MIA but Still Amongst the Living!

In case anyone was wondering about my whereabouts, I'm still alive.

I know I'm still alive because I see no angels anywhere. Nor are they offering me the much-deserved glass of wine I am fully expecting to be given upon admittance into Heaven. (That would be grape juice for all you Baptists out there.) And since I'm also not being poked with a pitchfork by some twit in a furnace, I must deduce that I am definitely still here on Earth.

Although it has been hellishly hot over the past two weeks....

I've not been around because I committed an act so incredibly stupid that I ought to be committed, period. I share this experience with you on the off chance that at least one of you may also be COMPLETELY NUTS and be contemplating doing the exact same thing as I did. So listen up, you Crazy Woman (whoever you are):

DO NOT SPEND YOUR PRECIOUS ONE WEEK OF DESPERATELY NEEDED VACATION TO TAKE A SEMESTER-IN-A-WEEK DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY COURSE BECAUSE YOUR HUSBAND GETS FREE CLASSES FOR FAMILY MEMBERS AS PART OF HIS EMPLOYMENT AT THE UNIVERSITY DOWN THE STREET!

It will not be fun.

It will be stressful.

Much more stressful than your job (if that's possible). It will be hot and miserable and occur during the summer's hottest heat wave, and your teacher will make you go outside and take pictures because interior lighting is not allowed. You will be forced to wrestle with a tripod that is an instrument of torture - possibly even designed by Satan himself - and you will not be allowed to use it to beat your teacher - even though she richly deserves a beating because she is a rude, mentally-deranged "artiste" who thinks it's okay to change the assignments and syllabus three times a day AND hollers at you as if you were a red-headed stepchild.

(I have been both an "artiste" and a college professor, and I'm telling you right now, there are a lot of posers out there. Tenure is pure poison for these people - and you can always tell just how truly talentless they are by how many times they let you know they have tenure and then mention how they can do anything they want now.)

You'll end up getting one of those losers because they're the only ones unethical enough to make the claim that you can learn in one week what you quickly come to realize requires a whole semester. But, hey! She got her paycheck, and that's all that matters, right?

On the bright side, I can say that you will finally understand the mysterious trinity of aperture, shutter speed and ISO. And, as a student, you'll get to finally upgrade from the world of Photoshop Elements and purchase Photoshop Extended CS5 for $149.00 instead of $999.00. (It is these perks that saved my teacher's life as I would otherwise surely have taken her down with that wretched tripod.)

And enjoyed doing it, I might add.

Seriously, I have never, EVER had a worse instructor or a more miserable excuse for a class. However, I'm over it now. Despite my little tirade here. (I had to fill y'all in, didn't I?)

I also suffered some major dehydration while out shooting at some damn apple farm she made us all go to, and I ended up pulling the calf muscles in my right leg - I was limping like a pirate with a bad peg leg from Wednesday to Sunday. On Friday, after the class ended, I went home ready to celebrate and finally get to make some cards... and proceeded to have a massive sinus episode that kept me in my bed for the rest of the weekend. The only thing that brought me out from under the covers was my responsibility to Paula's blog hop (which was a success, BTW - thank you, everyone)!

I spent all of last week trying to recover from my "vacation."

And trying to catch up at my job. Can you believe they actually changed the name of our group while I was gone?! We used to be the project's field deployment PMO and now we're totally revamped and are calling ourselves the Business Support Something Or Other.

This is like going to visit your father and finding somebody else living in his house. (Where did he go? WHEN did he go? Did he go to the Final Roundup in the Sky? Did he leave a forwarding address?)

Very disorienting and not just a little flabbergasting, I can tell you.

(I speak from experience. The year was 1992 and I didn't send my rotten Daddy a Christmas present that year I was so ticked. Well. That and I didn't have an address.)

Despite the past two weeks, I'm feeling optimistic. Gigi's school starts in a fortnight - which means my life will be getting much better. She's been here with me all this summer, and it's been very trying for both of us. She, understandably, wants me to play with her, entertain her, take her places. While I wish I could do these things, I work from home, so I can't very well just stop analyzing data to go have a tea party. But she persists and fights for my attention anyway. Far too often I've had to wait until she's gone to bed so I can go back to work to make sure they're getting a true 40 hours. It's been rough and frustrating, and given the whole spinal issue this spring, I've had practically no time at all to create anything.

Good grief - do I need some cheese to go with that whine or what?!

Aaaaaaaaaaaaanyway, that's where I've been and what I've done.

The coming week will bring you more posts with pictures of the fabulous get-well cards I received because...

I AIN'T DEAD YET!!!

;~D

Comments

Glad to hear "all is well" .... :)

Posted by: Virginia L. | July 27, 2010 at 10:14 AM

I'd go through h.e.double toothpicks to get Photoshop for $149 too!

Posted by: Nancy | July 27, 2010 at 10:27 AM

I LOL'd so badly Deborah. I probably would have done the same thing. I just hope you can survive the next couple of weeks, then hopefully then things will slow down a bit.

Posted by: Froggietalks | July 27, 2010 at 10:33 AM

i think your instructor has a clone here or she moved to indiana (is her name barbra???-notice only 2 "a's" and don't dare call her barbara). loved reading your photography story from hell. anyway enjoyed your wine and glad u r alive and well. my copic class is next week - i'm excited.

Posted by: Betty | July 27, 2010 at 08:23 PM