Well, about time for an update. The last few months at work were the busiest time of year for us. For a little over a month I was working 55 hour work weeks, driving all over the phoenix area to rent instruments for school children at schools. I love the rush and fast paced work environment, but boy am I glad it's over.

Every rental season we hire 10-15 temps to help out at the rental counter. While we had a few shining stars (my baby sister included, of course). But, with love and respect, many of the temps were worthless as tits on a boar. I watched one stare in to space for literally five minutes, another showed up late almost daily, others would just form up into little groups and joke and flirt with each other while customers were waiting. On the bright side, we didn't have any doing drugs in the bathroom, that I am aware of anyway. In addition to the less than satisfactory performance of so many of the employees, there was a constant parade of petty, belligerent, and stupid customers. Spent half an hour on the phone with a lady who was yelling at me, calling me lazy and dishonest, because I wouldn't replace a violin case that her daughter had damaged. Another lady said she was going to report us to the better business bureau for unethical business practices, because we rented her an "economy" violin (Economy simply meant it was cosmetically rough, but played perfectly) and her snobby Scottsdale private teacher said it was worthless. I even offered to exchange the violin for a newer and nicer one for the same price and she just said, "nope, you guys are scam artists and I'm going to report you to the BBB". I may or may not have laughed at her a bit and told her to go right ahead. I'm amazed by the stupidity of people. Well I could rant for hours about all the crappy people we deal with at work (had to kick out a drunk guy after he got a little belligerent, it was awesome, I really really wished he would have thrown a punch at me so I could relieve some built up tension, oh well) so I'll leave it at that.

Been doing a little more here and there with photography, shot an engagement session a few weeks ago, shot a band gig a few weeks before. Haven't had as much time as I'd like, but now that I have more free time from work I'd like to try to spend some more time with it. I've never really taken the time to see the sights in the great state of Arizona, and now that it is starting to cool off, (I say this hesitantly, as last Sunday was a record high of 111 degrees, awful) I would like to do a little traveling and explore the state. I'm going to try to get up to Flagstaff, see the mountains and some old friends, go see Tombstone, go stay in the haunted Jerome Grand Hotel, go up to Show Lo and see grandpa Cooley's statue. Anyway, hopefully I get to get out of this urban sprawl and see the good parts of the state.

I recently invested in the Adobe Master Collection, which contains their professional design software for web, print, audio, and video based media. The photoshop program is intuitive and I really enjoy working with it, (I've gotta give props to the free photoshop program "Gimp" it does a good job for the price of $0.00, but there is a reason Adobe is the industry standard) however the other programs I'm not so familiar with and have been a little overwhelming. Fortunately, I was introduced to a website called lynda.com which provides video tutorials for any piece of software you can think of, taught by industry professionals. I've only gone through a few of the lessons, but they are awesome. After a few short lessons, the web development software made total sense, and was easy to navigate and customize to my needs. Anyone wanting to learn a particular piece of software, I would definitely recommend checking out lynda.com.

I added a few books to my antique collection recently. Nothing spectacular, but some interesting reads. I picked up a early 20th century copy of Ivanhoe, 3 late 19th century history books, on the subjects of the French Revolution, South London, and the Far East. I also picked up a 1920's handbook on 16th-19th century English and American furniture. I've always been fascinated by 19th century culture, literature, art, etc... Someday when I marry a sugar mama or my non-existent millionaire uncle dies and leaves me all of his money, I would love to purchase a Victorian area home in need of repair, fix it up, and fill it with period furniture and art. Someday I'll have nice 130 year old things. Speaking of, a local bookstore has a 1897 edition of Bram Stoker's Dracula, I want it soooo bad. If I could get my hands on that and a 19th century copy of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, I would be happy as a pig in mud.

Well kids, that's about all I've got for now. Sorry if it was a dull read. Need to find something to get enthused about. I don't even get excited about video games anymore. Video games were always there for me when I needed them to cheer me up or relieve stress by destroying hordes of zombies. Now that they're boring, I don't know what to do! I might actually have to..... BE PRODUCTIVE!!! NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!