In September, there was mucho hoopla over the re-release of The Beatles music, remastered, and ready for 21st century ears. As much as I wanted to pick it up, I avoided it at the time, and bided my time. That was a good move.

A coupon from Borders (40% off) netted me a terrific price — over $100 off! — but I had to find one in town, and they were scarce. However, I found one in Sunset Hills, made the drive, and wound up with my box o’ Beatles.

I’m really impressed with the sound quality. I’m no audiophile, so I don’t know that I can quantify how the music sounded in any way meaningful to anyone else, but to my tired old ears, they sounded great. I’ve owned some of the collection on CD, and all of them on various vinyl pressings over the years… even to the extreme of Japanese virgin vinyl pressings. Lunacy, that was. But now, durable, transportable copies have given me The Beatles wherever my iPod Nano can go. It’s amazing to think about carrying that music with me, and is keeping pretty close to my headphones much of the time.

I still think it’s pretty crazy that 40+ year old music can create this kind of stir. What’s cooler is that it’s music that I like. That’s great!

So, if “bing” means “disease” in Chinese, what does that say about bing.com???

This is always a good sign…

Tonight, we opened Off the Clock at The Old Orchard Gallery. It was amazing.

We all met up an hour ahead of the announced start time, and put the final touches on the art. From there, it became a bit of blur. Three hours of entertaining our visitors, and talking about our work. I’d guess we had 100 folks drop by during the event, and I can’t imagine having had more fun. It truly was a fun time.

Of course, I love talking about my work and the things that inspire it, so an event like this is right up my alley. There were a few sales — none of mine… yet — so we know the space has some magic to it.

If you have the chance, drop by the gallery before November 5th and enjoy the work!!!

Almost two months of planning are complete, and my images are hung at Old Orchard. Hooray! The five of us met up at the gallery this morning, and spent about three hours getting our images hung. It looks great, and the images we all hung really seem to work well together — always a concern with that many different styles in one place.

Come Saturday, we’ll have our opening event — hope you can attend!

Our trip has paid off, and we have a bouncing Berner baby girl — Bailey!

We showed up at Trulli Kennels, with three little ones to choose from. They were all cute, and it would’ve been great to scoop ‘em all up, but we were there for one.

So why’d we pick Bailey?

She was the biggest. She’s a little chunk — 17 pounds at 8 weeks — and seems like she’s destined for bigness. We were told her pop was 120-130, and her mom was about 105. She’s gonna be big.

She was the fastest. Every time I ran around the yard, she was the first one to catch up to me. It was cool to have all three of them chasing me around, but you can’t compete with speed and girth.

And then there’s the markings. She’s beautifully marked with cute little freckles on the end of her nose — she’s easy to pick out in a lineup.

She’s wormed her way into our lives, and we’re thrilled about her!

Myself and four other photographers will begin an exhibit in a couple of weeks. We’ve titled it Off the Clock, and it will premiere at The Old Orchard Gallery in Webster Groves MO on October 11th. We’ll be hosting a reception on October 17th from 6pm to 9pm.

If you get the chance, c’mon by and see what the five of us have been up to… off the clock!