February the twenty-ninth

It was cold in our house that night.

Our little cat people

Our cats have always been raised by humans. The people who fostered them before we got them said they were found at about ten days old with no mama cat in sight. They were bottle fed by the foster parents until they were big enough for food. They were also, apparently, half raised by the couple's giant dog.

All this is to say, our cats are super social. They are not your ordinary cats, who like to go find their own quiet place to sleep the day away, and only want to come out for food when it's convenient. Our cats want to be in whatever room we're in. If we move rooms, they move rooms. If we have to keep them out of a room we're in (like the office, because they get behind the desk and reek havoc), they wait outside the door for us. They come with us to the kitchen, the garage, and the bathroom. They sleep next to us, on us, or curled up in the crooks of our arms.

Tonight, while I worked on my research paper at the table, Sawyer decided to hop up for a nap. As he dozed, he occasionally reached out to touch my face. Then he fell asleep with his arm in the air. Somehow he still looked comfy.

Jack did the same thing a few weeks before, just without the arm straight up. These guys are so ridiculous.

February the twenty-seventh: Rainy Day

The end.

February the twenty-third

Today's picture of the day is brought to you by the produce section of the Rancho San Diego Ralphs. As nothing of great interest happened to me today (and I really don't want to post another picture of my cats... I feel I'm still teetering on the verge of crazy cat lady), I decided to photograph the most interesting thing I purchased today.

What is it, you ask? Your guess is as good as mine. It didn't have a label, but I found it nestled with mustard greens and collard greens. I thought it might be a purple version of one of those, but the leaves don't really match. It looks more like kale leaves, actually, but the regular kale was nowhere to be found around it. It doesn't really matter anyway though, as I'm just going to use the bunch for a green smoothie tomorrow. I might use some leftover leaves to try making baked kale chips for the first time, too (if it really is kale), but I got a small bunch so I don't think much will be leftover after the smoothie. Mmmmmm, smoothies....

February the twenty-second: Leaf Watching

The story of today:

Chris asked me how my day was. I rattled off a list of things I'd done, including tutoring, my CA professional development meeting, what I had for lunch, leaf watching with the cats, working on homework, and taking a nap.

Sometime around 11pm, he was surfing through his Instagram feed and started laughing out loud. "You really did leaf watch with the cats!"He had found the above picture, and was highly amused that this was an actual event I had photographed during my day. What can I say? I liked the colors of the porch, wood floor, Sawyer, and my shoes. Seemed like a perfect photo op to me.

February the twentieth: The day we celebrated the presidents

On this delightfully extended weekend, Chris decided we needed to get out of the house to do something. So after stopping by the hospital to drop off lunch for our friend Emily (whose son Everett is being monitored at the hospital for a case of bronchitis), and after a quick house cleaning/editing some sneak peak newborn pics for Jen and Justin, we headed northeast to Ramona. Our goal was to find good shoot locations. We found diddly in this regard. However, this is a cool tree-enclosed path we found at the base of Iron Mountain.

After Iron Mountain, we stumbled on a park that looked promising, Dos Picos, but as luck would have it, we pulled into the parking lot right when they were about to lock the gate. Everywhere else we found that looked cool was surrounded by barbed wire. Darn you, you selfish people who own land that just sits there becoming overgrown with weeds glistening in the sunset that only benefit a photographer!

So the only pictures I got today were at Iron Mountain: Chris trying to capture a pretty weed, and the landscape facing the sun.

Sunday Funday

Picture(s) of the day for February 19th

Since Kris and Becky were in town, Chris and I lugged our sorry behinds out of bed early (for a weekend), and met them in North Park for breakfast. Because Chris is trendy like that, he picked a hip, tiny cafe called Parkhouse Eatery. It turned out to be pretty cool, but I'm glad we got there early: otherwise, we would have been standing in the street waiting for a table, like the poor schmucks you can see in the picture below. Sorry, poor schmucks. I did feel a little guilty as we sat around talking for about half an hour after they'd cleared our plates, but hey, we got up early (for a weekend) to get that table.

Kris and Becky wanted to walk around Fashion Valley for a bit before getting in the car for their long ride back, and we stopped at Robbin's Brothers along the way to get our rings cleaned, since it's so close to Fashion. Since I now have a cool camera phone, I took a shot of the bathroom door, something I've always wanted to do at Robbin's Brothers because of this:

(This morning, Chris asked me in a weird voice: "Do you know you're tweeting pictures to Next to Me Studios?" And I said "Yes, of course, I think I know where I'm tweeting, sheesh." And he replied that Robbin's Brothers had re-tweeted my picture tweet, which we both thought was pretty cool. And also? Free publicity to a diamond ring store. Heck yeah. If that's not awesome fortune for a photographer, I don't know what is.

