October 31, 2009

Happy Halloween everyone! Interestingly, Halloween isn't a big holiday here. It's gaining popularity due to American media influence, but it's nothing like what tends to happen back home. We did have a handful of trick or treaters come round, which really thrilled Zephyr who has never gotten to experience Halloween before. :)

The frameshop opening went very well today- my photos were looked at by a lot of people, and I hope some will sell soon. I have a deal with a printer who will give me 50% off printing on large format, so that makes it more feasible for me to print things to be mounted and framed than it would have been. It was exciting to see people coming in and it made me think back to my parents opening their store years ago- I don't think I realised how much valuable business knowledge I gained simply from working in their store. But now that I'm running my own business I'm getting a lot of comments from people about my having good business sense- basically I'm just doing what seems to make sense to me and learning from my mistakes as I go along, but active learning is no small task I suppose, and I'm blessed with business genes from both my parents. :) And I know that Gd has put me in this situation for a reason, hopefully so that the business will do well and we'll be able to start other businesses in the future.

Any of you who are astute might notice that I'm posting this at 12:26am our time- it's been a catch up day for me today, getting lots of photo processing done, some even from back in the summer on our last trip home! I am very nearly caught up, which is great since we are off to China in 2 weeks now! It's been quiet as far as StAG work goes since it's half term, but I for one needed the time to get random things sorted out. Our bble studies start back up this week.

Ok it's high time I went to bed- I hope you are all well there and enjoying the beautiful trees! I hear the weather has been up and down, and it has been here too. We miss you all and are looking forward to seeing you around Christmas time!

October 28, 2009

Now that I'm over swine flu, I've been up to my ears in business related stuff. An exciting development this week is that a business connection of mine is opening a framing shop and is renting me wall space so I can sell my fine art pieces! I am SOOOO excited you guys- I started out in photography as a fine art person, doing black and white. I've learned to use some skills from my classes to do other sorts of work (that actually pays) but black and white is my first love and I am really thrilled to be able to sell some. Finally my babies are going out into the world to earn their keep! ;) This development has kept me busy- I've been visiting local printing companies like crazy to see if I can find someone who will print on fiber papers for me (no luck yet) and getting more business cards done, having my photos framed for the wall, etc etc. I still have to make some little placards for the pieces to put on the wall, with the name and pricing.

This past weekend we had a lovely visit with our friends Helen and Robin from the Ann Arbor SCD group- I miss dancing in A2!!! It was wonderful to spend time with them and we were very sad to see them go. On Saturday I was out with the US Air Force who brought out a small group of volunteers to do some tree felling for us, and it was really nice to enjoy some American hospitality and friendliness. Most of them live on base and don't know many British people well, which I found interesting as we've immersed ourselves in British culture and don't know many Americans here! There are certainly days where I'd love to transport myself to America- maybe I'll just go out to visit my friends on the base and get my fix that way. :)

Tomorrow I have a new client coming round to get some help with batch processing his files. I seem to be doing a lot of photoshop tutoring these days- its been great for raising my profile and credibility, and I hope it brings in some new business as well.

October 19, 2009

So I put 2 and 2 together today when looking at the swine flu symptoms list and figured out that I had swine flu. :) Here they aren't bothering even to diagnose it- they just say stay home and take some anit-flu medicine. So no one knows exactly who had it or how many. Zephyr has already had it, and I suspect Hope had it too. It really wasn't that bad as far as flu goes- much less bad than seasonal flu, except for the horrible sore throat. It was a fairly mild fever, just a strong feeling of tiredness, and runny nose etc. I'm still feeling tired everyday, which is a real bummer. But now that I've had it that's that, so no worrying about it anymore. They hype over it was quite ridiculous until people started catching it and everyone saw that it wasn't a big deal. It hasn't been in the news here in ages. :)

Now you can all tell people in the US that swine flu isn't a big deal, and that half of Britain has already had it and gotten on with their lives. :)

October 17, 2009

This week I've mostly gotten over my cold, but its swept through our house and it looks like G might be next on the list. I'm still feeling very tired in the evenings- going to bed early and sleeping a bit later than usual. Things have been relatively quiet here- Hope made it back safely, and I have some projects in the works but nothing with a tight deadline which is very nice. :) I think I mentioned that I've been tutoring several Korean girls in English, and supplementing my photography expenses that way. I've done a bit of restructuring photography wise to reduce my time spent doing small projects, freeing me up to concentrate on the larger projects. I'm aiming for about 2 big projects a month, and not more than 1 small project a week.

Now that we've gotten back and settled in, we're starting to plan for the China trip that's coming up in a month. I'm looking forward to getting a few plans sorted out in advance, though we may do most of it on the fly as always. :) Shanghai is supposed to be an interesting city, and I'm sure I'll have plenty of photo ops there!

If you are into haunted trails, you should really go to www.morrowroad.com. It's a fantastic trail, voted the scariest trail in last year's Fear Finder! I wish I could be in Michigan to see it. :) I miss the Michigan falls for sure- it's very boring here, not beautiful most of the time in the fall. I always feel a bit homesick this time of the year.

Speaking of feeling tired, it's only 8:30pm here but I already feel exhausted! I might just go to bed even! :)

October 10, 2009

We've gotten mostly readjusted after our Germany trip- having Hope here has been really awesome, and despite my coming down with a nasty sore throat (courtesy of Germany) we had a great day out in London yesterday. I took G and Hope on a tour of the cooler parts of London, we saw the main shops for Tiffanys, DeBeers, Fortum and Mason, Gucci, Prada, and all sorts of other high fashion shops. It was fun to have a walk around. We decided to see Wicked (a musical based on a book about the witches in Oz) which was really good! We got back at about 2am last night due to some engineering works on the Tube trains, but fortunately I knew my way around and we went to another Tube station. Anyway we got back and took it easy today- we took Hope out to the haunted Ole Ferry Boat Inn in Holywell for lunch, and I'm currently home coughing and feeling not very good while the rest of the Windsor House residents are playing games with a bunch of internationals! Ah well, hopefully I'll be back to normal soon. :)

October 6, 2009

We made it safely back to the UK- turns out after my last post I didn't have consistent enough internet access to blog. but here we are safe and sound. :) We got in late last night, and I had my BNI meeting at 6:30am today so it's been a long day and time to go to bed. Germany was great, loved it there, loved using the German floating in my memory somewhere, hope to visit again soon. :)