The Kodak BW  is my absolute all-time favorite disposable camera, and I LOVE disposable cameras! Unfortunately, it has been discontinued and I haven’t seen them in stores for ages. I bought two cameras on ebay and fell in love all over again… If I had an extra $99 laying around, I would snag this lot of 24.  Black and white is lovely. You are forced to focus more on light and composition without depending on color to make your photos pop.

My summer school class is done (A++). It was Intro to HTML. I learned a lot and had fun doing it. Our final was to create a three page website from scratch (including certain elements such as tables/forms/etc) and upload it to our NMSU web account. See? I’m not completely happy with it, but I’m taking the advanced class this fall. Call it a work in progress!

This is #25 in my 100 strangers assignment. Check out the 100 strangers website to see more pictures and people working on the same assignment!

A weekend or two ago we went to The Inn of the Mountain Gods, a hotel/casino near Ruidoso.  Mike went to get us some coffee while I looked for a spot to rest in the lobby. I was going to sit next to Miss Mescalero, but she said the seat was taken by Mr. B (man on right) who was elsewhere at the moment. I ended up sitting across from them for about five minutes and was impressed by how sweet she was to everyone who walked by. No less than a dozen times people stopped to take her picture and she always smiled happily for them.  Mr. B (a  regular at the casino) would stand up and move to the side while they took their pictures and return to his seat, picking up their conversation without missing a beat. He was very excited about his phone and its built-in camera. He showed her picture after picture of everything and anything, including a woman he met in a bar. Before I left, I asked about her job. “You just sit here and talk to people? And let them take your picture?” “Yes. It’s so interesting! I love it.” “It sounds like a great job.” She smiled. “It is. It really is.”

I wish that I would have had my ‘real’ camera because the scene I saw and captured in my mind is so much better than what turned out on film. I only had a bw disposable camera with me.  I wanted to get further away, but it would have been too dark. It was still too dark really and the glare of the flash in the center  is horrible. Boo.

“I never have taken a picture I’ve intended. They’re always better or worse.” Diane Arbus

The Good:

• A package from Julie with a book and POLAROID FILM! Thank you.
• Finally getting my doctor’s appointment out of the way. Yay!
• Winning the Pic Pick contest from Photojojo/tumblr yesterday.

The Bad

• Being a single parent whenever Mike has to go out of town.
• Feeling tired and sore and worn out all the time.
• Wading through a bazillion emails from tumblr. Note to self: turn off email notifications.

The Ugly

After a thorough exam, the doctor told me that he thought I had Fibromyalgia. Had I ever heard of it? My heart sank. If there is one thing I’ve learned from what Mia has gone through, it is that the pain doesn’t go away. I’ve been hurting for a long time, but always find a way to come up with excuses. I’m depressed. I don’t move enough. I don’t get enough rest. Now that the F word has been thrown out there, I know that there is a very good possibility that I will never feel better. It is disheartening, but liberating at the same time. My tired old excuse of  ‘I’ll do it when I feel better’ won’t work any more.

The elusive lightning photo. I love photos of lightning because it is so unpredictable. Uncontrollable. You have to be in the right place at the right time with the right equipment. Preparation is not my strong suit. Still, I think I’m getting better.  I wish I had the camera pointed just a little to my right because there were at least six strikes at the same time, lighting up the sky. It was pretty amazing.

In other news, my computer has died. The computer tech says I have to reboot my hard drive, erasing everything on it. I am so thankful to have posted all those pictures to flickr over the past few years.  No worries about losing precious memories… I should get my laptop back today, which will make all this online stuff a lot easier!

my first, 2006 and an accidental, 2009

This picture is from the big storm we had last week. After the wind and the hail and the rain come puddles and mud and fun.  I wish I would have framed this one better, but I love the expression on his face. He looks so calm and relaxed, like he is having his portrait taken in a studio instead of wallowing in the mud!

Speaking of pictures, Julie posted about the camera I sent her for Sight Unseen. Check it out here. If any of you would like to exchange disposable cameras with me, the information is here.