we've moved!

ok so at the risk of the whole world knowing where we live, our new address XXXXXXXXXXX

(i've deleted our address. if you didn't copy it down then call me and i will send it to you.)
figured it would take me ages to actually send out a mass email. this weekend was a bit nuts because jason's brother got married on sat. i shot the wedding and jason was in it. so after 11 hours of shooting, we fell into bed at 3am. jason's mom and aunt knocked on our door at 7:30 which was great because otherwise i don't think we would have gotten our rears out of bed until noon, we were that tired. other members of his family joined us through out the day so we had 8 people helping us move. it made it soooo much easier. the only downside is that i have no idea where anything is. i'll post some pictures soon.

holy cow twice in one week!

it is so wicked hot outside!!! i'm not knocking those living in the desert. but it is SUPPOSED to be that hot there. it doesn't sneak up on you, it doesn't prevent you from sleeping at night, and i swear i never had my eyeballs sweat the way they do here. of course being the good journalist i am, i have to go immerse myself in other people's sweat misery and document people looking like they are melting into their shoes. this is harder to find than you might think. most people don't walk down the street when they feel this way. they hide. so that leaves construction workers! which are oh so fun to shoot. that statement could be considered dripping with sarcasim if i was dripping with sweat!!

turning 30

so friday was my 30th birthday. i had some issues with it as i think i have written about on previous blogs. i stayed up on thursday night until midnight and i know this is going to sound pitiful, but i actually cried when it hit midnight. dumb, i know, especially since i wasn't born until 1:30am on 7/28/76 and that was phx time. but i woke up friday morning, put on my frida khalo t-shirt (since i figured that if anyone didn't give a rat about their 30th birthday, it would be her) and went about my day. i met with a bride first thing, went to the retired ladies home where i have been working on a photo project, had lunch with jason and then went to target, tipsy. yep, i was parked at target and jason dropped me off after i had a bomber sized corona at lunch. i highly recommend. i got to sober up while debating tiki torches or citronella candles. good times. sunday we had a big bbq in the backyard of our current house. which made it kind of a goodbye party as well as b-day party. but now i feel better about 30. i do feel like i've accomplished something and i also feel a slight divide between me and the 20-somethings that work here at the paper. but i guess that is ok. maybe the phrase should be changed to "don't trust anyone UNDER 30!"

thanks to everyone for the calls, emails and cards. it made the day great!

yes i suck

so it has been almost a month since i posted about going to martha's vineyard and yes it was lovely. time got away from me and the longer i put it off the more i felt like i was behind. so quick re-cap.

the vineyard rocked. good photos.
4th of july kind of quiet. watched fireworks from porch.
sailfest was this past weekend in new london. old man drove
car into crowd injuring 30 people. no one died.
jason and i moving to new london august 12.
found great cheap place 2 minute commute instead of 25min.
amazing garden.

whew... now i feel better.

i will send out our address in email so that the whole planet won't
know where we live.

martha's vineyard

i'm shooting a wedding this weekend on martha's vineyard with my friend jacqueline. i've never been there before so it should be lovely. we are taking the ferry over saturday morning and then the wedding is sat. afternoon. we are spending the night and coming back on sunday afternoon. the weather is supposed to be just gorgeous too. i'll post some pics when i get back.

GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL!!!!!

so jason has started watching the world cup. but i have discovered that he only likes to watch it on telemundo. at first i thought this was dumb because he doesn't speak spanish and wouldn't know what the announcers are saying. but after watching germany (aleiman) score 3 goals in 18min, and heard the announcer yell GOOOOOOOOOOOL!! it is definitely better in spanish. not to mention that it is pretty funny to hear one of the announcers do a german accent everytime he pronounces the name of a player named von steiger.

Holy Crap!

Wow it has been ages since i posted. mea culpa. jason and i got back from our trip to ohio on tuesday. we went to a wedding, 2 baseball games and a great outlet mall. not to mention lots of forebidden fast food. my body is pissed, but i had a great time. the wedding in new orleans the week before was unbelievable too. there was a voodoo blessing which wedding guests were able to be blessed as well. i actually had voodoo dreams for a week. it was pretty cool actually. i asked this guy at work who is mr. new orleans and he told me (and i quote) "they're just spirits, darlin, go with it." which i did and it was pretty cool.

