Updates are pretty scarce these days aren't they? I've spent a relaxing day working on the Assemble Fiji site, watching tv, doing laundry and being a lazy bum all at the same time. hehe Not sure how that works. I guess sleeping in till 10am will make you feel like a lazy bum! It was amazing though! I wore comfy clothes, no makeup and only left the house for dinner and came right back. I took my time working on the Assemble Fiji site and still felt like I accomplished a lot! I just finished watching Superman Returns. Good movie... I bought it when it first came out on dvd and I hadn’t sat down to watch it. A friend referred to a line from the movie in a chat the other day so I decided to watch it. I’m currently waiting for a load of laundry to be done so I figured it’s time for an update.
So I turned in my prints to the San Bernardino County Fair. I opted to volunteer on a Saturday for a couple of hours so I got a free ticket and parking pass. I guess I'll be going to the fair for the first time in years! I think the last time I went to the fair was with Jesse. (Speaking of which, the anniversary of his death is coming up and he's been on my mind quite a lot. That and running into his brother at Starbucks the other morning didn't help. It's a bit hard to realize someone so close to me is gone and has been gone for almost a year.) For those of you who don't know, I entered my first ever photo contest. It was quite process let me tell ya. I entered just in time and wasn't sure what pictures I wanted to enter so I picked 2 divisions and 2 classes each that I knew fit my style of photography. This proved to be more difficult then originally planned. I had my friend Leonard help me print up the pictures I picked. He was a Godsend! He helped me crop and print at the best quality. He opened up his own business called Cracked Egg Graphic Design Studio. I met him on a web/graphic design job quite a few years back, he was working at a printing place at the time. Anyways, we’ve kept in touch off and on through the years but I was happy to hear from him a little over a month ago and we met up so I could check out his studio and when he heard my dilemma with getting my prints done he offered his services. Anyways, here are the four I turned in...
Top left - Color Misc: Desert Sunrise.
Top Right - Black and White Nature: Cherry Blossoms.
Bottom Left - Black and White Misc: Journey.
Bottom Right - Color Nature: Tears of a Flower.
A Chair's Photography - Having entered the photo contest my friend Jason encouraged me to get at least a bit of a splash page up before I turned them in so that whoever saw my prints (which have my url along side my name) would be able to check out my site. So here it is everyone!
www.achairsphotography.com ! A work in progress but something is actually up. I got a bit of a vision for what I want to do with the site and surprisingly enough it’s going to go away from my personal sites look and feel.
Assemble Communications - As I stated above, I worked on the Assemble Fiji site today. Yes, they have commissioned me to do more work for them. It’s been hectic but I’m thankful for the extra cash that it will bring.
Dentist - I had a dentist appointment last Friday and found out my referral for my wisdom teeth extraction came back approved! In some respects I’ll be glad when it’s over, but right now I’m like a little kid that hates the dentist! The idea of being put out scares me and of course because my teeth are impacted they want to put me completely out. Not sure if I’m more afraid of what I’ll say as I’m coming to (I’ve heard embarrassing stories!) or just the thought of actual surgery… in my mouth of all places! I remember what it felt like when they took out some teeth to make room when I got my braces on. Not a good memory. Anyways, I have almost two months to fret about it! As the oral surgeon isn’t available till June 28th! Oh joy!
Travel - I talked to my friend Stephanie up in Oregon the other day. She wants me to come up for a visit. I think I need/want to! I have been trying to figure out where to go for my birthday. Maybe this is what I should do. But I also want to go visit family in Montana as there are a lot of events that are taking place there. One: A family reunion on my mom’s side. People I’ve never met in the entirety of my life! This has already been set as lowest priority to the other events. Two: My grandpa’s 80th birthday! What a milestone! Definitely want to make it out for that. Three: grandparents may be moving and will need our help. But we’re trying to not have this happen as my grandparents have lived on the farm since I believe they were married. So the family is trying to figure out a way for them to stay there. But going back to the decision to go to Oregon, the decision is made, it’s just a matter of when.
April 7th - Jason's Play and dinner: my long time friend Jason called me or I called him. I can’t remember. But he had a play he was in for Easter and wanted me to go and he wanted to hang out afterwards and catch up. My friend Andie and I went. It was a great play! I was impressed. Jason didn’t have a main role but he did well in his performance. Afterwards we hung out at Red Robin with his uncle who was also in the play. Here are a couple pictures.
April 8th - Easter and makeup: Easter was mellow. I went to church, got to test drive a 2006 BMW 325i!!! Holly and Daniel came to church and they are Rachel’s in-laws. It was Holly’s new car. I was lovin it! Here are a couple pics from church.
After church I went over to my parents’ and had Easter dinner and then watched the Passion of the Christ and of course cried. I have a hard time watching that movie and not tearing up. After that my sister wanted to use me as her canvas for her makeup class. And I was quite shocked at the difference but here are some pictures! What do you think? Hehe
April 10th Tax return! - I went over to my dads the week taxes were to be turned in. Nothing like procrastinating to the last minute! I knew I was going to owe because my severance package from linkLINE was not taxed and neither was the money from the work I did for Assemble. So I was dreading another bill I had to figure out how to pay. My dad helps review what I’ve already entered and helps me answer the questions I wasn’t sure about on turbotax and in our review he noticed I hadn’t claimed my tithe. I told him I never claimed my tithe and he asked why I hadn’t. I guess it was because when I was younger he told me I didn’t make enough for it to matter and well now that I’m older and making more money it is enough to matter… So since he is the keeper of the tithe records and turbo tax allowed me to go back to 2001 I was able to claim the exact amount I’d paid in tithe every year. I got a little over 1,200.00 back!!!! I’ve never gotten more then 600.00 since I’ve been doing my taxes! This was such an unexpected surprise! Of course it’s all gone to pay off debt but that’s the way it should be right? It’s just a bit of a bummer I couldn’t use that money to do more for my business like get equipment or something. But that’s ok… It was a huge blessing and I was never more grateful that I tithe! Haha
April 21st - Hector’s Surprise Birthday Party: Hector is a guy I work with at Alliance. Keith had invited me to his surprise birthday party for Hector’s 40th birthday. It was a hoedown theme. I had a good time. Got to see my friends Jess and Marc who drove from Wisconsin to be there! I leave you with a bunch of pictures from the day.
