Home...

Tia is HOME!

After a harrowing flight home, various delays at airports across the country and nights in strange places, Tia arrived home, exhausted and 24 hours later than originally planned.

It's Christmas morning, the house is dark and quiet, the weather outside is threatening, distant rumblings of thunder and rain pattering the roof. No dinner in the oven, no family around us, no Christmas chaos, not even the twinkle of soft lights adorning a ceremonial tree this year. Our house is a pretty pathetic sight.

Tia is sleeping in the other room having come down with a stomach virus and running a fever. She was up most of the night making quick trips to the bathroom. I feel bad for her, but I know that she needs the rest and I'm glad she is at least in her own bed now, resting, knowing she is home.

I'm relaxing on the sofa, watching TV and resting and looking after Tia. It's a pathetic Christmas this year and I'm glad we didn't make an abundance of plans because they would have all been cancelled.

Hope you and yours are enjoying the day, the season and doing what you need to do, or whatever you want to do.

Still Counting... (and taking pictures)

Wow, I can't believe it's been ten days since my last post! Time surely flies. So here it is, three-quarter past ten on the 20th of the 12th month... too many numbers there. I guess I haven't posted because nothing has really changed and I've been busy counting hours and minutes until my honey gets here. So far we are at 49 hours exactly! Every time I think about our first meeting Friday I get teared up. I know I'm going to make a fool of myself at the airport, probably a sobbing mess when she gets here, but that's ok, who the hell cares! GOD I MISS HER!

So I've been busy with quite a few photography gigs. These pictures are of items from an interior design firm I am building a website for. It was fun, I liked the textures and the varieties of physical experiences encountered with the camera. I have a gig next week shooting for the City of Sarasota 2006 Annual Report. It's all donated work, but I get photo credit and that will be nice exposure - excuse the pun please. I think my favorites of this series are the colored glass pieces at the beginning and near the end of this post. You really need to click on them and enlarge them to truly appreciate the depth of field in them.

Next I need to figure out how to shoot people, naturally, in their own environment, some people have a knack for it, making people forget about the lens and the recording device, I need to figure that out. Seems like a distant planet right now, I feel so foolish shooting people, I always feel I am being judged and inspected if I know what I'm doing. Most of the time I do what I do on instinct, so to try to explain it, I stumble. I need more practice, I know... Anyway, I'm rambling.... Did I say it was only 49 hours until I get to be with my most amazing, most beautiful, most wonderful woman in the world, wife?

Cheers and Merry Christmas (or whatever you celebrate)!

Counting...

I'm counting the hours, the minutes and the breaths until my sweetie returns! I want to keep it a secret so I can have her all to myself - at least for the first day or two! I think we have some catching up to do, whaddoyathink?

It will be a sweet Christmas... I'm leaving the Christmas decorating for a time when we can do that together. Usually we put up the decorations the day after Thanksgiving, but I just couldn't bring myself to decorate. So, we're going to make that the second thing we do together. Probably don't have to go into much detail about the first thing...

The temperature the past couple of days has dipped considerably! It has been in the 40's at night and in the upper 60's, low 70's during the day. It's been perfect! It's this time of year I live for here, relief from the blasting heat and humidity of the long summer months. Winter is the only enjoyable season in Florida. Unfortunately, the weather has been unseasonably warm lately and these cold snaps don't last very long and before you know it, the temps are creeping back up into the 80's YUK. I am really longing for a change in climate - and perhaps a change in elevation and geological diversity!

It'll be an interesting time when Tia returns. We're stepping backwards now, back to square one in our plans. Do we adjust the price of the house until it sells, do we stay put for another year or more, do we look at other locations? It's all up in the air. I know Tia is frustrated about all of it, and I don't blame her, I think she just went through a metaphorical social and career blender being in New Zealand the past three months. And I'm burnt out on being in Sarasota. Together it's an odd mix of wanting to take off for another destination and planting ourselves in the sand for the season... Only time, and numerous conversations will tell. The best of all, whatever we do, we'll be together again.

Officially... Christmas Already

Yes. It is official, my Christmas present has come. Tia is coming back to me. It's true and in stone now, her ticket is dated December 22. We're 18 days from being reunited. We have made no decision about what we're doing, we plan on having a number of lengthy talks about the plan - that's after we have copious amounts of "together" time. (I'll let your minds take you where you may...) It's exciting. Hell, it's damned fantastic.

Opened up my Verizon Wireless bill today... now, as a consumer, I guess I should have been proactive and called to find out what the international rates are for New Zealand... because they're $1.50 a MINUTE! My phone bill is $581!!!!!! I almost fell over. Tia and I talked on Friday (prior to this bill's date) for 150 minutes - that's a $225 conversation! I don't even EARN that much per hour. I'm naucious.

Thanks for sticking by us in our perforated contacts online. It's nice to know you guys are always here.