At home: I tried to mimic Sam the Cooking Guy's salt and pepper shrimp, only it came out awful because I used the same amount of salt and pepper that the recipe for a pound of shrimp called for, even though I only had about 15 shrimp left in the bag. Because I'm a smartie like that. Chris came in and discovered a shrimp on the floor, that Jack must have jumped on the counter to get and disliked enough to knock it off and then run away. Chris rinsed away the salt and pepper and broke it into pieces and then Jack was all over it. Sawyer, on the other hand, kept looking at Chris like, "Are you freaking kidding me? I'm not eating that," every time Chris held it out to him. I think he's very sensitive to the garlic smell. So Jack ate the whole shrimp by himself.

Later that night, Ryan came over and the three of us had a good old fashioned camp out at the dining room table with our laptops. I got through almost half of Trinity's newborn photos while we dined on carrots and broccoli, Trader Joe's cookies, and delightful peach champagne. Chris also taught me how to use the remote on our new cameras, but those are pictures for another day. The cats, meanwhile, spent a rewarding night creating epic scenarios involving the two bags Ry brought with him. I don't know why we spend money on real cat toys.

February the eighteenth: Trinity's newborn shoot

One of my favorite types of shoots is newborns when the newborns belong to our friends. I don't know why, I just feel much more comfortable squishing our friends' babies into cute poses than I do with stranger's newborns. Weird, huh? 

Trinity was splendid all afternoon. She slept soundly almost the entire time and let us dress and undress and headband and re-headband her the whole time. And did I mention she's so little and squishy? I want to go back and do a whole second shoot with her because she was so darn cute!

February the sixth: Me, today

February the seventh: The Rainy Day

February the tenth

Friday!

February the eleventh: Meeting Trinity

February the ninth

I think the interview went well... And here's my happy face about how well it went!

February the eighth

Surprise email during lunch. My last-minute interview is scheduled for tomorrow at 9am. Wondering if this is God's way of keeping me on my toes...?

February the fourth

Home project Saturday! Chris has been hankering for a gigantic full wall-sized bulletin board to hang all his thoughts (of which there are many, let me tell you). So after he'd drawn up the plans (did I mention my husband was an architect in a past life?) off to Home Depot we went. Then it was back home to work in the garage, and finally we had ourselves a homemade beast of a bulletin board hanging on the wall around 8:30 pm.

It's lovely. Chris has already filled half of it with his thoughts.

Super Bowl Sunday

We are heading out on an adventure today, first to Hollywood to check out Mosaic Church, then to Sarah's house to check out the Super Bowl. As in years past, I am reserving the right to choose a team until I see the colors of their uniforms.

Happy partying!

February the second

There is not an ounce of pink or red in this photo, but for some reason it makes me think of Valentine's Day. I think it's that shade of blue mixed with cream in the sky, and the richer blue tones that show up in the shadow of the trees. Whatever it is, it makes me happy inside today.

When I got home today, it was just in time to see the late afternoon light start pouring in the west end of our house. We have this tall double window over the stairs and it lets in gorgeous oranges and yellows that my camera can't even capture. I tried, but it ended up looking more pink. The kittens seem to like lounging in the warm light from that window; this is where they usually are waiting when I get home.

Things I'm excited for in February:

1. Finishing one of my tutoring commitments and getting to come home semi-early on Mondays and Wednesdays (and not be working until 7pm in Imperial Beach).

2. Starting my Master's classes. Not looking forward to the homework, but definitely loving the idea of being immersed in technology ideas to better my classroom.

3. Seeing what Cody's designed for our new brand and website. (Very, very much.)

4. Meeting the newest Aubrey baby, who should be arriving any day from here to Valentine's!

It may be the shortest month, but it looks like we'll be packing a lot in!

February the first

Things I love: Wednesdays with few to no kids in the classroom. I may love working with kids, but holy smokes is it nice to not work with kids. Just once in awhile.

February the first

1. Impromptu dinner (tried a new white bean dish; it called for way too much olive oil, which is why it's seaping out of the beans in the pic. :( But the shrimp came out okay.)
2. Dark chocolate almonds during editing... I feel fatter already.
3. Empty classroom. Today was delightfully kid-free. (For the most part.)
4. Chris scrutinizes the latest office project: how to mount six sheets of 3x2 corkboard for a massive bulletin board.