Candy Crazy

After spending the last few months watching several episodes of Scooby-Doo Liam decided he wanted to be a mummy for Halloween. So, Saturday night we wrapped him up in about six rolls of medical gauze and headed out to Uncle Eric's parent's neighborhood for some trick-or-treating.



Here's Liam with his cousin Sydney. She made a beautiful elegant Spider Queen.

I think this was the first Halloween experience Liam has had where he really understood what was going on. Last year was kind of a shock to him. "What, you mean, I just knock on their door and they give me candy? Just like that?". His memories of last years trick-or-treat were still pretty vivid in his mind, to the point where he even remembered some of the neighbors he visited. His favorite was the "monkey-monster". I was really surprised. He didn't seem too scared of anyone, except for the man with the devil mask but he still took his candy then on leaving he shouted back "Don't scare me anymore", and that was that.



Another holiday, more memories. Hope everyone else had a wonderful Halloween too!

"R" rated Halloween

As a counterpoint to her previous entry, Carleen asked me to write a post with my Halloween movie favorites. I'm not going to try to make any set list, limit the number or rank them from 1 to 10 or any such tomfoolery. That'd just be too hard. The numbers below are for simple organizational purposes:

1. Pretty much any one of the Halloween's, but of course the first one would be preferable. There is simply no Halloween without Michael Myers.

2. Choose your favorite Zombie movie. Why zombies? I just love 'em, so they must be a part of my Halloween. I just got through watching my entire zombie movie collection. For Halloween, I'd say stick to any of the "of the Dead" series by George Romero, with a preference leaning toward Dawn of the Dead. If you want some silly zombie hijinks (and who doesn't?), Return of the Living Dead part 2 is highly recommended.

3. Personally, I think it's important to keep the classics alive, so anything with the "classic" monsters, Dracula, Frankenstein, Mummy and Werewolves. So, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, (I do not know any good Mummy movies - and no, The Mummy with Brendon Frasier does NOT count), and either American Werewolf in London or Dog Soldiers would be the only decent werewolf movies I've seen (although the remake of The Wolfman looks promising). I take that back - Ginger Snaps 1 and 2 were both excellent werewolf movies.

4. The Exorcist. If I have to explain that one, you shouldn't be reading this.

5. I've recently become a big fan of Dario Argento's work and I think many of his films would fit perfectly into a Halloween themed movie marathon. Specifically, The Church and The Mother of Tears (both, not entirely coincidentally feature his daughter, Asia Argento, rowr) are both great examples of gothic horror.

Other than that, anything that feels sorta gothic or involves demons, devils or supernatural creatures are my personal favorites.

PG13 Halloween on the Screen

When I first met Mike, I wasn't really into Halloween much. Even as a child I had a hard time getting excited over a holiday that focused so much on scaring you. I've always been very sensitive to any images of horror. I can still remember the fear I felt going through my first haunted house when I was five. I had barely taken three steps in before I clutched my dads arm with a deathly grip and screamed for him to take me out. That was twenty-six years ago and I have yet to brave another haunted house since. I can also still remember the trauma I felt over a small Halloween candy that my brother had. It was a skull, very creepy skull that had some kind of red jam inside, meant to mimic blood red innards. I know it's silly, it was just candy but that's how seriously sensitive I am to these things, and why I refuse to watch a lot of horror movies.

But Mike has been working on me. I can now stomach Halloween 1 and 2 with Jamie Lee Curtis quite well, in fact, I can even go so far as to say that I enjoy them. I'm also really into Exorcist kind of movies and most zombie movies are ok too. What you will never see me viewing (in fact, I've been known to leave the house when it's on) are movies like Saw, or anything involving torture and seriously sadistic psychopaths. Very big no no for me.

Point being, thanks to Mike, Halloween has been growing on me the last few years. When we lived in Bartlesville, we would usually have a small party with our gaming group and I'm really going to miss that particular tradition. Instead, we're creating new traditions. This Saturday we're heading down to Syracuse so Liam can go trick-or-treating with his cousin Sydney. Plan was to make Liam a scary pirate but he's been asking to be a mummy the last week. Looks like we'll be heading to the nearest drug store to buy lots of gauze for the getup.

As for Halloween movies, I plan on sticking to my past time favorites, none of which are rated beyond PG13.

