Super Psycho Magnet

As of midnight tonight I’m not eating meat for 30 days. I don’t know where it came from. Possibly the interest of experimentation. Possibly the want to challenge myself. Possibly boredom. Actually, yeah, I’m going with number three (3).

Regardless of reason, I’m going to do it!

Shockingly enough I didn’t take a late night trip to McDonalds to load up on double cheeseburgers and Big Mac’s like I usually do when I decide to “diet” or start eating differently. Instead, I went food shopping earlier tonight and built what I consider to be a solid base for my experiment. I’ve also got a great vegan cookbook and this island is pretty damn veggie-friendly.

Here goes nothing.

I love my dog.

There is no question about it. She’s the best friend I could ask for. We learn more and more from each other everyday. Pretty much the only human contact I have outside of work is her or because of her. I’m shockingly ok with this though. The more time I spend with her the more I hate people. She doesn’t talk back, she listens to my opinions without judgement and she loves me unconditionally. She’s my perfect companion.

However, since we do get to spend so much time together I think we’re starting to rub off on one another. Example: Yesterday I walked to the tobacconist and I tried to sniff the clerk’s butt. What? It’s a simple yet effective greeting.

As for Betsy… this morning she was playing with something, having a grand old time, and then it happened. She snorted. Just like her Mom. It was the K-9 equalivilant to the human giggle-snort.

My dog giggle-snorted.

And this is why I love her.

Two weeks ago I started taking a class on how to use my camera. I am in love with this class. I really am. It’s in a regular classroom, nothing spectacular. The room is split down the middle. Canon users on one side, Nikon on the other. The teacher is a Nikon user but he has 2 assistants that swear by the power of Canon. The Canons boo at the Nikons and the Nikons hiss at the Canons. The teacher says “Hummer” enough that it totally creeps me out. And the PC users HATE the MAC USERS! It’s just how things go.

We have an assignment every week. He gives us the specific settings the camera has to be on and we need to submit three pictures of one subject. One picture is underexposed, one is ‘perfect’ and the last one is overexposed. I submitted my pictures even though I wasn’t very happy with how they came out. My subject was color and I took a close-up of three tennis balls. The teacher was funny though because when he opened my set he did compliment me on my balls. He also said that he liked the ones that were overexposed the best. I agree with him. I like the picture of my overexposed balls too.

Here is day 3 through 14. (By the way, I’m really excited about my new macro lens. I think the gnomies agree.)

I’m sorry I haven’t been posting much lately. It’s been one hell of a fortnight.

I started taking classes, finally working towards a degree. Originally, I was going to stay with University of Maryland, University College to finish a Humanities degree. After careful thought I decided that a degree in Information Technology is the way to go for me. I love computers and working with them so it just seemed a logical choice. However, the University I’m attending, whose name I’m going to conceal until a later date, is quite different then anything I’ve ever experienced. I’ve only been to two classes and I’m starting to question as to whether or not this is the right school for me. I’m in a general education class at the moment and I’m starting to feel like the other people that are there, are only there because they were told to go in one form or another. Long story short, I feel like I’ve got to dumb down to go to class and that probably isn’t a good thing.

On top of that I started a photography class. It’s just a class to teach me how to use the camera that I have now. The instructor seems really cool. The only thing is he says, “Rim Jobber” a lot and that freaks me out. My mind goes to bad places when I hear that word. This class is going to go every Tuesday for the next 5 weeks.

I also start a Photoshop class tomorrow. It’s a 2 day class that will last ALL day! It’ll be good though. I’ll finally be able to learn something useful other than resizing my pictures, making collages and making LOL’CATS.

The most important thing of all? I also finally received the shipment that I had in storage. I called the property office on Monday just to get a status of my belongings. At first the guy couldn’t find it in the computer. “Great,” I thought, “They’ve lost it again.” To my surprise it had just arrived on the boat!!! I was told that it was going to take until 2 July so I was expecting another month or more without it. I had it delivered as soon as possible. That was Thursday. My shipment didn’t even go into storage. It came off the boat, onto a truck and to my apartment. I was so happy when I saw those 3 crates I cried. It’s been over a year and now it’s all mine once more.

Day One.

Day 2.

(**The pictures are blurry because I’ve discovered a new setting on my camera that I’m determined to master.**)

One of the things in my shipment was my bed frame. Last night I was able to raise my bed off the floor, roughly 6 inches. I never realized what a difference that makes. For some reason, being raised up that 6 inches last night made me sleep like a baby. Usually, I wake up two or three times during the night. Not last night, Buddy. I’m usually up at 5:30 at the latest because that’s the latest time I can get up for work and still make it on time. It’s also the time that Betsy starts nagging me to go outside. Not this morning. I got to sleep in. Betsy too. I woke up at 7:30 :::gasp::: with Betsy sleeping right next to my head.

I’ve been looking for a project to complete. A project or an experiment. I think I’ve found it.

I bought myself a Canon Rebel XT for my birthday last year and I still don’t know how to use it. Karyn has tried to teach me a couple times but I just kind of listened to her with a glazed look and immediately forgot everything she had said. And they say I don’t have ADD.

A few weeks ago I was browsing through University of Hawaii’s website a workshop that is going to teach me how to use that beast. There are two classes in a series actually. The first will teach you how to use the camera properly (i.e. aperture, lighting) and the second class will get more into trick photography. My class starts tomorrow and I couldn’t be more excited!

With that being said I thought it would be interesting to take one picture everyday for the next year and see how my photography progresses.

Starting tomorrow, I’ll be posting them on here and on my Flickr account under a whole new category.