Doe, a deer, a wedding and a dirt road.

On Saturday, I drove an hour and half north of me, to meet with Lisa, to help her shoot a wedding in Gainesville. From her place, we headed to our destination in Lake City, to capture the moments of the bride getting ready. We ended up missing our turn, and went back and forth the wrong road, of the same name as the correct road. In one direction, there was a long, dirt road and while we traveled along this dooming road, Lisa decided to start telling me about all the horror stories from movies and true stories, that start with a car making a wrong turn, down a dirt road. I wasn't entirely freaked out until the uncle of the bride got on the phone with us and warned not to go on that road. By then we were already off the dirt road, but it got our brains tickin'. We still don't know if he was serious or not.

We finally arrived to the house where the bride was getting ready and Lisa started doing her thing, taking photos of the little details and such. About 10 minutes after we arrived, a storm erupted. I'm talking a crazy thunderstorm with pounding rains. So much for outdoor photos. Which really sucked, because the property was beautiful. It rained through the whole "getting ready" session, and even while we arrived to the church to take some photos of the men in the wedding party. A few times, before the wedding, the lights even flickered, as lighting struck and thunder shook through our bodies.
It was unfortunate that it was raining so hard, because the church was adorable. One of those quaint, country churches, which would have made for some amazing shots. Lisa still did her thing and came away with plenty of great photos.

On the way to the reception, Lisa saw a dog laying on the side of the road. I looked back in time to just make out the color and unusually large size of the animal. I believe it was a dog that we'd actually seen running loose, while we were lost earlier that day. A very sad thing to see on the way to a reception.
After the reception, we started back to Lisa's, and spotted a deer. It was a lovely thing to see after the dog laying on the side of road. I don't know why, but I love seeing deer. It just makes my day...

All in all, this was a wonderful learning experience for me, and working with Lisa was awesome. I already knew she was sweet and talented, but when going into a situation like that, I always take the time to wonder how it will be actually working with someone. And much to my delight, it was great. Lisa's wonderful and really helpful. I am starting to have a little more confidence about my photography and how the whole business works. Hopefully, I can start making money from it, someday soon.

Jump!Zone, Where are my shoes!? :\

Last Friday, Karima wanted to take our friend's son to Jump!Zone, as a reward for completing this year at school, so the kids and I joined in on the fun. Well, kinda. This place was full of rambunctious, careless, spoiled children, whose parents were more concerned with texting, reading and watching movies on their ipads, than taking a second to explain to their children what behavior is acceptable in public, especially with other, younger children. The bigger kids had no mind over the little ones and were quick to run them over and shove them out of their way. These kids were rude, had no regard for anyone surrounding them and seemed to feel just fine about putting their hands and/or feet on others. It was a pretty sad sight.

Now, I know my kids aren't perfect and I know I am far from being a perfect parent. So I certainly don't expect other children and parents to be perfect. However, when kids are running around like wild creatures, shoving, hitting, kicking and picking up other children, that they don't even know- It irks me. And when the parents of said children, allow such behavior to continue, you gotta wonder. I may not pay attention to what my kids are doing 24/7, and I'm sure I don't catch every bad move, but when I do see that they are misbehaving, I don't ignore it! I acknowledge it, and make sure that I correct them. I see parents see glance up at their kids for the shortest of moments, even happening to witness bad behavior and then just ignore it. I don't get it. They have the opportunity to teach their children to be functional humans in society, but they don't take the time to do so. As children, everything is a learning experience, so parents need to step up when those opportunities arise and  teach their children what is expected of them.

Anyhow, that's not the worst of it. My son has extremely wide feet, therefore, it is very hard to find shoes that fit him correctly and don't hurt him. I tell you this because, his shoes were gone(!) when we went to leave. Some careless kid and/or parent took his shoes! There was another similar, but different and much larger pair of shoes left and I assume that they were mixed up. But if this is the case, the child must have had to cram their foot into my son's shoe... And you would think, they would figure it out. I'm kinda pissed, because that pair happened to fit him perfectly. Now I have to find him new shoes. As if I didn't have to do it often enough for my two growing children. It's just so annoying.

