Back To Normalcy

Or at least as much normalcy that can be accomplished upon returning to work for the first time in eleven days. To add to my angst I am but two weeks out from laying my Black Sheep trail and haven’t had the time I’d like to put into planning it — something about being away on vacation.

Lessons Learned, Part One
Living on Central Time makes you late in Eastern Time.

Because I arrived home late on Friday night I had about enough time to unpack some items and get my house in order before crashing in bed. The plan was to wake early enough to go out and photograph the Peachtree Road Race as I have done the past two years.

When the first alarm went off, the one on my phone which correctly converted itself back to Eastern Time, I was groggy and needed “a few more minutes.” This seemed okay because I had been clever enough to set an alarm on my laptop.

What I hadn’t been clever enough to do was remember that I had manually changed my laptop’s clock’s time zone to Central when in Winnipeg. So, when its alarm sounded the actual time was an hour later than displayed on my laptop.

From this you may have correctly guessed that this error made me too late to make it to the race for photography.

Lessons Learned, Part Two
Being a singleton makes it easy to cancel plans when no one is counting on your attendance

I’ve been noticing this a lot for some time. When no one is relying on my attendance at an event I find it incredibly easy to break my plans. Such was the case with Saturday night’s desire to shoot (photos of) fireworks.

The fireworks scenario has another wrinkle built within. In order to get a good spot from which to shoot I’d have to arrive early and stake out a position. Since I’d alone for this, what the hell am I going to do to pass the time? Common suggestions such as reading, or listening to music are fine, but didn’t really provide the incentive necessary to drag me as well as all my photo gear out of the house.

ITP Flickr Pic
Welcome Back! Since most of you probably missed Friday’s blog I’m going to throw two photos at you today.

While I didn’t shoot on Saturday, I did on Sunday…

I met up with a few photo friends at The Majestic for breakfast beforehand

This shot was taken with my iPhone and post-processed using an app called “CameraBag.” Click here to see all of the cool post-processing tricks “CameraBag” can perform.

Lessons Learned, Part Three
If you are a laptop owner who plans to not use it for, oh let’s say ten days or more, shut the system down to save its battery from going completely dead, and losing some of its settings information.

Last night I cranked up my old iBook G4 for the first time since departing for Winnipeg and the battery was completely shot. Apparently I failed to consider shutting the laptop down, even though I knew that would be best practice. When the machine finally roused itself it had no idea about the ridiculously long wireless network password and I had to scrounge up the string of random characters. Its loss of power must have also allowed some Alzheimer’s Disease to set in as well, because when I awoke it from inactivity sleep it had once again lost its network connection.

Lessons Learned, Part Four
Sometimes there is no lesson to be learned.

I have a ton of work to do today. Not only do I have to catch up with what’s been going on here, I have to get myself moving in the right direction in order to have a successful last-half of the year. It’s good to be back, hope you all are feeling the same.

Stats & Goals
Daily
Current Mood – oddly nervous
Current Music – silence, mostly because I’m like a chicken with my head cut off and need to concentrate
Website Of The Day РLe Tour has returned! Some documentarians have created some cool documentary footage of the Cerv̩lo team which can be found at Bar Tape.
Mode Of Transportation To Work – my car
Exercise (b)Log – hashing yesterday
Monday Morning Weigh-In – Dammit! I forgot! However, Saturday was 203 pounds, and Sunday was 201 pounds.

Monthly
Foot Mileage – ~4 miles, Wheel Mileage – 0 miles
Consecutive Days Of Bed-Making (Longest Streak) – 3 (3)
Vegetarian Days – 0, Carnivorous Days – 5
Marta Rides – 0

July Goals
– Regain interest in my life
– Not get fired from my job
– Plan and lay a successful Black Sheep hash on July 19th

2009 Goals
– Reduce my weight to 190 pounds (today’s weight was 199.5 pounds)
– Completely read the book 1001 Paintings You Must See Before You Die
РEarn at least $150 through photography sales in order to cover the cost for the renewal of the Jalape̱o Beach SmugMug account I opened the other day.
– Save $500 for the sole purpose of donating to charitable organizations of my choice
– Attend at least one professional photography workshop

The Unmeasurable
– Continue backing up all data, including the off-site storage
– Become a proficient programmer in Objective-C (iPhone development) and Ruby on Rails (Black Sheep web page concept)
– Do not create a solution for something which is not a problem

Cheers,
Paulie [eatl/ga]