go steelers!

FINALLY today i'll get to watch my first game this season! (i've missed the past 4 games for a variety of reasons)

hotlanta!

nate and i were in atlanta this past weekend for a good friend's wedding. we used to work with her in florida and it was great to see her again :) the wedding was very cool too :) ever since my own wedding, i appreciate all the small details so much more!

for the rest of the weekend, we spent our time with ashlea who is finishing up soon at georgia tech. she is a fantastic tour guide so we saw plenty of neat areas in atlanta and had a fantastic time :) the most photogenic of which was piedmont park:


we ate, we drank, nate & ashlea played guitar, we shopped, we talked -- all in all, a perfect weekend :) we weren't ready to head home on monday, but i'm sure we'll make another trip before ashlea leaves atlanta for good :)

which way to the pictures?

well i'm officially caught up back through january! now just december and november to post and i'll be all current! that's progress my friends :) the picture below is from december: nate, cassie, jeff and i all went for a hike while we were in arizona for christmas :)

i feel like ari's disapproving look is appropriate here ;) i am six months behind on pictures! totally unacceptable! i'm on a mission to get them all published asap so you'll see more action on our smugmug site than there has been in awhile! i'm working from current events and going backwards for now. have a good wednesday ;)

so if you give your wife a camera...

no, nate didn't write the comment below. i highly suspect my brother-in-law actually but haven't had the chance to verify that yet :)

"...if you let your wife become a photographer, she'll probably ask for a fancy new camera. Once she gets her fancy new camera, she'll tell you she needs a nice case to 'keep it safe' (oh, and an extra memory card.) and while you're getting the case, you might as well go ahead and pick up a portable hard drive to store all those pictures on, you know, because it's black friday and it's a super deal. Once she has all that storage space, she's going to need to fill it up with some especially artsy stuff, so she'll probably want a new extra versatile lens to attach to her fancy camera. And of course, if you let your wife become a photographer, she'll probably want to grow a beard. Oh, wait. That stopped working."

if you give a mouse a cookie....

...he'll probably ask for a glass of milk. if you let your husband join a band, he'll probably ask for a new pa system. once he gets his PA system, he'll tell you he needs a set of microphones. once he gets the microphones he'll probably need to get some stands for them (oh and some wind screens). and while you're getting the microphone stands, you should go ahead and order a music stand, you know, to get the free shipping. once he has all those stands, he's going to need somewhere to put his drink, so he'll probably want a drink holder to attach to his mic stand. and of course, if you let your husband join a band, he'll probably want to grow a beard.

the sun sets on the gulf of mexico (and i forget to watch)

while we were in captiva, we watched a beautiful sunset and it reminded me of a poem i wrote years ago about when i was working on the oil rig in the gulf.  i've posted the poem before, but here it is again (with a picture of the almost gone captiva sunset) :)

The Sun Sets on the Gulf of Mexico (And I Forget to Watch)

He asks how long I think it will take the sun to disappear
after it touches the water. Thinking of a movie I saw once
where the sun seemed to disappear almost instantaneously,
I tell him thirty seconds.

“No,” he says. “It takes three minutes.”
Silence lapses between us as fiery light falls
on black water between the breaks of the waves.
He is talking but I am thinking of what to say
next. My gaze is on the water. I hear him
pause, so I smile in what I hope is a valid response,
turn back to the sun on the water.
I forget to pay attention to his watch.

Instead I watch the water until the light fades,
fascinated by the way the sunlight
is carried back to us from the horizon,
dancing along the blackness.
Remembering the sun,
I ask him, “Is it really three minutes?”
“I don’t know,” he says. “Something like that.”

epcot mexico

a few shots from epcot mexico recently -- i had them and thought cassie might like them so i put them in a collage ;) (made with mcp actions)

pictures...

so i finally updated more pics!  i'm only up to august though, lots more to come! :)

which one do you like best?

i'm back at editing the paris photos :)  which do you like better? 

the black and white? 

or the mocha one?

the downtown 'wg'!

nate and i headed downtown on sunday to putz around and take a few pictures -- i was missing my mother on mother's day and needed some kind of activity! just a few:

paris, day one

so i finished editing pics from my first day in paris! (can you imagine how long this would take me if i had been on vacation instead of working and took even MORE pictures???) here are a few of them, but you can check out all of day 1 here. we visited les tuileries garden, the banks of the seine, and notre dame.



my favorite part of the day? i think probably this cool little cafe called la palette. it was full of local parisians having cool coffee shop discussions (or at least... they seemed so in french!), reading literary looking books, all those things you'd expect of a cafe :) i had fun just wandering and looking at storefronts (pastries, cheese, and flowers, oh my!) i also loved all the bookstores- they were everywhere AND there were people in them! we even happened upon the bookstore from "before sunset" which is one of my favorite movies :)


oh and the doors! do you all know about my love of doors? :) well, i have one and the doors in paris are so colorful! i loved it.

what's going on here? apparently mickey gets really dressed up in france!

wow... these pics take FOREVER to edit

but i promise i'm working through 'em! this one is from our first day 'touristing' around paris. our plane landed around 8 a.m. and we dropped our luggage, showered, and took the train into the city to explore! somewhere during all that, we forgot to eat! we were starving by the time we took the metro and stumbled up to champs elysées and this picture was taken in the first place we saw. i told her we wanted the café, but i think she thought i meant we wanted coffee- we ended up in more of a hotel lobbyish type place instead of the cafe in the next room, but it worked out just fine :)

lunar eclipse!

lastnight nate and i headed into the backyard to check out the lunar eclipse -- he set my tripod up for me so we could take some pictures of it -- i don't have much of a zoom lens, but i cropped this one and you can kinda tell what's going on! the white specks are stars --

in other news, we celebrated our 2nd anniversary on monday :) since i was still kinda zombie-ish we had a low-key evening, i made tostadas (mmmmm, mexican food!) and then fell asleep almost immediately around 8:30 pm! but we do plan to celebrate more formally this weekend :) maybe dinner out? or a nice indulgent dinner in - we'll see!

i haven't forgotten about my favorite photo subject

miss cleo :)

why nate lost at scrabble lastnight.

that darn Q! i won by 2 points ;)

life's a bowl of cherries!

a collection of my favorite property photos :)