The bathroom ant

My dear tiny friend,

How came you to live in my bathroom? Aren't ants supposed to leave scent trails to follow? If so, how is it that your friends led you so astray?

I have seriously considered washing you away; I thought of putting you out of your life of lone travels through my bathroom, which I first interpreted to be a miserable existence, but I feared His Holiness the Dalai Lama would chase after me in nightmarish visions with a rolling pin. But then I soon realized that would be unlikely given what I'd done to all the cave crickets in the other end of the house. But I digress...

Where do you go besides between the shower and the sink? And why is it that I only see you, no matter the hour, on weekdays except for Friday? Do you work only four days a week?

Since you have been here for several weeks now, I take it that you have moved in. I hope you have a lovely apartment in the shower windowsill. I will not charge you rent, as I can't do math that small, and you probably don't have money anyways. But please don't get a mate and start having children. This is a single family home, you know.

Well, thanks for the company in the shower. I'll see you bright and early Monday morning.

Welcome home and happy birthday!

I moved back home on my 29th birthday. Ian invited close friends and family over for a cookout. Here are some pictures. There are more details about our first week in our house over on the Conway Scrapblog.



They tried to make me a smiley face with the candles on my cake.


We all had cake and a great time!

I'm a lemonade factory

Where do I even begin?

A few months back, I hinted (either here or on the Conway Scrapblog) that some major news would be announced by the end of the year. I didn't want to announce anything until things were legal and finalized, but my excitement and my big stupid mouth got in the way. Ian's done some posts about it on the Scrapblog, but I wanted to officially announce it once and for all:

By the end of the year, I will be a homeowner in Tennessee.

 Long story short, we will be inheriting part of my Grandparents' farm, which is amazing because Ian and I want to expand on our organic farming, and also because we'll literally be right across the street from my parents. There are about 100 other really great reasons, but I won't go into them all here.

The property still isn't legally ours, and we have no clue when it will be. We had originally planned to move there at the end of October when our lease is up. However...

Ian lost his job. He's been so unhappy here for so long. It seems like every job here requires a college degree, and every time we get him enrolled in school something drastic or crazy happens with our finances, never allowing him to do more than one consecutive semester. Being the smart thinker he is, he realized that there are many more job opportunities in our area of Tennessee for non-degree holders, so he volunteered to move there and get a job. And he did.

Meanwhile, I find out that my boss has been offered and accepted a job offer from an extremely prestigious institution. She's leaving in the beginning of August. I'm unofficially second in command, so this has major implications for me. I don't expect to be interim head, but I do think I need to do my part to lead us through this transition. The administration have reassured me they'll begin a search to replace her, but it most likely won't be this year.

Now you might ask, gosh Ashlie, that sure is a lot of change! How are you holding up?
Why thank you for asking! I'm holding my own, I guess. I jokingly have started to call myself a lemonade factory...you know, the old saying, "When life gives you lemons, turn them into lemonade!"

Honestly the hardest part has been being without Ian. I don't sleep well. I don't really have anyone here in town without major commitments to hang out with. I've literally had to fight myself to get up and get out of the apartment rather than sit here and mope. Sure, I video skype with Ian, Mom, and Dad every night, but it's just not the same.

 So for now, I'm here and he's there...and that's just how it has to be.

But in the meantime, Ian's done some great photoblogging at the Scrapblog on what he's doing to fix up our house. Once we're both moved in we'll be doing some serious blogging about all the fixing up we'll get to do...so stay tuned!

Oh and before I forget- those of you who found out about all this before this post and left comments, tweeted, facebooked, or voiced your support and friendship- it has been GREATLY appreciated. I love how every day friendship is shown to me when I least expect it. We all need to have a little more of that in our lives.

Until next time, my friends....
xoxox
akc

Back again!

Hi folks,
I'm back again. Life's been getting in the way of taking pictures and posting them. I've been considering redoing this blog to make it fit more of my life, and be less about selling photography. I've found that if people want your photography, they'll just email you, which works for me!

