Catching Up

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Okay my beloved blog readers, clients, friends and future friends, I know you are thirsty for more blogs like you are craving an icy cold beverage on a hot summer day… and we have had our fair share of hot summer days! Its been crazy lately, with those insane storms on Monday, extremely hot days and the exciting Cubs season–oh yeah and of course a very busy wedding season.

So Monday I started my day around 5am–ironically its Thursday around 5am as I write this and I am finishing my Wednesday really as I have not gone to bed from the day before. It started with an engagement session around 6am, yes AM I was hoping for that beautiful sunrise early morning light and they said they loved early morning and were naturally up that early. Well our day started with some overcast at Diversey Harbor, luckily the groom-to-be had foresight to tell us not to walk but to drive to the next location, because as we photographed along North Avenue Beach we saw the light grey skies turn to a greenish black in a matter of minutes. We hurried back to the car just before the rain began to fall. Those of you that were in Chicago on this Monday, August 4, know that was only the beginning and the morning storm was just a small taste of the storms that were to follow that evening. This morning (well Wednesday not right now) as I waited for my first of two cups of coffee I would drink today at Starbucks I glanced down and saw the headline in the Chicago Tribune, it read…

“In a Flash, Heavens Roared”
followed by this remarkable numbers….
90,000 thunderbolts had hit northern Illinois
6 months worth of lightning strikes in one night
[in 4 hours really]
800 bolts per minute at the storms peak

I was–still am amazed by those numbers! I don’t have any photos of the lightning strikes, why? Well because I was hiding in our basement. The tornado siren went off not once but twice! For those of you that know me know how afraid I once was of tornados, growing up I was convinced that was how I was going to die. I had many many dreams about tornados. Now I am not as afraid but still when it comes to tornado warnings I take them seriously. [side note on some interesting tornado things: NPR show This American Life did a great piece involving tornado and the prom-made me cry, and there is also a tv show on Planet Green about a town in Kansas called Greensburg that was wiped out by a tornado and is now rebuilding it green.]

So when the tornado sirens sounded I grabbed two of my external hard drives in a bag with one hand–yes even in the face of danger I think about protecting images, and my puppy in the other and headed down to the basement. I knew from the morning and the green skies that a tornado was very possible. It took Jon until the second siren and some insane winds for him to finally join me in the basement. We watched through the glass block windows and occasionally we would get gutsy and crack open the tiny window for a peek. We just saw flash after flash it seemed almost continuous.
After awhile the winds calmed and so did the rain and lightning. And Chicago went back to sunny, hot summer days.

The storm wasn’t just a storm for me, it was symbolic of feelings I have felt lately. Its hard to put into words, and will probably make far more sense inside my own head and memory. Like the bolts of lightning producing more lightning strikes in one night than in six months I feel like I am producing more photos-and editing, in the last two months than in the last eight. Its a great thing, but hard to contain, like so many lightning bolts a minute. Lately, I have been running on two coffee days–I cut down to a maximum one shot espresso drink a day several years ago in jr. college and have been that way ever since, even less than that most days. I feel too like a tornado and what it symbolizes in dreams and in life. But today after having some amazing eye opening conversations with a couple family members, I feel the calm after the storm and I have a new remarkable lightning bolt energy.

Well I will begin to catch up on my blogs with a hot summer day in July–and I mean hot. My aunt who lives in Florida said that week she saw Chicago was hotter than Orlando area (Melbourne), I had also checked many cities then, it was hotter here than most of the country.
But despite the heat, the sun was perfectly shining and it was a perfect day for a wedding in the garden. It was July 11….

Please continue to next post.
[hopefully immediately following, but if the coffee wears off, following a few hours later]

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