thursday back to the office...nothing much on the agenda, so i feature hunted and found these kids playing in the park.....self-described monkeys, they scaled the jungle gym, rigging up their own zip line across one of the bars...cool kids, and not such a bad feature find, though not something i'd call my best work....but it's always fun to meet innovative and talkative kids!

next day was what was to begin the comedy of errors that depicted my day....after doing officey work in the morning, i got a skype message about a nationally-renowned band rehearsing at a local high school for a later evening show in Ohio....5 semi trailers filled with equipment...should make them pretty easy to spot, right? only, i get to the school to which i am sent, and see nothing of them or their massive entourage....call editor....well, maybe they're at this other school...go there...so i go, and i find them, only now i've got about 15-20 minutes to shoot before they go to lunch...great! so, pix, needless to say, not so great.....but i get them in, set some appt's up for the weekend, including a portrait, for which i soon discover i am short on lighting gear, grr...and then i am out of the paper and getting ready for my next patch.com assn up in Novi - an art exhibit opening.....i get there early, which is fine by me, since i need to write a copy block and would like to talk to the artists, etc, beforehand, but it's all locked up...no one in sight....ok, i'm early....go find a store, grab a pop and come back....then still, no one around, except for an older couple who make their way toward the entry...i follow, but after several minutes, it's pretty obvious that we are the only ones showing, and now it's opening time, so that's even stranger...call the editor, who makes a call and gets back to say that the event has been cancelled....aah well, back to Monroe, after a brief stop through Northville, where the couple i met is from and who encouraged me to follow them back to see what their town is like (more on this later)

saturday then, out to a gubernatorial recall petition drive....the reporter was scheduled to shoot this, but it had sounded like her day was getting crazy and she was stressed, so i offered to do it and grabbed some quotes and color for her story, just in case there weren't many people there signing up when she could come (of course, those 4 graphs all made it into the story with no attribution to me, which they normally do when more than one person contributes...whatever...i feel SO over this whole paper right now!)

then it was out to the family retro games day in the park - retro games being things along the lines of potato sack races, hoola hooping and tether ball....i remember having tether ball in our backyard....my older sister nicely facilitated the falling out (or, rather knocking out) of one of my hanging-on baby teeth during a backyard game of tether ball!

i think i like this one best from the day there

then, it was off to a portrait - triplets who have taken up bowling....pull up to the bowling alley with the question in mind...how come the parking lot is empty on a saturday? to discover that the alley is closed for renovations through the month....thank god for the bowling mural painted out front! and now, my lighting logistics issue is no longer an issue either!

later that night, our local semi-pro football team playing a home game...nothing too stellar from that....just decent daily

and that is all....for now, til the next week....same bat time, same.....well, you know the drill!