I knew the way you know about a good melon...

It's a pretty strange thing when you realize that you have a rather large fruit growing in your backyard that you don't remember planting. A few weeks ago I found a rather strange fruit growing on the vine that I thought was failed green beans I planted way too early in the summer. As you can see, the legume turned out to be a cantaloupe. I don't know if any of the melons on the plant will be edible. The first melon I identified wound up rotting from the inside. This melon here as gone soft on one end. I have two more tries left on the vine. I've eaten figs, apples, pears, blackberries, raspberries, chard, and tomatoes from my backyard; it would be fun to be able to add melon to the list.

In other news, I've had some fun photo time. This past weekend I got to help out photographing prewedding pictures. I even got a chance to direct the couple for a few shots, but it was pretty intimidating and I was relieved to hand the reins back over to someone else. Today, I am going to take some family shots of some friends with the lighting kit I checked out from class. I played with the lights this morning, and they were less scary than I thought they would be to work. Not that I necessarily will be able to light things the way I want, but at least I've figured out how to turn the lights on and trigger them from my camera.

Well, hello again...

I know, I know I have hardly held up my end of the bargain. A blogger that won't blog is pretty boring; I totally understand if you've lost interest. It's been almost a year since I've last written. In knitting news, I finished the spiral socks and was able to wear them over the winter; they were very toasty. I also knitted a hooded sweatshirt from the Yarn Girls' Guide to the Beyond the Basics. It was my first project with sleeves, and I am really excited how it turned out. Currently, I am working on a new pair of socks, knitted from the top down with a regular turned heel. I've never done the traditional turned heel, so it's rather exciting.

The socks are going slowly, however, due to my photography classes. I finished the first black and white film class, took an intermediate class, and a digital photography class. I am now taking my first professional program photography class in portraits. I am really bad at portraits, so this is a stretch class for me. I hope to be able to produce adequate portraits/headshots, but I'm not necessarily looking to be the next Avedon or Leibovitz. I am usually uncomfortable around people without shoving a long, black barrel in their faces; I have not yet found the appropriate balance of getting "that" shot and not being a very large gnat. Hopefully this class will help me get over my people photographing anxiety.

I've been keeping busy with the photography and knitting and baking, but the other sort of news is that my husband and I have made a goal to have our house paid off by the end of next year. We bought our house almost 5 years ago (yeah, almost at the peak of the market), and if we're lucky and stick to it, we will have paid off our house in 6 years time. Part of our decision to do this comes from having listened to Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University that my aunt gave us many years ago, and part of it comes from the fact that I am strongly considering a career change. Dave Ramsey is a conservative, financial talk show host (not exactly the kind of guy from whom we would normally take advice), but he's really good at getting you jazzed up to get rid of debt. His premise is along the lines that once you don't owe anybody interest, you can start building wealth at a much faster rate. I know that, in theory, if you have a mortgage at 5.5% and you can make 8% in stocks, you should keep the mortgage and you will be making a net 2.5%. I, however, am opposed to this scheme for two reasons: 1) there is an emotional cost (for some people) to being indebted and 2) our stock picks seem to suck so bad that we are usually lucky if our interest rate is positive. Anyway, if we can make this work, we will own our home when I am 30 years old, which I think is really awesome, and I would be really proud of it. It's not going to be easy. There will be no vacation until then. Eating out will be kept to a minimum. We are going to try to keep down extraneous expenditures. I.e., for the next year or so, we are not going to be any fun.