Christmas!

What a wonderful time of the year... I am so happy to have been surrounded by family this Christmas! It really made me appreciate all the things that are good in my life. My side of the family came into town and we all enjoyed the celebration together with K's family! The best part about it all was how much EVERYBODY seemed to be enjoying themselves! Christmas day went so well that it was well past 11PM before anybody noticed the time! We ate a delicious prime rib roast, had cookies, played games, and watched 3 movies!!! Can you believe it? I can't either. Everybody was in the best of spirits.

I took about 200 pictures on Christmas Day and I couldn't be happier. I took my most portable setup, the camera flash on a light stand with a silver umbrella and a silver reflector. I'd have used soft white, but I knew I'd have to light large areas, so I needed all the reflected light I could get :) I'm still pretty happy about the pictures except for the fact that somebody's little sister decided to make silly faces in 90% of the pics she was in! And I forgot to set the flash to manual mode for a series of pics so the lighting is all over the place. But I can fix a lot of it in post processing. So all is well.

K and I spent about $200 over our budgeted amount for food this month, but man was it all so good! So many good cookies, breakfasts, and other meals left me wanting to eat more. Luckily, I was able to resist over-eating for several meals. I only went overboard on cookies. But hey, they taste the best when they're fresh :) I hope everybody's Christmas was as good as mine was. I am looking forward to a fun-packed New Year's celebration! Bring it on holidays!

Check out my latest photos

So I went to another photo shoot recently with the purpose of re-creating the feel of some of Ansel Adams' portraits. Here are the results.... I'm pretty happy with them.

Recent Photography Adventures

I haven't been keeping up with my blogging, but I haven't just disappeared into a hole. In recent weeks and months I've been getting more involved in photography clubs. It really has been a great learning experience so far. Although it has tempted me on several occasions to spend mega cash on new camera parts! But If I'm patient I'll get them eventually. Maybe next month ;)

On Monday I went to Gary, Indiana and met with a bunch of "photogs" at the now abandoned City Methodist Church. We had a grunge themed photo shoot and we tried to focus on using natural light. However, I couldn't resist using my off camera flash to enhance the dramatic effect. I got some really awesome shots. But see for yourself...

This shot was kind of inspired by the movie Carrie	The deteriorated state of the church really was captured in this wide angle shot
The lockers are a bit too rusty for your average school, but can't you see such a character at such a run down school?	Maybe one of my favorite shots...

Porsche 911 Targa 4S

Yesterday I had the opportunity to drive the my personal dream car that I may actually have a chance at owning one day. This wonderful example of German engineering was the Porsche 911 Targa 4S with a manual transmission. Of all the Porsches, I think this is the most practical. It has all wheel drive, 385HP, and a fully glass roof that retracts into the back window. This car has a top speed of around 180MPH and you can tell the second you start driving it. You can cruise at 65MPH in third gear (of six) at under 3000 RPMS (the red line is 7000RPM) So 3000 RPM is pushing the engine about as much as 2000-2500 RPM in most cars. Needless to say, if you press on the gas pedal, you'll definitely notice that you are at 65MPH in under 5 seconds. I had a little sticker shock when the dealer told me that the particular model I was in was around $120,000. However, you can get your own for the "bargain" price of $101,100. Being as young as I am, I feel honored to have even drove such a wonderful car and If I ever get the kind of money to buy a car in that price range, this one will be on the top of my list.

I painted my living room!

Today K and I took a couple hours out of our busy day and painted my living room. It was pretty fun actually. We bought a couple of rollers, taped up the trim and ceiling and then got to work! It looks pretty nice overall, but there are some imperfections that I wish we could've seen before the paint dried! But that's ok, it was our first attempt and it still looks pretty good. It makes the room feel warmer and it increases my comfort level in it as well. White walls were just so boring!

Photography and saving money

Well, to start off I'd like to say that I've done an absolutely terrible job budgeting. And up until this point, I didn't really have a need, but with the economy and having a lot of new expenses. I have decided that I need to pay closer attention to where my money goes. So, good thing I decided that THIS week AFTER I bought a whole bunch of new photography stuff!