Clue with the great Tim Curry and Madeleine Kahn



Murder by DeathPeter Falk and Maggie Smith



Hocus Pocus with Bette Midler (I totally had a crush on the lead guy..what a cutie)



PS. Thinking about Halloween movies lately has made me remember two cartoons I use to watch every Saturday morning when I was little. Remember these?!

The Groovie Goolies



Drak Pak

Skipping ahead: The last two months in bullet points

• Finished painting Liam's room and our bedroom. Now I just need curtains.
• Had lots of birthday parties (Both Mike's parents, his sister Kim, Me and Liam...Phew! Made lots of veggie trays).
• Parents bought Liam a totally cool playground set.
• Made friends with our neighbor. They have a little grand-daughter called Meghan who's six. She comes over to play with Liam all the time.
• Parents came up for a visit again and managed to find a lovely house in Sackets Harbor for purchase. I anticipate there move here sometime in October and am very much looking forward to having them geographically close to our lives once again.
• Mitch, my brother came for a short visit before heading back to school. I love my brother. He's super cool.
• Work is crazy busy. Enrollment is up like 12% and we're really feeling the space crunch in the library. Teaching lots of library instruction classes, working on a lot of different projects. I love my job. It's super cool.
• Reading a bunch of books on how to organize, simplify life. I need to do this. I'm tired of misplacing bills, keys and purses, arriving at work later than I wish and eating nothing but pasta and cheese for lunch because I'm too lazy and ignorant to make anything else.
• We are currently trying to teach Liam how to urinate and defecate in the potty. We've been working on this for the past three weeks. It has been traumatic. I'm exhausted from the experience. But thus is parenting.
• Last week was our one year anniversary since moving to New York. It's been quite the year. I miss my friends. Yet, I feel at home and very happy.
  

Final Waffle Shot

Here's the final shot I've submitted for the Strobist Boot Camp II Assignment 2:



I'm not entirely satisfied with it and may reshoot it, even after the deadline if need be, just for my own satisfaction. I tried the powdered sugar, but wasn't happy with how it turned out. BUT, the point is, I did it, I shot it and I put my stuff out there for people to critique and see. I'm going to continue doing these assignments for that very reason. I'm looking forward to seeing who wins this one, I'm up against some pretty tough competition. http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

Strobist Boot Camp II

A blog I follow devour, Strobist is having another Boot Camp Assignment and I'm looking forward to this one. The idea is to take the things you've learned from the site and apply them to a real world assignment. He (David Hobby, creator of the blog) gives out the assignment, then we upload our pics to the Strobist Flickr Pool then he chooses a winner and you get some gear. And bragging rights, I guess. This assignments prize is a ring flash adapter.

The assignment is to shoot an appealing food shot. Any food. Just make it look nice. I chose waffles (since, I must say, I make one mean waffle). I've been slowly building this assignment up, learning how to get the lighting the way I want it, then moving on to presentation - a little bit of studio work, a little bit of mental work. I just shot my first waffle test shots, which you can see below. Being just test shots, they're not quite close to the finished product - I'll be adding berries and other accouterments to pretty it up. I'll also make a new batch of waffles, as the ones shown have been sitting in a plastic bag in the fridge for a few days and they look a bit ragged.





I think the first one is my favorite, I don't like the fork in the foreground of the second one - it's just a bit too distracting. Here's a shot of how I lit it:



I'll post my final shots later this week - I'm going to hold out as long as I can, since I have a new 50mm lens coming and I'm hoping to get it in time for the deadline, which is this Saturday. Wish me luck!

Studio Work

Spent the morning yesterday building a small studio in my basement - it's serviceable, but will need some minor modifications in the future.



Sorry about the crappy blurry photo's don't know what happened there.



I'm working on a small project right now, learning how to control the specular highlights in reflective objects - I've done this stuff before in school, but that was a long time ago, and I only ever did it once, with very little success. I think I could have traded my entire photographic education for time spent online at Strobist.

Here's my first relatively successful application of various techniques - there's a lot I have to fine tune, and I'll be working on that over the next few days:



I've got a lot of diffusion to do, but I'm learning and that's what counts.