Busy month

I apologize for being so remiss lately. it has been a whirlwind of a month so far and doesn't look like it will slow down again until mid-june. they have shuffled the beats of all the reporters at work which means a wealth of new story ideas flowing in. this makes for wickedly long days shooting 3,4,and sometimes 5 assignments. i guess its feast or famine though because all winter long we have been just starved for actual stories to work on as opposed to the drive around look for a feature game. which we all hate. i'm getting ready to start a story on home birth which will be interesting. i'm keeping my fingers crossed that a couple i recently met will agree to let me document their pregnancy including their giving birth at home.

this upcoming week will be nuts as i try to work in a session with the couple, and get the ball rolling on a story about the coal industry in conn. there is a power plant nearby that burns coal to generate electricity but also steam to run a nearby paper mill. it has been raining for a solid week and we are not scheduled to see the sun here until next friday which puts a damper on the coal project a bit.

on friday, i am leaving for new orleans for my friend jacqueline's wedding. i can't wait! i am so excited for her. i come back on monday the 22nd and then jason and i leave for a road trip to ohio on the 25th. two of my friends from college are getting married. we are going to also go see a family friend (martha, for those who know) and catch a cincinnatti reds game. the wedding is in cleveland on sunday and we have tickets to catch a cleveland indians game on monday. should be tons fun! i love going to major league games. jason and i saw a reds game with martha the last time we went through ohio. it was awesome! we then head back to conn. on tues.

whew!
i'll update again when i can. i got a new little canon elph digital camera so i hope to put more grab shots up here.

martha and me

so thanks everyone for your awesome comments on the site. now i just need people to HIRE ME!!!

my friends, marcia and heather and myself went to nyc on wed. to see a taping of martha stewart. it was very interesting to say the least. tune in on monday may 1 to see us. it shows here 11am on nbc but for those of you with tivo it won't be hard to find. i'm pretty sure we will be on because of the fabulous head wear they adorned us with. i won't say any more for now. better to leave you in suspense. i'll be sure to blog about it monday. my friends and i all had green on and if you are looking at the audience we are on the far right side, 3 rows up.

•kategardinerphoto.com-wedding photojournalism

thar' she blows!!!

so i got to shoot the coolest thing ever yesterday. they blew up an old bridge in nearby jamestown, ri which made for unbelieveable photos. follow this link and see the gallery:

then click on the News section. you will see Jamestown Bridge Demolition. i would just post the pix here but don't want to run the risk of the paper being irritated by my posting their intellectual property on my own blog.
things we have to think about.

ok so the link is having issues at the moment. i think it is a mac thing. i will fix when i get to work.

may the earth swallow me whole

so funny story, today i went to the mall to return one
pair of flipflops i bought that i thought would go
with a dress and didn't. (one pair looked great so
we have a winner) anyway i stopped into the bathroom
in the food court and then walked to am. eagle
outfitters to return the shoes. i'm standing in line
at the place and this tiny gay guy employee walks up
to me and says "oh honey, you've got a bit of t.p.," i
look down at my shoe and there was a toliet paper
trail of about 10 squares long stuck to the bottom of
my shoe!!!! the guy reaches down to pull it loose but
3 squares remain securely behind. so he grabs again
and one square stays behind.

MORTIFIED!!!!!

finally i say, oh thanks don't worry about it. and
then have to stand there in line for another 10
minutes dying on the inside while waiting to return
the damn shoes with one square attached to my shoe. i
tried to look like i had completely forgotten all
about it the moment the guy walked away, but everyone
in line totally heard our conversation and i swear
they kept looking at my feet!!!

i had to wait until i left the store, hid kind of
behind a pillar and picked the rest of it off.
GROSS!!!

anyway thought you all might be entertained...

good stuff

well my weekend in new york was lovely. my friend jacqueline has the most amazing friends. we went to tons of wonderful restaurants but would frequently find ourselves just standing on the corner talking. we also decided you know you are no longer in your early 20's when after a night of drinking, no one got sick and we were all ready to shop the next day. the second night we were there, we all were also ready for bed at 2:30 am instead of partying until the sun came up.

i'm basking right now in the coolness of a gadget we were issued at work. i just finished shooting my assignment and now i'm sitting in the parking lot of the beach where my laptop is using its verizon broadband card to use the local cell phone signal as an internet connection. i just surfed the web calendar to see if there were any cool events going on in the area today to photograph while listening to the scanner. all while sitting in my car. technology is so amazing!!

so excited!! AGAIN!!

i realized as i typed the title of this post that it had come up before and for the same reason. my website is really ticking along. my web goddess just sent me the latest update. it is going to look so cool! i will post my web address after she makes the latest update. what is there now is not good. so i'd hate for you to see it with its pants down. i'm heading down to nyc tonight with some girl friends. we are having a bachelorette party weekend for my friend jacqueline. it should be fun. i'll update you when i get back.

peas and lettuce

so spring has sprung here. i raked out my garden beds this weekend and built up my planting mounds. i'm trying to make my garden a bit more organized this year. last year i lost track of what i planted where and didn't really know until they got rolling what was what. i also planted my peas last year really late mostly because i had no idea you were supposed to get them in around st. patrick's day. who knew? they did grow last year but not very much. lettuce will be a new experiment this year. i think i am supposed to cover the lettuce beds but not sure yet. it hasn't been freezing at night lately so hopefully i'll be ok.