Rainbow Bright

From Drop Box

I saw this yesterday, while driving to Krispy Kreme. Of course, I had to snap a few photos off. With a little googleing, I learned this phenomenon was called a circumhorizontal arc. Supposedly, they are somewhat a rare sight, but I've actually seen more of these in the past couple of years, than I have rainbows. (I've taken some pictures of the others I've seen, but I can't locate those at the moment.) An excerpt from a NationalGeographic.com news article states:
"The arc isn't a rainbow in the traditional sense—it is caused by light passing through wispy, high-altitude cirrus clouds. The sight occurs only when the sun is very high in the sky (more than 58° above the horizon). What's more, the hexagonal ice crystals that make up cirrus clouds must be shaped like thick plates with their faces parallel to the ground.
When light enters through a vertical side face of such an ice crystal and leaves from the bottom face, it refracts, or bends, in the same way that light passes through a prism. If a cirrus's crystals are aligned just right, the whole cloud lights up in a spectrum of colors."

The whole phenomenon kinda blows my mind, considering how hot it's been lately. It's just hard to fathom, that up there in our Florida sky, there are ice crystals, perfectly aligned, creating prisms for light to pass through and put on an amazing display for us. I just wish some of those crystals could make their way down to the ground without melting- Now that, would be a phenomenon! If you happen to google: circumhorizontal arc, you are bound to find even more spectacular displays of this special sight.

You wanna... Bowl?

The kids and I went to the bowling alley last evening, to presumably have an awesome time. We got to the alley around 6:30PM, which I thought was a great time to go. Oh, how wa-rong was I!? I approached the counter with coupons and cash in hand, ready to purchase some time on a lane. The guy at the counter lackadaisically approached me and gave me this weird look. He then asked, in somewhat a surprised tone, "Whadaya need? You wanna... Bowl?" And I said "Yeah." With a bit of  "Of course, what else would I be at the BOWLING ALLEY for?" type of sarcasm. He then relayed the unfortunate fact that there weren't going to be any lanes available until 9:30PM. Seriously? The kids didn't really understand why we couldn't bowl, and I felt pretty bad about building the whole outing up so much. So, awesome evening plans, ruined. Stinkin' league bowlers! (You know who you are. Haha.)

So in an effort to salvage the evening, I offered to them, a nice evening trip to Busch Gardens. I was totally shot down! I racked the ol' brain and suggested a trip to Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, since they talk about it a lot, in pretty high regards. They bit. KK happens to make the only doughnut I care to pay money for, so it was a win-win. We drove and drove... The kids asked if we were still in Florida, since it seemed to take eons to get there. When we finally arrived, my kids were ready with their specific doughnut requests. Lego Boy asked to have a cruller and miss Hello Kitty asked for the one with sprinkles. (They'd been there several times with their grandparents and father, so apparently, they were pros at this point.) I was pretty shocked that my son even knew what a cruller was. I decided to try Krispy Kreme's featured Lemon Cake doughnut and it was ever so delightful. I had to share it with LB, because after he tried "Just a little bite," he was hooked. HK, not so much. Since we had decided to eat-in, we got to have our faces melted. And not in that "Check out that guy shred! This is the best rock show ever!" kind of way... It was soooo steaming hot in there, that I was 'Hot and Ready' to leave. But the kids were really enjoying our little impromptu date. I'm going to have to say, I seriously recommend against eating in, at the Florida and Waters location- At least, when the sun is beaming directly into the cramped, little dining area.

From Drop Box

From Drop Box

From Drop Box

From Drop Box

From Drop Box

After KK, we headed to a friends house, but before that, we stopped off at a playground to burn off some of that sugar. LB made a couple of friends right away, and HK did too, once some girls showed up. They had a blast with their new friends and played until the sun started going down. Needless to say, evening: saved. =)

Assembled!

I put together the wardrobe today, and while doing so, I was happy to discover that it was Made in Poland, not China, much to my surprise. It's fulfilling its purpose at this very moment.