Dreaded red head

If there's one thing I really enjoy about doing inventory in the library, it's being able to go through all the books in the stacks, making mental notes of titles I want to add to my reading list. I'm finding that I'm becoming more and more drawn to obscure topics, like the "history of feasting from the time of Charlemagne on.." and other stuff like that.

One gem I came across today was The Roots of Desire, a narrative focusing on the history of..get this...the red head. This is definitely a must read for me, especially since all of my deep crushes in life (including my husband) have had a thing for red heads, which means that I've been trying in vain since I was about eighteen to dye my hair a desirable shade of red. Here are a few interesting facts that the publisher chose to add to the back of the book to entice the reader further.

Red hair is a genetic mutation that emerged about fifty thousand years ago in africa, and the gene for red hair, known as MCIR, was discovered in 1995.

Lilith, the lascivious she demon, and Judas, Christ's betrayer, are both commonly depicted with red hair.

Aristotle thought that redheads were emotionally unhousebroken. (what, like a dog is "unhousebroken")

Four hundred years ago, the fat of a red-headed man was a key ingredient in deadly poisons. (I dare not imagine how the said fat was extracted)

While less than 4 percent of the world's population is naturally red-haired, the most popular color of at-home hair dye is red

A 1912 study based on phrenology revealed that redheads make the best waitresses.

Redheads are harder to sedate than people of other hair color, requiring 20 percent more anesthesia.

The perception of the color red enhances the viewer's metabolism and increases both heart rate and respiration.

The Roots of Desire: The Myth, Meaning, and Sexual Power of Red Hair by Marion Roach

Summer time!

Summer is turning out to be a wonderful, busy time for our family. Our library director astutely observed a few months back that the minute the snow melts around here the community is lit ablaze with a kind of fury, trying to get as many projects done in the mild weather months as they can.

We've definitely been bitten with this bug. Mike is busy trying to finish up as many outdoor projects as he can. We have a moisture problem in our basement, so his next task will be to try and seal the walls with a special water proof protectant.

Now that the weather is warm, Liam plays outside almost all day. I have fallen in love with our back yard. The trees are just the right size for him to climb and there's plenty of room to run around. We have a fence enclosing a large portion, however, behind that is a haven of foliage and trees, a great little place for Liam to go exploring. With him outside more, I can focus on completing some indoor projects that I've had an my list. First off, is the office/craft room. My mom had done a wonderful job putting my craft room together shortly after we moved it, but unfortunately it has once again become the dumping ground for all the "stuff not otherwise needed but still pending an identifiable space of it's own". If I don't have a tidy craft room then I can't craft. So, that's my project for this week. Reorganize and rearrange the craft room. After that? Liam's room. 1) Recycle old toys 2) Tear off flowery border 3) Repaint room some lovely shade of blue - possibly adding some nautical type of theme...we'll see.

Work has also been surprisingly busy. I was under the impression that things would slow down in the summer but it's not happening. Inventory was the big project of the month. I'm hoping to be done with that by the end of this week. I also recently attended my first SUNYLA conference last week (the college I work for is one of sixty-four other universities that are part of the State Universities of New York...which is what SUNY stands for). It was, in a word, spectacular. The SUNYLA folks really know how to put together a great conference, interesting keynote speaker and wonderful social events (they actually closed down the MoST just for us..served us Dinosaur Barbie-Q and beer). I also presented for the first time, on a panel session about Twitter. Twas great experience!

There is still a little more traveling in store for me. Come early July I will be traveling to Chicago for the annual ALA conference. This will be a purely a pleasure via observation type trip. Although the highlight will be meeting and hanging out with the lovely Chrissy Hennessey. After an estimated six years of following her around the internet, I'm finally going to meet her in person. I'm not worthy. For realz.

Mike and I keep discussing how we really mean to become better bloggers...but we just never seem to be able to put that particular thought into action. At least not consistently. Meanwhile, I'm having a lot of fun redesigning our blog banner...I think I may have another template/banner idea in store. Perhaps once I have that completed, we'll feel renewed and re-inspired to get on here and blab about life more often.

Parents are cool

My parents were just here, visiting for about a month. They left yesterday morning. Things felt awfully quiet and empty in our house when I came home from work yesterday. It was a wonderful visit and I'm beginning to realize just how precious it is to have your parents close geographically.

