That was perhaps the longest week of my life. Working 8am-11pm every day really took it’s toll. It was a really great learning experience though. For those that don’t remember, Paul and I just spent the week in “historic” Lubbock TX as the official photographers with the Miss Texas USA pageant. Basically I spent the week carrying equipment and learning what shooting a pageant was all about. We met some really great and down-to-earth people like Sargent Dave and his bomb-sniffing dog Biff who were just plain fun to talk with. I’ll say this for Texas, the have the one of the most “normal” populations for people I’ve seen in a long time. Well… except for the pageant moms, who were more of a pain in the ass than both soccer and hockey moms combined. I came really close to ending a few lives this week. Some of them are just downright scumbags trying to work every angle to get something for free. Thankfully my “I don’t give a shit about you” attitude beat their “we’re customers and we’re always right” stance. The funny thing was that the ones that were trying to get something from me for free or weasel their way into seeing pictures that we weren’t previewing were the ones that didn’t order anything and weren’t actually customers. Man do I have some stories from this week. It’ll keep me in new story material for months to come. Like the morning we were hanging out with Dave and the Police Commissioner and they decided to take us up to this really nice (and expensive) winnery were we got a personal tour, wine tasting and a few bottles to go home with. All things considered, and with all the work we did, it was a pretty good week. We had fun, I learned a lot and I think both Paul and I got an understanding about the way each other works as photographers.

There’s also been some interesting personal things going on. After talking with Toyota of Nashua we found it it WAS possible to completely transfer a lease making my parents single reason for keeping the car completely moot. There isn’t even any charges associated with it, I just have to take over the payments. While that would obviously be my first choice in cars the lease in unfortunately locked in at $250 a month and Nashua Toyota told us that I would actually have a really good shot at getting something well under $200 for the exact same car since I’m a first time buyer and they have programs for that. So, I’m going to see what I can get into a new Matrix for down here. I’m also looking at just about every other car on the planet. Today I’m also talking with Lending Tree and NH Higher Education to see who has the better consolidation rates for my loans. Once I consolidate my loans it’ll be time to go car shopping. It might be good to get a loan for the car and then re-consolidate that into the payments I’d already be making, but that’s something I’d have to talk with loan places about.

As you could imagine this also keeps me in Texas without clothes, a computer, anything. I don’t know how I’m going to get those down here. Honestly I have no idea. My parents close on the house today actually and so the phone is already disconnected and they’re living off their cell phones. They put all my things over my uncles house and are planning on staying a week at a condo at Loon Mt. and then a week or two at my uncle’s house. After that, if they haven’t found anything they’re going to get an apartment.

Today I have the day off since I just worked an 80 hour week so Lauren and I are going to run some errands. Groceries, T-mobile store to find a new faceplate for my shitty company phone, that sort of thing.

I really really wish I have my computer down here so that I could update daily and really rant and rave about a few things that ticked me off this week and a few things I heard in the news that just got me all worked up. I don’t, so I can’t. I’ve got to figure out a way to get it down here. How does Gateway and Dell ship their full assembled PCs without them being beaten to shit? I’ve got to figure out what (and who) they use to ship them.

Ok, it’s time to go. I’ll update when I can. I just wanted to let everyone know that I was back and that everything went well this week. Take care guys.

Matt out.