I took a picture of some grass in the front yard tonight because, well, looking at this blog for the last couple weeks has been a lot like watching grass grow.  Not a lot happening.  Each year summer is one of my down times where I don't schedule photography sessions because, let's face it... 103 degrees and smiley, happy clients just don't go together.  Or maybe it's that 103 degrees and me don't go together.  Either way, I've been enjoying my R&R in the AC... maybe a little too much.  As much as I love being connected with technology - so much so that I'm contemplating whether I have an addiction - the last few weeks have been a little less stressful and I've actually felt refreshed and enjoying the actual face to face time with Kylie and friends.  Imagine... spending time with real people.  Crazy, I know.  And for a few days, I've been reminded what life was like before photography and before I was brain washed into believing that I had to be blogging, facebooking, flickr'ing, RSS'ing, photography foruming, tweeting, or just plain internet'ing every 5 minutes or I'd be missing out on something.  And on more than one occasion, I've been tempted to go back to that life.  But alas, the fstops have been calling my name, and I'm excited about the upcoming busy fall client season.  I've made a few behind-the-scenes changes, though, that will hopefully help me take on more clients but get more of my life back in the normally-crazy next few months leading up to the holidays.  I've got a couple sessions to post after clients come in to view the images first, so in the mean time here's a bit of randomeness from the last couple weeks. On the automotive front, we finally decided it was time to trade in Sophie, Kylie's 1998 Saturn SC1, for a new set of wheels.  Searching for a replacement ride was a bit of an 'adventure' with Kylie and I.  She's more into the practical side of cars and as long as it gets her from point A to point B and gets reasonable gas mileage, she's good.  Me?  If I'm going to be going from point A to point B a lot, I want to enjoy the ride.  And while reliability and practicality are also on my list, they're a little further down below the really important things... you know, like the sound of the doors closing, the feel of the turn signal knob, the sound of the horn, the look of the dashboard, etc.  And for the love of Pete, the car has to have an arm rest in-between the driver and front passenger seats.  Sophie didn't have this, and I can't even count how many times Kylie just rolled her eyes at me every time I completely dramatized the re-enactment of me demonstrating to her how I nearly fell into the passenger seat every time I drove her car because couldn't put my right elbow on an arm rest.  But while I admit I appreciate good design and am willing to pay a little more for it, I'm not willing to go into debt for it.  So, we bought another '07 car, this time an Infiniti G35... and I'm loving it.  After a LOT of looking around and doing some homework, we traded this...

for this...

Mayb the most amazing part about the whole process is that after we finally bought the G35 on Thursday, I listed Sophie for sale on Craig's List around 11:30am Saturday, and by 3:30pm that same day we had sold the car and had cash in hand.  That still blows my mind.  4 hours!  Thank you Craig, whoever and wherever you are. And on other random fronts, I went to the dentist last December and had some medical Flexible Spending Account money l had to use before the end of the year or I lost it.  So, I went to my dentist and told her I needed a bite guard because I was concerned about grinding my teeth.  Long story short, I called and went in on December 30th and told her I was in a rush to get this before the end of the year, so I paid for it that day but didn't bother going in to pick it up until April of this year.  And after using it for about a whole 5 days, Mia got ahold of it and decided to us it as a $400 chew toy.  End of bite guard.  It wasn't a total loss, though... I still have my wicked cool molds that I can put out as decorations to greet guests with a smile. Although... it looks a little disturbing and kinda like I have 3 week old Fruity Pebble bits stuck in my gums.  Zoinks.  Oh well, cheeeeeeeeeese!