Life

Seattle

Posted by Pam on Jan 25, 2009 in Life | 6 comments

This photo pretty much sums it up… While my brother Roy was home at Christmas he proposed the idea of coming there (Seattle) for the summer. I told him I’d think about it even though I kind of knew what my answer would be. Earlier this week I finally made the decision to do it.

Now is a good of time as any to do something like this – I don’t have anyone or anything holding me back other than my fear of making changes in my life. I weighed the pros and cons, and the only cons I could come up with was missing out on a class this summer and finding a job. Finding a job was and still is the big issue I’m concerned about. My brother assures me that I shouldn’t have a problem, he’s probably right . . . at least I hope he’s right! heh. There are a lot of pros going to Seattle such as: meeting new people, escaping the summer humidity, sightseeing – I’ve already started a list ;-), and most importantly being away from rural Kentucky.

The tentative plan is to leave the second week of May and come back the first week of August – that’s if I want to come back! (heh!) My brother is probably moving to his friends place in the next two months. I’ve seen photos and it’s a really nice place, but the only downside is it’s in the ghetto. I asked if Seattle had a high crime rate, he said no, but the crime that does occur usually happens in that neighborhood. LoL. He says it’s odd because a block away is a nice Jewish neighborhood, and you’re only a few blocks away from parks and the Puget Sound(!)

I’m going to take my brother’s advice and drive there so I can get around on my own. I’ve always wanted to take a road trip across part of America anyway, not to mention documenting the entire way. It looks like I will be going through South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho, so that should make for nice photos. I even have two girlfriends who said they’d be interested in joining me. I really hope gas isn’t back up to $4/gallon come May. I imagine it’s probably going to take about a week to get there from looking at the route Google Maps gave me. I suppose it would be smart to invest in a GPS. If you have a recommendation for an inexpensive TomTom or Garmin please pass it my way.

The new year

Posted by Pam on Jan 2, 2009 in Internet, Life, Photography, Technology | 7 comments

I first began this post wanting to detail 2008 and the many things that happened, but I don’t want to bore you with what you’ve been able to read in the past, or that I’ve told you. Most of my readers are close friends who hear about what I’m up to on a regular basis, especially if you read my twitter updates. I probably update twitter more than I should at times, but I suppose there are far worse addictions. Overall, 2008 has been a wonderful year. I’ve met a lot of new friends, mostly through flickr, that I continue to see on a regular to somewhat regular basis. Most importantly, I traveled more than I’ve ever done before in a year span. I think that was my big “resolution” for 2008: to travel more. To view photos from 2008 click here.

As for 2009 I’m not making any “resolutions” per-say, maybe a few goals. The word “resolution” seems like a doomed word, who really keeps their resolutions? Well, I suppose there are people out there with willpower, but I’m not one of them. I guess my big goal for this 2009 is to complete Project 365.

I attempted Project 365 last year and it fizzled out shortly after day 100. I lasted longer than I originally thought I would . . . so that’s positive? If you’re unfamiliar with Project 365 it’s pretty simple: you take a photo each day. I recall learning quite a bit about my camera when I was participating, and it’s not a crazy goal to have to keep up with. It helps that some of my friends are participating this year too. I posted my first photo (left) yesterday of my niece. If you’d like to keep up with the my project without joining flickr, you can subscribe to the feed here or livejournal users can add tmg_flickr to their friends.

I’m also brainstorming design ideas for a personal photography website. My brother told me I should do it, and for some reason I’m listening to him. What’s the worst that could happen? Not getting any clients? I’m at least attempting a step forward.

I hope 2008 treated you well and 2009 continues to do so! Happy new year!

Happy Holidays

Posted by Pam on Dec 25, 2008 in Life | 1 comment

Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays!

Despite feeling under the weather the last few days, I’ve had a good Christmas thus far. We had breakfast this morning, opened gifts, and visited my brother’s new house, and later had lunch there. After lunch I took a little nap in hopes that my stomach might stop aching from the lunch I had, but I think it only made it feel worse. Bleh!

The gifts that I received this year were: A ticket to see Ryan Adams in March (yes!!), season 2 of Heroes, 5-pack of 120 film for my Holga, gift cards to Target and Sephora, a Jawbone headset for my iPhone and misc goodies from Andy! I thought that I made out pretty good this year, even if Santa didn’t bring me the new Canon 5D Mark II. I guess with the economy money is pretty tight . . . Or maybe I just wasn’t that good? >;-)

What was your favorite present that you received this year?