They are still planning to move up here. In fact, a good portion of their visit was spent checking out houses here. Their house in Oklahoma has been for sale since xmas. They've had a few open houses and a couple of return viewers but nothing close to a potential sale yet. I think the situation has become rather discouraging for them, given that they simply can't make much of a plan until the house is sold. It makes me realize just how lucky Mike and I were to have sold ours so quickly, before the market got so bad. I'm thinking about trying to market their house on twitter, what do you think?

Spring 2009 Visit from Parents: Top 10 Highlights

1) Visits to the zoo

2) Visits to Thompson Park

3) Visits to Old MacDonald Park

3) Going to the movies with my Dad (Star Trek, Angels and Demons..first one was really good, second one was meh)

4) Sewing a knitting kit with my mom

5) Memorial Day BQ with whole family

6) Mom doing our laundry for us

7) Having an extra lap top in the house (my dad's...)

8) Eating out like..almost every night. Discovered lots of new restaurants..

9) Having on site babysitters...means extra date nights for Mike and I, including a very special overnight stay at the Ontario Palace Hotel in Sackets. The idea was to get away from parent responsibilities for awhile and sleep in.

10)Watching my parents play with Liam in the yard, making memories.

Good times.

PS. Of course, we have pictures for most of this stuff just not on flickr...yet. Things still move slow around our house.

What's My DJ Name?

Have we not posted in a long enough time that I now need to make the requisite "Wow, I haven't posted in forever." intro paragraph? Oops. Guess I just did.

Had my second solo DJing gig this weekend and I had a an absolute blast, which is very surprising. My first was a 30th birthday party which was lame as all get-out. I was told to turn the music DOWN 3 times ('You did hire me to play music, right?"). And I had several technical difficulties that made me look pretty bad. But this one was a prom, which scared the hell out of me, since the only time I listen to the radio is when I'm listening to NPR. I can't tell the difference between Lady Gaga and Rihanna. Luckily I was provided with a list of music that they chose that lasted me the entire night. And the only technical difficulty I had was a corrupted song file that caused one of the songs I was playing to cut out halfway through the song. But I had the kids on the dance floor for a good portion of the night - that gave a huge confidence boost that I desperately needed. Doing these gigs has been so nerve-wracking for me, but after this gig I have a good grasp of what the kids are listening to these days, so that fills in one genre of music that I needed a lot of help on.

Sunday was a barbeque at mom and dad's which I had to cut out for to go to DJ training (yeah, training AFTER the gig - whoops nothing to be done about it). Got to see both Grandma's an Aunt and a cousin, my sister, her husband and my niece, which was very nice.

Monday I declared an official "I'm not getting anything done today!" day, and mostly just played with Liam and played Oblivion on the Xbox 360. THAT was nice.

Today: we have some ripe rhubarb out in the garden (which I mistook for chard) so I'm going to make some Strawberry Rhubarb Pie.

The Shoot

I had my first pregnancy shoot last weekend - it went better than I had expected it to. I was unfamiliar with the setup I was using and although I was not as nervous as I thought I was going to be, I was still pretty shaky and often mentally stumbled over myself. The shots came out really well - better than I had hoped. Not that they couldn't have used some improvement, I wish now that I had shot more on the white background. I also had trouble with not having a second light, although I could have gotten around this problem with a few minor changes to me setup - using the white background, moving my subject into a corner to get a bounce effect, etc. but I've learned from that shoot and I'll do better next time. Also, I feel like I stuck too much to reproducing the sample shots she sent me rather than stretching my own creative muscle, but I think nerves got in the way of that. Anyway, I've learned a few good poses from that, and now they'll be embedded in my brain, that'll free up some mental resources for next time to allow me to get a little more creative. Also, I should, you know, shoot.

I'm not going to plaster the shots up here, but if you'd like to see them, you can visit my flickr page. On a side note, a friend of the woman's mother has asked for my number. I also have a new business email address, if you know anyone in the need of portraits and you're in the general vicinity of Watertown, NY, feel free to contact me:

mhuxleyphoto [at] gmail [dot] com

I'll also be setting up a separate Flickr or Picasa account - I'm going to look into both - I enjoy Flickr, so I'll probably stick with that, but I'll see what Picasa has to offer.

One shoot and I'm getting word of mouth business. That rawxxs!