nothing new or exciting maybe manilow

so i wish i had something riveting to put here but i don't. i finished my photo galleries for my new website. hopefully my web chica will have it up and running soon. i'll post a new link when it is running. my friend jacqueline's bridal shower was on sunday. it was most lovely.

ok so i'm not usually a watcher of american idol. i usually find ryan seacrest painful, but i just finished watching 'bones' and it is on after that. barry manilow is singing right now and you know he is kind of scary looking these days. his skin has no creases. i can't decide if it is just a face lift or if there has been some significant pealing involved as well. not to mention makeup. he also looks more like martin short's "jimny glick" character minus the fat than himself. weird. what people do to make themselves glam. what, old housewives wouldn't still swoon over mr. manilow if he had a wrinkle or two?

Happy St. Patrick's Day!!

Eat, drink and be merry!!

alright already!

ok so i've been getting harasssed that i haven't posted anything new on my blog for awhile. SORRY! i've been crazed. i went to a national press photographers assoc. northern short course for 3 days. it was totally crazy but really awesome. i'm fired up again about photo which i totally needed. i haven't had any professional development since i went to this course four years ago. the kind of sad thing is that the last time i went to this, most of the classes involved issues that came up in newsrooms, ie. ethics, lighting, digital work flow. but this time most of the classes were how to be a freelancer, build your own business and there was even a "losing your job" seminar. one of the lecturers gave a statistic that the ny times spends on average $700 per day on their staff photographers with ins., salary, travel, etc. they pay their freelancers $150 per day. he said that when more papers figure out the immense savings behind hiring freelancers over staffers our jobs are toast. yippee. anyway i learned a lot and got to mingle with many very cool photogs. i think i only got 7 hours of sleep during the whole 3 days.

Facial Fabulous

all i have to say is that if you ever get the chance to have a facial, i highly recommend. deb and i went to camelback inn on sat. and had glorious facials. we also layed by the pool, drank cocktails and took in a little sun. i swear i look at least 5 years younger. even jason said he could tell the difference. although he didn't saying anything about specific years :O)

i'd write more but i have a ton of stuff to do. i just got home from phx and now i have to pack tonight to leave for cherry hill, n.j. tomorrow after my shift. there is a national press photographers assoc. conference that i'm going to until sat. busy, busy, busy!

i'll update more about my trip soon!

autism awesome

so you have to check out this story that was on cbs. totally made me tear up but it was amazing.

great shot

oscar the mega grouch

have you ever had one of those days when you really woke up on the wrong side of the bed? you know when, for no reason, you wake up wanting to rip someone's head off. today that was me. i didn't have a weird dream or anything. i got to sleep in until 10ish so it wasn't like i had to get up early. poor jason. he kind of poked me at 10:30 saying it was time to get up and i almost slugged him. talk about suddenly having someone on your hands who just wants to throw things. we went to breakfast and he had to make sure i didn't make a scene. i did get better as the day went on, but i'm still kind of crabby.

karma kicks my ass

i have a confession to make. maybe if i send it into the vastness of cyberspace karma will give me a freakin break!! yesterday the wind was blown fiercely. it was so strong that when i was out for a walk in the morning it would take my breath away. so i pulled into the parking lot of target, opened my car door, reached for my purse and the wind whipped the door out of my hand and solidly planted it into the door panel of the car next to me. i got out and there was a two inch red streak with a teeny dent in their door. the car was champagne colored so the red was pretty obvious. here is where i really pissed karma off. i tried to rub it off with my finger which did help, but the dent was definitely there to stay. so i moved my car into another parking space...

i know i am so bad!! i went into target and ho hummed in my brain about it. i did go back out to see if the car was still there but they had left.

so for the rest of the afternoon karma had fun with me. i went back into target to get the things i needed. i was smelling the liquid soap to find a new flavor. i popped the lid on one and it totally shot soap up my nose, all over my face and dripping down on my shirt. ick. after bumming some tissues from the pharmacy and whipping myself off, i paid for my stuff and went back outside. the wind, still going strong, blows my cart over onto me as i am trying to put my things in my car. so i am struggling to right the cart when my cute orange hat goes careening across the parking lot. i leave the cart to go get my hat and when i come back it is leaning against my car although the scratch was teeny. then i went to panera bread (like paradise cafe in phx but not even close to being as good) anyway i got food to go and i was walking out of the place, the wind whipped the bag out of my hand making it crash on the ground where my styrofoam container of soup explodes all over the place. they did give me new soup so it wasn't as sad as it could have been.

