Fran - Hiss

Kitten needs a home. Someone dumped her at the shop last week and she is overstaying her welcome. She is a sweet little kitty, but she has a unique predilection for hissing. She doesn't mean anything by it. I've caught her hissing and purring in the almost the same moment. We've been calling her Fran because she was bounding across the room and knocked over a St. Francis statue causing it to shatter.
I've been getting rid of my stuff again. If anyone wants any designer shoes size 7.5 or camera gear please check out my ebay auctions. :)
Oh... I got a wacom tablet. I hated it at first, but I'm starting to like it. The mouse is much nicer than the one that came with my computer. It has a button to toggle back and forth between pages.
Most of y'all wouldn't appreciate this, but I set lots of new keyboard shortcuts on my computer today for my Adobe programs. They are unique to me so if anyone else tries to use my computer it is going to misbehave. I do the same few tasks over and over again and adobe didn't seem to think they were worthy of shortcuts. What do they know?
I'm pricing my weddings... what do y'all think? How much should I charge?

QUICKB00KS

Rrrrg. I entered all of my sales vs expenses and I've spent almost 10x what I've made. Yikes. The good news is I have lots of bookings for the next few months and I needed all of the stuff I purchased. By need I mean want. *sigh* Running a small business is no easy task. I'm glad I'm the boss. I'd hate to have to justify my expensive taste to anyone else. :)

More pictures

This week has been hard on me. I got sick on Thursday and then sicker and sicker until I was in a little pile on the bathroom floor vomiting and cursing my existance. Luckily a nice ER doc suggested gatoraid and salteen crackers and a sweet boy brought me some. I'm feeling 95% better this morning. I've got lots of work to catch up on today, but I'm feeling good about it.

Figure study

not bad for a first try.

Its up to you.

Green belt

I took some new pictures yesturday. I like this one.

I must be...

Ferel.

Last night at the Dario Robleto/Jeremy Blake opening at Arthouse I convinced two friends to run up and down a deserted hallway screeming. It was a performance piece. The art was a collection of civil war treasures and video footage from the Winchester mansion. We were adding to the mystique. I didn't think people in the main galleries could hear us, but turns out they could. For what it's worth no one knew it was us.

Redecorating con't

Painting is finished. The furniture has been moved, although I'm planning on mixing it up some more. All I need now is to get a few of my boxes of books from moms house! A fresh coat of paint and some new furntiure goes a long way to making a girl feel good. I'm trying to find a before photo... the room had a matress on the floor and bedsheet curtains.

Redecorating

ok. my big brother, now that he has moved all of his stuff out, thinks he might be moving back in... so i've decided to redecorate my room before he does that and reclaim what furniture i want from the guest bedroom. because the carpet in my room is dark blue (i choose it when i was like 12 - bad choice) i'm going to paint the walls cafe mocha. i picked up a great old chair for reading which is going to go with my mission style bed. now all i need is a duvet and to get used ot the guest bed witch isn't as nice as mine, but sure is a lot prettier.

New Career?

I'll cook dinner for anyone who can correctly guess what is going on in this photo.

Cold and Stormy Weather

Makes a girl wish she had a cute boy to kiss. *sigh* All in good time. I've decided to make my first big equipment accusition for the new year. I'm buying a battery powered strobe kit from Ebay. I've figured out to the dime how much I can bid before I won't be able to pay my bills. Life is the most fun when you bid with all of your chips. I still can't find my wallet. Not being able to charge things on my credit card or get money out of an ATM has been interesting. MLK thanks for having your birthday when I really need money. *sigh*. Even worse than the money is not being able to check out library books. Being poor is ok, but poor with nothing to read is not acceptable.

Worst mood ever.

Waaa waaa waaa. I'm UNHAPPY. I lost my credit card case with all of my cards in it... including by not limited to my drivers licence, insurance card and barnes and noble gift card. RRRg. I'm just kicking myself about this. Worst part is I canceled all of my cards but because today is Friday and Monday is a STUPID bank holiday I won't have any credit for a week. YIPES. I have a company to run. I need to be able to spend money. I don't want to have to do it the old fashioned way and write checks. Rrrg. Boo hiss. Maybe I'll set up a paypal acount and all of my loyal blog readers can float me. It also erks me because my mom gave the case and I really liked it. It had wonder woman on it.

I'm also in a bad mood because my older brother moved all of his stuff out of the house. I'm happy to have his stuff gone, but he took some of my stuff with him when he went. He also practically trashed the place. I know he took most of my good tools, but I haven't figured out what else he tooks. It really irks me because I know I have zero chance of getting my stuff back. My big brother sucks that way. He isn't a rational human being so reasoning with him never works. Rrrg.

I'm going to drink some hot tea and read my book. Too bad I gave up the lefties.

Jeff Wall at Tate

Fuck. I want to be a famous artist. It's what I've always wanted. Not sure who convinced me I'm not good enough. If Jeff Wall can do it so can I. His latest show at the Tate modern is very inspirational. He has the same love of cinema-graphic still as Gregory Crewdson, but his work is less produced, cruder. Makes me feel guilty about the amount of time I spend not making art. I need to get back out there. Take the room to room tour with someone you love. Have some tea and think about looking into big glass boxes.

Gas

Stop thinking it relates to the WBC. : )

I'm a great lover of bookkeeping minutea so here are my gas stats for 2005. I'm working on my taxes and I love going the extra mile.

