Sore jaws, Tuscaloosa knights, and custard faces

So I worked on Labor Day, no biggie aside from being a little rushed in my assignments because there was a last minute addition to the middle of the day. And all morning, my jaw was starting to ache. No reason, and this is the second time in as many months. I'm going to attribute it to stress and just leave it at that. But it's stuck around since Monday, it's now Wednesday, and I'm thoroughly annoyed. I got Tuesday as holiday and I'm off work today. Anyway ...

At the Labor Day Festival thrown by the Our Lady of Lourdes (hey, I've been there; Lourdes, France, I mean; sorry, just occured to me) Catholic Church there were battling knights, horseback rides and custard-y men:

This fighter was actually a guest knight from Tuscaloosa ... thus the post's title ...

You cannot imagine the goofy goopiness of that last photo ...

And the knights are actually members of the local Iron Mountain Barony of the Society for Creative Anachronism, and I attended their meeting last night, asked about the fighting, so I'll hopefully be a regular stickjock soon enough. (Just FYI: "stickjock" is a term used to refer, sometimes in a derogatory manner, to a member of the SCA who is solely there for the fighting ... which would be me in a nutshell...) Go out, dress up in armor, beat the crap outta each other with sticks -- sounds like a perfect Sunday afternoon to me.

Okay, jaw hurting, gonna go and get some food that's really bad for me and go to bed. I've found that too much free time + hurting jaw + deep thoughts = bad mood.

The Fourth and Further

Yeah, so I broke down under pe-- actually, it wasn't "peer pressure," it was "Chana pressure," and ended up in Jackson, Ga., for the Fourth. Good times, overall, with its own set of ups-and-downs. Her friends like me, which is a plus. Anyway, I only shot during the fireworks -- drinking and carrying-on took up the rest of the night -- but here's a couple frames from the night.


Chana and Heather watch the firework on the dock of Chana's lake house. The bikini'ed figure in the background is her mother.


The lightning competes with fireworks over the lake. Thankfully, the rains held off till the fifth, when nobody particularly cared. I'm actually sort of fond of the second photo, particularly since I got the verticals right ... [happy pause] ... yeah, anyway.

I went into work today ... oh, by the way, work:
So, yeah, I went into work this morning, thinking to myself, "Well, I don't have any assignments yet, so I'll probably have to go out and find some good features, so how do I go about this buggering thing ..." et al. I spent an hour surfing the web, looking for inspiration on the art of feature-photo-hunting and researching B-ham for some good ideas, then decided I'd wing it. I walked up to the Ed's desk and ahem-ed, which gave him a little bit of a start.

Turns out I wasn't working today. Nobody tells me these things.

So I wandered around B-ham for a while, walked the UAB campus, went to check out a couple YMCAs in hopes one would have a Tai Chi class (no dice -- the only one is Tuesdays at 10 am, which is not really viable for me), went to the bookstore for a while, almost shot a feature on the UAB campus (would have, too, if not for the damned bureaucracy), and did a little huntin'-and-gatherin'.

And I'm apparently working a 2-10 shift tomorrow, so I won't be able to make it to the next meet-up of the local capoeristas, which I found through the internet god, Google. They meet late on Tuesdays, apparently, at a park about fifteen/twenty minutes from my place. But I've got assignments to look forward to: one on school construction and the other on a semi-pro football team. Even if they turn out to suck, I'm sure I'll learn something.

If I didn't learn something new every day, I'd be a depressed little bugger. Today I learned that though cockroaches can survive harsh environments and are generally resilient little bastards, they still don't stand a chance versus a standard-issue sink-based trash disposal ... don't ask ...

Update

First off, let me say that I want to strangle Nikki and Tara. Now that I don't really know anyone named Nikki or Tara (well, not well enough to actually want to strangle them), so it's just the outward signs of annoyance at third parties. Specifically, the third parties on the advertisement for the "Eye-Fi," an SD card that transmits wireless from one's camera to one's computer. The murderous desire is not due to anything they've actually done -- I simply chose them to be the direction of my ire tonight. Annoyances.

Anyway.

I had my first little assignment from the R&B tonight (as a stringer) and lemme say, it sucked. Which is to say that I had fun, I took some decent (not great, not even "Pretty Good," just decent) photos, I met a bunch of sorority girls that all looked pretty much the same, and I met one of the regular photo staffers at the R&B, Lindy Dugger. Well, semi-regular -- she claims she hasn't been working too much lately. Also, I was informed that I've been thinking wrong about aperture, since I usually try to utilize the smallest possible to get as much depth of field as possible. That needs to be the other way around, most of the time. I mean, it all depends, of course, but I should start watching that, especially since I seem to have a fondness for close-in with a wide-angle.

Not much else to report. I skipped Johnson's photo-j class on Wednesday so I could go with Aleks (but I think this has already been mentioned), but she'll have to wait a few weeks to actually get her citizenship. She aced the test, though, not that that surprised me. "How many stripes on the flag? Who was the first president? Who's the current president?" She's a frigging International Affairs major who attended high school here in the States. Not to mention she borders on painfully smart.

I'm just babbling because I'm tired. Capoeira angola hates me hard.

Ciao.

My work ...

So I had a section of wall at the Latin American Study Abroad art show a couple weeks ago (yeah, I'm slow with the updating ...) and most of my tribe showed up. Then I showed up five days later to take my stuff down, and it was all gone. Gone. Surprise, then rage, then rational thought went through my skull ... though I kept slipping back to rage, as it's such a freeing and fun emotion. Different story, but all ended well, and anyway ...

Jerry Wallace, a graduate from "thirty-something years ago" of Lamar Dodd, checks out my stuff. Self-matted, by the way, one of my only really satisfying accomplishments this semester.

So, this post was essentially me patting myself on the back. Terribly sorry.

Another, just because I can ...

At Dawgs after Dark, Emily Thomsen and Chase Brown duke it out in a very springy ring with gloves they swore were 15 lbs. And I thought 16 ounce gloves were thick ...