Tuesday, August 4, 2009

oh and alas

belize was fabulous. i got back a little over a week ago and haven’t had much free time since. i have been working on a new, all-belize blog with all the vacation photos but it’s not quite done yet. i’ll probably also do a few belize posts here, because i’m distributing the other blog widely and it basically has to be grandma-friendly. not everything from my trip fits the limitations of that level of censorship.

my aunt, uncle and cousin visited from colorado and just left yesterday. my cousin and i are great friends (she’s a year younger than me, and is one of only two cousins i have) and we hadn’t seen each other in a year and a half, so we had a lot to catch up on and had lots of fun times. we went thrifting, went to the basque festival, baked brownies (and ate the batter, and rolled around fat and happy on the floor with tummy-aches like we did as kids), rode our bikes downtown, rode to the nature center, and we even got to carry on our tradition of “hoarding” (we squirrel away junk food then gather it all for a gut-busting feast out on my driveway in the middle of the night). the hoarding ritual has been going for probably a decade, but we weren’t able to do it last time she visited because it was winter.

it was a pretty short visit and we didn’t get to do everything we wanted...she wanted to float the river but the logistics didn’t work out, we both wanted to go see bruno but that didn't happen, and i really wanted to take her to shangri-la tearoom, but the only night we could go they were having “call and response chanting night,” which we both agreed sounded absolutely painful. we also didn’t get to go to all the best thrift stores; we only made it to savers, because by the time we were done there the others were closed. we spent probably 3.5 hours at savers and became thoroughly exhausted and over-stimulated. it was one of the best thrifting experiences either of us has ever had.

the weekend before last i went to goddess fest and got some good photos, which i’ll post in a bit. i’ll make a separate post for the basque festival pictures as well. i got a little photo job working with idaho state independent living council, taking pictures of people with disabilities to promote a program that extends medicaid benefits to people who are not automatically eligible for them. i’m pretty excited about it.

yesterday i officially joined the multitudes of americans looking for work. i didn’t want to start the job search until i got back from belize, and now i have no excuses, it’s time to get my shit together. last night i applied for a job at a portrait studio (not a realsies one, just a corny, family-portrait type place)...it doesn’t pay much but it would be good experience. i think i have a lot of the technical aspects of portrait photography down pretty well, but i’m still working on building a rapport with my subject, creating a comfortable environment, coming up with poses and communicating pose ideas. i have a feeling that at this studio the technical aspect would not be difficult and i would be free to focus on the person rather than the camera. i hope i get it...there are so few good options for work right now.

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