Photography

t's Christmas Eve, I'm currently sitting comfortably on my couch, blogging with Irving Berlin's "White Christmas" on in the background and doing a fair amount of thinking. I recently had the opportunity to photograph a live nativity that my parents co-produced in Liberty Park called "Echoes of Christmas." It was a great experience for me and one that I greatly enjoyed. As you may know, I lost my camera to water damage this summer and have been without a camera for several months. I photographed the nativity using my parents' point-and-shoot fixed lens Sony camera. Having been used to shooting with a Canon SLR it was quite an adjustment for me and I spent a good thirty minutes fumbling with the controls and trying to find the functions that I knew I needed. As it was a live production I was limited to shooting without a flash and quickly felt the effect of this limitation. It wasn't until this evening while reading one of my photography books that I realized that the nature of the fixed lens camera was also holding me back. Aside from the limitations of the equipment at hand, I am by no stretch of the imagination a hugely experienced photographer and was also confined by the limitations of my own experience. Putting any doubts aside, I set to the task at hand determined to get some good shots. I was greeted by friendly cooperation from the actors involved and, I believe, managed to get some pretty decent shots. In fact, one of the photographs I took I feel is one of the best shots I have ever taken.
Since this experience I have found myself desperately missing my camera and the creative outlet it provided. I never really did anything spectacular with my photos in fact, any of them that were not posted to Facebook were lost when my laptop was stolen earlier this fall, but I miss it nonetheless. I am finding myself determined to get a new camera and continue developing my photography skills for whatever I may use them for. It will likely not amount to anything but a hobby that I love but I think that's an important thing to have. I have considered the possibility of trying to squeeze a few more photography classes into my schedule and exploring photography "professionally," shooting weddings, concerts, family parties, whatever I can get a chance to do. Here's hoping things pan out and I can continue to explore this passion. For now, here's an image from "Echoes of Christmas" that I'm particularly proud of. Merry Christmas everyone!!

The hardest thing...

I'm not sure how many of you are aware because I never really said anything about it but I did end up deciding to stick to a vegetarian diet for the most part. That's not to say that I never eat meat because sometimes it is really just too much of a hassle for me and for others for me to find alternatives to meat. Also, regardless of what health benefits may or may not exist from not eating meat; it really is delicious. Anyways, as I have continued to expand my diet and my recipe book, the most difficult part of the adjustment has been a surprise to me. I thought initially when I started that it would be really tricky to transition to a new diet and eating new things. I expected to have trouble with refraining from meat, finding alternatives that I enjoyed, adjusting to cooking new things, and making new habits of my food choices. In all reality, these things have been really easy. I have very much enjoyed trying new foods and new recipes and making positive changes in my diet. The thing that has been really hard is finding all of the things that I need in the grocery store. It's a little ridiculous. Before I'd drive to Smith's or Fresh Market or whatever and hit the canned food aisle and the frozen section and be out in twenty minutes. Now, before I go grocery shopping, I sit down with my vegetarian cookbooks and plan out menus. I make a shopping list and go through my kitchen to find out what I already have and what I need to buy. Then things get tricky. I drive down to the grocery store and have to find all of these obscure foods (many of which I've never heard of previously.) I have spent ridiculous amounts of time walking up and down the aisles looking for all kinds of things. Even the stuff that I thought would be pretty easy and know is at most stores is a little tricky. Like tofu, for instance. No two stores keep it in the same place. Sometimes it's with the veggies, sometimes by the meat, some tofu is kept with the oriental foods un-refrigerated. It gets a little ridiculous to keep track. There should be an index available for grocery stores, maybe as an android/iPhone app? I think it's genius.

200 Around the Corner!

Here I go, talking about food again. Sorry, it's kind of what's going on in my life right now. I'll be going on two weeks vegetarian tomorrow and I feel great. I've lost 10 pounds since I started trying this. That's ridiculous, 10 pounds in 13 days?! Plus I'm now just a stone's throw away from dropping below 200 lbs. I'm so excited. I'm pretty sure I'll get there by the  end of the week, it's less than a pound and a half away. I'm super excited. It's been so encouraging lately to hear, even from people I wouldn't expect to notice, that I look like I'm losing weight and looking really good. It really feels great, and that's in addition to just feeling healthier overall. :D I'm loving it!!

So, last night I needed to get some grocery shopping and I did it smart, possibly for the first time in my life. I rode my bike to/from work yesterday so when I got home I was starving. Rather than first going to the grocery store and buying way more than I needed to I actually did it right. I sat down with my veggie cookbook and found something I could make with things that were already in the house. I ended up making "Andrea's Puttanesca," which is a spaghetti with marinara cooked with fresh garlic, spinach, tomatoes and topped with olive. Add to it a nice green salad and I was feeling full and almost ready to hit the grocery store.

