Stuck Between Scissors and a Hard Place

Those of you who remember this, will get a kick out of this.

Awkwardly, my bangs are actually causing me problems once again. For opposite reasons, though; they're too long.

Don't worry, I'll be cautious with my next trim.


As an additional note, it may be a few days before the prom pictures are up because I am waiting, excitedly, for my new version of Photoshop to arrive.

Happy Prom Matt, Ali, Katie and Anne

More photos to come ...

Prom Portraits

Saturday I went out with my niece Alison and her two friends, Anne and Katie, to shoot some portraits of them in their prom dresses. It was gorgeous spring morning that started out warm, humid and stormy but grew into a partly cloudy, partly windy early afternoon. We had a blast. I'll also be on hand next Saturday while they prep for the real thing and to take a few more portraits.

Ali:



Anne:



Katie:

Egg-cellent adventures

Go here for some more pictures from the cold Easter egg hunt I mentioned below.

And, yes, I did actually use the title "Egg-cellent adventures."

"Sometimes it Snows in April"

Proof:



We'll get a projected 3-4 inches in my neck of the woods; 6+ inches are expected where Joe's parents live.

I'm told this is unusual. I'm finding spring to be a strange beast of a season ...




Update: After the day of snowy-drizzle I realized this would probably be the last snow of the season. Then, tonight, I stood outside in an atmosphere just cold enough to snow, watching the wind guide the flakes north, south, east and west. It's truly incredible how the snow can amplify the wind, making it entirely noticeable.

It made me remember all of the snow I've seen the year –– the kind that falls, sparkling under yard lights when it's very cold, the little tubes of snow that amass when its in between warm and cold, the soft, big, clumpy flakes and the little tiny balls of snow that melt on contact with anything –– and how magical my experience of winter has been.

The experience also reminded me that, in a culture that values comfort and efficiency, one can easily forget how beautiful "inconvenient" things are. Minnesotans often see snow as a hassle, increasing the occurrence of car accidents, making travel slow, ice-scrappers necessary and big, unfashionable coats a mainstay.

But, if you take a moment to stand and watch the snow, letting it fall on your shoulders and face, you remember that your inconvenience is marginal to the world around you –– that your inconvenience means nothing to anyone but you.

For some reason, this is very empowering to me; it reminds me that my place in the world has more weight than any one of my accomplishments or failures, and makes me content in simply existing in the snow.

Happy Easter; It's Cold

It was 18 degrees this morning as I headed to photograph an easter egg hunt in Farmington. It was a little confusing to see a ton of kids bundled up, picking up eggs with their mittens.

They're saying it's the same temperature today that it was at Christmas. Oh, and did I mention we have wind?

These people from the Castle Rock Bank kindly blocked the wind from hitting me as I took the above picture. As they said, "now that's a full service bank."

Big-Box Realtors

In a conversation about big-box retailers, such as Target and Walmart, I mispoke. This led my coworker, Erin, to sketch the artistic rendition of a big box just waiting to sell your house that appears above.

Lacrosse

I snapped this last week to run with a story I was writing about an eighth-grader (pictured) who is planning to transfer schools, despite his dad's belief that children should play sports in the communities where they live, because his community doesn't offer lacrosse.

IKEA: Labrynth of Furniture and Squirelly Carts

For the past few months I've been planning a wall montage for our apartment of different pictures of trees. Back in January I headed to IKEA and took a look at their frames, trying to decide how to best approach the project, but wasn't ready to buy them at that point. I finally made it back today.

Knowing what I wanted, I grabbed the World's Squirelliest Cart, which appeared to have some sort of device on the wheels making it squirellier, probably with the intention of making it "turn more easily," and headed to the frames. Luckily, I knew how to get through the maze of rugs, cups and plates, around the lighting fixtures and energy saving light bulb display into the promise land of frames.

When I got there, I parked my cart in a place that would be relatively out of the way and set out to collect the frames in the sizes I needed. Easier said than done.

I looked and looked and looked, but was unable to find any acceptable frames that came in the variety of sizes I needed. I walked back to find my cart missing. After asking a store clerk, who looked up their inventory, I found out the frames I needed would be out of stock for an indefinite period of time.

So I tried to come up with some way I could get this project done with different frames. Just when I was ready to give up, I found the two frames I needed sitting in the wrong section. It seems the Swedish Build-it-Yourself Gods had smiled upon me.

So I collected all of the frames I needed and shoved them in a big yellow bag while cursing the jerks who stole my cart (not that I knew who they were).

After picking up the bag, which was filled with 14 frames, I realized I was going to need a cart before I made the journey through the storage room to the check-out. So, I picked up the heaping pile-o-frames and made a journey back through the light fixtures, past the plates and rugs into the promise land of carts.

Swimming upstream through the sea of people and shiny, empty carts was difficult. I kept wishing someone would abandon their cart to me –– this poor girl carrying a bag the size of her own body –– but it didn't happen.

When I made it to the carts, I actually almost said to this other woman who was getting a cart, "I feel like we're in the cart promise land," but she looked grumpy, so I stayed silent. I think that's what IKEA does to people; it makes them grumpy.

While I've been relatively satisfied by everything I've purchased there, I can't say I've ever left without feeling that I had been somehow screwed-over by the giant store (not by the company, but by the actual building). The design of the place –– this big crazy maze of furniture displays and tidbits that cannot be quickly navigated through –– requires shoppers to become urban Indiana Joneses in their quest to keep up with the Joneses.