Celebrations

First up, congrats to regular commenter and blogger Cindy and her husband Dave! Baby Girl has arrived! :) She is beautiful. I'm so in awe of Cindy, not just for, you know, giving birth and all that, but also because she is WEARING MAKEUP and her hair looks freshly blown out in all the hospital photos, posted from the materity ward within six hours of giving birth. I KNOW. It makes me want to fall to my knees, a la Wayne and Garth, "We're not worthy! We're not worthy!" :) Rock on with your glossy hair and gorgeous kid. I'm just sayin.'

Alrighty then, moving right along from the antiquated 90s pop culture references, National Kazoo Day! I actually went to a National Kazoo Day party in the city at Becky and HDL's on Saturday night, and I got to see a lot of fun people I haven't seen in a while. Turns out, one or two are lurking here, hmm? :) Lots of bloggy good bonding ensued, and I found one or two blogs I'll be lurking on myself in the near future. BitchPhD is my new blog crush. You should all go lurk there, too. It'll be like a thing we do together.

And then, moving right along from reclaimed swear words for feminist academic bloggers, everybody's favorite "Portable P!0tner" got baptized this morning. I love this child so much that I only made Joel get out of bed to hit snooze once at 7:00 a.m. on a WEEKEND. If you've never tried to get me out of bed, you have no idea of the truly horrible beast that I can be first thing in the morning. Or even second or third thing in the morning. "Not a morning person" doesn't begin to cover it. I'm like the Incredible Hulk, except I turn green and hurl stuff around when people try to rouse me any time before noon.

Alarm Clock: "This is NPR's Morning Edition-
Me: (muscles bulge, pajamas turn to torn rags) SMASH! SMASH! SMASH!
Alarm Clock: Jesus, I'm scared. Somebody hold me!

But dude, I got up, I PUT ON PANTYHOSE, and I went to church two states away, because I adore this child. (And Joel sort of bribed me with the promise of an Egg McMuffin.)



The rest of the photos are here.

Funkytown

Hi. I've been awfully quiet on the blog. Nothing's wrong, I'm just... Meh. I'm feeling lonely, lazy, hungry, grumpy, cranky, poopy and apparently, whiney. Jesus, look at me, I'm practically Snow White to a whole new set of malcontented dwarves.

FASTEN SEATBELTS- ABRUPT CONVERSATION CHANGE

It seems like there have been a lot of conversations going on around me- online, at work, among friends- about babymaking and siblings and bringing home adopted baby sisters and whether or not to try for #2. My mom always said when I was growing up that she was glad that Amanda and I have each other, because there would always be another person who would remember the same Christmas mornings and family vacations.

And it's true. It's totally true. When a friend adopted two guinea pigs a few months ago, I mentioned that they were the exact same coloring as Heaven and Nature, the guinea pigs I had when I was four. I named them that because they squealed a lot, and it sounded like singing to me... I supposedly drew from a line from the Christmas carol "Joy to the World," where the chorus goes, "And Heaven and Nature sing," you know?

Anyway, on Sunday, Amanda happened to meet aforementioned friend's guinea pigs, as well as her four-year-old daughter. Bear in mind, this is 25 years after the rabbit that my sister got at the same time as I got the guinea pigs kicked the bucket because it crawled out of its hutch and ate leaves from the magnolia tree the bunny/piggy cage was under. (traumatic)

She glanced in the cage, and the first thing out of her mouth was, "They're identical to Heaven and Nature!" I'm glad she remembered that, and I'm glad she remembered it absent any reminder from me.

I had a great time last weekend, seeing all kinds of fun people in Baltimore and celebrating a variety of birthdays and whatnot. I always feel deflated and blue after seeing the sister and sisterfriends. My life always, always feels like it shrank in the wash after I come home. I just want more.

We are SO pretty.

You can see more photos of the brunch and puppy-meeting portions of the weekend here.

Wholly Uninspired

I had an amazing long weekend. So amazing and relaxing that I don't want it to end, and so I sit here, watching the night click away and knowing that dawn and work and the start to my new week, albeit a short one, are a few hours away. The longer I sit, the further behind the 8 ball I put myself for the new week...

See, here's the thing. I don't have to work until noon. And so if I don't get to bed until 3 a.m., I can still get eight hours of sleep. I know. You hate me. But hours after you've all gone home and eaten your dinner and run your errands and snuggled up with your significant others, I'm still shooting gymnastics and listening to police scanners and fielding caption questions. I'm just sayin.'

I'm trying to think of a funny, Idiosyncratic Life, Angie-esque story I could tell you, but I'm feeling wholly uninspired. Feh. Joel and I went up to Mear Bountain Pate Stark and stayed overnight in one of the stone lodges, which sound very romantic and cool, but are actually hotel rooms (and not even all that NICE of hotel rooms, to be honest) with a common area and a giant fireplace. Which, again, seemed very cool and romantic when we decided to go up there.

