007’s rapid disappearance still lingers. I enjoyed being visiting my mom for the New Year’s Eve event. We were all out in the country where the nights are lit with hundreds of thousands of stars invisible to city eyes. Bob made a huge bonfire and we roasted marshmellows and hotdogs. There were no loud bars and congestion of cars… just the wind. I didn’t actually stay up for “the ball drop”. Back at work, the new year is always challenging. Up until the leap I took three years ago, I had no immediate concept of quota assignments and territories. Each new year starts the same… prospecting and qualifying with hopes that the end of the year has brought enough successful sales cycles to meet your commitment. Rinse and repeat. Outside of work, I’ve been laying low… spending time with friends, playing games, etc. I submitted the request for my “new format” FAA license and should receive that in the next week or two. I’ve been researching a book I’m working on with a good friend of mine and neighbor, Bob Nuelle. He is an amateur entomologist of sorts and we’ve started the selection process for a coffeetable style pictorial with factoid insets. The idea is to photograph the specimens at very high magnification… atypical for bug books. This sort of photography is somewhat technical due to the effective depth of field at this magnification. I’ve worked through some of those challenges but I’m still not happy with the resulting images. I’ll practice more as time allows and hopefully we’ll have the kinks worked out by spring and I can shoot the spreads by the end of summer. Here are a couple of test shots from the other day:

I’m off to work downtown. Have a good day.