From Drop Box

In other unimportant news, I am über happy to have found my favorite pair of sunglasses, which I misplaced a few weeks ago. I've been using my back-up pair in the meantime, but those tend to induce horrible migraines, so I am thrilled to find my old stand-by (Even if the lenses are pretty scratched up). I have the most difficult time buying sunglasses, because either the bridge hurts my nose or my eyelashes scrape against lens. Anyway, so happy.

From Drop Box

And my mom introduced me to some new yogurt. Wallaby Organic. The flavor's vanilla bean- my fave, and it says it's Creamy Australian Style, whatever that means... It's not actually Australian at all though- It hails from Napa County, CA. But it's delicious and even has little specks of vanilla bean, and I find that to be a nice touch.

From Drop Box

Lost Generation

Incredibly clever. Really worth watching.

Ikea, Kids and Boxes

(Click image to enlarge)

IKEA is having some great promotions, so Karima and I, along with our little ones, hiked across town to check out the deals. I ended up scoring an EINA wardrobe for 23 bucks (Orig. $99)! And the kids ate free (FYI they do through July 5th), which is nice, even though the cost of their meals isn't exactly bank-busting. Every little bit helps, as they say.

Although we had to wait over an hour (after the girl working the play area said there was a 10-15 minute wait) the kids thoroughly enjoyed their 45 minutes, of freewheeling in Småland. Meanwhile, Karima, the babe and I were able peruse the goods at our own pace, deciding what was nice for the price and what was just plain, Made in China junk. That mega-mega store is just plain fun.

Now getting the wardrobe home posed its own challenges, as the box's length was pretty ridiculous- Measuring in at nearly 6' 5"! There was no way that was fitting in my sedan's trunk, as I had so foolishly planned. So thankfully, Karima offered her vehicle, since she has an SUV with a roof rack. We thought about the different options, such as folding down seats, having the box hang out the window, and decided on tying it down to the roof, instead- With the IKEA- provided, skin-ripping twine. Yes, it ripped my skin, yes, it burns and stings. Somehow, us girls managed to get the unwieldy box on the top o' da truck and then I began the futile efforts of tying it down. A lot. Over and over and over. It was kinda ridiculous how many times I tied that thing to the rack. No matter all my efforts though, it still managed to come loose during our very slow and very careful drive home. I was following behind and had to stare for a while, to realize that one of the main pieces of twine that was holding the box along the length of the car had slid off. We pulled over and tied the box down some more, with the extra twine we'd taken, for just such an incident. Whatever I did that time, I guess I did right, because the box looked more secure the rest of the way home than the first half of the trip. I can happily say, that the box made it just fine, thanks to some careful maneuvering on Karima's part. And no so much my lacking tie-down skills. Lesson of the day: When in doubt, bring your ratcheting tie-down straps (Especially if you already have some)!

Looking back to move forward.

I have been working on a website for my photography, since I would love to make money from what I love to do (and also since I'm unemployed and seemingly unemployable). Unfortunately, building the site, I find myself very stumped as to what content to add. A lot of the photography I have worked on or should I say, take pride in, actually lies within some hard drives that are currently housed in a dead PC. I need to get one of those drop-in hard drive reader thingys, ASAP. (Well, I really wish my old PC would just come back to life for me, especially since I had just dropped some major RAM into it, before it died.)

I just feel I haven't been inspired lately and need some sort of creative kick in the butt. Perhaps losing Photoshop to my dead PC, kinda killed the whole enjoyment of shooting/editing, because I have had to start from scratch- Learning a new, less expensive program which I'm now realizing, I haven't even opened in several months. I remember so many days where I would come back from a day of shooting and not even wait a moment to upload my photos and start editing. Not the case anymore.

I need Photoshop. That's what it boils down to. Now to come up with funds and a plan...

Sometimes, I just take pictures.

Of random sightings. And sometimes I like them- For no particular reason.

A purpose?

I hope to find some purpose for this blog eventually, but as for now, it's just random events and thoughts on the present... And maybe even some past.