Las Margaritas

So I’ve been craving Mexican food all week, but the WMD has had a nasty flu bug that knocked him out and I had to wait until he was better to get him to take me out to eat. While I wouldn’t say he was healed, by last night he just had stuffy sinuses and what’s better for stuffy sinuses than some spicy food?

So we headed over to Las Margaritas, our favorite loval Mexican joint (we have 6 to choose from in a 5-mile radius from our home):

Sorry this so blurry. I got that new camera I was jonesing for for Christmas and I’m still trying to figure it out. At this point, an old man taking an evening stroll through town was behind me asking me why I was taking pictures of the concrete. I think I mumbled something or other about “inspiration” and hoped that would get him to shuffle on, but he just stood there, so I packed up the camera and didn’t get a better photo. I can’t work under such scrutiny.

Since one of my resolutions was to take more everday life type of photos with my snazzy little camera, I thought this would be the perfect place to give it a try. The WMD wasn’t too mortified when I pulled it out. I think he was even a bit amused.

But it didn’t last long:

He’d kill me if he knew I put this up, but he never reads my blog. Ha, ha, ha.

At this point I put the camera down because really, how many photos do you need to see of the WMD eating chips and salsa? Not to mention the fact that he was ingesting them at a high rate of speed and I was a pregnant woman in desperate need of Mexican food. I had to intervene on behalf of the little WMD and get some Mexican in my belly.

And then this came (insert voices of heavenly choir):

I don’t know what it is about their rice, but I always order a double portion and load it down with salsa. That and a couple of tacos and I’m a happy girl. And the WMD was good enough to wait for me to take four photos before he touched his food. I never doubted his intelligence.

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Ali Edwards’ Blog

One of the things (Alright, really the only thing- I like to hedge my bets.) I’m asking for as a Christmas gift from my parents (My mom asked me what I wanted a week ago, okay? I’m not stepping out of line here.) is a small digital camera. Now don’t get me wrong. I LOVE my current digital SLR. It takes wonderful photos, particularly artsy ones, and has been very good to me these last two years. I plan to be good to it for many more.

But…that sucker is big and it’s a little embarrassing to pull it out say, when we’re at a restaurant and I just have to have a photo of the marvelousness of the food or the joint we’re at. Or, for a group photo with friends. While all my pals pull out their shiny, lithe, little silver cameras, I pull out my big, black giant. It’s like saying, “That ain’t a camera. THIS is a camera!” a la Crocodile Dundee.

And it’s kind of hard to be discreet when your camera bag is bigger than your purse. Or your husband’s backpack. Okay, not really, but it might as well be the size of the Goodyear blimp as far as the WMD’s concerned. And that’s not a good thing in his book, especially at Shorty’s. Particularly at Shorty’s.

Unless you’re Lindsay, who was able to get away with taking a picture at Shorty’s. In the WMD’s presence. With the WMD in it! The injustice! But that’s because Lindsay has one of those little cameras.

 

Man alive, I need to fatten that boy up! You’d think with the amount of Oreos and brownies that are consumed in our house that he’d weigh 500 pounds by now. But it seems that the Matthew Seering diet is a curious one. Eat all the garbage you want and still lose weight, while your wife gains it for you by simply looking at a cookie, no matter how many miles she runs on the instrument of torture that is her treadmill. Score!

Anyway (and I’ll get to my point eventually) I’ve been reading Ali Edwards blog for awhile now and I really like what she’s been doing recently on it. She’s been taking pictures of the regular, run of the mill stuff that happens throughout her family’s day and then doing a photo journal of it, calling it “A Week in the Life”. The photos aren’t of anything spectacular, just a document of their lives on a particular day, each day of the week.

From a genealogy enthusiasts standpoint (Have I mentioned this about myself? Is that weird for someone who is not even 30 yet?), I think this is a fantastic exercise. What I wouldn’t give for something like this on those Cook and Jones ancestors that tease me in their obscurity and lack of records.

Really, when it comes right down to it, life is really filled out more about the day to day minutiae that consumes us than the few really great things that happen, isn’t it? I don’t mean that in a bad way, just a realistic one. And I think there is beauty in the simple day to day.

