Last week was pretty cool. On wednesday, Sheri and I headed up to OH for a couple of reasons.

The first reason was for work. Kedrick and Addie wanted me to take a trip up there to see the new office and to have at least a couple days in the office with everyone else. It was actually a lot of fun. I like working from home, but I enjoyed being in the office too - getting to hang out with my coworkers who are, i must say, pretty awesome. We got a lot done, but there was a fair amount of laughing and general goofiness as well. The work environment there (for those of us in the back room, anyway) was really laid back and relaxing. For someone like me, it was just about perfect for productivity.

So Thursday and Friday were spent at the office, finishing up a project which most of us are quite excited about and going over some general practices and methods. It was a good time.

On saturday, Kedrick and Addie took us to the Cincinnati area. We had tasty lunch and Graeter's ice cream - which was funny because i'd actually had the very thing i ordered before, I just hadn't realized it. Edie gave me some of their Black Raspberry Chip ice cream the last time we were over there playing Talisman.

After that, we went to Ault Park. They had wanted me to take some pictures of them as part of a yearly tradition. It was the first time i'd *really* tried portrait photography. I don't typically do 'posed' shots of people, i think candid shots are so much more natural. I also don't "direct" - I basically just let them sit or stand however they wanted or thought would look good, and I simply tried to make the most of it. I won't say they turned out fantastically, but I think there are a few in there that would look nice on their wall. It was a good time. Most importantly, I now have a little xp in this capacity and I learned a bit about what tends to work and what doesn't. I'm still far from considering myself particularly qualified for this yet. A little of my difficulty might be equipment-related as i don't really have nice portrait lenses (a nice 50mm prime would have been good), but I suspect it's mostly technique that needs practicing.

We were also talking about all of us going to the Ren Fair later in October if we can at all manage it... ...that would be awesome. :-)

Later Saturday afternoon we headed to my grandparents' in Greenville - which was the second reason for our trip. We hardly ever get to see them, which is kind of a shame. My parents and my uncle had also headed there for the Easter weekend, and the group of us had a great time talking together. We even got to sit out on their deck Sunday afternoon, which was really nice. We didn't do a whole lot, but it's always cool just to spend time with family. I'd like to get to see all of them more often than I do. Hopefully when we have a car that we trust a little more (and don't necessarily have to rent for trips like this) we'll be able to see some of them a little more.

~PS