My FIRST door ding on my car happened recently. It was only yesterday I discovered it though. It was bound to happen though. I guess I’m less concerned because I’ve had my car a bit over 2 years now so it’s not as “new”. Since I’ve had it, the damage it has sustained was the hailstorm (all dents were removed the paintless dent repair way), the incident with the truck tire tread outside of Birmingham, “someone” letting a screw on their video tripod chew up the console on the passenger side and now the door ding. Sigh. We just can’t have nice things.  What frustrates me more are the things that can be prevented with a slight bit of caution. For example, when I’m getting out of my car, I’m conscious of how much space is between me and the next vehicle and keep that in mind as I swing my door open. How hard is that? I’ve sat back and watch people swing their car doors open like the bad guys in cowboy movies swing open the bar doors when they come into town.

Gym update: I’m still going strong on my commitment to get into better shape. I’m making it into the gym at least three and sometimes four times a week. It’s a great way to end a day and set yourself up for a good night’s rest. Yeah, you gotta add another shower to your day but it’s SO worth it. My buddy Jason has been key to helping me stay consistent on my exercise. You’re a lot less likely to skip if there’s someone holding you accountable. Anyway, my weight is fluctuating between 150 and 155. I guess that’s ideal. When I started out, I think my body fat percentage was 16.3% or something. I need to check on that next time and see if that’s changed about a month into things. Weight’s not my issue though, endurance is. That’s improving, but I’ve still got quite a way to go with that. I’ll keep at it though until I’m where I think I should be.

Peace out homies.

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By now I’m sure many of you have seen the latest and greatest from Apple - the MacBook Air. That’s one sweet piece of hardware. One thing I’d like to be able to do is have a laptop along with me at a photo shoot so I can look at things right away and re-shoot or correct any mistakes on the spot. I could do that now with my current laptop (a 2004 Dell monster) but it’s big, heavy and just a pain to haul anywhere. If I do go that route though, all the software I use are PC-versions. I’ll have to make the swap to Mac stuff for the best performance - and that will cost some cash.

Any one got an order in for one yet?

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As I suspected, it was COLD this morning. In the teens even. It was time to break out the SERIOUS thermal underwear. What do I mean by that? I had some Patagonia Capilene 4 bottoms going on. Long ago I found out that if you really want to be warm, take a good hard look at the stuff people in extreme sports or on expeditions wear. There are ways to stay warm AND DRY without bundling up to look like the Michelin Man.

For the most part, church went well. Had a funny moment when all but Kevin left the stage… apparently, we had one more song to do but according to what we had been informed, we were done. I was 3/4 of the way to the back of the theater when I heard “the band has one more song to do”. Um… we do? So - BACK to the stage we went while everyone got a good laugh and we played the last song of the set before Dave came up.

When we started the first song, my kick drum sounded REALLY weak. I thought to myself, “surely they turned on my kick mic as it’s pretty obvious if its off”. When things are working properly (which is becoming a rarity these days unfortunately) I can feel my kick as the stage moves with the beat. Not so the first song or two. My concerns were confirmed when I asked about it later. Not only was my kick mic off, but my snare drum mic also - probably the 2 most important mics for the drums. Sigh. Topping that off, there was a hum coming from two of the channels on the soundboard I use. Unplugging my mics and cables from the affected channels didn’t change anything so I knew the problem wasn’t on my end. I hope that through all this our sound folks are learning more and more about what they do to make these situations occur less in the future or at the least speed up troubleshooting them.

Anyway, I got a chance to visit a different church this evening to listen to another friend of mine play drums there. SHE did a great job. They played a lot of the songs we’ve played in the past but in a bit of a “tamer” style if you will. Sitting in the crowd was nice for a change.

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It would appear that we’re dipping down into the mid-teens this evening. That means Kelsey will be coming in so she’ll stay nice and warm through the night. What’s going to stink is loading up the car in the morning with my drum stuff. I’m not looking forward to that. I’ll also probably have to do more tuning on my drums too once I’m at the theater. Normally, my drums hold their tuning extremely well, but when you go from a warm environment (storage unit) to a very cold one (trailer) then into another warm one (movie theater), things tend to loosen up a little. The guitars will be going crazy tomorrow I’ll bet.