Labels: A Chair's Photography, Assemble, Dentist, Parties, Pictures, Travel
posted by Charity at 4/29/2007 01:00:00 AM
*this post has been written over a few days*
So my friend Jason and I stayed up talking till way late Monday night. But the conversation was awesome! We were having a lot of fun discussing all sorts of things and before we knew it we had been on the phone a few hours and it was really, really late… or early however you want to look at it! Like I said in my last post, I was surprised I did so well on 3 ½ hours of sleep! And honestly the conversation was needed and I wouldn't have changed that.
Mission: Accomplished! Where do I begin!? I mean there were so many goals and plans and events over the last month or so! All took place, and I'm left feeling like if this is an idea of how this year is going to turn out… I have a lot to look forward to! I am going to attempt to share some of the things I've been up to this past month. Life has been amazing. The internal change has made a big impact in my life and how I relate and look at things.
March 10th : Hanging out with Russ – I went down to Burbank to hang out with my long time friend Russ. We've been friends for a few years but since he lives so far away we've tried to make a day of our hangouts and getting a full day together has been hard. We had an absolute blast! I would say probably one of the best times I've had hanging out with him thus far. I met up with him at his place and he took me out and about around Burbank, Hollywood, Marina Del Rey and to his work. Here are a few pics from the day
March 13th : Hair cut – My sister has been going to cosmetology school and she felt I would look great with side bangs. So I gave her the chance after some reluctance to cut my hair the way she wanted to and… I love it!
March 15th : Final breakdown on freeway – I wrote about this in my March 19th post so I won’t repeat myself. But while I waited I snapped a couple shots of the traffic playing with exposure settings. Here are a couple of the good shots.
March 16th to 18th : Vegas - I was supposed to go to Vegas and go see Evanescence with my friend Armando but because I was having so many issues with my car I opted not to go. I was going to see if I could barrow my mom's car but she wasn't too willing to let me considering I'd be driving up to Vegas for the weekend by myself. My mom seems to have built up a new fear of me being independent even at the age of 29! But I had to cancel on Armando and my friend Debbie. At least until I could get a new car.
March 16th : 24 Elsinore @ Drapers – Because I didn’t end up going to Vegas I decided to go to my friend Eirik’s show. It was cool hanging out with them. It’s been a while. The last time I went out with them it was for Jason’s show and he threw up on stage and called my name out in one of the songs. Good times. Hehe Here are a few of the pics
March 20th : Meeting James in person – My friend James and I met online back in we’re guessing 1999 or 2000. We have been friends since then and every time we’ve tried to meet up something comes up or we can’t get over to the other person. So James had a class down in LA, so I chose to take off work a little early and meet him down there. We went down to the Santa Monica Pier. It was a trip being friends with someone for so long and just meeting in person after all these years! We had a great time. It was only odd in the fact that we had yet to meet in person. Here are a couple shots
March 24th : Bought a new car! – Yup! Decided the last time I broke down on the side of the freeway that it just wasn’t worth it anymore. With how much I commute I just needed to have a reliable car. I decided against the 2006 because the cost was just too far out of my range. I did my research and found a 2005 Honda Civic LX with 32,000 miles and bought it for $13,800. I went down to Kaiser Brother’s Honda in L.A. Spent a good portion of a day working out the details and drove away with my new car! This dealership is awesome! They treated me great! Though it took a while to get everything done they made up for it in other ways. A few days after I bought the car I got a $20 Starbucks card in the mail from them! My dad was really impressed with them too. Check it out! Here’s my new car!
March 25th : Bonsai Exhibit – I went back to the Huntington Library for a Bonsai Exhibit they were having. I unfortunately only stayed a few hours but I got some great shots!
March 29th to April 1st : Shawn and Brenda – Shawn and Brenda were out in Fiji for business with Assemble Communications. They were flying back to the states and had an overnight layover in California. So we got to see each of them for a day on seperate days. :)
Ok so if you can believe it I have a few more events to post pictures about but I think the month of March is a good enough start. :) And if you did get through all of these I hope enjoyed them. I'm posting this before I start writing too much more.
Labels: Inspiration, Pictures, Rambling
posted by Charity at 4/13/2007 10:52:00 PM
Life is good even on 3 1/2 hours of sleep! :D Thanks Jason! ;)
I know it's been a while since I've updated. The amount of pictures I want to share means an extremely long post. But I hope to do some posting this week and maybe I'll post one event at a time or something. I have a few priorities though staying on the phone till the wee hours of the morning last night didn't really fit in to that plan.
But I took some quiet time outside, took a nap on the grass under some trees on my lunch break! Listening to a mix of binaural beats and running water. It was amazingly relaxing!
Now back to the grind.
Labels: Rambling
posted by Charity at 4/10/2007 02:17:00 PM 
