Track 27: Good Intentions

The title refers to my intention -- ill-fulfilled, thus far -- of keeping this blog up-to-date. I now have Blog Guilt, where "Update Blog" is always on my to-do list, but it always gets put off, and I feel like I'm letting my readers (all 3 of you) down.

I thought it would be fun and good practice to take a picture a day and post them here. My goal was to start January 1. Unfortunately, as you know (unless you live under a rock), today is January 8. Hm. Maybe I should post a weekly photo instead. Temperatures have been hovering around 40 degrees (January thaw! January thaw!), so I should take the opportunity to walk around my new neighborhood and see what jumps in front of my camera.

Here are some updates on things I mentioned in my last post:

- I start school next week! I really couldn't be more excited. I'll be taking four classes; they're all held during the day on Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays.

- I've been doing a little photo assisting. A local photographer I met a couple years ago has kindly been paying me to help him. It's been mostly clerical work and a couple of small shoots, but it's his slow time and he's promised me that things will pick up in the spring. I feel so incredibly lucky that I've lined up this assisting job without even having gone to school yet. It's going to provide me with great experience that you can't get in a classroom.

- I got an internship at the MN Center for Photography. Starting in April, I'll be assisting MCP with their McKnight Fellowship program. It's four $25,000 grants from the McKnight Foundation given to four photographers. I'll be helping to spread the word about the grants, holding information sessions for photographers who are interested in applying, witnessing the panel reviews and hearing the reasons photographers get chosen, offering support to the grantees, and helping with the final exhibition of the grantees' work. One of the MCP staffers I'll be working with told me it's a primo internship because of all the connections I can make and because I get a first-hand view of the whole process. Whee! We had a "welcome, interns" meeting last night (there are around a dozen of us, all doing different jobs), and I can tell I'm going to fit right in. The MCP staffers are cuh-razy and goofy and fun.

- Keep your fingers crossed, everyone, because I'm waiting to hear if I got a part-time job at my favorite little clothing store that's about a mile from my house. They sell organic cotton and other sustainable and environmentally-friendly clothing and accessories that are also fairly traded and sweatshop-free. Visit the website here. I really really want to work there! I believe it was meant to be, because right after I went in to inquire about a job, one of their employees announced she was leaving. Um, hello? Could the planets BE more aligned?

Since I don't have a new photo yet to post here, I'll post one from the end of my trip to California. As I was driving on I-35 North through southern Minnesota (hardly believing that I was going home, but anxious to get there), the sky behind me started to turn the most beautiful shades of pink and orange. Frustrated that I couldn't see it without turning around to look behind me (not a good idea, obviously, when you're driving 70 miles an hour), I exited the highway and got this photo: