Hello there Beautiful!  I am back from the dead–if only for a brief moment.  I battled allergies, a cold, and the flu and was still standing but the illness God’s were not going to be happy until I was supine, they inflicted me with acute sinusitis (basically the equivalent of five days of torture).  Think ice picks to the eyes, axes to the brow bone, vise like pain at the bridge of your nose and you have a good idea of what I went through. All very unpleasant. I would have spilled world secrets if I knew them (I didn’t).  I suffered, missed my first day at my new job and hung my head in the toilet for interminable hours.   I’m alive which I believe is a good sign.  I am slowly recovering, went to my first day and happy to report that I can breathe through one nostril.  I missed you so much, I can’t wait to get back to blogging, my project and life in general. I’ve missed you.

I love, love.  I do.  I don’t think of this day as silly commercialism, but a sweet reminder to the world to give more love.  It doesn’t have to be in the form of candy and cards, although those are often appreciated but being a little more affectionate and telling someone you love them. A general rosy disposition today wouldn’t hurt (even on a Monday)!  

I decided that what I was going to try to accomplish today was a little insane given everything that’s going on this week, quitting my old job and starting a new one. Sometimes I need to give myself a break, so today I am giving myself the Valentine of not giving myself a hard time.  What I plan to announce will happen, sooner or later but not today and I am ‘OK’ with that.  I am not even going to get disappointed, I am just going to roll with it (how unusual). So in the spirit of actually be loving to myself, I wish you all a happy heart’s day.  May your day be filled with lot’s of love.

Truth be told, I can’t believe it has only been 26 days of editing it feels like 2600 days.  Don’t get me wrong, I do enjoy my edits, but they take a long time because my ‘before’ has been usually less than desirable.  

I have long been interested in black & white photography both film and digital.  I love the timeless quality.  B+W appeals to my minimalistic leanings and my love of monochrome.  I felt like I  never grasped the concept of how to ‘see’ a color image to translate it successfully to a  black + white.   I got lucky this weekend and found an essay by photographer John Batdorff on how he accomplishes his b+w images, by  just reading a few sentences I started to have about a dozen ‘aha’ moments. I  tried to apply his words of wisdom to a few older photographs and felt happy with the initial results.  I can’t wait to go out and shoot some new images now with what I learned and see if I can really delve deeper into this medium.

 

This day just flew by and now I am beat.  I am excited about tomorrow, I think I may be going to pick up my new computer and that makes me ecstatic, but it’s just a definite maybe at this moment, not a heck yeah. I am not sure if my master plan is going to pan out for Monday and I don’t want to think how disappointed I will be if it doesn’t, so I am going to try to will it into fruition (more with the vague crazy talk). I wish I could tell you but I can’t because I promised myself I would only tell you if it happened and I really want to tell you, (like nearly going to burst with wanting to tell you) but I am also trying to learn patience in my golden years.  No, it’s not another job.  

I mentioned on Flickr that this photo was taken on a day that the city felt like it was on fire, because it basically was.  I have never experienced a day quite like it.  The air was stagnate, dry and the combination of the summer heat and fires made it inferno hot.  This image takes me straight back to the day when I snapped this out the moving car window, happy that we were almost home from our long desert drive.

Oh Etsy, you so rarely disappoint, just look at the treasure I uncovered–Three Little Ducks.  Darling. I will take one ‘Pout’ dress in every colour please (they are Australian so I must use Queen’s English).