So today in Photoshop 2, our project was to create, from scratch, a holiday card.



Me, sexually frustrated? Naaaahhhh. :-)

I generated super-duper big news monday, I'm just too damn busy to write about it now. It needs its own post and photo examples. That, and I've had a cold, unlike anything I've had in years, kicking my poor little ass since the day before Thanksgiving. I've been living on generic DayQuil (or, as I like to call it "The Elixir of Life"), and getting looped up on NyQuil for the last week. I'll write more when I'm not all looped up on cold meds.

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I'm getting really good with handling and shooting the street hockey ball. All I need are shoulder pads, a jersey, and those weird legging things to cover the shin and knee pads. Took two big spills tonight, but I was wearing my gloves, elbow pads, and padded trousers (which feels like a huge diaper). The first one I landed on my elbow, though, which jabbed me in the diaphragm and knocked the wind out of me. Gave my knee a nice road rash in the process, but it was overshadowed by my desperate gasping for air. A few minutes of sitting down and I was back out. Once I buy the shoulder pads, I really think I'm going to do quite well on the ice...

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Went over to Dark Haired Girl's tonight. Her back was hurting, so I gave her back and feet massages with lotion. I'm such a tactile person and love feeling her super-soft silky skin.

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Anyways... nyquil is kicking in. Goodnight all. I'm zonking.

Funny, but when you're beer buzzing, 'blogger' almost always comes out as "booger" the first time you try to type the website into your browser.

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Anyways.... Wednesday at the L&V I was invited by Beth (proof that there is a God, however spoken for she is) to go out with her and a group of friends tonight. So I showed up at the L&V at 8:30, but as the disparate elements of "the group" showed up, they all took root at different tables and started a steady order of drinks. An hour later, I figured the idea of going out with other people was most likely a moot point, and I desperately need a change of scenery.

So few people use the word 'moot' in everyday converstation. But I digress...

I get bored by the suck-ass band that has commenced their sonic assault, so I head over to Avalanche where I figure it'll be more tame. There's a $5 cover charge, but as I stand outside by the check-in desk chatting with the very friendly night lady (Avalanche is in a hotel), the band sounds well worth the $5, so I go in.

I spend several hours and many beers bopping to the music, but otherwise not interacting with the almost entirely couples crowd there on a saturday night with no single women in sight. Welcome to Troy, Ohio.

To my right, though, are two 40 or 50-something MILFs (showing much clevage) who are cracking me up with their conversations of ex-boyfriends and birthday parties gone alcohol-drivenly wildly awry. I have to say something of my amusement to them, and am immediately whisked off to the dance floor.

I know what you all are thinking, but they both had boyfriends and I wasn't hitting on them. Just people having a little innocent fun dancing to a good classic rock cover band.

My point is that after I left the L&V, the "crowd" went to Dunaway's, and had a so-so time there, while I struk out all by me onesy (as per usual. *sigh*), and had a fantastic time dancing and chitchatting with two very attractive older ladies. I stopped by the L&V on my way from Avalanche to learn of the others' fate, and was so happy I took the gamble and left on my own. No, this wasn't a pick-up, get-laid kind of night (as I in my capricious late 20's often hope for), but it was a totally and wholly satisfying social event nonetheless. I doubt the same could be said for the rest, or even myself had I stayed and clung to their coat tails.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Story of my life.

'Cause I'm gonna be a cowboy, baby!

Hi guys. Shot my first rodeo this weekend. Met up with Lee at 10am and didn't get home until around 1am. Long freakin day, but it was such a blast! There's a strict traditional dress code for anybody entering the arena, so I had to sport boots, a flannel shirt tucked in with sleeves buttoned at wrists, and a cowboy hat. Luckily, I had bought a hat when I was dating Sophie.

I still miss her. I think about her all the time. Still talk to her from time to time. But all the horses at the rodeo, and the particular way they sound and smell, really kept making me think of her.

But I digress. Lee kept jokingly calling me "Tex" all day because of the hat. He brought three of his computers, one to download the images after each event and do on-location printing, and two for customer viewing stations. Horse people are also usually money people, and like to pay in cashon the spot. Anyway, I set them up, established a network, and we were off! I made a shitload of sales that day from my photos.

I did get to flirting with one arena worker. She was this amazon type who was probably several inches taller than me (oh yeah!), and was cute as a button in the face. She was working the gates at the pen where the calves in the roping events ran into, and she was sitting on top of the rail for extended periods. I struck up a conversation by saying to her: "Doesn't your backside kill you sitting on that bar for so long?" We chitchatted for a while, but I didn't sense any diggage from her. Or maybe she's just shy. I'm clueless when it comes to that. Anyway, I hope to see her at the rodeo at the same arena in December. Maybe I'll try talking to her again.

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So I'm sitting at a bar the other day, and watching the TV, when Entertainment Tonight came on. I was watching with disinterested detachment until an absolute GODDESS came on. It was the actress Sara Ramierz from the show Grey's Anatomy. They were playing various clips, and asking her about her larger size. She mentioned reservations about doing certain scenes, and then they showed a clip of her doing a little grindy sexy-dance in her underwear. I nearly fell off my barstool, I was so... I don't know. There isn't a word for what i felt at that moment. Something like spontaneously orgasming while my heart shattered to pieces. Oh, the wretched painful joy!



Sara Ramirez is now the hottest woman on Earth. Period.

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I am this close



to having all the gear I need to play hockey. Found a guy on craigslist.com who'll sell me shoulder pads and a big duffle bag for $10. Then, all I need is a helmet and I'm ready to do some damage, baby! Nevermind that the damage will most likely be to my own team, but it'll be done with serious moxie!

Showed up sunday morning to hockey practice, but didn't bring my stuff. I didn't have all the gear I needed, and I want to be padded from head to toe before I go out there. But I stayed and watched the scrimage, which was thrilling even though they didn't keep score or count penalties or anything. They just played. Some guys were from semi-pro Dayton teams like the Bombers or the now-defunct Gems, while some were far more amateur and less graceful, and obviously more on my level, which made me feel better.

Afterward, I hung out in the locker room and introduced myself. I don't think I've smelled anything in many many years quite so rank as a hockey locker room. And I haven't been in the presence of so many naked men since boot camp. Kinda took me by surprise there.

Still can't do the "hockey stop", but with practice during the last public skate, I can now kick up a little snow when I turn sharply. I figure it'll be something I grow into.

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Hung out with Dark Haired Girl yesterday night. It was her birthday, so I bought her and her girls an extra-large pizza for dinner. Afterward, when her girls went to bed, she and I sat on the couch watching TV for a while. Nothing risqué, just two friends enjoying each others' company. And that's what makes the dynamic between us so wonderful.

2007 Is Gonna Be My Year

It was November 18, 2005, that I moved away from my marriage, and out on my own. Or, as much as one can be on one's own while shacking up with one's folks. But anyway, I was thinking today...

2007 is going to be my year. See, the rest of '05 was spent still reeling from the transition, as was most of the first half of '06. Now, I'm solidifying my roots in society, but also in myself. I'm my own person now. I have a career, and seniority at school. In a nutshell, 2006 was spent reactively arranging my chess pieces on the board of life from utter chaos to a position in which they're proactively ready to pounce. And pounce I will. I have the confidence now. I am totally my own man now. I am no longer the squeamish little boy I once was, even just recently.

But more on that on the 18th... the one year anniversary of my transition.

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Guess what? I'm going to play HOCKEY. You heard me right... mild mannered angelic little Andy Hutchinson is going to don his skates and gear, and leave a wake blood in his trail at the Hobart Arena.

Ok, so that's pushing it a little, but I did get an invitation to join the adult hockey league. See, there's always a coach in the penalty box from where I shoot the peewee hockey games. One invited me to join the "Old Man's" hockey league, and he just happened to be league brass. Me, shmooze? Naaaahhhhh! So I went to the used sporting goods store, Play It Again Sports, and started buying up hockey gear. I've already amassed $6 gloves, $8 shin and knee pads, and $5 elbow pads. Old school readers, remember the Ontario skates I bought last december? Totally applicable.

So tonight I bought a street hockey ball, and put on my Roces inlines, big padded gloves, and elbow pads. I already had a street hockey stick in the garage from when I was a teen in the 90's. (picture the following visual as a scene from a movie, shot in slow motion with "Chariots of Fire" playing in the background) I grabbed my 14 or so year old hockey stick, swiped the dust and cobwebs off of it, and proceeded to tear up the pavement in front of my house. Darting and batting the hockey ball to and fro, I realized I wasn't half bad.

That is, until I was going backward and wiped out most heinously. But I got back up and said aloud to myself: "Well, the new elbow pads work!" Smarted a little, but I'll just have to toughen up a bit. grrr.

I'm gonna kick ass once I buy the helmet, padded trousers, shoulder pads, and most importantly of all... the jock cup.

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I'm doing this for a number of reasons:

1) A diversion so I don't burn out on photography.
2) To impress women. My inner adolescent is alive and well.
3) To drop weight. Sick of weighing 280lbs.
4) To add a desperately needed splash of "badboy" into the mix

Regarding 4, I'm sick of being so one-sided... all yang without a little ying to balance it out. I can't be Clark Kent all the time... there needs to be a little testosterone-laden Superman poking through every now and again. Time to acknowledge that I am, in actuality, male.

No, mild mannered silly dorky nerdy goofball Andy isn't going away... he'll always be my base personality. He's just getting an extra dimension; he's becoming a little more colorful. :-)

It's the end of an era...

