Updating ...

So I finally got internet hooked up today, and here's the "off-line updates":

An offline update for Monday evening, June 30.

It was my first day as the Birmingham News photo intern. But perhaps I should go back and cover the weekend first. So, in brief …

Went to visit Chana on Friday, it was fun but she finally went ahead and broke down and got pissy and indignant about me leaving for six months and that was a nice guilt trip (I drove home sad that I couldn’t spend the night and happy that someone cared enough to feel as she does), got up bright and early on Saturday morning with a minor sense of dreading building in my gut, packed up the car(s), and got on the road, only about 30 minutes later than usual because my family is, well, my family; caravanned toward Smyrna to get Grandma, because no road trip is complete without the elderly matron of the family along for the ride; drove major detours because the freeway was backed up, delaying us even more; finally got to Hwy 20 and zipped (as well as a 1988 Toyota Vanwagon, a narcoleptic 1990-something Mazda Millennia, and a slightly-rattly-but-otherwise-pretty-nice 1996 Mazda Protégé can) toward Birmingham, Alabama, occasionally scattering across 4 lanes and occasionally nigh upon one another’s bumpers, had some major/minor car issues, and made it to the leasing office with only, gasp, the same 30 minute deficit with which we began; unloaded, kicked my folks to the road, felt bad about it, called, apologized, started missing them rather quickly, and unpacked some more. Sunday: unpacked, explored B-ham a little, felt a little lonely but survived nonetheless.

I started at 8 am today. I won’t go over the usual things (i.e., doing all the wrong things at least once, feeling more than a little awkward, wondering where things are more than once, forgetting the pencil behind your ear, et al) but I will say I got some nice equipment, all Nikon stuff. Also, instead of the usual week of shadowing and assisting, the Ed decided to just dropkick me into the newsroom, so I went on assignment to some bike shops (photos possibly to come). Some of them might run tomorrow – we’ll see.

You know, I’m kinda tired. I’m going to head for bed now.

**

Tuesday night, still no Internet. If I hadn’t been at the office until about 6:30 today, I might have had the chance to actually make a phone call or two. Supposedly, the Ed’s going to let me off early tomorrow, so progress might be made.

Assignments for the day: coat hanger factory with a character who shall be known as “the Song,” decorated parking meters as I was coming back from that, and photos at a park that’ll be edited tomorrow. Coat hanger factory was fun as any factory might be, though I got a bigger kick out of using the Song’s D300. Sah-weeet. I might be sold on Nikons – jury is still out a little.

I think I needed to get back into the habit of shooting. Yesterday felt more forced, rougher, in need of a great smack to the forehead to make things right up yonder. Today was nicer – it was more relaxed, I just looked and shot and looked and talked and smiled and enjoyed it. Maybe it’s going from a small town newspaper where grip-and-grins and façade shots are acceptable to a paper with 600 employees and assignments from sister companies in D.C. Maybe I’m just fooling myself. Anyway, I hope things get better, and I hope my shooting improves – it was easier today, but I don’t know that it was better, per se.

Speaking of photography, I talked to the Ballerina tonight – it was comforting, exciting and kind of invigorating to talk to her. I do miss her. She’ll hopefully be shooting for one of the colleges back in Athens pretty soon.

And speaking of talking to people, I talked to the Birmingham Miss tonight. She had called while I was still at the office, and made mention of going out with friends tonight, though the conversation was a little lost because I was in the midst of editing and captioning. She called later and we talked briefly – sum of it was that she’ll give me a call later and we’ll meet sometime somewhere next week or so because tonight might have been a little hairy. Seemed a little worried her boyfriend might show up at the bar, too, so … don’t really know what, if anything, that might imply, but it’ll add interest to my day, no doubt.

Bedtime – shooting something tomorrow at nine in Bessemer, and then something else at 11:30 in D-town B-ham. That’s something I like about this job: it’s something different almost every day. So there’s no chance to say, “Same shit, different day.” It’s instead, “Different shit, different day, same damn camera.”

… or something like that.

… oh, and I have to carry around a second cell phone for work. Which is actually nicer than my cell.

… yeah, bed, gone.