Miscellaneous Monday

Opening Day was fantastic. Nice weather, a great game, and no annoying (okay well not so annoying) people surrounding our seats. Hubby's aunts have a suite, so we spent the second half of the game in the Suite with them and also my Sister-in-Law and Mother-in-Law. All in all, a great time, even if we didn't get to tailgate because of the new puppy.




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Speaking of the new puppy - he is doing great. He has figured out going to the bathroom outside with some consistency and the crate training is getting better. (Thanks to all who emailed their suggestions, or commented!) I'm looking forward to seeing his progress next week at this time after we have had a full week of a more consistent schedule. This weekend was pretty rough on establishing any sort of routine for him.

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Drumroll please! I booked my first destination wedding! I am thrilled to say that Hubby and I will be spending several days at the beginning of December in Jamaica shooting Deb and Tony's wedding in Montego Bay! If there are any other destination brides out there that want their own photographer, please shoot me an email. Deb and Tony are getting married at a Sandals Resort - known for telling brides that you must use their photographer - not true! As long as the photographer is a guest of the resort with your party, you can bring your own.

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Ringo had a playdate on Saturday. You will remember the infamous Optimus Prime who belongs to our friends, Jamie and Craig. The miniature weiner dog always seemed so tiny and delicate to us all, but put him next to the three pound wonder that is Ringo and he is huge! The two had a great time playing together, only trumped by how much fun Jamie and I had watching them and laughing at their antics.

They were moving too fast for most pictures - but I did get this one when they were having a little back and forth over a certain toy:


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My computer went in for a tune-up over the weekend - a free service thanks to my Apple ProCare membership. I also had a backup consultation with the Geniuses. Since I shoot weddings, I take protecting my images very seriously. I have been using a somewhat time-consuming process of hard-drives and disks to backup each wedding and session. Since I also had Leopard installed on my machine this weekend (loooove it!) I have a fun new feature called Time Machine that backs up my whole computer every hour, so that everything is retreiveable, even in the event of a full system crash. And I bought a 1 terrabyte backup external hard-drive that with the help of a nifty program called Super Duper, backs up all of my files on my computer and the external hard-drives I store images on primarily, every day. So, if you are a client of mine, your photos now exist on an external hard-drive, are backed up onto the Terrabyte drive, are backed up on disk in a fire-safe box, on disk in your folder, and then also in California on the Pictage servers. There is no way I am loosing anyone's wedding. Whew!

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Saturday night, Hubby and I met 13 of my cousins for the Ultsch Cousin Reunion. Since we are all older now (some of us with our own little families) it has come to pass that we don't see each other very often. So, we planned months in advance for an evening out at Lucille's. We had a blast, even though six people couldn't make it. It was so nice to look around the tables and see all of these people that are related and also such good friends. How lucky we are to have family that we truly enjoy spending time with and look forward to hanging out with, and who are some of our best friends. And not to mention, cousins who are so freakin' awesome. Our family rocks. Hubby has a trillion cousins who we see all the time, many of whom are his closest friends, so it was nice to get some time with my side of the family too.

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Another drumroll please...(two in one monday!) The doorbell just rang and it was UPS delivering my brand-spankin' new camera! Woot! I can not wait to give this baby a spin! Every wedding I'm scheduled to shoot this year just got a great upgrade since I'll be using this fabulous tool. Don't get me wrong, I'm much more of a "it isn't the camera, it is how you use it" type of person, but the advancements this model has over my last one will really free me up to take some spectacular shots. Woot! (yes, that is also too "woots" in one post)
I'm still stressing that it costs almost as much as my first car did, but I keep reminding myself that it is an investment. I'm sure there will be some test shots up on the blog later this week.

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Have a great Monday!