Tonight was my last night at Chipotle. It was a very fond farewell, with an open invite to come back to work at any time. According to Lee, things slow down in spring between the winter and summer/fall sports, so I may just have to go back for some supplemental income. I can't tell you how liberating it feels, though, to have that weight lifted off my shoulders. It's just school and photography now, without that pesky day job schedule to worry about.

It does kinda suck, though. I liked the work and everybody there, and I've never had a job before where I could say that. But I assured them that I'm still going to be going to school just down the road for another two years; I'll be in there getting lunch or dinner at least twice a week. :-)

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Speaking of photography, I spent saturday from 6am to 6pm shooting the "super saturday" hockey tournament. Friday night, I went to the local mom & pop sports store here in town, and purchased a mouth guard and also some forearm pads. Sure enough, during the peewee game a kid hit the wall and his stick went over, which I deflected with the forearm pads. I'm hitting "Play It Again Sports", a 2nd hand store in Huber Heights tomorrow, as well as the pawn shops and several Salvation Army locations I know of, in search of a good used helmet before I shell out $50 for a new one.

Back to Saturday... Lee brought his computers and I brought my card reader so customers could view the photos we were taking right after each game. Several ladies, as well as the guy who bought my display prints last weekend (super nice guy), were filling out order forms from the photos I took, and they want a ton of prints. Hoping the web brings in more sales as well, but I've already made out like a freakin bandit this weekend.

Anyway, by the end of the sixth game, I told Lee I couldn't shoot anymore. Even with his nice gel kneepads from Sears, it felt like somebody was running shishkebob skewers through my kneecaps. I was completely exhausted. But I had plans afterward with the zaftig beauty, Dark Haired Girl...

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Every time I speak of intimate encounters with Dark Haired Girl, I always put each time in superlative terms. That's not just me being overly complimentary. I really mean what I say about our experiences. And saturday night with her was by far not only the most intense, most passionate, but also most tender and affectionate night that we've shared. And she was never before more radiant.

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My foolish heart has gone and started wanting a girlfriend again. I guess it's been long enough that it's pretty much gotten entirely over Sophie. And then there's those goddamned eHarmony commercials, and my heart is so unbelieveably gullible. It actually buys the crap that my brain has the good sense to totally dismiss.

But there was a couple ahead of me in line at the store tonight. They were about my age, and they had a little baby in a carrier in the cart. The young couple looked so in love, and both gushed over their child. Such an amazingly strong feeling of jealousy welled up in me. I guess guys have that "biological clock" too, and I'm feeling it ticking ever louder.

But I haven't even really started dating yet. And do I really really want to un-single myself just yet? No. Definitely not. With school and my new job, and still living with my parents... absolutely, positively no.

Hanging out with Ruben (of Mexican descent) the other night, he said to me: "Andy, you need to find yourself a chubby latino girlfriend who'll stuff you full of enchiladas." That made me chuckle.

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The Tylenol PM just kicked in. Good night.

In Photoshop 2 today, we continued the painting lesson. We were given a photograph of a knife, and we had to create a totally from-scratch image overtop it using the photo for reference. Then, we had to drop in a provided background, and create a shadow. So here's my humble offering, 3 hours, 10 paths, and 14 layers in the making. Nothing in this is from the original photo, it's 100% by hand, save for the backdrop:



What a tedious pain in the butt. But the result is cool. :-) Now where's my excedrin?

In Photoshop 2, we started talking about painting with photoshop. We were given an empty outline of Taz, with numbers specifying what colors go where. We were then to paint shadows and highlights over the flat solid colors to give him shape and dimension. Lastly (and this is the part I hate), we were to create a background and incorporate text. Well, I thought it looked like he was dancing. So...



Todd always mentions how I love to use bright day-glow colors, so I decided to really smack him upside the head with color, and turned it in with the title "Andy's seizure-inducing Taz".

Zaftig beauty, hockey pucks, and desperately needed change.

Yeah, it's been awhile since my last post. But not all hope is lost! Chipotle has greatly reduced my hours, and I've got more free time on my hands. So let's see what has happened since last week...

[Wayne's World style "skiddly-doo! skiddly-doo! skiddly-doo!"]

Friday night, went over to Eagles Girl's place, and we picked up some sandwiches and beer. We sat and watched movies, she curled up against me during. After, she put in a commercial for a college in Cleveland that she was in, as well as some college student's weird art movie that she had a part in. We just sat and talked, and she whipped out her guitar and we traded songs.

No, nothing beyond putting my arm around her during the movie happened. It's not what we need right now, and she's kinda working on a relationship with a guy in Florida. But we both need a friend, and somebody to hang out with.

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Saturday I went and shot a couple of "squirt" hockey games. Got some awesome action shots, and afterward bought a nice padded binder and page protectors at Staples. Came home and printed about five prints off. Lee told me I need a portfolio to show off.

