HEADED TO CHI-TOWN

It's Thursday and I'm packing like a mad woman. Nothing like waiting until the dead, dying, last minute, eh? I'm headed to downtown Chi-town (Chicago) for another 3 day photography workshop. I'll be gone tomorrow thru Sunday evening. I'm looking forward to this workshop because we'll be discuss things I'm totally unfamiliar with as well as learning Adobe Lightroom 2.0 and the benefits of shooting in RAW. We'll also be doing full fledged night shoots with tripods on the streets of downtown Chicago. The instructor has several professional models lined up for our benefit and we'll be ROCKIN' out the Urban shoots again in the countries coolest most Urban-esque city evah! Did you feel my heart skip a beat? I'll be totally in my element again. I'm traveling alone this time so please pray for safe travels on my trip to and from there as well as while we are walking the streets of Chicago. (especially at night) Michigan Avenue is perfectly fine but I'm sure we'll be hitting those 'off the beaten' path areas just as we did in downtown Indianapolis a couple of weeks ago. Every city in this country has areas like that somewhere.

The good part is that there are 9 other women in this workshop with me so including the instructor, there should be about 11 of us. We are all staying in the same hotel together as well as eating at the restaurants and such for each meal together. Therefore, I'm eager to meet some new friends who carry the same passion for photography that I do. It should be a great "girls weekend." This weekend kicks off a stint of several weekends worth of back to back travel for me in the coming weeks. It's going to be really hectic from here on out. I'm looking forward to the craziness of it all though. And yes, even the 3.5 hour drive from Indy to Chicago all by myself. Pay no attention to me should you pass me in my vehicle on the highway during the afternoon hours tomorrow. I'm sure I'll be ROCKIN' out the tunes and pretending like no one is watching. God help the passer by's. HA!

In the meantime, there are still some slots open for my photography workshop. The class starts next week so jump on it if you want in with us. See the post below this one for details. Also, tomorrow's FOTO FIND FRIDAY theme will be "eyes." Locate your "eye" driven images now and be sure to play along with us this next week. Although I'll be away for the weekend, I'll still have access to my laptop once back in the hotel at night so feel free to email me should you have any questions. I'm looking forward to seeing what you ladies come up with. For now, I'm off to my cardiologist appt. It's the first time I will have seen her since learning of my PFO condition back on May 29th. If you remember correctly, I found out about the PFO an hour or two before hopping the plane to FL for the summer. My doc called and confirmed what she had suspected and immediately placed me on a high dose of aspirin each day to avoid stroke risks. She then said to enjoy my flight and my Summer and that we'd talk more in depth about my future with this medical condition once I was back in Indiana come August. Well, it's now August and I'm eager to get in front of her and start drilling her with all of the questions I've conjured up in my head over the past 3 months. I've had some issues pop up again with the palpitations and some weird feelings within my heartbeat lately too so I'm really anxious to ask her about all of that and get her opinion. Needless to say, I'm asking for your prayers for a productive appt. today. I meet with her at noon. I pray she tells me that we can avoid the PFO heart surgery depending on how small or large the pin hole size hole is within my heart. My ideal situation would be to keep with the heart medication (I'll commonly joke and refer to it as my heart worm pill - like a dog has to take) and then also just stay with the easy enough high dose aspirin regiment she has me on. I'll keep you posted.

Lastly, for all of you Twilight lovah's out there who've emailed me in the past week or commented on my last blog post about the books/movie...you'll be happy to know that I'm halfway thru book #4 now. I'm taking it slower then the others and really savoring each page. I'm astonished and blown away at what I've read so far though within Breaking Dawn. I can't wait to see how the end unfolds. Whose in for a New Moon midnight movie premiere party with me come November 20th? No joke. If you want a fun "Edward" fix for the day, check out this old video interview of him from last year before Twilight came out. It's hysterical! Love his laugh! Click HERE for the video. It doesn't even look or sound like him in comparison to what he looks and sounds like in the movie but he is still such a doll. The laugh just cracks me up. Make sure to watch it all the way through.

xoxo, Angie