Last week I bought a camera flash, light meter, and one step gray card, white balance adjuster, and exposure aid! The one step aid is really 2 steps, but still it's nice to have! I bought the flash on eBay and the hot shoe was damaged, but the seller was not aware of this and he quickly refunded me the amount for the replacement part. I was so excited! Now it's fixed and it works great! I joined a local photography club and I was inspired by the studio lighting setup that this one guy had. So I set out to buy myself the minimum to take some great looking shots. I also bought what they call a strobist kit that you can mount your flash on and bounce the light off an umbrella. I can't wait until I receive it! I've already been taking a lot of great pictures.

I also switched my web hosting provider to save myself $5/mo to pay for a tiny bit of what I bought. A very tiny bit haha. Last weekend they had a special speaker who talked about how to keep yourself afloat and out of trouble in a recession. He also promised that if you really stuck to the "common sense" steps, that you could easily become a millionaire by retirement. Of course, in 40 years, $1,000,000 will probably be worth $200,000 of today's money. Either way what he said made sense. And most of it was common sense. Unfortunately, most people don't do it and that's why this recession is having such a big effect. The first common sense step he had was to make a budget and stick to it. Just having the budget makes you more conscious of where your money goes and you can control it better. The second step that was not too common sense, but actually may work. He said that there are stats showing that if you spend cash for everything you spend 10-12% less on average. I partially think this becomes true because when you run out of cash, you don't spend more. But your checking account is virtually a botomless pit compared to the $50 most people keep in their wallets. You also will have to plan your spending and take out the proper amount of cash. He also said that you feel the effects of your spending much more when you count it as you spend it! The last and most common step is to not have debt! Now, at first I was thinking bull crap. You can't not have debt. But he began to explain it better. Most people have multiple forms of debt including, credit cards, student loans, car loans and home mortgages. I currently have all of this debt! He went on to say that the way that you get rid of debt is to pay off your smallest loan as quickly as possible first and make minimum payments on the larger loans. Now, you may think that you will be paying more interest on the larger loans. This is true, but when you really think about it, the interest you would save by paying off the smaller loan is the same you would save by paying off only part of the larger loan. And then you still have to pay off the smaller loan. So once you pay off the smallest loan, you have that minimum payment as extra cash flow plus the cash you spent monthy to pay extra on that loan. You go to the next smallest loan, and repeat. Soon you have that minimum payment added on to your extra cash flow once that loan is gone. Eventually, you will be able to pay off exponentially more on your loans. Now this not having debt step also means saving up for thing you want like cars and toys instead of buying now and paying over time. So when you keep driving your 8 year old car for a few more years, people will probably make fun of you. But once you buy that one car with cash, you save on all that interest you would've paid to the bank. You also have to make sure you have an emergency reserve in cash. That is your first priority. You should have 6 months of cash to cover your expenses. Before paying off your debt, you need to save at least this much. Wow, that took a lot of typing. I think I'm done!

Last weekend

I had an action packed weekend. That's for sure! On Friday my sister came to visit and we went to K's sister's birthday party. It wasn't the most fun party ever, but it was something to do, and there was Italian Beef and plenty of desserts! We played catchphrase for awhile. That game is always fun.

On Saturday we went to the Garfield Conservatory Garden and pretended that it was summer! I got a lot of good pictures that day. There really are a lot of amazing plants out there. After that we went to dinner at Penang. We got 3 apetizers and 3 meals. We were so full afterward! I got this one pork chop dish that had the most tender pork chop! It was one of the chef's specials. But I can't remember the name of it for the life of me. We also had some skirt steak dish and a seafood yam pot. After dinner we went to the mall and K and my sister went shopping like they have never shopped before. Ok maybe not, but they had fun. I sat in a massage chair at Brookstone. At night we went to a dueling piano bar called Howl at the moon and we had a bucket of Hurricaine Rush (I think) We partied like it was 1997. So in other words, normally :P

Sunday we went to church. Everybody got lost or lost something except me. My sister got stuck in a one way traffic pattern. I couldn't find her for 30 minutes. She even bought a pay-as-you-go phone to call me! Kristin also lost her work cell phone. boo! After my sister headed back home K and I went to a superbowl party and ate pulled pork sandwiches. MMM MMM. Then the weekend ended. Fun times were to be had by all.