Now this next bit I think is really incredible. Two weeks ago I spent some money and stocked my spice cupboard and pantry with a few of the basic ingredients needed for most of the vegetarian recipes I had. I went through what I had on hand and leftovers in the fridge and made a complete menu for every meal between now and my next payday. I then hit the grocery store and bought everything I need (excluding some fresh veggies that won't keep) to make those meals for less than $45!! Awesome right? I have meals planned for almost the next two weeks and the most I'll need to spend between now and then is maybe $10 on veggies here and there. Way friggin cool!

Veggie Catch-Up Blog

Ok, I haven't been as good about writing as I wanted to be, but, things are going great! I have, however been rocking this vegetarian thing. It's been way awesome. I'm trying new things, cooking more and definitely eating healthier. Regardless of whether or not you think meat is healthy/unhealthy the simple fact that I have to supplement my diet with more vegetables drastically increases the amount of veggies that I'm eating (duh) and subsequently makes my diet healthier. Since I last wrote, I've made some delicious chick-pea enchiladas blancas, a whole variety of awesome veggie sandwiches and salads and tonight, vegetarian shepherd's pie with sweet mashed potatoes. For those of you who have never tried sweet mashed potatoes, do it. Seriously. They are crazy good. Anywho, short and sweet, this whole thing has been an awesome experience so far and I've got leftovers for a couple of days which means that finishing out my goal week is going to be a piece of cake. Now, I've got so many great recipes left to try, do I stick with vegetarian for a while, move to mostly vegetarian and eat meat only very occasionally or just screw it and go back to what I was eating before? Opinions?

Vegetarian Day #1

Okay, so, strange announcement. I'm going vegetarian for a week, at least. Some of you may know that as of late, I have been working on improving my overall health. I've quit smoking, started to increase to a regular workout schedule and worked towards a healthy diet. I've already been on a diet that is (with rare exceptions) free of red meat. This particular change wasn't a huge deal. I don't eat beef a lot in any form so it was only cutting out the occasional hamburger (which was usually fast food and needed to go anyways) and maybe not ordering a steak every time I had the opportunity. There was nothing wrong with that particular diet, (that's diet as in eating pattern, not hokey weight loss strategy) in fact I was, and still am, losing weight but a vegetarian lifestyle has recently been rather intriguing to me. My interest was piqued this weekend when I watched a documentary called "Forks Over Knives". The documentary primarily interviews two doctors who have spent a large portion of their careers doing field/clinical research regarding the link between meat/dairy products and obesity, heart disease, diabetes, cancer and other killer diseases. While there is no concrete evidence of any definite link between any of these, the correlation data and limited clinical results were very convincing. At least enough so to convince me to try it.

As of right now, I have no intention of going full and permanent vegetarian but I'd like to just give it a shot for a while at least. I've decided on a minimum of one week with no firm end date. It may be that I adopt a  "mostly vegetarian" lifestyle after this experiment and only very occasionally eat any kind of meat. I thought a week sounded like a good starting goal to evaluate the idea. I'm probably going to be blogging on this a fair amount if nothing else than to get my thoughts on it written down. I'd like to keep an eye on my morale through this experiment and be able to look back at it and remember what I was thinking at the time. This isn't going to be a major change for the majority of my day. My typical diet currently consists of meatless meals for 2 of the 3 meals of the day. I typically have oatmeal for breakfast, followed by a banana or other fruit mid morning, PB&J for lunch and some veggies and maybe string cheese in the afternoon. It's dinner that's going to be the kicker. Almost every evening meal I have made over the past few months has included chicken in one form or another. That's what's going to be tough. In order to kick start my creativity and get me some ideas to get going, I purchased a book suggested by the makers of "Forks Over Knives" entitled "Everyday Happy Herbivore" by Lindsay S. Nixon.  The cover boasts that the book contains meals that can be "on the table in 30 minutes or less." With my current lifestyle, this is exactly what I need. Something fast, cheap, and easy to make.

Now, on to the experience! Today was my first day as a temporary vegetarian. Not surprisingly, it wasn't much different from any other day. I had a typical breakfast and a mostly typical lunch. I went with some co-workers to The Tea Rose Diner. Tea Rose is a a Thai restaurant in Murray that we frequent, (seriously, some of us 3-5 times a week) and I usually order a massamun curry with chicken. Being a day one temporary vegetarian, I couldn't quite stick to that so I ordered the same dish but with tofu instead of chicken. While the meal was still satisfying and very enjoyable, most of the tofu didn't leave the table until the bus boy cleared our table. That was quite a shock. I'm not sure exactly what I expected but I sure didn't enjoy the stuff. It was rubbery on the outside and a nearly liquid gelatin on the inside. I think I'll explore other protein sources and meet substitutes. Dinner, on the other hand, was a roaring success. I tried my hand at making my first vegetarian meal out of my new cook book and ended up with a couple of delicious black bean burgers with a crisp spinach salad. I was very pleased with how the burgers turned out and very satisfied with the meal.

