so, i think i made a decision which, for those of you that know me, is so unlike me.

i woke up this morning severely early due to being sick. instead of trying to go back to bed (i couldn’t, even if i wanted to), i pondered. well, i surfed, really. i got an e-mail from one of my best friends about the latest picture i put up on kettlepot. it was really the first picture i’ve put up in awhile, and she said some nice things about it. i also talked to one of my photographer friends this week about my lack of motivation, direction, and all that. she made a good comment that i think, in some regards, applies directly to me. i feel like a lot of my good shots are luck instead of technique or skill. the old saying “i’d rather be lucky than good” does have its merits. sometimes a great shot is about luck; being in the right place at the right time, or timing something that you capture a shot that’s 1 in a million.

i’ve read my share of books, and blogs, and articles. i’ve talked to other photographers, and experimented. but i think what i need are some actual classes. i’ve been looking at some online classes, mostly because of the travel i’ve been doing and my life schedule. i don’t want to have another excuse to not take a class, i guess. my camera is with me at all times, even when i go out east, so i think an online class offers the best opportunity to continue with the photography in spite of life opportunities. my plan has always been that if i take this class, which covers a wide variety of topics and photography types, that i would then (hopefully) pick an area to focus on and take appropriate local courses here to advance my skill. sounds like a solid plan.

the other thing i’ve been struggling with is upgrading my camera, but the one i want, the Nikon D300, is $1,800. my saving grace has been that amazon didn’t have it in stock, which changed today. they do.

the perfect storm? extra money came in this month.

so, here i sit, way too early in the morning. i’ve been saving up for the course, the camera, and a new guitar. i’m trying to rationalize everything in my head, weigh the pros and cons. it’s enough to make my already churning stomach spin out of control. and then i rationalized it.

i think the course should come first. my camera is a decent, solid camera that is fine for what i am doing (or not doing, as the case may be). i can’t really justify spending the money on a new camera when i don’t really use the current one. really, the only push for me to do it would be because the new camera would do way better in lower light situations, which happens to be where i’ve been shooting mostly lately, and that’s the shows for kerri’s school. but the shots i’m taking are fine. i have two fast, low light lenses i can use. and, realistically, if i bought that camera and only used it to take pictures of the shows, i’d be disappointed in myself.

next will come a new guitar, i believe. we’ve been working on note reading and more classical guitar work, so i think it makes sense to get a reasonable classical guitar to help me work towards that. i guess as the things i work on get more complicated, having the classical guitar will make it easier.

the extra funds this month will then help pay for some of the wedding bills that we’re piling up, which will definitely help me sleep better. then, maybe sometime in the spring or summer, i can look at upgrading the camera. by then, i should be deep into the course work (if not done, assuming i get highly motivated) and have a higher technique to luck ratio.

it seems all logical written out. not bad for some early morning decisions.

i hate being sick.

i don’t get sick very often, and when i do i think my body does a pretty good job fighting it off. but it still sucks. the timing of this illness couldn’t have been worse, either. my guys from out east are in for a visit, so my plans for a team dinner and a vendor dinner were foiled. luckily, those events still went off, but i wasn’t there.  i did manage to go to work and get the stuff done that i needed to (and hopefully minimizing the potential for spreading my bug, although i read somewhere that i was probably contagious before i showed  any symptoms…still, it’s the thought that counts). i probably stayed too long today, but i think it was for a good cause.

i’m actually sitting on the couch right now, trying to do too many things, so i figured i would do none of them and write for a bit. and watch hockey. so far the lightning haven’t blown it like they usually do, and the vancouver game just started so they haven’t had an opportunity to lose yet. oh, speaking of hockey, i checked out my old teams website tonight. it looks great (except the old, freaky picture of me)! i miss playing and am trying to figure out if i want to fit it back in my life next season, although that’s unlikely with the wedding. and the 1,000 other things i want to do. still, if i can work the schedule, i think i’d like to.

and, speaking of wedding. i still haven’t made an appointment with a photographer, although it’s a work in progress. i did check out a few more websites tonight, and have a few more lined up to look at tonight. i need to focus my priorities and stop making excuses for not making the appointment. tomorrow.

i need to update the website, too.

ok, enough about all the things i need to do. it would become the never-ending post.

it’s going to be a busy few days. i got a violation letter from the HOA because i haven’t taken the christmas lights down yet. between travel and all that, it was a low priority, but i’ll take care of it saturday. i think it’s supposed to be nice out. we have an engagement party on sunday, and i think some folks from work will come up, so that makes me very happy (unless, of course, they get sick between now and then, and then i can only blame myself. and them, for getting sick).  then on monday, i’m flying east for the week. it will likely be my last trip for a few weeks. kerri and i are going to florida in march, just in time (hopefully) to see my friend’s new baby, or to see her right before she has it, or to be there when she has it so we can babysit their precious daughter. we’ll see a hockey game with mom, and spend some (noisy) QT with the new puppies. We’ll probably head to Orlando for a bit, too. I think I’ve earned a free night at a hotel with my Marriott points, so there is something to be said for the travel.

a light night of writing, i guess. no deep thoughts, no keen observations. it was an eventful day, but one that i’m trying to process, i guess. it was also work related, and i don’t / won’t post about that stuff. it is what it is.

oh, speaking of. i know a few folks that hate that saying. but there was a brief segment on npr talking about the saying. i looked for a link but didn’t find one, but it was a light story talking about the phrase, where it might have come from, and how it’s used.

