Its been a busy couple of weeks since school started. I have been spending nearly every moment working on schoolwork. It is to the point where if I am not doing something related to school I am falling behind. So I spend just about every waking moment attending class, teaching, preparing to teach, or preparing to attend class. Not to mention photographing on the weekends. I’m not complaining, I know this is where I need to be, working my butt off and trying to get through grad school. However, it gets a little tiresome at times and sometimes you can’t seem to see the end of what you are working towards. Thats when I pack up my things, head to St. Louis, and fly down to Florida for the weekend.

I”m trying not to build this up too much, but this weekend is truly going to be incredible. I am flying down to Tampa in 8 hours from now, and I will be chillin with my boys for the weekend. On Monday morning we head out early for Miami. We are planning on spending the day in Miami at South Beach, just chillin on the beach and admiring the art deco architecture. We’ll go from there to the Orange Bowl, where the Miami Hurricanes will be hosting the Seminoles from Florida State. It’s going to be amazing, I can’t wait to see the Noles take the field again. I honestly think we have a pretty good chance of winning. No doubt we will need a solid game from Drew Weatherford and Lorenzo Booker, but I think in the end the boys from Tallahassee will come through in the clutch. FSU 21 Miami 17 You heard it here first. Have a great Labor Day weekend, and I’ll see everyone when I get back.

I hate to say it, but it’s the end. As the clock turned 12:00 AM this morning, the summer of 2006 is officially over and tomorrow I will wake up to find myself driving to class. It has been a summer of amazing moments, and not so amazing down times. I am actually kind of ready to start school again and to get another semester out of the way. It’s hard to believe that I will be half way through grad school at the end of the semester. Me and the other grad students met with the new grad students tonight, and it was pretty surreal to think that last year I was in the exact same situation as they are. I was so nervous to be walking into my first year of graduate school. I don’t think I had ever been that nervous in my life. I can’t say that I can call Carbondale my home without a slight bit of trepidation in my voice, but I have come a long way in one year. Last year I was walking into SIU without knowing a single person, and tomorrow I will walk in as a confident grad student ready to get back to work. It is very hard to say goodbye to the lazy days of summer, and even harder to say goodbye to all the amazing times that I spent this summer. I was fortunate enough to be able to travel to Florida, Bimini, California, Las Vegas, and Colorado this summer. But what really made this summer so special was the people that I spent it with. Some quick memories from the summer of 2006….

Driving to Destin, FL after my first year review. That was one of the most liberating and relieving drives I have ever had.

Spending 5 days in Destin hanging out with Costello, JB, and Cook. I’ll never forget laying on the beach, playing frisbee, and living like royalty in a top floor condo.

Photographing graduations in Miami. I had a great time with the Bob Knight crew.

Heading over to Bimini with my aunt and uncle and my family. Not to mention almost getting attacked by a shark.

Going to California and Vegas with Casey and Costello. I’ll never forget that trip fellas.

Trying to cool off in a blow up pool with multiple holes in it. (very difficult)

Going to Colorado with my family for a week. Sitting in a natural hot spring in Colorado is pretty amazing.

Taking it easy before school started. yeh, i was lazy

After rolling out of bed this morning, I walk to the computer to check my email. Having received nothing, I put the computer to sleep and go get something to eat. I come back to the computer a couple of hours later and wake it up. It starts lagging on me, and I look over at my external hard drive and the light on the front is just blinking at me. I turn off the drive and proceed to restart the computer, hoping it would resolve itself. I turn the drive back on after the computer loads and the computer just completely goes to crap. I can’t get it to do anything, and the stupid drive is just blinking at me. I’ve only had this drive for a year, and it is a really good drive…a Lacie 250GB d2 drive. Well, it turns out that it is kaput…completely. I can’t get anything off it. So I have lost just about everything on my computer. My system drive is still fine, which allows me to run windows and everything else, but I don’t have any of my photos, music, or any other media. Luckily I backed up most of my photos last summer. However, I have lost everything from the past year. Basically, anything created over the past year is gone…papers, research, photos. Gone. So the lesson learned is….back up your computer!!! Please!! Don’t make the same mistake I did. I bought the best possible equipment, and it still failed on me. So I have another drive in the mail, and if I can’t recover the old one, I’m going to buy another so I can have them mirror each other. Anyways, it was a sad day. Maybe its an omen…for me to forget about the past year, which was pretty pathetic from a creative production standpoint. hmm

I have been waiting for years now to purchase my first Mac. You could say I’m the biggest Apple fan that doesn’t actually own a Mac. I love everything about Apple, but I haven’t had the money to buy anything. I still don’t really have the money, but I am seriously thinking about buying a new Macbook next month. I’m waiting for rumors about new processors to pan out and see if I can get a free upgrade on the processor if I wait a little bit. I’m really excited about finally having a laptop though. It makes writing papers a little more exciting when you can do it outside or in a coffee shop. I just want to be like Chase, pull out the Macbook in a coffee shop and look down upon all the loser PC laptops.