Studio Equipment

I was recently asked to shoot some pregnancy shots for a friend of mine whose baby is due in April. Asking them what they wanted out of the shots I quickly discovered that I'd need to acquire a bit more equipment. This ended up being more of a hassle than I had expected. First, I purchased what I thought to be a set of Pocket Wizards. These are used to trigger an off-camera flash to fire once the shutter is pressed on the camera without cords. One is connected to the top of the camera, on the hot shoe, the other is connected via a short cable to the flash. The package arrived - only 1 in the box. Hopped on Amazon and ordered another one - rush delivery. Also purchased a starter backdrop setup - this purchase worked without a hitch - just about the only one. Got my other Pocket Wizard, tried to set them up to see if/how they work. The included cable which is supposed to connect to the flash - doesn't fit my particular flash unit. Back online to find another cable after much searching ($20 for the right cable!) I got what I needed. I got what I needed from a great site called FlashZebra.com - if you're a photographer and need off-camera flash stuff, check em out. They shipped my stuff super fast, which was good, cause it was getting down to the wire. So, after spending much more than I really intended to, I have my setup:





And some shots using the setup:

Here's to your health

The past two weeks have been hell. Really, I tried to come up with a more graceful beginning for this post but why waste time. Hell, that's what it's been. Mike is having a major Crohn's flare-up. At least, we think that's what it is. His doctor still seems unconvinced that he doesn't have some lingering stomach virus causing the bulk of his problem. Whatever it is, it landed him in the emergency room last Monday (an eventful story...I'll leave for Mike to relay if he so chooses). He's been doubled over in pain on and off ever since. As if that wasn't crappy enough, Liam caught the stomach bug last weekend (which he then past on to me the next night) and subsequently ended the weekend with a lovely chest cold which Mike and I now have also.

I've missed several days of work in order to do my duty at home, and the days I have been at work I've admittedly only had enough energy to put in just enough to get the minimum done. Things are notably more difficulty now, living in a new place, without my parents nearby to help. Gone are the days when I could drop Liam off in haste when little emergencies like this came up. Mikes parents took care of Liam on several occassions the week Mike was in the hospital which helped a great deal, but they work full time and live almost an hour away so it can be tricky. Pretty much everyone at work has offered to take Liam at a moment's notices, and I've even been told that it's acceptable to bring him to work with me during times like these, although I doubt anyone would get any work done if I did that. Liam would have a riot running in and out of peoples offices...yikes, my head spins with the thought.

To be honest, Mike and I are struggling in more ways than one right now. The cost of the move together with ongoing medical bills have put a big whole in our bank account (ok, so my speeding tickets did some damage too). It's enough to make me yearn for the ole days in Oklahoma, when temperatures were only mildly cold instead of frost bite freezing, when my skin didn't feel like 60 grit sandpaper, and the only bill we had a to worry about was my $300 visa. I came home Tuesday night feeling lower than I've ever felt, curled up in my bed with my dog and cried my eyes out. She snored through most of my sobbing, but that's ok. I felt pretty darn good afterwards. Sometimes, you don't really want to cry alone but crying with someone isn't what you want either. This is when a pet comes in real handy. Or a pillow. Either will do but at least you have a chance to have your tears licked away when you have a pet.

Alas, love and perseverance...and all the mushy stuff...will prevail. Will make it through.

Youtube tutorials

I'm always amazed at the wonderful tutorials you can find on Youtube. I've been following quite a few lately. Two people who never fail to put me in a good mood are Willowing and Make up by Laren Luke. Willowing does tutorials on altered imagery and artist journals. She just so adorable and whimsy. I don't do a lot of crafting nowadays but I spend a lot of time thinking about crafting.




Lauren Luke does tutorials on how to apply eye make-up. I don't wear a lot of make-up and rarely much eye make-up at that. My mom has always been amazing with make-up and hair stuff, in fact, she did both for my wedding and did a better job than any professional would in my opinion. I have very fond memories of watching her apply her make-up before a big dinner dance while we were living in Scotland (being an oil mans wife, she went to quite a few) So, I often think of her when I watch Lauren Luke applying her "eye artwork". And don't you just love that accent?



I also think it's cute that, especially in her older video's, you can often hear someone snoring in the background.