Well, I hope everybody is out having fun on this 4th of July weekend. And I hope not too many people were hoping to tune in and watch a VacaChat tonight, because I'm having to push that out a week.

I had thought that I might be super busy on weekends once the California State Fair got started. But actually, it looks like mid July might not be so bad, but I have so many things I need to get ready for this upcoming week--that I am really having to kick things into overdrive!! I have charts and schedules and milestone lists tacked-up all over my office.

Monday we are going to the Napa County Fair in Calistoga, so it will be at that time that I will find out if I managed to capture any more ribbons. We are looking forward to a good old fashioned county fair and a big fireworks show at the end of it. I think it is going to be a lot of fun! Then on Tuesday I have to drive back to Calistoga and pick up any photos that did not sell. Then on Friday or Saturday I have to deliver all of the entries to the Solano County Fairgrounds for that contest (and of course I will have to make up a new photo/frame package for any photos that might have sold at the Napa fair). However, I have another thing that I have to prepare by the end of the week to deliver to Solano--I entered an illustration that is not even done yet! I am entering a tableaux image from my graphic novel into the fine arts--computer assisted art category. I figured this would be a good deadline and incentive to kick the graphic novel project in the butt. I have had this thing knocking around in the back of my brain for almost nine years...I am determined to either do something with it, or else purge it from my mind. And I hate living with regret, so I'm trying to make a go of it.

Of course the end result is that I have heaped yet another big dollop of work for myself onto my plate. This in addition to a couple of work projects, plus some ideas that have been fighting to get to the front of my brain. You see, the inventive gene has been going crazy lately. It started with my creating the light painting images for the State Fair, and having such success with them (one blue and one 4th place ribbon). So I have been messing around with the light painting again, and now I am starting to make plans to create version 2.0 of my light brush. There are so many changes I want to make--based on my recent experiences with the technique. I want better ergonomics, more bells and whistles, and lots more patterns to choose from! One of my most recent sessions used a special rainbow filter, and I thought the results were pleasant (I'm sending one example from that for the newsletter).

Another area of photography I have been experimenting with has been macrophotography. In particular, I love seeing rocks and minerals up very close and under extreme magnification. There is an entire world contained in the very small, and I want to get pictures of it. Again, I'm including a recent photo I took of a red agate.

Yet another project that has been competing for my time has been a camera restoration project. I recently got an old camera from one of the MODs, but it is currently not functional. So I am dabbling in the area of camera repair. I'm trying to take it slow and attempt it myself, because the quotes I got for sending it to a good repair facility comes to well over a thousand dollars! This is a very old camera, but one that is still collected and used to this day. So some parts are no longer made for it, and the number of repair personnel has been dwindling over the years. So who knows--I may just become one of those people.

Another thing I have been keeping track of, and which has been keeping me looking up--and that is the Juno space probe. This is the orbiter that is due to insert itself into orbit around Jupiter starting tomorrow--July 4th! This brings to mind a previous endeavor when NASA timed a big space mission on the 4th of July, and that was the first Viking landing on the surface of Mars on July 4, 1976 (our nation's bicentennial). I still get goosebumps when I remember being a teenager and waiting for those first few images from the Martian surface. Oh, those were the days!

So in anticipation of this event coming up with Juno, I spent some time last week creating a 3D model of the Juno craft, and I just put the finishing touches on it this morning. I'm sending one of the first renders from that along for the newsletter too! It's an exciting time to be alive, and for me--it is a busy time as well! And I look forward to being able to tell you all about it next weekend on the VacaChat. I'll let you know how things went in Napa, as well! Until then...