It seems that since May, I've just been completely swamped with projects and events outside of the normal work stuff (which I don't talk about here). These activities are in addition to the "normal" half-dozen rehearsals a week, playing in church, 4 dance lessons, 1 vocal lesson, and all the other normal family activities I can't think of just now.
Here's my rundown, in summary form! Starting in May, we've had visitors here pretty much full time from India and China. There was a brief 2-week period at the end of August where there actually wasn't anyone extra here! So my family spends a lot of the weekend showing these visitors the sights in glorious St. Louis. Oh, and when I say "glorious", that is actually NOT sarcasm. I love this city. This fall we have been less able to do that, due to some of our other activities, but believe it or not - WE STILL HAVE OUT OF TOWN VISITORS!
From June until the end of July, I took, and edited, hundreds of pictures for our new church directory. It was finally released this past Friday. Out of the hundreds of pictures I took and submitted, a dozen or so made it into the directory. The company putting the directory together didn't allow too many of our own pages in the directory. The pictures I took make up the majority of the church provided photos. On the positive side, the printing looks GREAT, keeping the color and resolution of my original files. I'm very happy with how my pictures look. I even got the cover shot (shown below).
As soon as that project was wrapped up, I scurried MYSELF off to China. Here's a picture I took my first evening there. This (and some of the remaining pictures) have previously appeared on "One Dad's Life." So, all you old-timers, cut some slack for the new visitors, OK? Thanks!
And another from the mountains near Xi'an my first weekend!
Then, the very day AFTER, I returned from China, I started orchestra rehearsals on the 260+ page score of "Annie." Production on the show, of course, had been going on through-out the summer, starting in June, but this was the busiest time for me. The show finally played the last two weeks in September. By my way of measuring it, the show was incredible...and so much fun. We had the BEST cast and crew, ever, this time around.
Then, this past weekend, we had the 2nd Annual "St. Louis Interactive Festival." It was incredible! As a bonus, my wife, Dianne, helped out all weekend with it so I didn't even have to be away from her for one of my "day's off!" She got to know some of my blogger friends a lot better. They are a great group of people. We also went out to dinner with a group of them on Friday night at Hodack's, which was a lot of fun, too! I was the speaker/host/moderator of a session on "Photography for the Hobbyist" along with Mike Wilkerson, which was fun. There were tons of questions, which totally knocked me off my agenda, but it was really good in that we were able to help some people with problems they had been having. We are currently working on plans for at least one "lunch and learn" session on basic photography. Stay tuned!
So, now that all of this stuff is "over", I can finally come back to my home a few nights a week without going right to bed! So, as I sit in my home, relaxing a bit, there is one question that is asserting itself loud and clear:
"NOW WHAT?"
Hey hon, I was hoping you could help me out with the Advent services. I need someone to play on Dec 16th for the 5 and 7 o clock services...Since you are looking for something to do....
Posted by: Dianne | October 20, 2009 at 01:51 PM
I was thinking more along the lines of working on my man cave.
Posted by: Gregg | October 20, 2009 at 02:27 PM