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happy halloween!

lost

I got my one roll of color film developed today. Sadly, I'm pretty sure that I've lost a roll somewhere because I sworn I had 2, but at least I have this picture.

I have a BW roll that's finished I will develop here tomorrow and one that's still in the camera I need to finish. I really hope my mom finds the color roll I'm missing in her car.

home!

After getting up at 445am, I am home. It's nice to be home.

maine day 6

Well, I wasn't supposed to be here for a day 6, but my flight out of Portland, ME was delayed for so long I would miss my flight (and JetBlue's last flight) out of JFK to Jacksonville. I could have flown to Orlando or stayed the night outside the JFK airport, but instead I decided to stay here. 

I fly out tomorrow morning at 7:30 am (which means I'm getting up at 4:30 in the morning to get to the airport) and have a 4 hour layover at JFK. So, hopefully this won't happen tomorrow. Here in inland Maine snow flurries are expected late tonight and very early in the morning. I guess I was meant to stay so I could see snow like I wanted.

maine day 5

Snow Falls, West Paris, Maine

My last full day here. I wasn't able to get into Portland. Next time I'll be renting a car.

maine day 4

maine day 3

Songo Lock, which is a functional and historic lock, is where I went today.

maine day 2

(I added a crap-ton of pictures today.)

I am loving the "real" Autumn.

maine day 1

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ttyl

Leavin' on a Jet(blue) plane.

I'm going from 77 degrees to 45 in just a few short hours. It's going to be lovely!

airport ishuffle

In getting ready for my flight Wednesday, I went through my desk and found my old-but-super-convenient-when-I-don't-have-a-spare-hand (especially considering I only have one hand since my right one is broken) ipod shuffle. 

electric halloween

Well, I've got my halloween decorations up - just in time for my vacation. I'll be back a few days before "Halloween-proper" and it's a pretty big deal in my 'hood, considering there's a large amount of families and children in the area. I still haven't decided what I'm doing Halloween night, but I'm not going all out like I did last year. (I can't really do very good gore makeup with a broken hand.)

grrraaaarrrr

tick tock tick tock

Counting days is a very time-slowing process.

I can't WAIT to get out of Florida for a week.

Wednesday, during my excessively long (3.5 hours) layover in JetBlue's brand spanking new terminal 5 at JFK I'm going to meet up with friends at the airport. (God love my Manhattan friends that are trekking out there.) Sadly, it's not like the "old days" where they can come into the terminal to make the whole situation easier. So one of my friends is hiring a town car for 3 hours to grab us all from the front and we're going to go have some food in Jamaica and catch up. It will only be a brief visit until I go back in January for snow, but it's something. We don't get to see each other very often and somehow we've all managed to retain the friendships in the 3 years that I've been on the "south side".

From there I will be spending a week with the family about an hour and a half north west of Portland, ME. Besides an "1800s traditional Barn Dance out in the country" my mom hasn't told me of any plans. I've asked to have some real New England clam chowder, some ultra fresh lobster bisque and any other form of Maine Lobster I can get my hands on. I want to see the coast and the mountains and I'm so excited about seeing fall - a real fall with oranges, red and very chilly weather. Not this "87 degrees at the end of October" Florida crap. (The lows here are 10 degrees warmer than the highs up there.) And of course there will be lots of photo-taking. I shipped my Nikon FT2 and about 30 rolls of film via UPS yesterday, insuring it for $1500 in case anything happens.

I'm so ready to go I'm already 85% packed.

Hurry up, Time!

hanging chad

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I decided to go sort of morbidly tongue-in-cheek with this Iron Photographer. Considering the elections are coming up and i live in florida, i figured it to be apropos. 

warholized

Utata Take Two (14) Project.

unravel

Also, have fun with this. How well can you eyeball distances?

(my best was 3.82)

broken

A broken right hand doesn't bode well for typing so blogging is going to be almost nil for awhile. The most you'll get will be a few sentences that take 10 minutes to type.

newness

I bought a new digital point and shoot today since my last one bit the dust. I LOVE it. It's a Canon PowerShot. For snapshots, especially of Maine, it's going to be perfect. 



So Happy Halloween, a bit early, from my new digicam.

On a slightly more lousy note, I noticed a local organization is unlawfully using my photo. I contacted them directly and when I spoke to the director about the situation he said I was being slanderous and will be taking legal action against me.

