What a BuzzKill

Updates and ramblings …

Nam, the other tech at my office, is on a much-deserved vacation. The week before he left it was rather slow, but it seems that all hell broke loose the day he hopped on the plane. The first few days were a hectic mess of working on multiple projects/problems for clients concurrently. I’m not begrudging him for taking a vacation, but I have been rather swamped for the last week. He  won’t be back until next Tuesday. I may give him a big hug when he walks through the door.

My 365-day photography project is still coming along rather well. I did sorta mess up and failed to take a picture one day – but I did take one about 30 minutes after midnight of the next day (before going to bed) to make up for it. Christine says that it should still count, since my “day” doesn’t typically end until around 12:30 a.m. anyhow. While I see her point, I’m going to try and not repeat the minor infraction.

I still get occasional calls from creditors looking for Melissa Hayes, the person that previously had my work cell phone number. It’s down to just one, maybe two, calls a week. I finally got a live person to pick up on one of the automated messages so I could tell them that it was no longer her number.

A few weekends back I took off to Big Bear by myself. I needed a break from people and felt like clearing my head. It was a much-needed trip and I came back feeling a lot better.

Christine, Sam, and I enjoyed going to the Renaissance Faire not long ago. Sam was the only one of us who dressed up, but we had a good time. I’ll definitely consider dressing up the next time I go to one.

I’m looking forward to this weekend. With as busy as I’ve been – and another 3 days more of it – it’ll be nice to end it with a 3-day weekend.

_{This entry does that … it just keeps talking …}

The first month of my 365 Days of Photography project has flown by rather quickly. I’ve learned so much and have enjoyed pushing myself. As expected, I wasn’t always feeling inspired or particularly motivated, but I did as promised and took a picture of something every day and posted it to the online gallery.

Here are a few of my favorites from the past month:

Messing around with googly eyes and a chip clip.

Veggin’ out in the kitchen.

OMGWTFizit!?!?

Death of a mannequin.

As you can see, I’ve tried a lot of different ideas. Some of the ideas work out well, some don’t, and some just need more work to get right. Hopefully this becomes easier for me to deal with so I can start writing about things other than this crazy project!

_{This entry wants you to tell it a story.}

I’ve been kept busy enough with my 365 Day Photography project that I’ve let my blog languish out here in the cold expanse of cyberspace (does anybody really call it that anymore?!?) for far too long.

The photography project is moving along just fine and life has settled into a nice even rhythm, for the most part. After today’s visit to the doctor I’m feeling some added motivation for getting into better shape. My blood pressure is higher than it should be, but not dangerously so, and I’m about 20 pounds too heavy. I admit to having beome a bit lazy and not as active over the last year or so – and my eating habits probably aren’t the healthiest either (but oh, so tasty!). So that’s something that’s gotta take a higher priority for me than it has been lately.

Today I took a picture of Rece that I’m quite proud of:

It was fun to see an idea for a photo in my head and to actually make it work. This did take some effort, but I really like the result. I learned a lot while doing it, too!

Anyhow, that’s my update for now.

_{This entry almost forgot how a proper entry should behave!}

I started with a light switch, but it turned out looking like crap. Then I tried a corner of the ceiling in my bathroom … hmm … not interesting enough to start off the project. Sitting next to my computer I spied a spindle of CD-R discs, the light reflecting off the top one, which got me thinking. So after taking 24 pictures all over my apartment, I finally came up with one I liked:

It’s not amazing, but I think it’s pretty and rather interesting to look at. I’m positive that I’ll have days where I don’t give a shit and end up taking a lame picture of something stupid, but I’m looking forward to being pushed like that – outside my comfort zone is often where I tend learn something completely new.

I’ve added a link to the right side-bar to my 365 Project Flickr set. Buckle up, it’s going to be a wild ride!

_{This entry ate a meatloaf sandwich for dinner!}

I want to take at least one photo, every day for
an entire year, and post the photo(s) online.

Honestly, I’m nervous about even posting about this idea. It’s as though by announcing it, I don’t have any choice but to actually go through with it. I guess that’s why I’m putting it out there.

The month of photos project I did this past December turned out to be a rather interesting experiment. It helped me feel more comfortable about taking my camera with me wherever I went, made all the manual settings on the camera less scary to me, got me to start seeing the world a bit differently, got my creative juices flowing (why does that read so gross?), expanded my knowledge of Adobe Photoshop, and it helped improve my photography skills.

That month-long experiment did teach me that putting some reasonable limitations on myself is probably a good thing, though. So here are the general guidelines for the project:

• Take one or more photos every day for a full year (365 days)
• Post the photos online (to my Flickr account) a minimum of once a week, but try to post them every day or two – when possible
• Include at least some detail with each photo (below the photo on the Flickr page); be it an observation, description, and/or a story to go along with it
• Post a blog entry about the photos only when I feel like it – but not necessarily to accompany every picture or group of pictures I post to Flickr (this was the part that gave me the most trouble last time and I don’t want it to become an unreasonable obstacle to the core project)

So there you have it. I’ll start tomorrow … no, wait – I guess that would be later today, now that I notice the time!

_{This entry is intersted in seeing how this turns out!}