These flowers are everywhere! |
Yikes! It seems like my last journal entry alarmed a number of you.
For the record, I'm not depressed, and everything is going swimmingly swell. I just had been going full force for so long, I just don't know what to do when I work 12 hour days vs 18 hour days!
VERY happy in San Diego, it just not MY town yet. Still feels like I am a visitor here. That's it. Nothin' more than that.
My mom came in last Thursday and stayed the weekend. We had a fine time. We got off to a shaky start as I had to leave her a message on her cell phone that I had a photoshoot when her flight was due to land. Unfortunately, her voice mail hadn't been activated and no message indicator came on.
She called me about an hour or so after arriving wonderin' where I was. I got down to the airport in record time. I felt bad cuz she is still not supposed to lift anything more than 10 pounds. She had to get her luggage off the carousel by herself. No one was around to help her either. Bad Son!
On Friday, I had a full day of shooting, so she stayed home to relax and putter around. Unfortunately, she went out to the garage to do a little laundry and ended up locking herself out. The door to the garage is really tricky, and I had previously noticed that if you open it from the inside, it doesn't release the locking mechanism and one could easily get locked out.
I knew this was a problem, so I had left a spare key hidden in the garage. The key only worked on this lower lock, so didn't think it was a big security risk. I usually would only use the deadbolt above it to avoid the lockout problem.
Anyway, she whiled away an hour in the garage before deciding to go see if any of the other doors around the house were unlocked. She opened up the outer garage door, but alas, didn't find any unlocked doors. My mom looked around in the garage, certain that I would leave a key for just such an emergency, but never did find it. I guess it was too well hidden.
She couldn't call, cuz, well, her phone was inside. By this time, it was noon, and she was getting hungry. Finally, she gave up and took the door of its hinges and physically removed the door, clearly exerting more than 10 pounds pressure to lift it up and out of the way.
She called me to tell me about her ordeal, and I felt REALLY guilty too. But it all turned out fine in the end. Door went back on there slick as a whistle.
The irony is I had made an appointment with a locksmith to come out and change all the dead bolts, re-key all the locks, and add 'keyed on both sides' deadbolts on all the doors, and to fix the garage door so it wouldn't stay locked if you opened it from the inside. He was due to come out on Sunday, which of course didn't do my mom much good.
Friday afternoon we had dinner at a Chinese restaurant down by the Ikea. My mom was eager to get out of the house for a bit!
Janet and Jo sent me a very very nice house warming card with gift cards to both Ikea and Lowe's. They know me so well.
So we took a shopping trip down to Ikea to get some shelving for my DVD collection. My collection is spiraling out of control! I actually stayed just under the gift cards limit, and managed to get what I thought was enough shelving for the ever growing collection.
Oops, I forgot to talk about the Chinese restaurant. Ya know I used to live right across from the Ikea, and I never ate here. It looked like a cheesy Panda Express type place, which are quite good if you are in need of greasy fix, but had never tried it.
My mom and I both loved this little place. Owned by a husband and wife team, the food was only marginally greasy, and tasted pretty dang good. I'm definitely putting it on my short list of quick yet yummy Chinese cuisine.
Ok, so we got the shelves, and then headed back to watch some of the Extras on the Return of the King DVD.
The Extended mix has four DVD's like the previous movies. I think I enjoyed the extra interviews as much as the movies themselves.
They really knocked themselves out on the interviews and Behind the Scenes stuff. Despite the ROTK being way way way too long, the third DVD in the collection really shows you why they made the decisions they made, the camaraderie that formed between all the participants, and how dedicated to bringing this epic to life each and every department was.
So if you gave up on ROTK cuz it was so long, don't neglect watching the extra DVDs, particularly the third disk. It's very worth it.
It took my mom and I three nights to get through all the bonus material though. It was a nice way for us to decompress and get sleepy for bedtime.
On Saturday we woke to yet another soggy day. Ya know, there just isn't much to do when it rains here. Everything is very outdoor oriented, and you can't even escape to the mall for some dry time-wasting window-shopping.
We did go over to Santee, a nearby city. I really like this city, even though the trendites scoff at it. It's nestled in to some mountains, and everything is new new new, which I really like. We stopped at Kohl's and looked for bargains. Neither of us found much.
My Mom and I did stop at the Der Weinersnitzel. What a flash from the past! JBB and I had eaten here when he was out a couple weeks before, and I think this tacky hot dog place will be a dining stop for anyone visiting me. Hotdog memories followed by heartburn! Love them chili cheese fries!
After lunch, we went back over to Ikea. I was short two shelves, so I actually did go over my gift card limit, but only by about eight bucks!
NEVER do Ikea on the weekends, unless you are an experienced Ikea shopper. My mom and I dashed in through the warehouse, navigating the throngs of people who were going in the proper direction. We were swimming upstream! I knew just where the shelves were, and we got out of there pretty quickly.
Despite the pouring rain, we hopped on the trolley and went down to Fashion Valley mall. We dashed from store to store, trying to avoid cloud bursts, buying a few deeply discounted items.
We took the trolley back, and basically decided we had had enough rain for one day, and just headed home to peruse our purchases, and finish off the ROTK DVD extras.
On Sunday, Cameron the locksmith showed up and changed out all the locks and added the deadbolt system that I like. He was a nice guy and very professional, and it's nice to have the key/lock situation under control.
There were a few breaks in the rain on Sunday, but not much.
We drove through Mission Trails, and even got out and walked for a bit.
Later we stopped at Lowe's and I cashed in the gift card for some plants for the side patio. My mom and really didn't know what we were buying- a bit stymied by the variety of flowering plants. So we made a few choices that we thought would thrive in the location I was targeting.
We hit the grocery store so we could grill up some chicken breasts and then headed hom. I planted the plants in very soggy conditions. Not much, but it's a start. I hope they all live!
Monday I took my mom back to the airport and started working again. My schedule has filled up, and I have had several shoots each day, plus I have done some of my own shoots at night.
Good to be busy again! I am of course using my garage for shoots, and it's tacky, but the images and lighting has been pretty on the money. Lots of practice time and refining my lighting recipe.
I got to work with a beautiful model named Braden. He is from Kentucky and he has the acting gene in him, which always make for awesome shots. He was a machine, and I got about 200 perfect images of him. What ya guys think?
Thursday evening Chad flew in from Minnesota. He stayed till Saturday. We shot over a couple days, trying to find some-rain free outdoor moments.
Sigh. Here is another prime example of how lucky I am to be working with such nice guys. Chad's got a boyfriend named Tom, and you can tell by the way Chad talks about him, that they are meant for each other. Chad is an easy going guy with a charming personality. He is very “crush worthy”.
We went to dinner several times and he's very easy to talk with.
Btw, special shot out to Bernie back in Minnesota…HOWDY!
The shoots went very well, once again, I am really happy with my lighting.
Saturday was unusual in that I had a video shoot for SeanCody. I worked with the most adorable 20 year old from Arizona/Texas. After our shoot, I took him and Chad around San Diego, trying to show them the beach and the views, but we experienced downpours at every location.
Neither of them seemed to mind, but its kind of frustrating to try and “show off” the city when it's miserably wet.
We finally gave up and decided to just go eat. I thought maybe Old Town would be light on tourists because of the rain, but it was packed, so we quickly gave that up.
Instead we ate at El Zarape, one of my favorite dive Mexican restaurants in University Heights.
The food was great and we even scored good seating in this small establishment.
The model and Chad got along great. For a 20 year-old, the model was very mature, and both Chad and I agreed that he was going to make a lot of girls happy. It's nice to see someone of his age with manners and well-roundedness.
After lunch, I dropped the model back off at his hotel, and Chad and I finished both our outdoor and indoor shots.
Saturday night we ate dinner at Baja Betty's, getting our fix of gay gay gay dining. We came home and watched a pretty awful movie called Testosterone. It has Antonio Sabato Jr. in it. The quality of this movie is marginal. Poor lighting, some pretty bad acting, plot and transition problems. A few twists here and there, and we both continued to watch it cuz we impatiently just wanted to see what happened at the end. It's supposed to be a dark comedy, but it just fizzled for both of us.
I took Chad to the airport early Sunday morning, hit the gym, then came back to work on the journal.
Sunday afternoon, I had a shoot with a model named Trever and it went very well. We went to do some outdoor stuff, despite the rain, and came back and of course did some studio work.
Adam and Tony (featured on the site right now) where also in town. The were visiting Anza Borrego State Park, camping and viewing the flower bloom spectacular. Apparently it was nearby so we made arrangement for them to come on by. We went out to dinner, and I showed them all the images I have been working on lately.
We took this photo op and they insisted on tickling me for it. The boys were a little ripe from being out in the desert for three days, so I'm here telling ya now, just to get even with them, that they was STANKY! ;-P
They stayed the night, and after looking back at the last couple weeks, I am glad that I got the house. I really do enjoy people coming by for a visit, and it has been a steady stream of company since getting the house. I love it!
Ok, now for some news items.
The greeting cards are available on 10Percent.com
They optioned out some images for cards, and a fan wrote me that they had spotted some of my images.
I went through all the cards (they have a lot) to try and track down all the ones with my images.
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