and on that note, it’s back to photographer websites. vancouver scored and my insides are churning in celebration. stupid being sick. boo. still…

it is what it is

as always, i’ve been meaning to write for awhile. i’ve had all these (good) ideas that i’ve been wanting to write about but didn’t take notes and now, after a very long day, my head can’t recall what it once thought was the most important thing in the world.  i’ll work backward and see how far i get…

today we took the ski train up to winter park for some mountain fun. it was actually planned for my birthday, and it was a great present. the ski train itself is worth it, but being up there with kerri and two of my best friends makes it even better. it was a good day, though. it was a cold and we were reminded we need to upgrade kerri’s gear, but we made the most of it. my legs felt good, and my friends, who hadn’t been up there in over a year, did great. i brought the camera but didn’t use it; too cold, too overcast, but more on that later.  this paragraph already had a few things that sparked my failing memory.

my birthday. the big 3-4. i guess i’m destined to prefix all my birthdays from now on “the big”. i still don’t do birthdays, but k had the house decorated when i got home from work, which was awesome. we drank some wine, had dinner, and watched hockey. what more could i ask for? she got me a midi controller keyboard, which was way to expensive but that was very in line with what we’ve been doing musically lately. what a weird thing to say…”what we’ve been doing musically”. a couple of guitar lessons and all of a sudden i’m a musician.

speaking of music… the guitar lessons are going very well. we’re switching back to more classical work so i can focus on my note reading. i’m also continuing to read my music theory book, so things are starting to (somewhat) make sense.  a few weeks ago, kerri and i were playing with a keyboard and she was teaching me a few things, then we went for a few nights with me working on my songs (i have 3 “covers” that i play and (try to) sing) and her playing keyboard accompaniment.  music will always fascinate me, i think. it’s such a combination of so many things…theory, math, formulas, patterns, creativity, passion, soul, everything. i’m not nearly as advanced as i need to be to do the things i want to do, but i have some cool tools (including my birthday present) with which to experiment.

i actually took a few pictures yesterday, too. as i said, i took the camera with us on the train today, which was big for me. i didn’t use it, but it was there. yesterday we went with some friends to an acquaintance’s photography show, and it inspired me a bit. we got to talk to the photographer, and i actually sounded like i knew what i was talking about, which made me feel pretty good. i put two new pictures on kettlepot, which are the first new pictures i think i put up since i redid the website.

a new family guy is on tonight, so i’m totally distracted.

finito!

i’ve been wanting to write something for awhile, but things have been busy (as usual) and i’ve been unmotivated (as usual). but over the course of the past few days, i’ve actually been semi-productive, so i figured i would top it off with a post.

my favorite accomplishment was putting up the honeymoon page on daveandkerri.com. i found web pages for the places we are staying and included links and pictures along with the itinerary. it seems so crazy, really. fiji, sydney, and the great barrier reef. i think we are going to see and do a lot of things but, at the same time, the itinerary seems to also include a nice balance of relaxation. as an added bonus, october is supposed to be a great time for heading to those parts of the world, too.

i also put pictures of the western show up on flickr. we only saw the wild west show, but it was fun and educational and was one of the things i wanted to ponder deeply and write about, but that won’t be tonight. in a nutshell, it was related to the history of the cowboy, and how much it has become a part of our culture, even though the cowboy as we think of him only lasted for about 20 years. it seems like such a short time. granted, there are cowboys today, sort of (none of which actually sing country music). it’s like hip hop, i think. it’s a lifestyle, not a profession. the real cowboys are the ones that led steer drives for hundreds of miles…the old west cowboys, not the ones that drive chevy’s and have the little decal of calvin relieving himself on a ford emblem. my point, if i ever decide to write about it in the future, was how it became part of our culture, and how long it would be a part of it. how far back in history will the lasso reach? fifty years from now, will there be a wild west show? will the seats be packed like they were when i was there? maybe we’ll have a new-age cowboy show that doesn’t involve any cattle, but folks driving around in their ford and chevy trucks, perfectly synchronized at 50 miles an hour (and 3 miles per gallon).

back to the pictures, i haven’t decided if i want to put any of them on kettlepot. i’m still unmotivated, and severely critical right now. but at least i took some pictures. that should count for something.

i’m also trying to finish brave new world. technically, i finished the main story. i’m reading huxley’s follow up to it, which is very, very interesting. even if people don’t read the book, i think they should read “brave new world revisited”. right now, i think i want to do a small book report on it. there were a lot of similarities to “stranger in a strange land”, which i’ve read maybe 5 times. the interesting thing about brave new world, though, is that the “revisited” provides a lot of insight in to why things are the way they are in the future, including examples of huxley’s present day that led him to design it the way he did…creepy experiments that proved things about human nature that, in the story, the future “world controllers” use the make a freak utopian society.

to tie my last to thoughts together, in the brave new world, there are “savage” reservations; basically, native american reservations. (pieces of that were very “stranger in a strange land”). but i wanted to mention that there were some native americans doing a few different dances at the western show, and some of those pictures are included on flickr. the dances were amazing, especially the hoop dancing, which constitutes a large number of the pictures on flickr. the coolest part was that the father was the main hoop dancer, which from the announcer is a big deal and not something just anyone can do. but the dancer’s son was following his father and learning the hoop dance, and the two of them danced together and was really touching, and real. the crowd gave a nice response, as well, which made me, even if only for a brief moment, believe there is hope for us all yet.

and then i caught the news on the radio…