Ah, sweet bliss--I got to print photos today. It was lovely. I printed some negatives that I took in '98 and '99. One was a closeup photo of Joey when she was 5 and another was a great (if I do say so myself) photo of my grandmother sitting at my kitchen table with a shawl over her shoulders, playing solitaire. The lighting from the windows is nice and the emotion is strong. I really love it--I think I'll print copies of it for Cherri and Amy. I'm not sure if I'll be able to frame it for them but I'll certainly mount and mat it. I also printed a picture of a house in a wonderfully picturesque state of decay. I love it. It was quite serendipitous to find it because I needed another landscape picture and didn't really want to take one. I'm already 3 rolls behind so I didn't need any more negatives to mess around with. Not this term. I'll do more next term.

I only got about 5.5 or 6 hours of sleep last night. I was fine when I got up and when I was in class but after class, after I went to Packaging Specialties and bought ribbon and seals for my Christmas party invitations, I went to Taco Bell for lunch. When I got there, I was overcome with a powerful urge to sleep so I pulled into a parking lot nearby and took a nap in my car. I locked the doors of course. It was funny and a bit pathetic. I felt like I was back in full-time school again when I used to nap in my car in the school parking lot during breaks between classes.

One of my classmates had an unfortunate experience today. I was walking down the hall with my easel and paper and the door opened to a film-rolling room. The girl inside (she's quite young--still pretty much a girl in my estimation) had blood streaming down her arms and was holding her arms up to her face. She was moaning "please help me" and making sad, scary noises. At first it looked like the blood was coming from her wrists. I had this brief flash of thought that she had tried to off herself in the film-rolling room and then changed her mind, but on closer inspection, I realized that the blood was coming from somewhere on her face. Turns out she had bent over (in the dark, of course) and whacked her nose and face on the base of the enlarger that was in there with her. I called for the teacher right away and grabbed some rubber gloves for myself and the teacher. Then I grabbed a pile of paper towels to put under her hands to catch the blood that was dripping from them. One student wanted to bring her into the classroom but because there was so much blood involved, I said to bring a chair to her instead. I brought her a cool, wet paper towel for her nose and took some of the bloody toweling away. By then the Public Safety officer came and took over. The poor injured girl seemed slightly offended that I was treating her blood like toxic waste, but it *is* toxic waste. I practice universal procedures. My rule of thumb is if it's wet, and sticky and not yours, don't touch it. (Of course, all bets are off if it's your own kid.) Sadly, the girl's film was exposed so she ruined her Thanksgiving pictures. She was very sad about everything. I bet she ends up with a pretty big bruise.

I sold back some books that I wanted to get rid of at Powell's today (best bookstore ever!) and I got $41 in store trade or $34 cash. I took store trade, bien sur! With that, I bought all the books for the children on my gift list. How excellent is that? She had to pass on about a third of my books because they were overstocked, so I can either bring them back later, give them to charity or try selling them at a different branch of Powell's, which I may do tomorrow since I'm going downtown. One thing I learned today, though, was that if if you want to be a book buyer at Powell's, you must have some combination of the following: a very weird and icky piercing, a big gnarly tattoo or dreds. One of the book buyers was a white guy with really nasty, natty dreds and a spike (very sharp, I might add) coming out of each side of his upper lip making him look much like the short cartoon villian Boris from Rocky and Bullwinkle. And since these were so sharp, he was doing a good job of advertising that he ain't gettin' none at all. The one who helped me had a pierced septum with a big fat ring in it that hung down almost an inch. She looked like a strawberry blond bull. Joey thought it was very funny. She told me later that she couldn't stop looking back and forth between the spikes and the ring. She even said the woman looked like a bull! I wondered if that guy had any freaking idea how pathetically stupid he looked. I mean, c'mon. White guys with dreds? Pul-leeze.

Now I'm going to go take a shower, crawl in bed and start addressing party invites while I watch TV. Ooh, I think while I'm downtown tomorrow, I may have to visit ProPhoto and get more photo paper. Mmmmm...photographic supplies.

Ta...

--L