I figured that the weather would be either snowy and beautiful, and we could do some nice shooting and throwing snowballs at each other like an idyllic LL Bean Catalogue couple. Or it would be unseasonably warm and we could hike and go ice-skating in their outdoor rink, which is open any day that it's less than 55 degrees in the winter.

Instead it was rainy and foggy all weekend. And they aren't open on Mondays, so we could only stay over on Saturday night. And when we pulled down the comforter to sit on the sheets, which are, in theory, cleaner than hotel room comforters (hi Kel), we found drops of blood all over the sheets. Awesome!

So we changed rooms. We did get to go ice skating. I made a big, fat hairy deal about saving the life of this sad moth that had got stuck on the ice and was fluttering about in his death throes. Then I put him on the railing and we realized someone had sliced off part of one wings, probably with the blade of their skate. So I "rescued" this moth, only to realize that I had prolonged his agony by making him flop around on the railing until a bird flies by and eats him. So Joel squashed him to end the agony mercifully. Do you think moths have the ability to feel hope? GOd, I hope not.

Moth: (chatter)So.. Cold. I flop! I strain! Farewell, cruel wor- THE HELL?
Me: (giant smeary out of focus face, as seen from moth's perspective) Hello, Mr. Moth! Let's get you off this ice!
Moth: Saved! Hooray! Let's see if we can't figure out what's wrong with this wing?
Me: Oh, no. Oh, dear.
Moth: (frantic fluttering) PANIC! PANIC!
Joel: SMASH

That's pretty much all I've got for ya, folks.

First up... Puppies!

Of the three topics posed in the comments section...

Welcome home, Sally! Maybe you and Gaby could make a trip to AC Moore or Michael's for a clay kit to preserve her tiny paw print. Although the contrast won't be as dramatic when Sally's full grown since she's a tiny breed, she won't be this tiny for long.

Second,
Degrassi fans, talk amongst yourselves. Tanii, Becky, and Gwen, this is, um, Becky, Gwen and Tanii. Although Gwen only really watches it with me since her house got rid of cable, I've been known to tape it, make up a silly quiz about the episode and Gwen returns them to me. We're sad. But funny! I have a shameful addiction to this show. Tanii, are you watching Degrassi: The Next Generation, or are you referring to the Old School versions? (Which are occasionally on late at night.)

Finally, Michelle's question...

"Why do some people know what they're supposed to do with their lives, inherently, and others feel like they are going to spend their entire existence trying to figure out what they want to do with their life, and a part of them will always feel empty...?"

Well... Uhh... Look! It's a tub of Ben and Jerry's Ice cream! Mmmm, ice cream fills the emptiness.

No, seriously, I want to try to say something profound and sincere. So... For me, a lot of little signs and coincidences led me to photojournalism. I always liked cameras.



This photo was taken when I was 2. I'm very intently studying a real camera, and that's my sister Amanda playing with a toy. When I was in sixth grade, I had an excellent elementary school principal who started a "photo club." I learned how to do tray processing, the old school black and white developing method, and it was like magic, watching the images rise to the surface under the red lights. I took a photo class my freshman year of high school, with more tray processing, and I loved that, too. I had the fantastic opportunity to travel a LOT when I was young, and I loved capturing everything with my camera.

The very first person I ever photographed for a Page 1 photo was Kurt Vonnegut. He was a guest speaker at SU. He said that those who seek their true calling in life should think about what they loved best when they were 10 years old, that you don't really change that much. At age 10, you're independent enough to have complex opinions and choose your own activities, but you're not yet bogged down by thoughts of what you "should" be doing. (He also said he liked mailing letters because he felt like he was feeding a big blue bullfrog when he dropped them in the mailbox.)

When I was 10 and in my elementary school's "photo club," I loved riding my bike down to the park and around the East Pete Pool, photographing the jungle gym equipment and the streams that run through the Sportsmen's Club. I stuck to bike trail and parks and places I knew well, where I often played, but I liked going around by myself and shooting them. I would do all these things with my camera that were different, like holding my polarizing sunglasses in front of the lens. (I now know that professional polarizing filters cost anywhere from $9.95 to $ 1,259.95, but I just thought it "looked cool" at the time.)

If the question is, WHY do some chosen (for lack of a better word) people know what their calling is, and others seem destined to wonder, and wait, and feel empty.... I dunno. I think that's up there with wondering why some people fall in love at age 16 and marry their high school sweethearts, and others endure heartbreak, betrayal and finally get it right when they're 85 and meet their soul mate in a nursing home. Fate? Destiny? Karma from a last life? God's plan? Whatever you believe, I guess.

But from a practical standapoint... I guess the best answer I can come up with for HOW I inherently knew what I wanted to do with my life is this: I do a grown up version of the things I liked best when I was 10.

As for the Julia's query about whether or not Michelle's question was for herself, or Julia or all of us... Let's see. Julia lives in San Francisco with a background in advertising. She is an excellent swing dancer. Michelle is newly married to a great guy, living in Seattle, and teaches special education. If you were living in either of those cities, what would your dream job be?

Hi.

How are you? I'm good.

What would you like to talk about? :)