Ski Jump!

Today I went to the ski jump event at the Norge ski jump and took a bunch of pictures. I only made it in time to see the last 3 jumpers. But I'm glad I got to see it seeing as they only do this twice a year! It was a lot of fun. I wish I had gotten more time to play around with my camera, but I took the shots that I could in the limited amount of time that I had. I am surprised with the image quality that I got from my 70-200mm kit lens this time. It was a lot better than I remember it being in the past. Maybe my lens is useful after all!

Two years ago today

Today in 2007 I had my first date with K. Who would've thought on that day that we had so many days to look forward to together? We've had so many wonderful moments together and I couldn't ask for a better girlfriend. I really do love her with all my heart.

We're playing it low key today because we were out playing cards with our mutual friend. We first all went out to dinner at a ma and pa style Mexican restaurant. The poor lady who served us really did not know English and we had the hardest time ordering. But the food was pretty good. So it was worth it. We then went over to our friend's house to eat pie! I don't remember what it was called but it had graham cracker crust, dulce de leche and banana slice filling and it was topped with whipped cream infused with coffee and sprinked with dark chocolate shavings. It was delicious. We then made up a card game and had some good conversations. I even got to try some homemade meede. It's wine made out of honey. Time flew by and next thing we knew it was waaay past 2AM So today we're relaxing. We're ordering pizza and watching the movie Traitor. It'll be great, I'm sure.

My Birthday

Was yesterday! And I'd like to thank everybody who made it special. I really can't say it enough that it really means so much to me. My family came out to visit me and they celebrated it on Saturday with me. Along with K, they made a super fun pirate party with homemade pizza. It was really unexpected and I really was taken back by how much they did for me to make me feel special :) Dino, our pet stuffed T-Rex got a friend named Carrot Nose who is a Triceratops. They've already been getting along great. ...and getting into mischief! Those crazy imaginary Dinosaur personalities sure are colorful! I also got an Ipod nano, which I really needed for working out. My wireless bluetooth headsets kept breaking so I needed another alternative to my cell phone MP3 player. K got me a toaster and a Blu-Ray movie. The toaster works great and it was just what I needed!

On Sunday K's family integrated me into their clam chowder dinner and they even did an impromptu birthday song around a dump cake. It was a pretty fun cake. It was loaded with cherries, pineapples, butter and coconut! What a good weekend I had!

Sushi Station

Yesterday K and I went to this Sushi restaurant called Sushi Station. It was a fun dining experience for sure! Most of the sushi rotated around the restaurant on an enclosed conveyer belt. And when you want some sushi, you just open the door and grab the one you want! They had some fun dessert options too. We tried these water dumplings filled with bean paste. They were so juicy feeling and delicious. We had so much sushi and other good stuff like tempura vegetables and green tea, it was great! MMM sushi!

Thanksgiving

I finally moved into my house last weekend and besides the sewage pump leaking into the front yard, everything is just peachy! My family came over to visit and we all worked in our own way to help set up my house. I did a decent amount of landscaping before the snow hit so I'm pretty happy about that. My mom sewed me some curtains. It took her so long and she worked so hard on them I really appreciate that. My dad helped out all around and made sure we were all adequately fed. And my sister she did just about as much manual labor as I did!

I got AT&T U-Verse phone, cable, and internet the Thursday before thanksgiving and it was down almost every day for almost every reason apparently. They say 3300 feet from the hub is right at the threshold for the service. So I hope it will stay up this time! I need to remember to call them and get refunded for the time my service was down. There's no sense in paying for service which I didn't have.

I hung out with K most of the week so that was a lot of fun. We celebrated Thanksgiving with both families. All the food was delicious. I made sure to eat a big piece of all 3 desserts. There was chocolate cheese cake, pumpkin banana torte, and pecan pie. All made with tested recipies. So I loved all three! I ate way too much the last 4 days or so, but oh man was it great spending so much time with family. I really am thankful for all I have.

To My Buddy

To my buddy,

You are the most wonderful girlfriend a guy could ever ask for. Every day I am happier to be with you, or so it feels. You do so many things that make me happy and I can't even begin to list them all. But these two little heart shaped cakes that you made just for me really show just how much you think about me and how you try to make me happy in every aspect of my life. You do little things like this without even thinking twice or with the slightest ulterior motive. You do it because you love me. Well I love you too.

This is probably about the sappiest thing I've ever wrote. But really I just have to say something. You make me so happy; all of the time. I can't wait for all the other happy moments in our lives together, or maybe I can because I couldn't be any happier than I am today.

All in good fun

Last weekend K and I went to a pumpkin farm and browsed all of the fresh produce. Most of it actually wasn't overpriced surprisingly. For example, you could get a whole spaghetti squash for $1.29. But there were of course the ridiculously overpriced items such as the $10 gourmet chocolate covered apples... There were a lot of fun sights like camels and some pretty crazy squash for sale. It was so packed there I felt like I was in a sea of people. But I loved it.

This week K and I baked a cold oven pound cake from the America's Test Kitchen "Lost Recipes" cookbook. I swear every single one of those desserts are the best I have ever had. The pound cake had a thick flaky crust on top due to starting the baking without preheating the oven and the cake was just perfectly moist! We brought slices into work because we couldn't possibly manage to eat that much cake by ourselves. Everybody loved it. My coworkers think I am some baking genius or something... Awhile back we made This thing called "Peach Puzzle" which was like a superior peach cobbler, if you even want to call it that. You basically bake whole peaches sitting in a sweet biscuit dough with brown sugar and butter and eat it warm. It was so good that I will want to make it again as soon as peaches are in season again. If anybody is ever around K or I during peach season, you absolutely have to request it!

Peach Puzzle

This weekend we went to a forest preserve and walked around. I saw a family getting portraits taken at dusk with all the fall colors and it inspired me. I think I'm going to go back tomorrow (today) with K and take some glamour shots. I really have to remember to buy a reflector and a stand online, because the local camera shops charge an arm and a leg for them! But anyway, back to the weekend. We drove around and got menus at many of the restaurant's around K's place and I ended up getting hungry and ordering the 3-meat combo at Sweet Baby Ray's. I had never eaten there before and it was pretty good for a chain. The ribs had a delicious rub on them that reminded me of the kind that was on this special order cajun meat that my dad used to buy for read beans and rice. Oh the memories. The weekend has been so good so far. I can't wait for more!

my life in pictures

Yamaha FZ6

I have found a new bike that I want. (If I ever get the money) It really has about everything that I want in a bike right now. And this bike is the Yamaha FZ6. Believe it or not, the thing that won me over hands down with this bike was the center stand. Most bikes don't come with them anymore, and this makes it a lot easier for them to tip if you inadvertently park it on asphalt on a hot day.

Besides the center stand, this bike as a lot of features that won me over from the Suzuki SV650 and Kawasaki Ninja 650.

• Larger 5.1 gallon tank
• Digital speedometer
• Digital fuel gauge
• Digital temperature gauge
• Dual headlights (more visibility)
• 4 cylinders (smoother ride)
• higher seat height (I'm tall)
• comes in blue (the Ninja 650 doesn't come in a color I like for 2008)
• Has less fairing than the Ninja 650

And most importantly, the exhaust sounds super cool :P

The down sides are the following

• under seat exhaust (possibly hot, and less storage)
• battery under fuel tank (harder to get to than most bikes)
• $500 more than the Ninja 650 (although, I'd pay that much more for the smoother 4 cylinders, dual headlights, and digital display!)

