a typical workday at grace

9am: arrive in a mad dash, makeupless, and forget to change the spanish language calendar.
10am: staff prayer. preceded by staff roundup and staff jocularity.
11am: the fire alarm goes off.
12pm: chat with jean, the ups guy.
1pm: drive home, make lunch.
2pm: hopefully i've had a chance to put on makeup by now.
3pm: eat lunch.
4pm: everyone has left - i'm the only one here - lonliness sets in...
5pm: still working...
6pm: change the spanish language calendar.

sky

sky
cielo
ουρανός
céu
hemel
небо
空

or...

"sk-eye"


images are cross-cultural and omni-lingual.
puns, however, are not.

bitsoflife

~10:48pm tonight is the beginning of spring! i'm throwing a party with my pillow.

~joel's last final of his first term of pre-med is tomorrow night. pre-calc. this has been a term of adjustments and a lot of hard work, and i'm really proud of him.

~our house is currently covered with a thin layer of white powder (diatomaceous earth to kill the ants). if a buyer stops by unannounced they'll either think we're trying to anthrax them or that we're a houseful of users so rich and strung out that we toss crack everywhere.

~i just got my first official senior picture gig! i'm not telling who ... that will be a surprise. it will probably be in a few weeks - when things are a little more bloomy outside.

~i hired a new assistant at grace last week. her name is charlene and she's a sweetie, though the week before easter is about the worst time to start working at a church, poor dear.

~on saturday night we got a free ticket to see the oregon pro arte orchestra perform peter and the wolf. which wouldn't be that amazing (i'm not that big on prokofiev), except that it was narrated by john ogden stiers - best known for his role as major winchester on the tv show "m.a.s.h." he conducted a couple pieces too. it was amazing.


can you spot the little brother?

so i haven't been online much lately...

because several hours after my last post we found approximately 500 ants in our wireless modem.
it was not a good evening. but they're mostly out now. have you ever tried to get ants out of a modem???
don't. let them have it.

joel balanced the offending modem over a bowl of diatomaceous earth, which he placed in another bowl of raid-water solution. the ants could crawl down the connecting cords, but they're blocked by ant-killing gel. we hope it's overkill, but hey, they could always grow wings and fly.

but that little adventure is on the wane now (hopefully!!), and i have some pictures from a recent sunny sunday to share with y'all!

first, my dazzling, caring, wonderfully handsome husband with the gorgeous curls!
this is finals week for him - he's finishing his first term of pre-med and i am so proud of him!



i love his laugh




next, a few of the vestal kids ... freckly, beautiful eyed, wonderful people!

this is daniel - every bit of 14. the 8th grade girls can't get enough of him.




patrick is 13 and refuses to smile for my stupid camera. lol. i managed to eke one decent photo out of him, though. that means i win. (notice daniel's leg in the background - he was climbing the tree.)



now to sammi ... ah sammi. she is 17, a senior in high school, and also enjoys photography. we had so much fun finding all the cool spots on their property, and this isn't nearly all of the great shots i got of her. hopefully i'll have more of her again soon!







(this next one migh look way too dark if your monitor is calibrated dark - mine's a bit light.)






if you've made it this far i'm impressed! btw, i settled for an in-between on the picture size. let me know how that works.

mean old dentist, mean old ants

i had a dentist appointment today
and i thought it was next week
and the lady from the dentist office
was really mean to me on the phone.

(just had to get that out there.)

i took a ton of pictures last weekend (including some gorgeous ones of my handsome husband, plus some of our photogenic teenage friends...)
but i haven't had a chance to process them yet because my nemesis is back, and i'm not happy about it.



we are putting up a valient fight against the evil ants, and so far, we are losing. the smell of raid permeates my nightmares as battalions of ants march through the cupboards, the bathtub, and across the expanse of living room floor.
i think we live on top of their marine base - instead of the typical libidinous barefoot-and-pregnant queen, they have a 3 ton female amazon general thundering out orders from her lair under our pitiful little house.

unsuspecting buyers, beware!!! (but don't read this blog until we've signed the papers.)



(postscript: i can't get the image size to work on this. i went for a size in between the 2 sizes on my last blog, but it doesn't seem to want to cooperate... sorry!)

question for anyone who reads this blog

hi. you know who you are. i don't, but that's ok if that's how you want it. i'm down with that. :)

but i do have a question for you, so please answer if you care one way or the other, because i'm just trying to make this blog nicer for you to read. i'm not going to be weirded out if i've never met you ~ i read blogs of people i've never met, too.

so anyway, my question:
photo size. the typical size to post photos on blogs is this size:



not very much detail, but you can fit more on in less space.

i am a photographer who puts a lot into my work, and i like to post this size:



i like the detail, etc. however, i don't want huge pictures to be a deterrent for reading my blog, and i'd be happy to post smaller pictures with links to see them larger if you'd prefer.

please let me know which you like better ~ that would be very helpful for me. :)


...btw, the photo is a selfportrait called "the breath before mozart". see it on my flickr for more.

if we were rich...

and had no responsibilities...
and didn't have to be close to town...
i think we'd move to springdale, oregon.

where even the grass looks delicious:




and church looks like this:




but at least it's close enough that we can drive through on a saturday. thank goodness for small towns! (i say that because i've never lived in one, probably...)

:)

my mom...

let me take some pictures of her yesterday! :)
here's a few...

o happy day!

i'm loving the spring-i-ness!
and our house has been visited 4 (yes you read that correctly) times this week!
and ... we took a drive up the gorge today, ending at my parents' house, and i took tons of photos!

(can you tell i'm in a good mood?)

here's a preview ... more to come.