In Honor of Spring

(taken on our honeymoon in Keystone, Co.)

Blog Hiatus Explained

If I said I had been captured by a gang of angry red blood cells who were keeping me from blogging, would you believe me?

Does this help?



Regardless of the reasons, I'm back, and will be returning to the everyday blogging many of you grew to know and love.

(Photo courtesy of Nikki, my sister-in-law; it was taken at the science museum in St. Paul)

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.

Gnome-nappers

This is Woodward, my traveling gnome. He sits on this fine tuft of grass at my desk during the day. When I leave work, I take him with me because I've grown to attatched to him to risk losing him to gnome-nappers.

Kellie

Friday, prompted by the warmth of spring, I headed out to do some photo-exploring on one of the bicycle/walking paths near our apartment. I didn't get very far (there was enough to keep me and my camera busy in a short distance). Those pictures are above.

In the process, I encountered a great place for portrait photography just off the road. Sunday, I shot some portraits of my sister-in-law, Kellie.

Camp St. Croix

Last week I headed to YMCA Camp St. Croix in Wisconsin to help my friend and colleague, Derrick, shoot some pictures for an article he was writing. You can see a slide show of more images here.

Weather Chops

All winter I have been trying to earn my weather chops. I think I finally did yesterday, while test driving mountain bikes in sleet.

Breakfast

Morning on the farm

I snapped these on our way back from our weekend trip to the Walsh farm as the morning sun began burning away an evening dew.

Rabbits and Spines

Things I've been preoccupied with this week at work:





For some serious bunny-action (more photos and video) head to Thisweek Farmington.

Black Ice

Update: Dennis had surgery to repair a neck injury. He is now at home recovering. Thank you to everyone who has been thinking of him and his daughter.

My mom just called me from Southern California to tell me that her boyfriend, Dennis and his daughter had been in a bad car accident. They slid on black ice in Alpine on their way back from attending a funeral in Texas. Their car rolled off of an embankment and his daughter was thrown from the vehicle. Luckily both are doing fine. Dennis may need surgery to repair a broken cervical disk, but considering what happened, they are in good shape.

On the eve of a significant snowfall that will likely continue through both morning and evening drive-time, I wanted to remind to everyone heading out in this bad weather to be cautious while driving. And, please think of Dennis and his daughter as they recover.

Hello, Starshine...

Good morning; happy Sunday.

(and a very happy birthday to Heather)

Snow, Snow, Snow, Snow

So, we got another storm at the end of this week. It hit, lovingly, on Wednesday night and grew to Blizzard-like conditions by 3:30 Thursday, as I headed home. The CR-V:



The roads:



Other than an on-ramp that I had to literally coast down because it was full of snow, I didn't have too much trouble on the way home. Though I had to drive slow, it didn't take as long as I feared it would.

After both storms, the snow outside our apartment has accumulated to this:





We're not blanketed like that everywhere, but there is a lot of snow.

...Sometimes Come Around

This is part two of a two part blog about the snow, which appears below. The Weather Service calculated the snow amount at about 10 inches. I'm not sure if that's what we accumulated, or what was the snowfall amount. Because of drifting, we had areas with under and inch of snow and some, as you will soon see, with feet of snow.

This is the same tree that appears in the before shot.




I like to call these Snowdunes:





Just to give you an idea of how deep that drift is:











But, trust me, I'm not complaining. We were pretty lucky. Many parts of Iowa and Southern Minnesota were blanketed with ice before the snow.