I called my lawyer. I'm going to print a copy from my negative of the photo as well as taking a picture of the negative itself and then depending on how the organization decides to deal with this situation on their end, it may get really ugly. Including and not limited to local television exposure.

2 photographers

One from a double exposure project with myself and another local photographer, Peter Chase.

shove it

I hate election time because all of my friends, republican and democrats alike, turn into complete idiots. 

"You're stupid."

"No, you're stupid."

"Nooooo, you're stupid."

"NO, you're stupid."

How about this: You're all stupid.

I mean really.. 

So you like Obama and you can't figure out why people like Palin and wait in longer lines, on a weekday versus Obama's weekend visit no less, to see her, only a nominated VP, over your chosen boy. 

Or maybe you support McCain and think "those socialist bastards" need their heads' checked. 

I don't give a shit either way. I'm sick of friends insulting friends because of a Difference in Opinions. I'm tired of the subversive "oooh hehe they are sooooo dumb" blog posts, Tweets, forwarded emails, mySpace bulletins and Facebook statuses. 

Get over yourselves.

I guarantee if we replaced the word "politics" with "religion" or "sexual preference" you would be much, much nicer. After all, it's socially acceptable to hate people who are different (politically) right?

picture weekend

One of the things I love about photography is the "I wonder what will happen if I do this" aspect. 

I'm working on a project with another local photographer, taking double exposures. Actually we just started the project and I did my, and the final, half of our first roll of film today. While I was wandering around the Cummer Museum Gardens, I had an idea of something to try. Since I had an entire roll of expired slide film with me I decided to try it.

What I ended up doing was walking around once, taking severely out of focus shots which (hopefully) end up being fields of blurry color. Then I went back through, after I wound and reloaded the film, taking a second set with perfectly crisp focus and the subjects filling the frame. My hope is going to be these underlays of fuzzy color of overlapping frames. I could have used my shutter release cable to take perfectly lined double exposures, then advance the film without having to rewind and reload, but I wanted to try it this way first.

Hopefully it looks as awesome in real life as it does in my head. I'm dropping the film off tomorrow at a local shop, since I only process black and white myself, and I can't wait to see how it looks.

trepidation

I've begun to get a teensy bit hesitant about my trip to Maine. 

You see, my mom and I, step-mom if I need to be 100% accurate, tend to butt heads and have since I became a teenager those many years ago. You see, she's outspoken. She's a strong woman and she raised me to be the same. The problem is that, unlike her "real" daughter, I don't really agree with anything she has to say. She's into new agey religious ideas, I'm an atheist. She's a staunch democrat, I'm a libertarian with capitalist bends. She likes to play her indian drums at 5:30 in the morning, when she wakes up to "greet mother earth" and I like to sleep until 10. She likes to gather a bunch of women in a circle and have a forced cry, I prefer to deal with upsetting issues in my own ways.

In other words, in her terms, I'm the black sheep.

But then, there's even worse stuff. She likes to insult me. 

Ever since I can remember, she's been making fun of me. Telling me I waddle, saying I look like a whore, insulting me at every turn that I disagree with. The last time I visited, she berated me for not wanting to be part of this "event" she'd planned where all of her women friends sat in the belly of a houseboat and cried. I wanted to be jet-skiing, dammit. She mocked me in front of everyone there and her daughter joined in the festivities by making fun of everything from my bathing suit to the way I spoke. 

Luckily for me, though, is that I've already rented a car and plan on spending most of my time alone, exploring central and eastern Maine. And where there aren't any hotels in the tiny, 11 square mile town, I'll be staying in an apartment that I've rented for the week. (So no drums at ungodly hours.)

I just wish that she's understand that she raised me to be this strong woman with strong ideals, that she shaped my personality and the ways I deal with conflict and joy. Instead she's still trying to raise me, to change me into what her definition is of a strong woman (that includes turning men into fluffy, emotional women) and doesn't understand or choose to realize that I love who I am. To her I'm still the rebellious teenager, not a 31 year old accomplished adult. 

random

Ok.. So it's not very often that I let "the ego" come through, but dammit... 

I love LOVE being me.

Not everyone can handle me. In fact, my best friends are few and for life, but each and every one of them loves and appreciates me and I, in turn, love them infinitely.

The people I connect with are "weird". They will never agree with me even 50% of the time and we love each other for the enlightenment and variety. My friends are my family, and like my family, we may not talk daily but we mesh with an ease that can never be easily explained.

I love my puzzle. I love what I've decided and how I've been sorted.

It's life and it's beautiful.