Adventures with Dr. Lady Cutie Troublemaker

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After a VERY long month, the decorating/furnishing of my office is complete. The entire checklist has been checked. The last few things were the plants, the bottom-up blinds, the wood-specific office chair wheels, and last but of COURSE not least, the therapist chair (which arrived Sunday).

I used to always use Autostitch for panos, but they don’t make it for Mac. Instead, I used Calico. This was my first time using it, and so I just have the trial version. I cloned out some (but not all) of the little ads all over the picture. After I stitched all 18 pictures together, I used Transform/Warp in Photoshop to fill out the gaps in the corners. Lots of artifacts of the process all over the place… and of course the office looks WAY bigger than it actually is. But you get the idea. This is where I work. It’s mine. I don’t work for anyone anymore but myself.

It’s what I’ve wanted for years, and now I have it, and it seems like it’s going to work! Thanks so much to all of you who helped me this month. I could never have done it without you. (You know who you are, and I’ll thank you all personally again and again… I’ve got your back whenever you next need it.)

Soon, I will have an Open House, and I hope my friends stop in to say hello! Maybe August First Friday. I still have lots of businessy stuff to do, and I’d like to celebrate one more time when all that junk is done.

Running into Sho Nuff is always entertaining. I was at The Borough on Friday having dinner with my friends John, Hugh, and Ian (and later Emily) when he showed up. He was on fire that night! (John, I can’t believe you didn’t mention him!! :P)

Learning about love from Sho Nuff:

Life has been busy since I started my private practice. I’m not brimming with clients just yet, but in the past month, I’ve furnished my office (with lots of help from friends Nancy and Libby – and others here and there, too – Robert, Jason, Christopher, Brian, Shannon, Everette, etc.). Because of the busy-ness coupled with the extreme backlog of pictures to edit from the past several months (gigs, NYC trip, etc), I’ve been leaving my camera at home much more than usual. Still, when I walk around in the world, I’m still a photographer, and I really can’t help myself. Luckily, there IS a camera with me at all times: my iPhone camera. Nope, I didn’t get one of the new ones – I’ve played with Oliver’s and MAN, it’s cool – not really in my budget. But I have my 3G iPhone, and with the additional apps Camerabag and Autostitch, I’ve been able to grab some pretty fun images from the world. My “Mobe Photes” set is growing every day, and I’m really loving it. Something about limitations in photography fascinates me – always has. I realize this is probably a side-effect of not exactly swimming in the money. It’s OK. I don’t mind, because when I’m limited by my equipment – because of money, space, and/or time – I have to get creative. And getting creative is NEVER a bad thing. Enjoy my iPhone pix, and watch the set grow! Yes, the iPhone has a camera, and it counts!

I got a MacBook Pro 13″. It’s cool, and yes, it’s one of the new ones announced last week. I’m really loving it so far. It’s the first Mac I’ve ever owned (unless you count the iPhone, and I don’t). My ex-husband always had Macs, so there are very few things that I don’t know how to do right off the bat. The gestures on the trackpad are new, so I’m learning those slowly – as needed.

I have but one small complaint, and it relates to the design of the body itself. There is an extremely sharp 90-degree angle where my wrists rest, so that there’s always a little digging in my skin on the underside of my wrists/lower forearms. I thought Mac was all about design? Maybe they are going more for visual than functional with this choice? I really am perplexed. Since it’s a Mac, I keep thinking I must be “doing it wrong!”

Thoughts? Comments? General harangues?

I did something really strange on Friday. A nut company hired a firm in Chapel-Hill to do some research on nuts, and I ended up participating in their Nut Focus Group at Southern Season. I arrived in time for a delicious lunch, during which we discussed how we liked to cook with nuts, what we think will encourage people to buy more nuts, and our favorite flavor combinations using nuts. After a lengthy discussion, the 12 of us participating were broken into 3 groups of 4 and asked to come up with several recipes using nuts. Then, the REALLY fun part. We were released out into Southern Season (a massive, super-stocked gourmet grocery, if you’ve never been) to gather everything we needed to create our dishes. We brought everything back to the test kitchen and were let loose. In other words, we were IRON CHEFS! It was so fun. My group made:

• Spring Tart with Cucumber, Caramelized Onions, Mascarpone, Dill, and Pine Nuts – I made a lot of this one, but the flavor combo was a collaborative effort.
• Breakfast Bar made with Dried Orange, Crystallized Ginger, Oats, Raisins, Almonds, and Ground Cardamon – But this didn’t hold together as well as we’d hoped, so we ended up putting it on Vanilla Ice Cream, and calling it “Better Than Breakfast Ice Cream”
• Mango Chili Chocolate Bark with Macadamia Nuts (That’s the one I was most responsible for, and it was AWESOME!)
• Orange Dream Brownies made with Ginger, Dried Orange, and Almonds (I actually had zero to do with this one – Brownies are yucky!)

The Delightful JNFR

So two particularly fun aspects of this adventure. First, the delightful JNFR was there. She is a special needs teacher, and was VERY good at herding us and keeping everything on track. She was definitely the Alpha that kept us focused so the creativity of our group could flow. Second, WE GOT PAID! Yes, they actually paid me $150 to give opinions about food and play Iron Chef. I can’t believe my luck!

The Day in Pictures: