I just got back from a fun girls’ weekend in Tennessee. There was wine, fake eyelashes, hot tubbing, talking about feelings, drinking, mechanical bull riding, a stretch hummer limo, Taco Bell at 2 am, dancing, karaoke, flirting with cute boys, massages, gifts, giggles, cupcakes, and pretty make up.

To throw myself back into balance when I got home I threw my socks on the floor, burped really loud a couple of times, and scratched my balls.

A super big thank you to Maile for making it happen, and congrats for checking off “host a retreat” from your Life List. I am so excited I was a part of it!

How are YOU doing with your Life List? I haven’t checked anything off recently, but I have a good excuse: my business is officially booming and I’m up to my ears in editing and shipping disks off to clients. It feels SO GOOD.

Update: We were here, at the Lyric Springs retreat house in Franklin, TN. It’s just under an hour outside of Nashville proper, and SO beautiful. It slept all of us comfortably.

I’m currently doing Weight Watchers, and every week I blog a bit about what I’ve learned and experienced, and whether I’ve lost or gained weight for the week.

Sticking with friends is the key to my success.

It was time to haul myself onto the scale Tuesday night. It had been weeks, and there had been parties, pastries, dinners, brunches, drinks-drinks-drinks and a whole lot of barbecue in Austin. Oh, and my birthday, which involved cinnamon rolls. Nerve-wracking! It was good news, though: down 2.2 since the beginning of the month (my last weigh in), 17.8 total!

It proved that I could take a few days on a vacation to relax the rules and it wouldn’t completely derail my progress. I won’t do it again, though. Success for me means tracking everything I eat, a habit that took a long time to form and only a few days to almost completely break. Getting back into it has been a drag.

I’ll attribute my success to focusing more on friends and new networking contacts and less on the food and drinks, switching to water earlier than normal, walking everywhere, and lots of dancing.

So, how are YOU doing?

Conversations with Dana:

“I just got an alert. They bumped my flight to tomorrow morning! But I’m supposed to be getting on a plane in a few hours!”

“Oh no! Well, of course you can stay with us tonight.”

“…”

“Has enough time passed that it is now appropriate for me to get really fucking excited?”

I hate writing about serious things here because it is impossible to not feel like I’m trivializing them; I am not the best writer. I often use this space to talk about my boobs. There is nothing I can say that you haven’t heard already.

But!

Japan has me brimming with pain. Loosing your home is terrible. Loosing all worldly possessions is awful. Cozy bed, gone. Important files on your computer, your tv, your wine collection – gone. On top of that, the frustrating, heart-wrenching pain of knowing your dog or cat is out there, suffering or having suffered, and you can’t find them and help. Or maybe, worst of all, your tiny baby, or the love of your life, has literally been swept away.

And then, having endured all that, you are one of thousands. You are standing bedless and petless, loveless and homeless, suddenly, and you are not even the worst off person you know. I think about this and I can’t breathe. Then I want to scream. Then I want to squish everyone that I love into me, Katamari Damacy-style. Then Matty wriggles away because I’ve been sobbing into the side of his scruffy neck for an hour and he’s tired of getting soggy.

I haven’t talked about it with anyone yet, because I didn’t want to be another voice yammering, and so, just this: if you are so inclined, donate to the Red Cross, a non-partisan, secular relief group that has consistently proven to be an above-board group of kick-ass humanitarians.

For a $25 you can also buy the poster above, designed by W+K, here, with the proceeds going right to the Red Cross. I found it via a whole bunch of places, including Pound and Grain which has a great list of other things people are doing to help.

One of the cool things about owning a business is being able to use your work to help but I hate to feel like I’m marketing off of a disaster, so I’m saying this shyly but happily: I going to donate 25% of what I earn for the next month to the Red Cross, too.

I’m back!

I’m back, I’ve turned twenty-nine, I’m exhausted, and I’ve come down with some sort of malady that is probably “I’m too old to party this hard”-itis.

There were amazing things that happened, and some bad things, too, that have left me very disappointed, I took a zillion photos including a whole bunch of new faces for my 1000 faces project, and I made new friends.

You’ll have to wait to hear all about it, though, because I’m going to go crawl back into bed and try to heal enough to stand upright without being dizzy. I leave you with the best piece of swag I’ve ever seen – this Freshbooks branded digital photo of me and Rob in a photobooth. Digital swag that I don’t have to drag home in a suitcase? Win.

Check out that logo!

I literally “sqeeeeeeeeee!“ed when I first saw it a few weeks ago, and when I showed it to Rob he grinned and said it was very “me”.

It’s created by the the husband-and-wife design firm Super Runaway. I love that their name sounds like a Portland-based folk band. I chose them to work with for a few reasons, including the fact that they designed and built A Practical Wedding. Anyone that has anything to do with APW is someone I want to work with. They’ll be making my website next. It’s so exciting!

My $100 Blogger Headshot special has been extended; I’m running it until the end of March. A little press went a long way, and I’ve been booked solid for the past two weeks! It’s incredible, and I love it. The money is awesome, but meeting people, spending time with them, getting them to make fun faces or helping them figure out how to smile their best is one of the most rewarding things I’ve ever done. I am really, truly doing what I love for a living.

GOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!

Ahem. Sorry.

I’m heading to South by Southwest tomorrow and I’m booked for some headshot sessions there, too, which I’m pretty sure means that I can write off at least part of my trip. Right? Right. There are still slots left, too, if you’d like.

See you down there?

Rob asked me to cut a foot or so off of his hair before his big road trip to Austin. We now have essentially the same haircut, which serves to dredge us even further into being “that couple”. You may barf.

He did it to bring attention to the concept of sacrificing for others. His Chevy-sponsored trek down to South by Southwest is raising money for Adopt-a-Classroom, an organization that helps teachers pay for school supplies (on average, a public school teacher in America will spend $1200 of his or her own money on supplies each year).

We’re sending his hair to a different charity, Locks of Love, an organization you’ve probably heard of that accepts hair from donors to make wigs for children who have lost their hair to chemotherapy.

Sweet, right? (Plus, how CUTE is he?!)

John C Jay wrote 10 Lessons for Young Designers, and I feel like they work well for young photographers, too.

1: Be authentic. The most powerful asset you have is your individuality, what makes you unique. It’s time to stop listening to others on what you should do.

2: Work harder than anyone else and you will always benefit from the effort.

3: Get off the computer and connect with real people and culture. Life is visceral.

4: Constantly improve your craft. Make things with your hands. Innovation in thinking is not enough.

5: Travel as much as you can. It is a humbling and inspiring experience to learn just how much you don’t know.

6: Being original is still king, especially in this tech-driven, group-grope world.

7: Try not to work for stupid people or you’ll soon become one of them.

8: Instinct and intuition are all-powerful. Learn to trust them.

9: The Golden Rule actually works. Do good.

10: If all else fails, No. 2 is the greatest competitive advantage of any career.

It’s nice to hear affirmed what I have always had an inkling of: hard work is really important and can trump being cool, lucky, glamorous, or well-connected.

via Swiss Miss

Well, I did it. And you guys were right… Brussels sprouts are really good!

First I washed them in our trusty one-armed colander. Rob and I can’t quite bring ourselves to replace it.

Then I cut off the tough-looking bottoms, where they attached to the stalk, and halved them. This made some of the outer leaves fall off. I saved them.

The bunched up layers of leaves made excellent olive oil holders.

In addition to the olive oil, I tossed them with salt and paprika, because I always roast things with salt and paprika, and I figured a good way to ease into trying a new veggie is to prepare them in a familiar way.

I dumped them in a pan…

…and roasted them at 450 until they looked like this. I don’t really know how long. It was about one episode of People’s Court with the commercials fast-forwarded through.

I ended up eating the whole pan for lunch on Friday, which put me in the lamest and stupidest of lame and stupid food comas.

The leaves that I’d thrown in ended up super flavorful and delicious.

I now have a new vegetable to add to dinners. Next I’ll try them in butter and brown sugar and then I’ll sautee them with garlic to see how that works, too.

Thank you!

I’m currently doing Weight Watchers, and every week I blog a bit about what I’ve learned and experienced, and whether I’ve lost or gained weight for the week.

I had a more relaxed set of efforts these past two weeks, including staying out until the wee hours of the morning on Saturday, drinking what I swear were two but Rob informs me are four whiskey sours. There was also a peanut brittle incident.

Still, in the past two weeks (skipped last week’s meeting) I’m down .8, making me the lowest I’ve been since I started. I am happy and proud.

Our meeting this week was about trying new foods and activities so we don’t get bored, timely since I have Brussels sprouts sitting in my fridge right now. I’d have never bought them BECAUSE THEY ARE GROSS, but you all commented on my last Weight Watchers post that they are awesome.

We’ll see, internet. We’ll see.