Blog-like update!

Ahh, Tintern Abbey, UK, Fall 2009.  Sadly, it seems that we won’t be making it back to the UK or Netherlands this year.  The next time we get to go will likely be entirely for pleasure.  That has some advantages, of course–I won’t be occupied with work-related activities for any of our time there, for one.  We’ll be back someday, I’m sure.

It’s been a little bit since I’ve updated here, and I apologize for that.  A lot of stuff has been going on here.  Namely:

• Working on first-floor powder room renovation.  This started out as a simple project and turned into a giant one.  It’s looking good, though.  We’re down to the point where we’re ready to re-install the fixtures.  This is probably the least complicated part, but the part giving me the greatest heartburn.  My Dad has been helping a ton, and I have a feeling some of my more handy relatives are looking down on me and alternately laughing at the dumb things I’m doing, and also helping to protect me from myself.
• Getting ready to host my sister Sarah’s bridal shower at our house this coming Saturday.  Getting the powder room done is first priority.  Second priority is getting the rest of the house cleaned and looking sharp.  That’s going to involve carting a lot of stuff upstairs and either putting them away or storing them until we actually need them.  Most of the stuff is mine, of course.
• Took senior photos of a friend’s daughter this past Sunday.  She is beautiful, the light we had was beautiful, and the resulting photos are, likewise, beautiful.  I’m about half-way finished retouching my picks.  I’m excited about delivering these with a few surprises for the recipient.  I just need a few more hours to finish them, and we’ll be all set.  This is the first official job for which I’m using Lightroom as my start-to-finish workflow tool.  So far, it’s awesome.  Thanks to Jared Platt and others for some good pointers along the way.
• We’re getting whole-house A/C.  I’ve never had that.  We have had a window A/C unit in our bedroom so that we can sleep on the hot days, but the rest of the house is self-ventilated.  It normally does pretty well, but this summer has been pretty brutal.  We finally decided to go ahead and get it.  We’ll probably still run it only during the warmest portions of the year and go self-ventilated for the reasonable days.  Having it will make our future goal of working out of our home more reasonable, and will make it easier for us to entertain clients in our home during the summer.  Since our ductwork goes all the way up to the third floor, I might even be able to finally realize having my office on the third floor.
• This marks my last week on my current team at work.  Next week, I officially move to a different team, doing somewhat different work.  It’s exciting for me, but my work days have been busier than normal as I try to make sure everything that I do is transitioned smoothly to the poor soul who has to take over for me.

With all of this going on, I haven’t had much time to think critically about several topics that I want to write about here.

Next time I post, I’ll have photos from something.  Maybe they’ll be before/after shots from the powder room, or perhaps some photos from the bridal shower.  And, of course, we’ll do a big post about the senior shoot.  In the meantime, it is late, and I’m tired, so I think it’s off to bed for me.