Gaming Saturday!
It’s a cold, rainy day, and I’m tucked into my bed in my jammies- pile of schoolbooks semi-stacked in a sloppy pile beside me. I awoke with a feeling of accomplishments over the past week: caught up on schoolwork (early), cleaned the house meticulously, spent some quality time with my mother and took care of my bad tooth. Saturdays usually mean writing another report with a gazillion citations + reading chapters on bivariate coordinates and chipping away at research topic proposals (I’m juggling two at the moment) and catching up on work that’s been put off until the last minute.
But this week, I made some personal habit changes and have begun to do my work early so that I can scale back on stress.
Rule # 1: Get your work done early!
And so I’ve followed this rule adherently. Alas, all of this responsibility has made me want to be wild and willy, so Josh and I have renamed this day Gaming Saturday! There will be no schoolwork (for me) or housework (for either). I’ve made a fresh pot of lemon ginger tea and we’ll stay in bed and game all day: he on his desktop and me on my laptop.
I’m downloading The Raven- Legacy of a Master Thief [move up queue- check! Bandwidth allocation set to high- check! Go!] and he’ll be playing Gary’s Mod. no doubt, but this is what we’ll be doing ’til 1 or 2 am or so: it’s how we blow off steam. Is there any better way?
Red River Gorge (Slade, Kentucky)- Carl Zeiss Jena Flektogon- 35/2.8/natural lighting/manual
Awesome Sale- Awful Vacation
I came back from my vacation with a notice that I made a sale: that’s always nice! Somebody bought a framed print of:
The Longest Dream
It’s a nice feeling that somebody would pay almost $200 for one of my prints. So, to whoever the mystery buyer is, thank you deeply! That made my day.
Unfortunately, our vacation was like a bad SNL skit. It really was the vacation from hell. I blame both of us being overworked-like two highly pressurized pots that have been on the stove for far too long. The best part was sleeping in the car on the first night. We read books on our Androids on an air mattress- priceless! But then we got semi-lost the next day and all hell broke loose. I can’t go into detail, because I don’t want to paint anybody black. There was yelling and cussing and that’s all before we even got to the cabin!
The location was absolutely stunning. But then it all went downhill very quickly, starting with the two large dogs (the size of small horses) which jumped all over us as soon as we got out of the car. The owner, Fred (who took a liking to hanging over his front porch), failed to mention that he and his wife actually lived on the premises too. We weren’t going to be alone as the website indicated; their cabin was only feet away from ours. Strike one.
And then there was the whole no-WiFi thing. The website said there was Wifi- nope! Fred told us that the teens who had stayed there prior to our arriving had used it all up. (Fred conveniently neglected to tell us that part on the phone while booking with him just days before.) Strike two. But the worst part of all was those damn acorns. Not the dry kind that bounces off the roof quietly- no no- these were the heavy, green kind that hit the tin roof with an ear-shattering CRACK. CRACK. CRACK. Every 25-45 seconds- just like clock work, without fail. Strike three.
Kiss your sanity (and any hope of a good night sleep goodbye). I couldn’t go out on my front porch without seeing Fred on his. The entire time, Fred let his dogs roam free, up onto our deck when we were grilling ribs- it didn’t matter. Between the dogs, the lack of internet, and the blasted acorns, I really couldn’t wait to get back home. I did manage to get 10 gigs of beautiful shots. I was only able to edit a few, as it’s back to the grind! Josh is working 12 hours days and I’m back to my 5-7 page research papers. It’s intense, but at least it’s predictable!
Post trip- still sane!
Josh, rocking out on the suspension bridge at Red River Gorge
Pics taken with Carl Zeiss Jena Flektogon 35/3.5 film lens + Canon Rebel XSI/natural lighting/manual
m o n o c h r o m e j u n k i e † 