Miles Traveled = 12,451
Cost of Gas = 1186.45
Miles Per Gallon = 22.23
Cost Per Mile = $.105
Gas Used = 560 Gallons

Whole Body Cleanse

It's trendy to do these things so I hopped on the wagon. Hello - 8 giant fiber pills, 3 laxatives and a super milk thistle for good measure each day. Not much to report so far except for me wishing I hadn't eaten a giant piece of cheese cake for lunch. The diet booklet that came with the cleanse didn't spacifically mention that I shouldn't eat lard-laden-delicious-deserts, but it implied it. I'll keep you a breast of any changes I feel, unless y'all don't want to hear about that stuff. I bet y'all don't. On second thought I'm going to keep the awakenings of my bowels to myself. If you want updates email me.

Fired.

At long last. I mustered up the courage to fire my therapist. Ok. So I didn't actually fire her. I've cancled my last two appointments, and this time the message said I was too busy to schedule another appointmnet. I hope she doesn't try and call me to talk about it. Yikes. She was nice, but I'd rather spend $15 each week on camera accessories.

Report Cards

Life should involve more quantifiable grading. Report cards growing up gave me a sense of self worth. Even better were the print outs of everyones exam grades in college. I loved knowing my ability to complete a scantron was superior to 95% of my classmates. Today I was craving a life score so I paid five bucks to Equifax. My score is good, but 28% of Americans have higher scores. This upsets me. Equifax suggests a longer credit history would boost my score. Rrrg. I'll just have to try again next year.

Taxidery Night Club

Those glinty eyes. That far away look. Makes a girl happy just to be the presnece of such greatness. I hate that I have a reputation for being rude and crazy. True - I'm sort of a nut, but I don't want people to think I'm bitter or dislike them. And I especailly don't want strangers to think I'm a snob. Its just hard to know where to begin.

Ignore-muffs

To hell with ear plugs, I've switched to Ignore-muffs for all of my rock photo jobs. They attract men like nothing else. Something about seeing a girl wearing noise canceling earphones lures boys to shout at me about nothing interesting. They also have the effect of causing people talking with friends to make the "ear-muff" sign to there friends right in front of me. I handle this by giving them the I'm looking at you sign... and then I shout - "just because I can't hear, dosn't mean I can't see!"

Looking away.

This photo makes me very happy. I could spend a long time looking at it even though everyone is looking away. I want to figure out what I like about so I can recreate it in the future.

Teacher

I'm teaching a private photo class about lighting and camera tequniques. This is a photo from class today. We were learning about false moonlight and the effects of using 90% strobe light and balancing it against 10% ambient sun light. Things are looking good! It helps that my student already has his MD and a phD (I think.)

Lite Reading

Got an email from a magazine based in Brooklyn asking if they could feature me and Roxanne in an upcoming feature. They want to publish 10-20 photos by each of us and an interview.

Getting dumped has to be the worst sensation I've ever experenced. Still being in love with the person only compounds the problem. My current plan is to use my friend Lawrences 10-day-breakup-ritual in reverse to get him back.

Darwin's Closet

My latest venture in Closet-ology has lead me to clothing selection as a means of simplifying my wardrobe. The process is simple. When I wear things I 'm going to launder them, but then not returend them to the larger garmet population. As variation decreases I will be forced to choose clothes until I am only left with the unwearables which I'm going to pack up and ship off (read sell on ebay or store in my attick).

Fur Trade

I planned on starting the big job hunt today, but it was far to lovely outside to hit the pavement. Instead I spent the day taking funny photographs of my cat with my fried Roxanne (who's url is lost in the post-old-blog-pre-new-blog-o-spere)

Breaking Up

Dear Cellphone,
I loved you dearly, but this relationship isn't working. Lets take some time off. If you could just hold a charge and look more like a treo and less like a maxipad mabye I wouldn't be doing this. And stop telling your friends I'm on the rebound. Just because I gave up on Cingular, purchased a new phone, switched to Sprint, and got a different number the day you stopped working dosen't mean I was looking for a new relationship. It just worked out that way. Besides, I paid more for the new phone wiht cash so I'm not under contract anymore. Who says freedom can't be purchased. Again. I'm so sorry about this. I'll leave your voice mail on so I can get messages from my friends, but I'm done taking you out on Saturday nights. Best of luck in all you do. Even if it is just sit in my desk drawer and age.
Formerly Yours,
Mary

Happy New Years!

I went to a fantastic New Years party at Travis and Ryan's house. I'm the one with pearls on. (PS the "'s" at the end of Ryan's name is odd because Travis owns the house)

New Years Changes

For the past couple of months I keep thinking I'm crazy or depressed or something. I started seeing a therapist who tells me I'm fine. This weekend I put my finger on the problem. I'm bored. I like freelancing, but it gives me too much free time. My plan is to find some day job that doesn't involve my mother and is flexible enough for me to continue taking photographs. It's going to be tricky because my only unfamily related steady employment was at Thundercloud (a local subshop) and Black and White Connection (not an inter-ratial dating service) and both of those were in the late nineties. One of my friends offered to get me a job at the Hickory Street Grill. I'm going to take it if I can't find anything better in two weeks. It should provide lots of funny fodder for my blog.

In addition to getting a job, hopefully I'm not going overboard on change, I want a roommate. I'm lonely living in such a big house all alone. I think I'm going to rent out the master suite. It has these great windows and bathroom and study nooke. I'd stay in there, but I like my dark little bedroom. If y'all know any young ladies looking for a place to live let me know. I have no idea how rent should be but I'm thinking something between $500-$650 depending on what we do with the bills.

And I know you have all been wondering. Scott dumped me. Or he wants to take time off or something. I have no idea. I'm heart broken about it, but putting all of that energy into fixing my life. My newyears resolution is to start drinking cola again instead of smoking. Not sure if I'll get as much housework done, but its going to be great. One bad habbit for another.

Taxidermy Hat Rack

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