Wow

Here are some images I made on Memorial Day, when we went to visit Grandpa and Judy. A lovely day, relaxing, with Dad manning the grill (just one of his many, many talents), topped off by gigantic slices of fresh watermelon. Ahhh, summer is finally here!

Zozo had a blast, too, alternately trying to pull the designs off Judy's shirt and the hair out of Judy's head. A good sport, Judy, she grinned and bore it with all the patience in the world.

Life is pretty darn good. I'm sitting here, blogging away, with a cat resting on my stomach (which means I'm getting a "cat scan" according to Papa), my beautiful babe sleeps soundly in her crib after a fun night playing with Mommy and Daddy, and my husband makes us smoothies with fresh fruit. Cardinals baseball on the radio, and fresh sheets on the bed. Don't you sleep better when you have fresh, crisp sheets on the bed? It's like when you get new tennis shoes and you can run faster and jump higher.

Well, the Cards just lost, so life got incrementally worse, but not so much that anyone would notice, really. We've turned off KTRS (hate everyone on there but Rooney and Shannon) and now have some Daniel MacKenzie playing on the Mac. For those of you not familiar with Daniel MacKenzie, I highly recommend you take a listen. He's kinda folksy, kinda soft rock, kinda jazzy. I discovered him through a review on NPR and finally, finally, Amazon started carrying his CD, A Complete Unknown. He's one of my favorite "unknown" artists.

For those of you out there wondering, yes, M is working diligently on his plans for the 2006 Christmas Display. Thaaaaat's right. It's May, and we're thinkin' Christmas in the Z house. Most of ya'all aren't even thinking about Christmas, but my husband, aka Clark Griswold or "Sparky," thinks about it year-round.

It's a nice arrangement we have, M and I, with our hobbies. I mess with images and blog, and he plans, calculates, measures, estimates, and configures. And somewhere at Ameren there is a Mr. Burns-esque figure tapping his fingers together, "Excellent."

My Brooks Jensen portfolio came in the mail today. The prints are just gorgeous. The two singles are propped up on the mantel for enjoyment, and the portfolio has been admired and will be pored over more in-depth later (after hands are thoroughly washed, of course).

Found an ad in my PDN (Photo District News for those of you not living in the World of Photography like I am), that had a great headline: To a photographer, if a day goes by without doing something related to photography, something essential to existence has been ignored.

That's a pretty succinct way to sum up how I feel about photography. I may not be able to make images every day, but I can do something related to my passion, be it visiting photo.net, reading one of my favorite photography magazines, or, now, posting even old images to my blog. Sometimes I just look through magazines or on the Internet for images that make my breath catch in my throat...that make me go, "Wow." Images like that inspire me to keep making my own images, in the hopes that some day, someone else will look at my work, feel a catch, and whisper, "Wow."