Billy Ward and Me in Nashville at Soundcheck Studios. He was in town to do a clinic and promote his DVD as well as DW Drums. He's drummed for several different folks, most recently on tour with Joan Osborne. In the last fifteen years Billy has toured and /or recorded (among others) with jazz artists Jim Beard, Bill Evans Supergroup, Leni Stern, George Russell and Living Time Orchestra, pop artists The Knack, Jimmy Webb, Carly Simon, Richard Marx, ex-KISS star Ace Frehley's Comet, and unclassifiable talents like Bill Champlin, Robbie Robertson, Yoko Ono, and Chris Whitley.

Look! I finally posted a Seattle picture! Sorry I've gotten so behind with the photos. I've just been covered up for the last month or so. This was a cool shot of Space Needle during a brief break in the cloud cover.

Photos and more photos...

OMG. Sorting and processing this last batch of photos from the dance recital a few weeks ago has been quite an ordeal. I really took a few thousand shots... all in RAW. I shot in RAW because of the rapidly changing light conditions and to easily set the white balance for each scene... of which there were 68 in each show... and there were 3 shows. Thankfully, I'm about done with that and can start uploading those this week. Jawana tells me that some other parents of kids in the recital were getting kid of antsy to see the photos so the answer to them is "VERY SOON NOW". These shots don't go straight from my camera to be uploaded - some work has to be done to them before they're ready. That's the time consuming part.

Shot a wedding this past Friday afternoon. Thanks to Lesa, I had a backup camera body to use in case mine malfunctioned for some reason. I did get one error that locked up my camera but it was cleared when I removed the batteries for a few seconds. Whew! It was an outside wedding so you can imagine I was pretty warm as I was doing my thing. After the wedding and the reception, I was pretty much worn out.

Saturday was a day of domestication as I did laundry and general home stuff. I was able to get out a bit and get some shots of a soccer tournament going on for a work project before coming home and taking a much deserved LONG nap. Joined some friends to grill out steaks and enjoy a nice evening in the country.

Church was a blast today! Music went off without a hitch with some really good crowd participation in the last songs. Wow! That was exciting. After a quick lunch at Quizno's, it was back to church again for band practice. I pretty much spent the rest of the day working on photos so that would be how I wrapped up my weekend.

Oh, I did get to tape then watch the British Grand Prix. Ya know I can't be missing my F1 races now...

Ah... the weekend's here!

After another busy week at work, it was nice to wrap up with a Photoshop seminar up in Nashville Friday. I learned a lot of new things along with better ways to do things I HAVE been doing. Good stuff. After class was over, I met up with a friend of mine from Pearl Drums for some dinner at Big River Brewery. Excellent cuisine. Had fun talking about a variety of topics from drums to photography.

Afterward, I stopped in at Guitar Center to see if they had a bag I could carry my bongos in. I was in luck and they had what I needed. I much prefer Fork's for my drum gear but they had closed at 6 and it was already past 7.

When I got home, I started uploading the first sets of shots from the Cinderella dance recital up to my gallery. There's a BUNCH so that will be a time consuming process.

This morning, I finally unpacked my drums from last weekends show. From the heat, they had gone way out of tune so I tinkered around with them to get them sounding like they should. I was lazy and didn't set them up yet. I may do that before I head off to bed shortly.

I decided that today I really needed to wash my car. It was filthy. What took the longest was getting all the bugs off the front. I had to break out the bug & tar remover to get about a zillion gnats off of there that wouldn't wash off. I did the whole works, vacuumed the interior and the trunk, wiped off all the leather, washed the exterior, cleaned the wheels and tires, cleaned the glass inside and out... I even went ahead and checked my tire pressures. 3 of them were down a pound of air so I got them aired up to where they needed to be. Car looks good now. I did find one place where my paint got chipped. GRRRR. I've got touch up paint so I'll fix it tomorrow.

Went bowling tonight - it was my first time in probably 6 years and you could tell. Yikes! I bowled WAY below my average, but I didn't expect much after not having bowled in so long AND being tired from working outside all afternoon.

Time to wind down for the evening. I may make myself a nice drink and watch some tube before I drift off to bed.