There Is a Loud Sucking Sound...

...and it's coming from this blog. Yes, lame-age abounds around here these days, I totally admit it. It's been a rough week, people.

So Monday through Wednesday, I had this meeting in downtown Chicago with other folks within the compensation world in my industry. My boss asked me to make a presentation about our company and our compensation practices. I was totally stressed out because 1) if given the choice between a root canal WITHOUT anesthesia and speaking formally in front of total strangers, I would gladly pick the root canal and thank the Lord for my good fortune; 2) I knew I'd be the LEAST experienced person professionally in the room; and 3) I just don't know my sh*t as well as I should.

To make matters worse, Cadence kept me up most of Monday night, so I went into this meeting on Tuesday with only a couple hours of sleep. Plus, I was starting to feel a cold coming on. Last, but not least, I was scheduled to give my presentation at 4:30pm, right before everyone would be heading to their hotel for the cocktail reception at 5pm.

I can't tell you how the presentation went as I've permanently repressed the memory, cuz everybody knows that anything more painful than a root canal without anesthesia (except for childbirth) should qualify for automatic repression within the memory banks. All I know is my boss didn't fire me on the spot, so it must have been okay. And no, I'm pretty sure I wasn't great.

Anyhoo, if that whole debacle weren't bad enough, I developed a migraine Tuesday night (from lack of sleep Monday night) and had to sit through Wednesday's meeting with a bruised head. Thank goodness it was a half-day meeting. I'd had plans of going on a photoshoot as long as I was downtown, but instead I went straight home and threw up. I missed our friend Erik's birthday dinner, and my head kept on hurting right into Thursday. Plus, I developed a full-blown cold by Thursday morning and couldn't stop sneezing, which made my headache worse. I stayed home from work, but I barely felt well enough to attend the Tim Lowly art reception/music show that evening.

Nevertheless, I really wanted to see Tim's art as he is one of my favorite artists, so I dragged my sickly self (actually, I should say WE dragged OUR sickly selves, as Ted is sick too) out of the house to see the show. I'm glad I did, because I hadn't seen most of the stuff he was showing, and it's pretty flippin' rad. That's Tim in the photo above, wearing the Tim Lowly ensemble t-shirt that the lovely and talented Katie Schofield embroidered. And that's my good friend Amy taking some Super8 footage.

I also took some of my favorite photos in a while, so click on the photo above for the whole slideshow. You can also see some of Tim's artwork, as well as photos of the music show that followed the reception.

This is actually my favorite photo from the night. It's just kinda wacky, ya know? Tim says it looks like a scene from a play, and I would have to agree. Katie C.(the violinist) looks like she's about to say something really poignant. And Matt looks like he's just gonna ignore her. And then there's that bottle of wine off to the side...

Tim's really nice to let me bring Cadence to all the shows. She was running and dancing and hopping around a lot, and at one point found her way onto stage. She told me she needed to talke to dada. No, really. That's what she said: "I need to talk to Dada." And she was totally serious.

Speaking of the munchkin, she's turning 3 on Monday. Another reason we're kinda stressed in this household. We're not having a party or anything--just cake w/ immediate family, no kids or anything. I'm glad we planned it that way, cuz I don't think I would've wanted to host a party w/ other folks' children in the condition I'm in right now--all snotty and achey and whatnot.

So that's the scoop, y'all. I'm sorry I've been bad about responding to comments or catching up on your blogs. I hope things mellow out in October...

From Listening Too Long to One Song

Help! There is a guinea pig, turtle and duckling peforming an operetta in my head, and they won't stop!! Someone sing me Spanich techno, NOW!

Alas, I suppose I deserve it, considering how many hours we've allowed Cadence to watch that show during the past week. There must be something like 8 different episodes on one DVD, and that is ALL she wants to watch these days. We find ourselves singing the theme song at random moments throughout the day. Cadence's affection for this show far surpasses any previous obsessions.

Simultaneously, she's developed quite the thing for Winnie-the-Pooh. She'd always been more interested in Tigger, but lately it's all about the Pooh.

*sigh*...It seems that we have sold our souls to the media devil...Heaven help us now...

Hopefully, once we start acting like sane people again after the wedding this weekend, we'll actually do things that require putting on real clothes (or bathing suits) and maybe smelling some flowers or something. For now, though, those Wonder Pets have sure got the right stuff.

Coming Clean

I guess it's about time I let you all in on a little secret. It's about these photos I've been taking lately. While I love my new camera and really believe it's made a huge difference in the quality of my photos , and while I would like to believe I have at least a little bit of skill in capturing moments of beauty, cuteness, sassiness, etc., I must now reveal to you all my new secret tool for creating these photos.

It's called Picasa, and it's by Google, and it's totally and absolutely FREE. Of course, it's only for PCs right now, so I apologize to all the Mac users out there.

I'm kind of a purist when it comes to photos. I don't own Photoshop, and I've been using Microsoft's Photo Editor (the software that comes free w/ Windows) for as long as I've been shooting digitally. All I've ever done (pre-Picasa) is to change the brightness and contrast, and maybe a little color if the white balance was funky.

I'm no post processing expert, but some of the effects available through Picasa are so easy for even a lazy post processor like myself. Here is the original to the photo above:

As you can see, I used the Soft Focus effect to focus more on the hands (which were already the portion of the photo in focus) and to blur our the background a bit. I think it's a subtle change, but I really like it.

I still use Picasa mainly for getting the brightness and contrast the way I like it, but every now and then, it's fun to play with some of those effects.

Of course, when your subject is as entertaining as Cadence, it really doesn't matter how much or how little post processing you do. Which is a good thing, cuz I'm still too lazy to do too much of it.