Every year Christopher and I take the tour de Tejas... it usually consists of 3k+ miles and about 10 lbs of weight added by December 26th. This year with so much going on and now the absolute dread of that drive, the decision was made to stick out our first Christmas at home. We learned our lesson years ago with going to Texas for turkey day then turning right around 2 weeks later for Christmas. That first year was rough being here and away from family but Christmas time made it all that much more enjoyable with less travel. Now it seems like it's gotten ridiculous again. Family is more spread out, miss seeing friends since we were limited on time, and really... my diet change this year was seriously stressing me out. Really... I can't have 3/4ths of the things that are so damn delicious during the holidays.

Luckily my Mom had a plane ticket that wasn't used this year so she's making it out for 4 days. That really was awesome of her... of course she's excited like crazy just to go and shop and spa and.. oh lord. I even talked to my Dad about the cancelling of the trip and he admitted "I don't know how you guys do it every year.. it's 2-3 weeks straight driving and visiting" and even said he might come out. If I got my Mom and Dad out here on even the same day and even sitting at the SAME table for dinner... that would be some sort of Christmas miracle. I haven't seen my parents together at a dinner in.............. 25 years.

It will be nice... I always put out lights every year on a timer but never had a Christmas tree in the house we've lived in for 4 years now. Will be nice to have our very own little thing and decorate a nice tree :) Hope everyone has a nice Thanksgiving.... I'm checking out the buffets as we speak haha

So it's been a few months now since changing my diet over to gluten free... and it's rough. Wheat/flour is in everything yummy and delicious.. and whats worse is what my doctor warned me about: you will gain weight if you don't significantly cut back on eating food. Seems completely contrary to logic but since my insides were damaged for so long from food I shouldn't have had to eat, I didn't absorb much food/nutrients so with the new diet I will absorb everything. He was right but I've gotten over that hump.

It's so nice now to not have the huge mouth ulcers I'd get constantly since I was a kid, the crazy headache for days for no reason are gone, and I'm not nearly as tired or exhausted as I used to be. I'm starting to dread the upcoming holidays though. With traveling yet again thousands of miles only to run around Texas seeing everyone only to not be able to eat what I want is frustrating. I don't ever want to be THAT person. That picky ass person who bugs every waiter and cook with a barrage of questions about how the food is prepared. Those people annoy the crap out of me and I feel forced to be that now. There are only two things food related that I don't like/care for: green bell peppers and monkfish liver. Seriously anything else in the world I will eat... beets, sea urchin, regular liver, sweet breads...I don't care just don't put green bell peppers on it.

Well... my bright side is always... at least I can always have wine :)

It's funny about me and photography... I love it and have loved it for a long time but seems like when sometimes things don't come out exactly the way I visioned them to I want to say screw it. I get these images in my head and if the photo doesn't turn out the way I wanted it to then I get frustrated and feel like it looks like crap... but in the end I really love it. Went to Austin this weekend to go to a friends wedding... realized my Dad's 55th birthday was the day before and decided that I had to go. Julie had asked if I would mind taking some bridal shots before the wedding... and help the other photographer take photos that he may miss. I would have been taking a ton of pictures anyway so I didn't mind. During the wedding though I felt exhausted on my skills. I hate flash... and the flash I have is huge and unweildy. I don't have much experience with it and after the ceremony I ditched it due to it being so big. Wish I had a smaller flash to mount to the top that meters but alas... it's $800. Either way I had this moment of "Jeez I really suck at this" which was also the same in Bordeaux during that project. I seem to feel that way every time but in the end... when I am going through and editing photos in photoshop (which I don't use much of anyway...) I think... damnit I love this stuff. I still think things could have been better but sheesh weddings and events are hard.