Update on my Western Digital drive failure. My failed drive has arrived at the repair facility and it’s replacement is being readied for shipment to me under warranty. I’ll be glad to have that back as I really miss that extra storage when I use it in the office to supplement my laptop’s drive.

I had a good dinner with my friend Tiffany last night. She just accepted a new job and it was a nice way to celebrate. We also talked about some other things I wanted to work on photographically. She’s a real trooper and was up for pretty much anything. I had seen a shot either on a website or magazine of a woman wearing a hood with a fur lining on it. It was a close-up of just her head, but it was made more interesting with the framing of the fur around it. I have a really heavy North Face ice jacket that has the fur lining on the hood that might give me the look I was hoping for. I wanted to try shooting that so we got together briefly this afternoon and gave it a whirl. What do you think?

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That’s what I was after Saturday morning’s workout. Especially from doing toe-raises. That’s the thing where you get underneath some bars resting on your shoulders (weighted of course) and you place your feet on a narrow “step” that’s elevated off the ground a few inches. Now, you use your toes to push yourself up. The really doesn’t do much to your feet, but OMG… your calf muscles take a beating. You can tell you’re doing something while doing the exercise itself but whoa momma - later in the day you REALLY feel it. I’m still sore today. That’s how it goes though. I’ll see if I can work through it tomorrow and get past this sore period. First time I used this particular machine so I’m sure it’ll get better with time. I’ve been able to up my weights a bit on some of the other machines I use so seeing some progress is definitely encouraging. Going longer on the treadmill too at higher levels as well (speed/incline). I checked out their indoor pool and sauna there also. Might have to try that soon. Swimming might be a nice way to wind down from a good workout - as opposed to collapsing on my carpet.

On the church side of things, we started a series today called “Simple Church”. Along with that message, one of the songs we played was a Lynard Skynard tune… “Simple Man”. Wow. What a great response from the crowd. Very “Alabama”… hootin’, hollerin, clappin’ and cheerin’. I think it’s the first time I can recall that ever happening while I was on stage. I’ll tell you what, that was FUN. Jared Spooner, Jack’s son, did a fantastic job with his part on the song. I’m proud of that kid. Everyone really did well. It was exciting today.

I can’t believe another weekend has already gone by. There’s so much I always want to accomplish, but I never can get to everything. I think I’ll try making a list out of what I want to get done next weekend and see how far through my list I make it. I might even post my list on here and then the results. That should be interesting.

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I hope everyone had a good time with friends, family and/or lovers to bring in the new year. I was lucky to spend the evening eating at Shogun with a few folks (you know who you are) till our belts were tight. The remainder of the evening was pretty sedate though. 2008 came in with no bang and no fanfare. It was nice actually.

I got my new year off to a good start by joining a local gym to work on my endurance. I don’t have a weight issue… I just have to get myself in overall better physical shape so I’m not huffing and puffing after some light activity like I was on the rock climbing shoot from December. Sheesh. I’m working my way up on weights and distances on the bikes and treadmills. I’m also putting a LOT of mileage on my iPod now. Prior to working out, my iPod was only used on rare occasions. Now I use it regularly.

On the photography side of things, I finally got a respectable set of studio lights. Rock on. Now I just have to spend time working and practicing with them. That’s what I spent last Sunday afternoon doing. A big thanks goes to Amber for assisting me as well as taking a few shots of the action while I was working. A big thanks also goes to Tiffany and Josh for being my guinea pigs for this occasion. I’ve got more work to go though till I get the results I’m wanting. But you know what? It’s a fun learning process that I enjoy.

Guess what I did last night?

I attended a beekeeping class over in Huntsville. I got an email from the Huntsville Botanical Garden letting me know about the series so I thought I would check it out. I was curious about the whole beekeeping process an industry and it seemed like a good way to get my feet wet. The class was packed and the topics were interesting. I’ve got no plans to start some sort of honey-based empire though. Just curious. Now I know how you get bees, how to build the hives, how to put the bees in the hive, how to trap bees… etc.

I’ll end my first post of the year with a sample shot from my Sunday experimentation.

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