I’ve gotta say, getting up this morning was tough. I had to get going though as no matter what my condition, I had to fill the drum throne today. Took my drugs, loaded up my stuff and off I went. I was the slow one today getting set up. I needed to set up all my drums today as we were playing Van Halen’s “Jump” as an instrumental intro to kick things off this morning. 80’s songs = more toms… LOL Finally, I got things setup and got rolling. Surprisingly, I don’t think we had a hitch in the music despite not having practiced this week. Despite being weak, I felt okay most of the morning and only started crashing after things were over and we were packing back up. I spent the remainder of the day resting as I was pretty drained from the mornings activities.

I plan on heading back to the office tomorrow. Hopefully, I’ll be feeling better.

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…to Megan. Thanks for all you’ve done for me, especially as I’ve been under the weather this week. I hate that I’m sick on your special day, but you know I’ll make it up to you as soon as I’m better. In the meantime, I hope you get lots of use out of your Wii controller! (hey, that’s what she asked for)

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Last Sunday was a huge day at Crosspoint. My role in the festivities was to procure my buddy Brian’s NASCAR vehicle to use as an attraction in front of the movie theater we meet in. This car travels in style - it has it’s own custom 40′ trailer. Luckily, Jason (as a CDL holder) had experience towing long trailers so it was no problem for him to get it moved around. Having the car there was a big hit! A special thanks to Brian G. for his generosity in loaning that to us.

Between babysitting the car and taking photos, that had me tied up all morning. What does it look like to do church at a movie theater in Decatur, AL?

HAVE A LOOK.

All in all, it was a great weekend despite not getting a break at all. I had a big photo session that Saturday that had me tied up for most of the day then the evening picking up and then storing the race car. This weekend looks to be a busy one also but with me still not back to 100% (I feel about 50% right now honestly) I may be taking a break whether I want to or not. All I know is that it stinks to be sick and I can’t wait to feel like myself again ASAP.

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After having a great start to this week, I contracted some kind of funkitis that hit me like a ton of bricks Wednesday. Tuesday night I was feeling kind of blah, but nothing out of the ordinary. The next morning while getting ready to head to the office, things went downhill quick. It’s always a special feeling when you feel cold and it’s 74 in the house. Add to that a t-shirt, fleece top and heavy sweats and you know there’s something wrong when you need that much to stay comfortable inside. Just in case it was the onset of the flu, I hauled my hiney to the doctor Thursday morning for a flu test. They took this LONG swab and went up one of my nostrils with it and swabbed what I think was the underside of my brain. HOLY COW!!! That was uncomfortable. Luckily, the test turned out negative as did a strep test. Since I was busy getting poked and swabbed, I told the nurse we could do a pap-smear also as I was pretty sure we had met my insurance deductible at this point. She left the exam room dying of laughter. Well, the verdict is that I have some sort of heinous bacterial infection going on - antibiotics to the rescue. I got my drugs and went back home to rest.

If you read Kevin’s blog, I would be the sick band member he is referring to. I really dislike being the one that hoses up the band (or anything for that matter). Due to some sort of brain damage, I thought that I would be able to make my way through band practice Thursday night, but as practice time approached, I knew there was NO way I could make it the way I felt. Plus, I was hoping to feel well enough to return to work on Friday. No luck there either. I guess I need to give the drugs a little more time to work as less than one day might not be enough to have much of an effect.

I’ve got a LOT to blog about that has happened since my March 9 entry and hopefully I can get things caught up soon.

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The wedding shoot last night went off without a hitch… except for when the bride and groom kissed at the altar, neither I nor Richard had a clear view to get the photo - a plant was in the way on BOTH sides. It was an important shot but despite the obstacles, a solution was found that worked for everyone.

On the way home, I met up with some friends at The Brick to hang out for a short time but ended staying out longer than I had intended. I’m not sure of the name of the band that was playing but the were really good. The drummer was also very good. I enjoyed that a lot.

