new and improved!

I haven't blogged in a while, mainly because there were some complications with my domain name. See, about two years ago when I lived in DC for a brief period, I happened to randomly meet a very nice gentleman who happened to own a server, and I just happened to need a domain. Being the nice gentleman that he was, he went ahead and set up the domain name josalee.com for me, which was great. . .

Until two years later when it was time to renew and the nice gentleman was off being nice and educational somewhere in Afghanistan, teaching villagers about computers.

So instead of waiting to see if my domain was going to be renewed and if I would still have access to it (yes it was renewed, and no I don't have access) I went ahead and bought josaleethrift.com.

I must admit that I will miss that feeling I get from impressing people when I tell them that yes, I have my very own domain name that only consists of my first name. It's like I'm ALMOST in the same category with people like Cher, Madonna, Aaliyah, and Tupac. Perhaps that will be the case in another two years. In the meantime I shall join the ranks of the two-named.

Anyway, there was an actual point to this blog: I did not learn until very recently that looking through a slightly unsteady long lens (800mm) for a long time will make you sick. And by "sick" I mean the kind of sick you get when you play Wolfenstein for too long. The doubly bad thing about this is that usually, when you are looking through a very long lens, you're shooting a pretty important event.

In my case, I was fighting the urge to vomit while I was in a CEMETERY. I finally put down the camera when my knees were about to give out. At first I thought it was the heat that was making me sick, so I drank an entire bottle of water all at once, which just made me sicker. I finally hopped off the riser and stumbled into a wooded corner of the cemetery so I wouldn't disrespect anyone's grave.

Fortunately, I didn't vomit, but as I left, the TV guy Jeff was nice enough to carry my step stool, and a very nice firefighter from Meriden carried my lens (like a baby, as another photographer said) to my car. I would like to point out that had I not been sick, I would have been able to carry all those things by myself. And though the previous sentence should be obvious, I feel I have to vindicate a statement made earlier in the day by an older gentleman who saw my lens and said, "Wow! That's a big lens! Especially for a little girl like you!"

Lesson: Bring a tripod.