I've posted here a picture from ShawFest 2010. It was a fantastic show at Shaw Air Force Base in Sumter, SC. I have more pictures to upload, but I haven't had the chance to upload them.

I also got another camera, but I'll save that for another post...
akc

Sunday morning

Sorry for the gap in posts...I've been a bit sick lately. Norovirus is slowly touching everyone in South Carolina it seems. If you don't know about norovirus, you stomach ends up feeling a bit like this:



Anyway, I wanted to share something really cool I found poking around the interwebs. It's a 1903 homemade version of Alice in Wonderland.

You can read all about it on the youtube page. Really interesting history to it.

In other news, we're going out for a videoshoot and maybe a trip to the beach today. The videoshoot is the one of me that we keep having to put off, and the beach is just because I dreamt I was finding HUGE shark's teeth, and well, it's going to be 65 here today, so why not?

So safe travels to you if you're headed anywhere today.

More later.
xoxox

Backlog part one

I've almost cleared out my backlog just in time for us to travel to Tennessee this weekend (so I can build up another mass of 500+ pictures to sort though).



I've uploaded almost all the abandoned house/farm pictures from my Kingstree, SC folder. Up next will be all the nature pics, then I can move on to the Valentine's Day folder.

Outside of that, I've been busy doing laundry. Life can resume somewhat because my big presentation is over. You can read about it on the Music Library's blog. This was also my first presentation done on the PowerBook, so I wanted to say thanks to Mom and Dad. Also, thanks to my husband, Ian, for picking up the VGA adapter on the way back from a video shoot.

Now if only I can figure out what's up with the dubbing studio computer (sigh, I really am developing a hatred for PCs), the top tape deck, and get caught up on all my reference email questions, I'll be able to attend all the meetings I have this week and next!

But enough about the library!

Did you hear?


We might have a snowpocalypse2.0 in Columbia. I am SO ready for summer. I want to bike up and down Hunting Island and go camping. Or maybe go biking while camping on Hunting Island. Either would make me happy.

So busy!

Sorry it's been nearly a week since the last post. I've been so busy with life, yet I feel I'm not getting terribly much accomplished.

I do have news to report, so I thought I'd pop in and update you all.

First, (and most exciting, if I do say so myself) I am soon to be the owner of a large format camera! YIPPEE! The only questionable thing is if my Dad will actually turn it over to me to use. I think he's having too much fun experimenting with it himself.

Second, I'm also about to get a telephoto lens for the Nikon, which will absolutely be life changing for me, especially with how much I like to photograph birds and wildlife.

Third, this weekend we had fabulous weather here in South Carolina, so Ian and I took the opportunity to get out to Hunting Island State Park. We wanted to have our annual Valentine's Day shark tooth hunting smackdown over Valentine's weekend, but the weather didn't cooperate. So we did it this weekend, and of course I retained my title as supreme shark tooth finder...as if it were even in question! I'll try to post pics of all 25 teeth I found soon. For now, you'll have to settle with looking at this red bellied woodpecker that was causing a ruckus right behind me on the beach. Thank goodness I'm too chicken to take the Nikon to the beach- we took our little point & shoot Sony H9 which has a telephoto lens.


Fourth, Ian has been nearly booked solid with his yellowpages.com and free turnhere videos. It's a good time for Conway Multimedia right now. He's even convinced me to do a video shoot (that is, let him do a video shoot about my photography). I need to fix up my imagekind a great deal (sigh, yet another thing I've fallen behind on) before shooting, but I hope to get it done by the end of the month.

Fifth and finally, this time of year is just insane for me professionally. I think I have a meeting somewhere on campus everyday for the next two weeks, so don't expect much from me (at least when it comes to posting new photos) for a few, unless someone comes out with Flickr Schedulr for mac.

Anywho, that's all for now. I need to write a blog post for the library and finish up preparing my presentation for 275 music undergrads on Wednesday.
xoxox,
akc