My niece and other things in life

This past week has been pret-ty busy.  Susan, Sergei, Vika, Anya, Sofia, and Malish stayed the night in Kansas City with us, which was a lot of fun.  We took Sofia to the park close to my house in the morning.  She is a walking machine!!

I also (somewhat forcibly, I'll admit) let her play with the sunglasses I got from a flea market that make me feel like an 80's drug lord, which made for a couple of good spur-of-the-moment photos.

After a good weekend with family in Lincoln, I hit the ground running with a shift at the Royals game, followed by my first day as a dog washer at Brookside Barkery - which may be the best job I've ever had!  I actually got to spend the week getting paid to hang out with dogs.  Granted, there is a lot of shedding hair, a medium amount of whining, and a little fatigue at the end of the day, which has made me a lot less productive at home and with my photography.  I did finish putting up my dad's ties on the wall (which Brian suggested, rather than hanging them up as curtains as I usually do), and I am extremely happy about how it turned out.

Brian also seemed to be inspired by his unfinished metal mask in the studio, and built an Awesome work table in just a couple of days!  He let me help a little bit, and was kind enough to show me how to use different power tools, which I am very grateful for.  And I am excited to have such an awesome table to work on!!

The Bizarre Bazaar is getting closer and closer, and I have yet to actually spend real time making real progress.  This upcoming week will be my big start-up week for food photos, which I am a little nervous about.  But I don't think I can do much more procrastinating...  

A Quick Post Before Work

It's been a busy weekend, followed by an even crazier Monday, which leaves me rushing around trying to do a dozen different things at the same time.  My first day of work at the Royals stadium was last night, which was a lot of fun but also exhausting!  I exceeded my boss' expectations (phew!) with 521 shots of different fans willing to take a second to be photographed, but by the end of the night my mouth felt all goopy after forming the words "Can I take your picture for the Royals website?" more times than I care to count and I was so tired I was barely comprehensive while talking to my mom on the drive home.  Getting home was shortly followed by hitting the pillow, but I had a restless night of sleep with Royals and White Sox fans invading my dreams and demanding that I take their photos...


Today was a mixture of fatigue and trying to get the second bedroom in our apartment converted into a studio rather than just a storage room.  It's coming along, slowly but surely, complete with parking spots for Brian's and my bikes, an ironing station for real world outfits, a metal mask Brian never completed that is inspiration for not giving up, and Russian propaganda pushing us to work harder.

  
I was also able to find a cheap storage shelf at Goodwill the other day, which is sloppily storing a lot of art and photography supplies, including my collection of pens over the years.  I spent some time a couple days ago going through them and throwing out the ones that didn't work, noting happily that I had some pens and pencils close to a decade old and all the while thinking back to similar activities during the good old days of the overflowing Pen Drawer at home.

I still have a good amount of work to do to finish the studio, since the closet looks like this:

but I have high hopes.  And now, armed with a positive attitude, freshly-washed clothes, and a granola bar to eat after the National Anthem plays, I'm taking myself out to the ballgame.  

The Fire Hydrants of Grinnell

I recently got back from a stint at the Tiny Circus in Grinnell, Iowa, which was both an educational and wonderful experience.  While I was there, I started to notice the oddity of fire hydrants - they're EVERYWHERE!!  And although they all seem to serve the same purpose and have similar characteristics, they are all very unique in and of themselves.  Here are a few pictures I took of the hydrants in Grinnell.  I have a feeling the next step for me will be to tackle the fireplugs of Kansas City.