Back To Normal

I can't believe the time is finally here, but Jess is finally going back to work on Thursday.  Yes, after seven and a half months of being off while she recovered from surgery, she has to return to the work force.  Usually, a return to normalcy is a good thing, but in this situation, it is pretty depressing.  We got to spend so much time together in the last seven and a half months and I can't say that I ever felt like I needed a break from her.  In fact, I think I am going to instantly miss her and you wouldn't expect that when you have spent so much time together.  Luckily, she is going back to work during my busy time of the month at work so I'll have plenty of other things to concentrate on.

What's amazing is looking back and realizing how much has happened in our lives during the recovery time.  Let's see what has happened since the moment Jess went under the knife: she almost died, our nephew was born, her mom passed away, we took two trips to Disneyland, one of my pictures ALMOST made it on the cover of a phone book, and we took trips to Reno and Tahoe.  All of this while recovering from surgery shows we did more than just sit at home for the last seven and a half months.  Can the next seven and a half months, with a HEALTHY Jessica be as eventful?  If it is, and hopefully we can avoid the deaths and near-death experiences, then we have exciting times up ahead in our lives!

In the end, this break from work was for recovery and as Jess goes back to work, I pray, cross fingers, think good thoughts, etc, that this surgery was successful and she will be able to work pain-free or at least mostly pain-free while she does her job.  Her job as a nurse is taking care of people and making sure they are comfortable.  It is only right that as she does her job, she is comfortable as well.  Now we see if it was all worth it.

The Agony of the Feet

As mentioned in the previous blog post, this past weekend included an overnight stay in Reno for us and group of friends.  We had SUCH a great time (as I typed that, a friend just texted me asking me when we were going again) and will have plenty of stories to tell of the trip for years to come  We didn't come home with gambling winnings as we had hoped, but hey, you can't win every time!  Because of the wonderful creation of alcohol, even though almost all of us were losing money, we were happy the whole time.  Some of the guys were drinking this:



Now, I am not much of a beer guy, but that has to be the coolest name for a beer ever!  But still, I'll stick with tequila!  Jess looked amazing (like always), but absolutely destroyed her feet with the heels she wore around the casino and walking out on the town.  By the end of our great trip, her feet were covered in cuts, blisters, and sores.  This was her the next day, poor girl.




Monday was a release for a new Vinylmation series, Furry Friends.  Her feet hurt so much that she had me go on my own.  I am sure that saddened her!  I didn't get the ones I was looking for, but I did luck out and get the rare one (called a chaser).  That one alone made the trip worth it and even though I am not keeping it (I have actually sold it already), it made for an awesome picture!





If we're going to talk about Furry Friends though, nothing compares to the one I picked out a little over 9 years ago.

Love that girl. 

Contrast

I survived another first week of the month, generally my busiest time of the month.  Thankfully, I actually got a LOT done and look forward to hopefully having a somewhat relaxing January so I can complete some other projects I have been putting off because I have been so damn busy.  Now that Jess is self-sufficient, I don't have to worry about splitting my time between my work and what she needs so time has become more readily available.  I think we'll celebrate with a fun night in Reno with friends tonight.  Yeah, that sounds like a plan.

I took two pictures this week that are so incredibly different.  That is what I like about this project, I get so many different shots and from one day to the next, you can get something totally different 
from the day before.

On Wednesday, I took this shot of this mandarin orange on our tree.  So much color and life in this shot even though it is just a spot of color surrounded by the muted green.




The following day, I took the following shot and it couldn't be any different: dark, black and white, and grainy.  Everything in the shot was intentional as I wanted a dirty, grungy look to go with the theme of the picture.




I didn't set out to make the two back to back pictures have such a contrast, but when I realized it, I was actually super happy.  I mean, at this point I am happy when I can think of something different to photograph after all this time, but when it is something I really like and am proud of, it makes it that much better.

Yesterday, I went with something new again.  Like I said, it is all about creating new ideas.  When I created the Star Wars scene in the last post, I thought to myself how fun it would be to create other shots from movies in my photos.  For some reason, I instantly thought of Kill Bill and thought it would be fun to create a scene inspired by the movie.  I came up with this...




Kind of fun, kind of silly, I kind of need to shave more often.  In the end though, I am really happy with how this came out. 

2012?

So we made it to 2012, so now what?  Well, if you're a crackpot, you answer that question by saying, "Who gives a crap, the world is going to end in December anyways!"  But since we are mostly all rational human beings and don't fall for crazy things like that, we can actually look to the future with some sense of hope.  After a couple of years of misfortune for Jess and I, we are looking at 2012 as a chance for a new beginning and hopefully, nothing but good news.  Sure, we had many great things happen in the last two years, but it was countered by so much grief that we want a year full of happiness.  Hell, we don't want to be greedy, we'll go with mostly all happiness.

Enough of being all moody and philosophical for a while.  The "now what" also applies to my photo a day project.  I just finished up my second year of Project 365 and I just can't bring myself to stop.  Sure, it is a pain at times and can be pretty stressful trying to think of something to photograph, but if I didn't do it, I might go weeks or even longer without picking up my camera and that is just no good at all.  I'm excited to start working on my coffee table book of the second year of pictures, while simultaneously trying to keep year 3 just as fresh.

Like I said though, keeping it fresh and trying to come up with a new picture every day IS the hard part.  Since I work from home, there are numerous days when I don't leave the house at all.  Add that to the fact that I often work all day, then eat, then rest, and finally think of something to take a picture of, and I run out of things to take a picture of at 10pm.  That is what last night's pic came down to - what can I see to take a picture of on the way to bed?  I ended up with this:




Now, I lucked out because I really like this pic.  It's simple, but I love all the lines, the black and white tone, etc.  But for every one of these, there are 5 pictures of forks or a pair of shoes that are cool, but nothing special.  This could be a problem this year, but we'll have to see how it goes.

Today I took this:



Now, I could take a ton of different pictures like this with all kinds of cool characters and funny scenes, but besides amusing me, I think this would bore the general population pretty quickly.  Year 3 is going to be pretty damn hard.  But let's keep our fingers crossed that the picture a day is the biggest thing I have to stress about this year.