Long Overdue

I haven’t really been around lately, half because I’ve been busy, the other half was obviously laziness. So here’s a not-so-quick update!

• In the midst of the instagram drama with the facebook buyout,  I created an account for ironic purposes- clearly the message was missed by a few. More on that later, because its a hilarious and ugly rant that deserves its own post.
  

• My mom’s 5 year breast-cancer-survival anniversary was 2 weeks ago and to commemorate her and many others fighting, or losing their battles Momma Dee, My sister Moni, & I got matching breast cancer tattoos. My mom and I chose modern cute bows instead of the traditional ribbon & my sis went with a traditional ribbon with the word Hope written on it. It was a nice bonding moment, its just a shame the tattoo place we went to sucked (lesson learned, never try a new shop). Also another lesson learned, you MUST eat before getting tattooed even if its tiny, I thought I’d be okay with my OJ and power bar since my tattoo was small, but I WAS NOT, about a half hour after we left I nearly passed out as we were eating at Jimboys and freaked out my mom and sis LOL, whoops!

• Realized the book concept for my portfolio I wanted to do wouldn’t work because my photo scans aren’t high-res enough & I’m not proficient with my personal film scanner yet; thus no book because I’m a broke-ho and pro scans cost up to $30/frame.
• Got a new camera with THE WORKS, as a gift from a family friend who got it from a NASCAR photog. Its a minolta x-700, with a serious assload of lenses:
  – telephoto
  -a proper macro lens (not just a filter)
  -zoom (30-80mm)
  -50mm
  -super-wide angle (17mm), my favorite so far
  Not to mention it also came with a flash (which I badly needed and couldn’t afford), and a power winder (which basically allows me to shoot several frames per second). Needless to say that was the highlight of my month so far. Thank you OJ! :)

• THE wedding is in less than a few days and my entire family is on stress-out mode, so I’ve been keeping my distance until the big day, ah the perks of living downtown. :)
• Also, just realized aside from pix that were taken on my phone (all of these in this post too), I’ve moved completely to film in the past 3 months. I haven’t used my digital camera at all so much that I’m not even sure what pictures I currently have on my memory card, and my battery is completely drained. OH well. And to think for a minute I was seriously considering buying a Nikon DSLR …
• Went to Bodega on saturday, it was much needed and ended up being more of a wildlife sighting more than anything. I got to see cows, cute deer, a whale (!!), and even a hawk just chillin’ soaking in the sun. (btw, there were 2 deer grazing not even 20 feet from this guy and I wasn’t that far away either)

• Also, if you want to keep up with me whenever I take my unexpected hiatuses, I post regularly to twitter, and twitpic.

It felt good catching up guys, I’ll see ya’ll soon.

<333 val