- Let me start by talking about why I've stopped my 365 Days of Hope - The last day I have posted is Monday August 31st - I do have pictures from a couple days after that, but have yet to hook up to a computer. Basically its like this; the first week in September was spent trying to clean my house and do laundry so that when I started babysitting my niece on Labor Day (the 5th), I'd be ready. There is a certain feeling of comfort coming home after a week to a clean house, so I wanted it done, plus I needed laundry in order to live away from home for a week.
The couple days before (aka the weekend) was busy for me with a dentist appt, a friends birthday, meeting with my SIL to go over the coming week, etc. It also happens that I sold my van that weekend, I spent a bit of time dealing with that guy, which was more than okay as I wanted (and needed) to get rid of that thing before winter!
In any case, the 365 project took a backseat to my busy agenda - at the time I didn't really think about it too much, but it did bother me some. However it was quite nice to be able to travel around the state, to and from work, and everywhere else without having to worry about my camera bag being with me all the time.
Then fast forward to the week of babysitting... do you have any idea how much cargo you have to haul around when you have a 2 year old at your hip?! HOLY DIAPERS BATMAN! So you have a diaper bag, you have a stroller, you have snacks, you have water... the last thing I wanted to do was haul my camera along with it all! It's really too bad though, case I wanted to make Jordan my little model and test out my portrait vision... but there was just too much going on~ I do have a few shots of her at the zoo though, I'll post another time.
So by this point I'm over a week behind on taking the pictures and I'm upwards of 2 weeks behind on posting the few I did have... imo, you can't really recover from that. So I just kind of stopped. It makes me sad, and I feel like a quitter (which I don't like to be) - but I made the conscious decision to stop, so I can only blame myself. That is the reason there is no longer a 365 Days of Hope :(
- Now, I mentioned in the last bullet that I babysat my niece (Sept 5th-Sept 12th) - surprisingly, without pictures there is not a whole lot to share about that week. I did survive, and I was worried I wouldn't. Jordan and I bonded in such a neat way, I'm honestly very glad I did it. Her and I had some great times together, and she really wasn't bad but once or twice near the end of my stint... I chalk that up to missing mommy and daddy. We went to the zoo, we went to parks, we had taco poop... she got to see her grandma, her grandpa, and TONS of doggies! Its so neat to watch her grow and learn new things.
The one {bad} thing I took out of that week was my vocabulary dropped a peg or two as I was walking around uttering "oopsie" and "uh-oh".
I loved my niece going in to the week and I loved her more (and in a much different way) coming out of the week. I still don't want kids :)
- So, moving on to the following week... which was last week... my week was just average, back at work, back to my life, trying to gain some normalcy.
My week ended with a migraine, as you may have read about here, never a good way to go into a weekend. I was to house/dog/bird sit for my dad starting Friday - so I did that a pretty much took it easy the whole weekend. Steve came and joined me up there, which was nice and made my mom feel a million times better as she was extremely worried about me after the whole migraine episode.
- I did add a new lens to my collection over this past weekend (after selling my van, I felt I deserved it, and it was cheap in comparison to other lenses) - I bought a 35mm f/1.8 Prime lens, which basically means it has one focal length, no zoom. The benefit of this is the aperture setting can be tweaked to really enhance the photo. I've taken some photos with it and I'm pretty sure I'm going to love it, I'll get them posted soon!
A few other bits of information:
- I booked a trip to Denver with Steve in October - simply based around Randy Moss! LOL... Steve has a man crush on Moss and the Patriots play in Denver in October, so we're hoping to get to a game. Other highlights of the trip to be visiting the mountains and spending way too much money on a rental car to get there. In all seriousness, we used Priceline's name your own price option for a hotel, and got a killer price on a 4-star hotel right near the happening area in Denver. The flights were also extremely reasonably priced, so I feel very good about the money spent thus far. I've never spent any time in Denver, so I'm very excited to hang out and see all it has to offer! If anyone's been and has tips or suggestions, throw 'em my way!
- I booked, this morning, a flight to Branson, MO to visit my friend Renee (who I've taken 2 road trips in the past year to see - here is the link from Spring 09, and here is a link for one of the blogs from last fall) - I think it goes without saying (but I will anyway) that I am WICKED EXCITED to see her, and her family. We were joking around about me coming to see her soon and upon checking some flight prices, we decided we'd be stupid not to book something (flights are ridiculously cheap to Branson with Sun Country). The flight options/days are not the best, so I'm only staying 2 nights, but 2 nights is better than not going at all!
- I got a call from a buddy of mine the other day asking if I'd be interested in photographing his band. I agreed and we decided to fine tune the details in the coming days/weeks... hopefully we'll be able to work something out with our schedules - I'm super excited, especially with my new lens! Good practice for me for sure!
Ok guys, this blog is LONG enough! See what happens when I don't post for weeks at a time?! I'll try to be better about it, but we all know how that goes.
Happy Autumn - hope your busy lives are keeping you good and sane :)
