October 2005 Archives

great weekend, now monday.

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Friday night topped off my great day with friends, a taiko drum concert, and the best margaritas I've had at a little joint discovered by the pfaffs. Thanks Bruce!

Sunday, Bryan Daniel, and I ventured out for a long awaited photo shoot of the potomac river and great falls.

Here is my love wielding the hi-def camera.

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After its trip across europe it came home with "issues" which prompted a visit to the sony camera doctor. All seems better now as we continue to put together footage for avisualplanet.com.

Here is what he was filming...

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muse barf

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Friday I actually honored my artist date. No work at all just play. I puttered around the house. I made a candle for Daniel out of recycled wax. Coaxing the breath back into the muse I started a new canvas and she barfed all over it.

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It was so fun to let her loose.

wednesday thursday

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Well my visit with Jen set the tone for the rest of my week and what was a wonderful weekend. Thanks Jen, just seeing you reminded me that I have been extremely abuseful of my artist self. All work and no play makes blair an abysmal artist. You didn't say it in words, but your presence did the trick and I was jolted back into taking my own good advice. To know Jen is to know that whenever in her presence, time and reality bend slightly to reveal wonderful things. Somewhere between experienced wisdom and inspired rant there is a sharpening that makes me better. It is like throwing spaghetti on the ceiling to test if it is al dente, the perfect noodles sticking slightly, although the spaghetti in this instance is ideas and Jen shoots them to the ceiling with a bazooka. Where's my fork?

That was wednesday.

Thursday we went to the first installment in the "must convince young son how blessed he is to go to UMD" campaign. This particular meeting was for faculty and staff of UMD and their potential students. Basically it was an insiders look at the benefits of going there. The great thing was they showed a cool video that sort of put the university experience into a more personal light(not big and scary). It also brought home what a truly great institution it is. Next installation will be an all day campus visit on Nov 11.

days before daylight

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It's dark. The boys just left for school and work in the dark. Daylight savings being postponed a month has sure made a difference this year. It feels weird. It is getting cold here in MD and I have been trying to face the next season with a positive attitude.

It isn't working.

I am so susceptable to cold that I actually wore long underwear yesterday. Silly, but it is in part why I dread winter. It is painful. Yesterday I fantisized about selling everything we have and moving to the bahamas. Ha. I miss the warm weather. Anyway, As the sun is starting to rise I need to don my yoga gear and get to it. Work comes later. And the special treat today is a visit with my beloved friend Jen who I haven't seen in months. That will brighten any dark day.

On to yoga. Art, and Jen.

picking college

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Set aside today for picking through all the college solicitations and filling out some applications with Daniel.

eeeeeeks.

How did I get here?

He has the day off from school and since the first college app deadline is in just over a week, I figured we better sit down and wade through. That and the discussion in our house continues about where, what major, and on some days there is the question of...

"Why should I go at all"?

This one is particularly frustrating when Daniel, if accepted, could go to the University of MD for free. For a parent with a little hindsight this is a no brainer except that I have read a few pesky articles about why sitting out a year could be good for a would be freshmen. Of course this is my version of "not going", meaning that you are eventually going to go, just taking a year off.

This is a tricky thing for someone who once thought that going to college these days doesn't have the educational bang for the buck that it used to in our society. Meaning that if you get experience you can get the work. Well that has sort of changed with Bryan working at the UM. In being involved in the hiring process there he has gotten a taste of how there are no open doors unless you have that college degree.

Frankly I think that could eventually lead to lawsuits for discrimination if a person could show that they had all the experience and could do a super job at a given occupation.

Call me crazy.

But putting all the silly ponderings aside, we are looking at what may work for young son to thrive not dive. Last thing we need is for him to go somewhere all ready to face the world and get blind-sided by it. UM is a huge school. That is probably my one reservation. It can be big and scary with large classes and little community. But smaller, private schools are ooooodles of money and frankly, for the same amount of money when you do the math...

We could afford to
• build a garage with an apartment that he could live in
and
• furnish it
and
• buy him a car
and
• get his first book published (agent fees, etc) and possibly his second
and...

well you get the idea. The price tag for education is unbelievable. And Bryan and I paid that price early in our marriage with student loans the first ten years for our education. It just seems economically silly to go to a school and graduate in debt with starting salaries not even meeting that debt.

So UM is looking pretty good. Again, if he gets accepted.

He struggles with the romance of it (or lack). Picturing himself at UM instead of some arts school in an artsy town, with artsy people is tough. It is big academia and somewhere along the line he has equated it with everything he disliked about high school. Next week we get to visit it and hopefully, he will get a taste of something that appeals.

So today we fill out the app, look at majors and other college related stuff. The next SAT, how his AP scores may allow him to skip some of his freshman classes. We will do it over cappuccinos and hopefully all will be bliss.

Let us pray.

sacred stone

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Working on these collections for the planet. Ancient Windows is really time consuming because of all the clean up. The shots were good, but when you are photographing something from (sometimes) fifty feet below and on a slant, the final product needs to have its perspective tweaked. What a pain. So yesterday out of the shear need to see some progress I worked on another collection, Sacred Stone. This one is a bit easier as I am just sifting through the euro-cathedreal content and selecting the best architectual shots and treating them with a sepia tone.

optsacstone.jpg

optancientwindows.jpg

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This page is an archive of entries from October 2005 listed from newest to oldest.

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