I don't expect to be noticing any huge life changes in a week of eating veggies but there is one thing I noticed right away; I wasn't full like I would have been with a meat meal. If I had eaten two similarly sized hamburgers, I would have felt bloated, lethargic, and uncomfortable for hours. After my first home-cooked veggie meal I felt great. I was full but not uncomfortable and after sitting for maybe 20 minutes to finish an episode of Breaking Bad, got up, cleaned the kitchen and my dishes and went for a three and a half mile run. Pretty impressive for after dinner eh?

Wow, sorry to anyone who read all of that. I just noticed how long that got. Thanks for hangin' with me through that. I'm going to try to keep this going once a day at least through my first experiment week of vegetarianism so I'll have lots more info on what I'm eating in the days to come. I know, that's just what everyone wants to read on the internet, right? Wish me luck! :)

Vomit Blog #2

Well, this isn't happening nearly as often as I had kind of hoped. Oh well. Here it is, vomit blog the second. :-)

#1 A bad reputation can be incredibly difficult to move past. I've noticed that in a lot of the things that I've been trying to change in my life lately, a past reputation can be really damaging. As I've started to realize this, I've been thinking about how it applies to maybe a more severe situation. What about someone labeled as a sex offender? I know that's an extreme example but the same principle applies. You get labeled with something like that, how the hell do you move past it. I don't know how many sex offenders really change their ways and try to improve their lives but how on earth could you? The same idea really applies to everyday life for most people. Even your own friends' preconceived notions of you, based on past reputation, can be really damaging to trying to make any real change in your life. It's kind of frustrating.

#2. Sneezing while driving is pretty much the most terrifying thing in the entire world.

#3. Service Fees. I'm certain that I"m not the first person to complain about this online and I certainly won't be the last but seriously, knock it off. If you need to charge me an extra $8 for admission, that's fine. I can deal with that. But don't tell me that the ticket is going to be $20 and then when I get to the checkout, oops, SURPRISE!!! It's actually $28. Just tell me 28 to begin with. I don't want to know what kind of shenanigans you had to pull to get that number. Let's just start at the real price and everyone can go home happy.

#4 Welcome to my world. Everyone should stop saying this and every variation or it. It's annoying, insensitive and does nothing but let people know that your problems come before theirs. Show some damn sympathy. 

SOPA Box

So yesterday as I was killing some time, I came across a bit of information about SOPA. I realized that I really didn't know anything about it so I thought, hey, it might be a responsible thing to do to try and learn about this issue as it is definitely a topic that isn't going to go away. So like any normal, sane, electronically connected person, I posted on Facebook asking if any of my friends knew of any unbiased, factual information that I could read on the subject. I was shocked when only one person responded and it was not with any kind of information. How in the world is this possible? Four months ago, two thirds of my friends list had posted pictures, comments, wall posts or status updates protesting SOPA and PIPA. For almost an entire month, you couldn't get away from it. People were signing petitions, removing their profile picture and replacing it with a protest image, shouting all over the internet that SOPA was going to destroy us all. What happened?
I can really only think of two possibilities as to what went down.
1. People on my friends list don't care or read my posts. However, I really have a hard time believing this as if I were to post a picture of a cat sniffing a dog's butt it would get tons of comments and every person wasting time on Facebook would click "like." So I guess that isn't a reasonable conclusion after all.
2. 90% of the people protesting SOPA in January had NO IDEA WHAT THE HELL THEY WERE TALKING ABOUT. This is ridiculous. I realize that, yes, even idiots online have their right to free speech but come on guys. We should be better than this. If we are going to take the time to scream about an issue, at least take five minutes to find some actual information and learn something before you start blinding protesting and agreeing with every internet powerhouse that tells you to sign a protest or petition. Up until now, I have not known much about what SOPA was or how it could affect me or the internet so I've kept my mouth shut about it. I spent a few hours reading up on it yesterday and while I'm no expert, I believe that I have a fairly good understanding of what it entails and can fairly confidently say that while I agree with the fact that this issue needs to be tackled, this is not the way to go about it.
Whew, okay, I think that pretty much covers my feelings on the issue. If you are one of the few that educated yourselves on the issue, congratulations and thank you. I appreciate that some people actually do know what their talking about when these issues come up but it is very hard to pick you out in the spew of "copy, paste, and post" that happens here on the internet. Those of you who didn't know what you were talking about, please, next time you go preaching about the next stupid thing the government is going to do to ruin your lives, find out what the hell you are talking about before you go spouting off about it.