My beloved L&V had their grand opening last night, so I figured I'd make an appearance (camera in hand of course), have a nice date night with Dark Haired Girl, hang out with Ruben & Co., and maybe pass out some business cards. I played dress-up with my black t-shirt under black striped collar shirt, and (eek!) gel in my hair. Ruben, Brie (left), and Jess (right) had already arrived and snagged a section of the super-comfortable overstuffed leather chairs up on the balcony. I've been in weird head space about going out over the last few weeks, but last night was truly the most fun I've had for as long as I can remember... and I had exactly ice water to drink all night.






I got flagged down by a table of guys, and turns out they're a band needing photos, so we exchanged cards, shook hands on a deal, and I got gig for next saturday night! Anyway, all night long in the chairs behind us, this couple canoodled up on the balcony. As I was standing outside to catch some fresh air and chat with Ruben while he had a smoke, the couple left, but not before stopping for a kiss.

Hi all! As expected, business with Bossman has dropped to nearly nil post-holidays, and I, your friend and humble narrator, am in a bind as to finding income. I DEARLY wish to stay the hell away from foodservice, although in this economy, Tim Hortons still wants me back. I've been reading a book called "Guerrilla Marketing" in hopes of generating ideas for Bossman, and I figure why not try to employ some of those tactics myself. I think a grassroots marketing blitz may just be in order.

The good news is that I have befriended and made a repeat customer of the new owner of my beloved L&V, and she has already given me several photo gigs to shoot for her and the new website. We're bartering photo sessions for free pizza. It's a good setup... I still have three free pizzas to cash in. :-)







Spent saturday night shooting a rather well known band in the Dayton area, so hopefully that will generate some attention.





Shot a short couple's session for friends Anne and John the other night. I think they'll make nice portfolio pieces.




Shaggy was up from Cincy visiting for the weekend, so as Anne and John were previewing their photos, I set the lights up for a nice dramatic headshot:



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Getting back to resolutions, yeah... I think I know what mine is: I'm going to market myself more for 2009. I even created a nice tagline for the high school senior market: "Show your seniority with AHP"

(Do I have to put one of those little [TM] doohickeys behind that?)

Just got back from Michigan where I finally got to meet Dark Haired Girl's family up there, after hearing about them for years now. She's so much like her mother, my eyes just kept darting back and forth between the two, catching all sorts of commonalities... from hand gestures to the way they form certain words with their mouths.

So I guess it has been unusually cold up there, and the pond which normally finishes freezing in January was already frozen a good solid 10 inches down, so I played the guinea pig while the kids watched in anticipation, and I put on my skates. I'd never skated on a pond before, only artificial arenas, and I've always always wanted to. It was so amazing, the bumps and irregular curves of the edge of the water... and the little pops and bumps that resonated off my skate frames. I was in heaven.

Only I would be sweating in 25 degree weather

So all the girls (Dark Haired Girl has adoptive sisters as young as her own daughters) and I were out there either skating or scootching around in shoes, and we took chairs and pushed them around ice, giving the back a good sideways shove and sending them spinning across the surface.

And I got to try venison chops which a neighbor brought over to share. Very tender and delicious... not at all what I'd expected. See, I thought we had a lot of deer around here, but up there, they're as thick as mosquitoes. So hunting is a common part of daily life up there, and driving around you can see all these little ramshackle deer stands just larger than phone booths are all over the place. I personally don't think I could bring myself to actually kill one, and I joked that I don't hunt deer with a rifle, I use a cannon. (cannon -- canon -- my camera.... get it? har har.)

ANYHOO, wouldn't you know, but just as we get back to Troy, Dark Haired Girl's car pops not just one flat, but later in the evening, the back end starts sliding around as the other back tire goes flat as a pancake. I mean, both these tires were totally FUCKED. The steel belt was exposed on the first one, and the entire goddamn tread was about to separate off the other. And to change it, it took Blonde Haired Girl's husband and I about a gallon of penetrant oil and a twenty minutes of beating the rim with wood beams to get it off.

And to think, while we were up there, she and I got lost on the way to her brother's house. There we were in the pitch darkness, totally lost in a network of iced over dirt roads with no houses in sight (but lots of deer), and no cell phone service. If we'd have popped a flat there (and provided we didn't careen off the road) I'd have had to leave her in the car while I hoofed a couple of miles in the middle of winter in Michigan to the nearest farm. And the speed limit up there is a lot higher than down here, so on the highways, we were cruising around 75-80 miles per hour. And we did all that without skipping a beat, and made it back home to Troy just as the tires gave out.

Now, I'm no churchy person, neither do I identify with any particular religion, but you try going through that and not feel like somebody was watching out for you.

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It's hard to make plans for new year's eve when you start trying around 7pm that very night, and Blonde Haired Girl's husband Ray had a migraine from the seventh circle of hell, so we walked across the yard to their place and got drunk at her table while Ray agonized on the sofa. After the ball dropped, we went back, and then Dark Haired Girl got this weird idea to start cooking, so we spent the rest of the night goofing around in her kitchen.




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I have been on a pretty good track of keeping my new year's resolutions. Last year, as you may recall, I resolved to be out of my mom's house and in my own place by my thirtieth birthday... and as of August 25th, 2008, I was. The fact that I'm back at Mom's notwithstanding, I'd count that in the "kept" column.

The problem is thinking of one for this year. I was thinking maybe piggybacking off of my resolution two years ago to not let my view camera just gather dust (which it has been doing since I finished school), or maybe not letting my enthusiasm for going to the Y to work out fizzle... but I dunno. I'm having trouble thinking of something inspiring. For the most part, I don't really feel the need to make any grandiose declarations.

Aside from the normal day-to-day bumps in the road, things are going pretty well.