Even with those down sides, the bike is still the all around winner. It has very little fairing, so the bike looks like a bike and not some plastic toy on 2 wheels. It's got a lower displacement engine (so that it won't be too powerful for my novice skills). And I really think it'll save me gas money. Of course, the time it would take me to repay $6,999 on gas with 20MPG savings would be astronomical. But still... it's a cool bike :)

Last weekend

I took a long time to write about my weekend this week, but I really had a great time. On Friday I went out to John Barleycorn with some friends. I hadn't seen most of them for months! The night ended pretty early for who knows what reason, but at least I got plenty of sleep! I guess we're all getting old and can't stay out like we used to!

Saturday was a sad day. My 3 week old pro lens broke all of the sudden. I went to use it and what do you know? The AF motor didn't move the focus ring! Man, you'd think when you drop a load of cash on a specialty lens from a good brand, that you lens will last longer than 3 weeks. At least I can get it repaired under warranty and the lens is insured. But The lens will be away for about 2 weeks. That's no fun!

On Sunday Kristin and I had a St Paddy's day dinner party. That was really a lot of fun. We made corned beef and cabbage from scratch. We even corned the beef for a week! Everybody had a blast. Even Dino had a great time. He danced and partied like crazy!

OK I changed my mind

I LOVE my camera. I had a great time photographing just about everything yesterday! And people do enjoy my hobby as much as I do, hehehe. But seriously, I'm excited because it is looking to be a super fun hobby from here on out. I'm getting used to the camera, and I'm getting better and better at taking good pictures with it.

I also had fun Saturday when I went out with K and another friend. We had some good conversations and we really had a blast. I made country fried steak as well that day, but it tasted more like pork chops than anything because the recipe called for a bread crumb crust.

Breakaway weekend

This weekend I went on a church sponsored trip to a winter camp in Michigan. Besides the horrific bus malfunctions and delays, the trip was wonderful. If I were in middle school I would've been so excited about the whole trip. And the whole time it was action packed and there were a lot of fun activities to do including snow tubing (tube-ing), paintball, swimming, rock climing, basketball, video games, Euro-bungee, and lots of other fun stuff. I really have to compliment the church on how well they cater to kids desires and make the camp fun and even make the worship services entertaining (all 3 of them). There were supposed to be four. However, the bus ride took an extra 3 hours on Friday so they had to cancel that evening's events by the time we arrived at 2AM. I really appreciate how they make the services entertaining for kids and that the messages are tailored to fit their lives. If I had this as a kid I probably wouldn't have went through my super pessimistic stage regarding religion. It is truly amazing that they were able to have 19 busses full of kids behave as well as they did too, but that just goes to show how tailoring everything towards the kids can subdue their boredom and keep them from going crazy :P

Personally, I really enjoyed going and I was able to connect more with a lot of the other leaders. I hadn't really talked to any of them up to this point and it was really nice to finally have a couple conversations with these people and learn that mot of them aren't really that different from me and that they also had their periods of un-religiousness. You know, I'm still on the fringe, but I'm trying here :P I, of course don't let the kids onto any of this. I don't want to be the reason that they leave the church! But back to the main topic, I also took a lot of pictures while I was there. I really wish I had a DSLR camera so that I could take a virtually unlimited amount of pictures. I got off about 25 shots, but because the film was old, most of the low light pictures have a very washed out appearance and the colors are off (probably because the film lost some of its sensitivity at different levels for each color mask) I learned that color film actually has 4 layers of "photo receptors" one, for each primary color and one for black and white. The pictures I took outside with ample lighting came out very well though. Because this weekend was so good for me and I think that the kids loved it too, I would totally do it again!

It's my birthday

And today is looking to be a great day. Already I got a surprise when Kristin stopped by to say hi before I went to work. And my co-workers like the cookies I made. It's a company tradition to bring treats on your birthday (I think it was a corporate cost cutting measure ;) I get free lunch from my co-workers today, and then I'll be getting a free dinner tonight. Wohooo! I love being rewarded for doing nothing but being alive!