Vacation: NJ and NYC

Posted by Pam on Oct 21, 2008 in Life, Travel | 0 comments

I’ve spent the last few days in New Jersey and NYC visiting with my friend Andy and had a wonderful time. The weather was perfect the first day I was there, so we went to the shore in Seaside Heights and walked along the beach. It was odd seeing a beach almost deserted, but then again it is October. Despite my fear of large bodies of water I wandered in just a tiny bit, only to run out when the shock of the cold water hit my feet. The shore was my favorite part of the trip, because I’ve never been to a beach and it was nice to experience it.

Andy and I also spent some time in parts of New York visiting Central Park, the Empire State Building, and walking the Brooklyn Bridge to name a few. The views from the 86th floor of the Empire State Building were spectacular! Andy hadn’t been to either the Empire State Building or walked the Brooklyn Bridge in the time that he has lived near the city. Needless to say, it was an experience for both of us.

This has only been my second trip to NYC, but there’s something about it that I really like, maybe the fact that there’s always something new and fun to see. Like a homeless woman washing her naughty bits in a public restroom. Or a man bumping into a woman and inadvertently (or purposely) groping her. Technically those two incidents happened in Jersey — maybe it’s people from Jersey who are weird. ;-)

I don’t travel often, but when I do I feel reluctant about coming home and back to the daily grind. It’s nice doing daily activities that you want to do and not what you have to do. Unfortunately, time goes by too fast on vacation and it’s over with before you know it. Despite being back home and back to normal life I’m happy that I got to see Andy again and made new memories.

You may see a part two to this post in a few days, because the film from my Holga is currently being developed. Cross your fingers that I actually did everything right this time and my images don’t come back weird. Heh-heh. I really thought I would have more photos to show but I didn’t take a lot of diverse images. Still I’m happy with the ones that I did upload.

Click the slideshow below to view more photos from this trip!

Square One?

Posted by Pam on Oct 9, 2008 in Internet, Life | 2 comments

I met with my college adviser today to register for classes for the Spring semester, it seems a little early but I guess it’s really not. I was assigned to this adviser after switching my major from “Undecided” to “Business” a couple of days ago. It was a liberating feeling at the time to finally not be undecided, but to be working toward something. I went to this adviser in hopes that he would be able to tell me what would transfer to UofL, and keep me going in that direction. Instead, he was about as clueless as I was and still am. I was already annoyed because he kept me waiting almost 45 minutes after my scheduled time, time that I could have been studying, so this added to it. He said that UofL is constantly changing their curriculum and it’s really hard to say what will transfer without talking to someone at UofL. I think a lot of it is universities want their students to get all of their classes completed at the university, and they’re making it increasingly difficult to have transferable courses available at community colleges.

He found three classes for me and had a problem finding a fourth class to put me in. He finally found an Intro to Business class. He thought that it was transferable, he said, “…if nothing else you’ll get an idea of what you’re in for and if you want to continue a Business degree.” Great! I guess the Spring semester will be my last semester at ECTC… and off to bigger and better things!

As much as I want to move out as soon as possible I’ll probably delay it a little while. Given the state of the economy, the world going down the crapper, how dramatically Obama changes things when he becomes President ( ;-) ), etc. I’d feel safer about saving extra money to have in case of emergencies. I’ve seen too many of my friends move out before they should and depend on a credit card to get by each month. It’s better to be smart about it, right?

I have a busy weekend ahead with errands, work, and a definition-argument I need to write before going on vacation on Wednesday. I think it’s inevitable that I’ll have to work on final revisions while on vacation, but it shouldn’t require too much time and effort. What do you have planned for the weekend?

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Also, I wanted to wish my brother Roy a very Happy Birthday! Miss you! :)

Zombie Walk

Posted by Pam on Aug 30, 2008 in Life, Photography | 2 comments

Last night was the Zombie Walk in Louisville which was an experience if nothing else. If you’ve never heard of a “zombie walk” this will sum it up, or at least Louisville’s version of it: the zombies meet up on at the corner of Bardstown Rd. and Eastern Parkway and walk a couple blocks letting people take their picture and ending at a pizza joint. Apparently this has been going on for a couple years now but I had no idea about it until some of my local flickr friends mentioned it on twitter.

I was surprised at the number of zombies out; there were probably 200 of them running amok. I’ve never got the fascination with zombies and that whole genre of movies but it was funny to see what extremes people went to. I think the best part of the evening was when a TARC bus (public transportation) was stopped in the middle of the road and zombies were beating on the windows. I can’t imagine what was going through the riders heads if they had no idea what was going on. HA.

My camera and I were fighting most of the evening because I left my speedlite at home and didn’t want to use my on-camera flash. After realizing that most of my photos were going to turn out blurry I decided to put it away and not get anymore aggravated. I haven’t been using my camera very much lately, in fact, I think last night was the first time I picked it up in two weeks! I need to get back in a routine of using it but I need to do a lot of things. If you’re interested the rest of the photos are located here.