Later that night, I went over to Dark Haired Girl's. She had a bunch of friends over, and it was nice to hang out with a crowd. We watched "The Breakup", and I have to say, it was kind of annoying. Not really all that funny. :-( I had such high hopes for it.

So Sunday I'm shooting more hockey games, with older kids. Unexpectedly sold three of my example prints, right on the spot. Hell yeah. The older kids were much more fast paced, and the game was actually quite thrilling. I shot from the penalty box, alongside one of the coaches. I even commented how exciting the game was, and that it made me want to go out and skate. He invited me to join the "old man's" hockey league, which had a game that night if I wanted to come and watch.

Schmoozing with the league brass. That's me. :-)

I damn near ate a hockey puck, though. Even when shooting on my knees from behind the barrier (and the glass is behind the penalty box, not in front), I'm still exposed from about the chest up. One of the kids did a slap shot to bounce the puck off the wall around an opponent, but it flew a little too high and bounced off the barrier right under me. It flew unbelievably fast, and hit the hollow steel wall with an earsplitting BANG like a gunshot.

Scared the everliving shit out of me.

I flinched so hard I hit the floor, and gasped "Jesus Christ!" The coach just chuckled at me. I'm definitely buying one of those plastic teeth guards before the tournament this weekend. I like my teeth. I'd like to keep them in my mouth.

Between supersonic flying disks of vulcanized rubber, charging bulls (weekend after this), and football running backs charging out of bounds, I'm most definitely going to get my ass kicked sooner or later doing this.

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Week from today is my last at Chipotle! Yay! I'll miss that job, but it's just too much in the way of the photography and school now.

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While cleaning at stillwater a few days ago, I came across one of those Merriam-Webster's daily calendars with unusual words and definitions. In the trash was this previous day's page:

zaftig
adj: having a full rounded figure; pleasingly plump

"Real Women Have Curves," proclaimed a 2002 movie title. In this view, the ideal woman is robust, pleasingly plump, Rubenesque, full-figured, queen-size, lush, substantial, voluptuous, statuesque. She is, in a word, zaftig. "Zaftig"... comes from the Yiddish zaftik, which means "juicy" or "succulent".

I have finally found the all-encompassing word to describe the hottest women on the planet: ZAFTIG!

Dark Haired Girl, Eagles Girl... perfect examples of succulent, juicy, zaftig hotness. Oh yeah.

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Cooling the hormones down a bit... as I'm typing this, Bush is giving his speech. Rumsfeld is resigning, and will finally no longer be able to do any more damage. Bush himself acknowledged that the GOP took, in his words, "A thumpin", and already his tone and attitude have changed from defiance, to expressing much more complacency and desire for bipartisan cooperation. America spoke, and the people won. The Republicans are out.

Let the disaster clean-up and the healing begin. Hallelujah.

Lee and I worked out an employment arrangement today. Last week he asked how many hours and at what pay rate I'd need to be able to quit Chipotle. Today I went to his office and said that I needed at bare minimum 20 hours a week at $7/hour. He said he was thinking more along the lines of $9. Hell yeah, no complaints from me.

So tonight after class, I drove over to Chipotle and gave the store manager my two weeks. And in two weeks, I'll be following my dreams %100. Photography school, and a now embarking on my career. Not just another job... an honest-to-God CAREER. Usually when somebody has an impractical dream, the advice is "Don't quit your day job, kid." But fuck it all. I quit my day job, and I'm on top of the freakin world.

Today truly was the first day of the rest of my life.

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Troy's a small town, and googling the locations I talk about brings up this blog. Tonight at my favorite watering hole, a guy I hang out with asked me if I kept a blog, and said that his mom pulled one up and said "Hey, is this your photographer friend?" Gonna hafta watch what I say on here. Troy's a small town.

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Here's then next installment of my Photoshop 2 project. This one is more in tune with the requirements, since the whole thing is made from scratch. I modeled this after the cover of mom's copy of John Grisham's "The Rainmaker"

Tuesdays with Photoshop

Today in Photoshop II, we had to create four images using our names, the focus of the project being working with text. Ok, so we were supposed to create the whole shmear from scratch, and I swear I will with the next two, but I had the bright idea to incorporate my name with existing images. So I found an image of a fighter pilot's name patch, patch tooled out his name, and found a tutorial online on making text look like embroidery. A little tweaking with an inner shadow to give the appearance of the upper shading, and a drop shadow to give the white highlight pixels underneath, and voila!



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So I decide to look up "monument" on Google image search, and find this wonderful picture, made all the funnier because I actually know a guy who just joined the Masons. Again, I clone stamped out the original name, put in "A. HUTCHINSON", and then added the last line of text as a punchline. Todd, my instructor, thought it was a little morbid. He joked "Dude, you're killing yourself off. That's weird."