Aperture 1.4 {focused blur}

It's been a while...

Sorry, about that but here at the Stringham house we are going through busy week, or rather month. I've been preparing for quite sometime to teach next week at CKU-Provo and Mark had his show last weekend with finals coming up next week and agent's auditions in between. Plus he's trying to get ready to start the Virginia Shakespeare Festival at the end of the month. We are also in the middle of trying to find housing in Louisville for August and the end of spring soccer for Grant!

Anyway, in the midst of all this I decided that I needed to come here and give everyone a warning.  People ask me all the time how I organize all my photo c.ds  I burn a new disk after each shoot and in the last year I have taken over 10,000 pictures.  Yikes!  That is a lot.  So I bet you also want to know how I organize all the information, right?  Well, that's the problem.  I don't.  I don't even label them ( I was worried about the marker on the c.d. ruining it over time) so I have hundreds of blank c.d's in blank cases full of shoot's in no order.  Yeah, not cool when you are preparing a class and you think...."hey, I think I took a perfect example for this of Cole a year ago."  Try searching for that with no labels.   It takes a massive amount of time so now as I am going along I have been labeling the cases so I don't have to go back.  Yeah, so my warning is- label,label,label!

Anyway, thought I'd leave you with this glorious picture in honor of my stressful week!

   

Being "cool"

Grant and I were watching a movie together where one of the characters talked about how it was "time to start living my dream".   Later that night as I was putting Grant to bed we had a conversation that went a little like this:

Grant:  Mom, it's time for me to start living my dream.

Me:  What dream would that be? ( I was fully expecting - to play for the Dallas Cowboys, as he is obsessed with them.  Why? We have no idea, but that is for another day, another post.)

Grant:  My dream of being the coolest.

Me:  The coolest?  The coolest what?

Grant: The coolest kid!

Me:  What makes someone the coolest kid? 

(I should state that I despise the word "cool".  I mean what is cool?  Most of the kids I knew that tried to be the elusive "cool" in high school ended up doing really stupid things, things that they did even want to do so that they could be "cool" or even more important popular.  I didn't like to hear this coming from my five year old.)

Grant:  Lot's of things.

Me:  Grant, I would way rather have you be yourself than try to be cool.  You shouldn't worry about what other people think.  Just do what you want to do.

Grant: But Mom, myself is the coolest! I always try my hardest, and do my best. I am nice to everyone! Plus I am funny.

Me:  Oh...so that's what makes you the coolest.

Grant: Yep, the coolest kid ever.  I'm livin a dream.

Me: ( relieved at his version of cool and smiling because his version of cool is pretty dang "cool" in my book!)

Grant