And I think you should read Ali’s blog to see the awesome things that she’s captured for her family, as well as all of the other great design ideas she has. That lady’s got talent.

So, getting back to my point, I think this is something that I’d like to do, but I can only realistically do it if I have a smaller camera, one that fits in my purse so I can take it with me to work and the grocery store. Don’t you all want to see photos of paperwork and the confusion that is the Asian market? I thought so.

It’s probably better to do this if you have kids, so we’re having a kid so I can do this!

Just kidding (no pun intended).

But here’s a photo of me holding someone elses kid a few weeks ago:

Good grief, I look like I’m about to drop him. See how he’s desperately trying to free himself from my clutches and go back to his mama in the gray headband? Yeah, that’s promising for our future offspring.

N-E-WAY! Thus begins my formal petition for a shiny, little, lithe camera from my parents for Christmas. Anybody want to sign it?

 

 

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Hello, can anybody here me?!

It’s me again, peeking out from underneath the pile of cardstock, mat board and prints littering our living room. Our very small living room. WMD’s being a real champ about the mass of crafternalia (craft+ paraphernalia) creeping out from the spare bedroom that serves as our studio/computer/library/study/storage/guest room. But then again, he knows that for most of the year, I put up with books, papers and coffee roasting equipment littering the living room and the WMD’s no dummy, so he takes it all in stride. That WMD’s a good man.

I know it’s been quiet ‘round these parts lately. Part of that’s been due to this darned craft fair coming up. I told my mom last night that I’m more talented in my head then I really am in practice. I’ve tried to do some artsy things lately beyond photography that just didn’t pass my muster. I know I set a high bar, but really, if I wouldn’t buy something, I’m certainly not going to put it out there and try to sell it to others. I know I have the creative bug in me, but creative talent is another issue. I suppose it doesn’t help to have the pressure of a craft fair looming down on me. I had so many things that I wanted to make and sell, but I’ve decided to just stick to matted and framed prints of my photography along with a few note cards. My creative juices do not fare well under a time crunch.

So that’s one reason I’ve been absent lately. I’ve listed the other reasons why in the past few posts. I know y’all get it since you’re busy people too, so I won’t go into the list of excuses. Just know that I’m thinking about this little old blog of mine a lot and the urge to get back to it is pulling at me. I just need to store up a wee bit more energy before I get back to pouring into it.

And to list one more sorry excuse, I can’t find the cable to my camera, which means that I can’t upload any photos and I hate not being able to upload photos. It’s so boring without them. But don’t you worry, as soon as I figure out where the WMD moved that cable (because he is the one who is always moving it and he is the one who can never remember where he put things), I’ll have a whole plethora of photos to share with you. Heck, I don’t even know what I have on the camera anymore, so it’ll be a surprise for all of us. I’m thinking there’s some fancy food photos on there and I know there’s some photos of my mini-Christmas tree bleaching and dying project currently in process. Get ready, they’re acoming!

To give a little more attention to this blog in the coming weeks, I thought I’d post some websites/blogs/Esty shops that I find really cool and worthy of passing along.  I’ll post a few different sites each day. They’re sites that I’ve discovered during my hours (and hours and hours) on the internet while the WMD had his nose in a book on Cicero or Adam Smith or someone or ‘nother. In my quest of new websites, I’m continually amazed at the creativity that exists out there. Really, it’s quite inspiring.

 

 

 

 

 

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From the Mountains to the Sea

 

I have a bad habit of forgetting to turn my camera off after I upload images to my computer. I get so involved in the editing process that I forget that the camera is still on and it’s getting the life slowly sucked out of its batteries by the computer that it’s hooked up to.

So, instead of the new photos I intended to take and consequently share this week, I’ve put together a  mosaic of some of the photos I’ve taken during my travels in North Carolina this last year. I had the good fortune to travel from the Appalachian Mountains in the west to the Atlantic Ocean in the east over the last 365 days. It really is a beautiful state and I feel very fortunate to get to enjoy it for the time being.

When my camera is resurrected, I’ll show you my new set of teeth.

 

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