I've been meaning to post this for a while but keep forgetting to... now more people are doing the couch to 5k program and thought I'd finally post my running list. Every song has an up tempo to run to... I have some slower songs but still have a good jogging pace for longer runs. The list is long so it plays enough for a half marathon, or rotates enough to not burn myself out on it :)

Basement Jaxx (Rooty) - Breakaway
Basement Jaxx (Rooty) - Jus 1 Kiss
Beck (The Information) - Soldier Jane
Beck (Modern Guilt) - Gamma Ray
Bloc Party (Silent Alarm) - Like Eating Glass (Whole album is good to listen to alone for tempo)
Bloc Party (Silent Alarm) - Helicopter
Bloc Party (Silent Alarm) - Banquet
Cartigans - My Favorite Game
The Chemical Brothers (Come With Us) - Star Guitar
The Chemical Brothers (Come With Us) - The Test
The Chemical Brothers (Push The Button) - Hold Tight London
Cut Copy (Bright Like Neon) - Time Stands Still
Cut Copy (Bright Like Neon) - Going Nowhere
Cut Copy (Bright Like Neon) - That Was Just A Dream
Daft Punk (Discovery) - Digital Love
Daft Punk (Discovery) - Voyage
Frou Frou (Details) - Breathe In
Frou Frou (Details) - Hear Me Out
Gnarles Barkley (The Odd Couple) - Going On
Gnarles Barkley (St. Elsewhere) - The Last Time
Interpol (Our Love To Admire) - No I In Threesome
Interpol (Our Love To Admire) - The Heinrich Maneuver
John Legend (Evolver) - Green Light
Kings Of Leon (Because Of The Times) - Ragoo
Lady Gaga (The Fame Monster) - Alejandro (now radio has played this song out assholes)
Maroon 5 (It Won't Be Soon Before Long) - Little Of Your Time
Muse (Black Holes) - Starlight
Mylo (Destroy Rock & Roll) - Muscle Cars
Mylo (Destroy Rock & Roll) - Otto's Journey
Nine Inch Nails (Hand That Feeds) - The Hand That Feeds (Straight Mix)
Of Montreal (Satanic Panic..) - Disconnect The Dots
Phoenix (Six Ft. Under soundtrack) - Everything is Everything
Phoenix (Wolfgang Amadeus) - Lisztomania
Phoenix (Wolfgang Amadeus) - 1901
Porno For Pyros (Good God's Urge) - Tahitian Moon
The Postal Service (Give Up) - District Sleeps Alone Tonight
The Postal Service (Give Up) - Such Great Heights
The Postal Service (Give Up) - Natural Anthem
Rush (Signals) - Digital Man (gotta have at least one Rush song!)
Shiny Toy Guns (We Are Pilots) - You Are The One
The Ting Tings (We Started Nothing) - Great DJ
Yeah Yeah Yeahs (It's Blitz!) - Heads Will Roll
Yeah Yeah Yeahs (It's Blitz!) - Soft Shock
Two Door Cinema (Tourist History) - Do You Want It All?
Two Door Cinema (Tourist History) - This Is The Life

So today was day two of shooting with film. Yesterday I walked about 8 miles of the southern part of town, and today 9 miles of the northern/industrial part of town. I had gotten the medium format Hasselblad cleaned and serviced before I left just to guarantee that nothing would happen on this trip and I would get stuck with a jacked up camera. Sometimes the lens gets out of sync but it's really no big deal since I have a special tool to unlock/reset it. So I take the tram to the north side, get off and shoot about 3 pictures. On shot three I hit the shutter... and the camera won't wind after it goes off. It's stuck, the lens is stuck, and for a minute I can't get the dark slide back in (metal slide that lets you change film backs without messing up film) and if I can't get that slide back in the camera won't come apart to reset whatever failed. I freak... I wander back to the tram a block away so I can get back to the room to get my tool to reset the camera (don't know why I didn't bring it in the first place). After realizing that everything is screwed.. I somehow manage to get the slide back in. I take off the back and see the whole mirror and back is flipped up. Fuck. This I don't know how to fix. I start cursing in my head at the old man who services my camera. How he charged me so much this time and it's working worse than before. Arrgh

Get back to the room and start looking on forums. Taking apart the camera as much as I can... crying my eyes out because I'm not even in Paris where the hell will I get this thing reset?!... and then I notice on the front I had the mirror lock on like if you were to take a long exposure at night... I flip it and the whole thing resets. God I'm a retard. Must have knocked it during shot 3.