Sunday morning came especially early with the start of daylight savings. After getting all my stuff set up, I downed a Monster energy drink. BIG MISTAKE. Now I was “too” awake. So much so that I noticed my hand shaking when I went for a second one. I thought better of that decision and stuck to water to hopefully get back to normal Mt. Dew levels of caffeine. When everything got cranked up, the music was rockin. Amber belted out the Martina McBride song and we pulled off the new “Rise” song without a glitch. We were definitely “on” today. Dave did a great job wrapping up the series on the book of Ruth and got everyone prepared for the next series on the schedule.

Spent the rest of the day with friends talking about drums and audio and then the evening with Megan. She was using me for my internet connection…

Oh, heres a sample from last evening. Congratulations to the new couple!

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It’s very rare that we get anything remotely resembling “snow”. When I lived in Knoxville, every once in awhile we would get a few inches of snow - sometimes even several inches. Down here in Alabama, some some of the frozen stuff may stick to the grass and shrubs but nothing to get excited about. That’s probably a benefit to living down here though. You want snow, move north.

I’ve got a wedding to shoot tonight with my friends Richard and Cindy. As such, my battery chargers are working overtime topping off the charges on my camera and flash batteries. At some point, I’ll check my cameras for dust on their sensors and clean them off as necessary. Usually a puff from one of my Rocket blowers is all that’s needed but for the tougher stuff, I do have Eclipse fluid and Pec-pads to accomplish a wet cleaning. All told, I’ll have five sets of 4-AA batteries, 2 batteries in each camera’s battery grip, and one spare camera battery. Both cameras actually operate on one battery but for extended life and a vertical portrait grip, the battery grips I have for each camera hold two batteries. I can easily click off more than a thousand shots before needing to change their batteries.

I’m all set on memory cards. I think I have 12-2gb cards and 2-4gb cards. It’s been a few years since I’ve every ran out of storage space thank goodness.

Other than the shoot tonight, I just have some laundry to do and then a run to the grocery store for some supplies. If I have time, I may clean my cymbals. That’s quite a messy and physical operation so the likelihood of me getting to do that are slim.

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My inner geek will show on this post… I was saddened to find out that Gary Gygax had passed. He and Dave Arneson invented Dungeons and Dragons back in the 70’s. My buddies and I used to play a lot through my high school years especially since I rode on “the first bus” which got me to school a little after 7 giving us almost an hour and a half ’till first period to play. I had most of the books… Monster Manual, Dungeon Masters Guide, Player’s Handbook, Monster Manual and of course - all the cool dice. If you know me, I didn’t just have the “ordinary” dice. I had the ultra-fly clear dice AND IN COLORS. As a matter of fact, I STILL have my D&D dice. Everything else I had is gone though. I wish I still had some of the dungeons I created. I put a lot of work into those. Anyway, those were fun times.

Thanks for a cool game Gary.

P.S. As a side note, this was like the Harry Potter of the 80’s. Some people got all up in arms over the game being “evil”. Some things never change.

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Whew! I’ve had a busy few weeks leaving me little time to do some bloggage… but I know a few of you got some special tidbits on some of the things I’ve been up to. First, my neice turned ONE YEAR OLD last weekend! I can’t believe a year has already passed since she came on the scene. I brought my camera of course and got photos of the event then made a slideshow of the shots so my parents could see them right away. (For those of you new to my blog, my ‘rents are on the other side of the globe) At least that will help it seem like they’re not so far away as I know they would have wanted to be here.

Last weekend was also the Addy’s - our region’s award presentations for the advertising industry. Our agency took many gold awards, a few slivers and three bronzes. The BIG surprise came at the end though when they announced the Best of Show… we won! A print piece Lesa did for one of our clients was the big winner. Congrats to her. That was a job well done. Afterwards, the whole lot of us - me, Megan, Lesa, Tab, Vania, Christine, Jim and Carmen went over to Dolce for dinner. Christine even got us hooked up with the “white room”. White walls and a black patterned table with the image of a blaze on a plasma screen making for a very unique environment. I had some seared scallops which were fantastic, but a bit overpriced IMO for what they were. It was all good though… just a great night out with friends.

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