I will definitely post the negative scans of the ones I choose after the class is over. I'm going to be shooting about 30-40 rolls of film and jeebus that will take a long time to scan those negatives. I'll definitely share the ones that make the cut!

So this is the fourth trip we have taken to France but this time started our trip off in Bordeaux. purrin had found a school that was an intense set of classes about the wine of the region taught before classes began for the summer, and soon since it's my big 30 birthday... so the trip was perfect timing. While I am here and he is in a classroom all day for the first week, I am doing a photographic study of the town and will be getting credit for the work in a class I am taking at UNLV this summer. I did something similar during a class at SHSU where we traveled to Houston (yea far trip from Huntsville), San Antonio and New Orleans. The only problem with those trips were we had one day to shoot photos, and then we headed back home. Looking back on the photos they seemed pretty rushed and could have been done better with more time. This time I will have almost a full week to really explore.

So today I woke up with Christopher, went to breakfast, and after he left I took the rental car on a drive around the main sections of the city.. mostly to see everything, get my bearings, and to circle on my map points of interest for photos. After some quick grocery shopping I came back to the hotel for some lunch and then spent the rest of the afternoon wandering the areas that aren't for cars or I just couldn't get to due to crazy one way streets. I shot about 200 digital photos throughout the day since the teacher told me it would be a good idea to see what looked good in black and white, and what didn't. Also as a sort of warm up to thinking about composition of photographs. I think her idea was a good one and really helped.. so much so I might use that technique in the future. Tomorrow I will take the medium format film camera and about ten rolls of film to shoot in one area I have marked off on my map.

Hope this project comes out good.... here are the test shots from today. Not too crazy about any of them but definitely gave me an idea of what may look good on film.

Yea. So much so I didnt really finish my review of 2009 and such! Terrible....

So for the first time... ever... I actually finished some sort of goal I had set out to do by running the Las Vegas marathon in Dec. Took me from May until then to get to the point but I did it and ran it straight. Since Christmas? Total slacker.... Hard to pick up running again when you take a month off plus this semester taking classes makes everything else a little more cramped for time.

Yea! So classes! At UNLV! Took a french class during the summer, then took the fall off (went to France in Sept) then started back up this semester. I'm just taking two classes (though they both have a ton of work... wow). One is Accounting and the other is Elementary French II. I am pretty sure this accounting teacher is about the most difficult teacher/class I have ever had. That's saying a lot since I have140+ hours of school from Texas. Every teacher here seems to like their job and act passionately (ok all except for the douche that Christopher has for a night class) and it really saddens me to hear our school is having some budget cuts. So why am I taking classes? Well French is cool and since we go to France it would be awesome to actually speak the language! So far I like it but it's really challenging right now. Accounting is because well.... we are wanting to have our own business and dangit someone needs to manage the money. Keeping it together instead of hiring out (and probably getting screwed) is a better route for sure.

Hmm what else has been going on. Oh saw Alice in Wonderland last night... 3D nonIMAX. It was the first full length 3D movie I've seen. I thought it looked good, story was a little lacking and slow in some parts... but definitely worth seeing. I'm not a huge fan of this 3D thing... about 1.25 hrs into it I was kinda over the glasses and got a dull headache. It was all cool but I was ready for it to be over.

Was the party that Christopher and the Dallas crew (Turtle, Brad Denton etc... ) threw out in a field outside of Dallas. I can't imagine how many people would have really gone if it had been held at Decibel like it was originally planned... but permits and stuff were whacky back then and things were moved last minute. It was fun and we had just started dating... wow why was my hair so ugly? lol

Courtesy of lilspicy