i told someone at work about this and she said that bad karma always kicks 3 times so maybe i'm done. or maybe the hoodoo of the internet confession will wave the dark cloud away.

so excited!!

so my website is really coming along. i finished the bio and philosophy sections this weekend and just sent those off to the designer. now comes the big hurtle of finishing up the photo galleries. i went to my first bridal show this weekend. i didn't have a booth there yet. not quite ready for something that grand. but my goal is to have all my sample books all set to go next year. so mostly i was just there to spy. there was only one photographer out of maybe 6 or 7 that were there that was not a complete joke. i kept wanting to run up and down the aisles with a big sign saying don't give your money to these people!! you are being ripped off!! and the photos are BAD!@!!!!@. there was this one guy that had a huge framed print that was of this couple that had this crazy starburst comet looking thing on it. it looked like in photoshop they had put this comet mask thing over the image and then printed it. ick!!! there is one up in hartford next weekend that i might go to. hopefully that one will be better.

i'm melting...

so our big nor'easter blizzard that rocked new england is mostly gone. it was 60 today. i photographed an interesting woman today who makes contemplative bead work. a.k.a. rosaries and hindu prayer beads. they are stunning. i also photographed a holocaust survivor today who was fascinating. her story was so moving. she kept getting choked up as she spoke of her mother and others who were executed. she was 17 when she entered the concentration camp. when i was 17 my biggest problems were boys and zits. she talked about how they rounded everyone up who was 30 or older and walked them to a big hole and then just mowed them down. gives you goose bumps. sorry didn't mean to bum you out. she was living history.

blizzard

i really love this word. it is so perfect for what it discribes. although at the moment i would rather be eating a blizzard than watching it outside my window. mmm.. that sounds yummy. i have a really great photo which i will post later of ice crystals forming on the condensation on one of our windows. i think if we had good insulated windows this wouldn't happen but hey not our problem since we don't pay for heat. i made tortilla soup this afternoon for dinner and listened to cuban music all day so i'm battling the nor'easter in my own way. it snowed all night and is still wailing at 5:20pm. i would guess there is about a foot plus a little more so far. i don't think it will be as big as the BIGGIE we had last year with 4ft drifts. the dog across the street was out a little while ago and it was pretty funny watching him try to walk in the snow that was up to his belly. his owner had to come scoop him up because he was stuck. he's a pit bull but farely sweet.

new week

sorry to leave a sad post hanging for so long. i am in a much better mind set this week. jason and i went to his parents to watch the super bowl on sunday. it was so great to see the steelers win. jason and his dad had a good bonding experience. of course there were a couple of moments that they were having coronaries, like when roethlisberger was super nervous and throwing the ball away. anywho, i made chili (which turned out great, for those of you who i debated the freshness of my roast with.) no one got sick. i actually highly recommend if you make a pot roast in one of those oven bags, dump an envelope of chili mix and a 1/4 of water in with it, bake at 350 for an hour and 40 min. yummy!! i cubed it and then made my chili the way i usually do minus the hamburger. it was fabulous!!

mom's day

today is the two year anniversary of mom's death. it is so weird. it seems like something that happened years ago, yet i'm always shocked by the thought like it was yesterday. i know i'm not the only one who has ever lost someone close. i can't even fathom losing a loved one in an act of violence like war or a car crash or something. it just seems like it would be so much worse. and this is bad enough. thanks to everyone who called or sent email today. it helped. i know i didn't get back to everyone, but it wasn't always a moment i felt like talking. love you.

feel better frida

while i'm not going to claim that i am completely cured from my 3-0 freak out (it is only feb.), i do feel better. today i put on my favorite frida kahlo t-shirt. i love this shirt. deb and i bought it at a cinco de mayo festival a couple of years ago in phx. as an artist and a woman she is such an inspiration. i doubt she worried when she turned 30.

the long slippery slope...

so saturday was my half birthday. why is this important you might ask? if you haven't experienced the kate/deb family tradition of celebrating half birthdays, you have definitely missed out. our birthdays are in the summer so when we were kids, we would miss out on the whole bring-cupcakes-to-school-on-your-birthday thing. so our mothers started celebrating our half birthdays (jan. 28 and feb.2) nothing fancy, cupcakes for school, maybe went out to dinner or got ice cream. anyway it was always a great thing that of course carried into adulthood. our boyfriends/husband's/kids all got to benefit from it.

well this year in july i will be turning 30 much to my chagrin. i never thought that i would be the one to really have a problem with this birthday. but i do. i don't feel like i'm in a place in my life that i wanted to be in when i pictured the big 3-0. i have mega debt, i don't own a house, jason and i haven't gotten married yet because we can't afford a wedding and i don't have kids yet.

when i turned 20 there was a big sense of "thank god that's over with". but with 30 all i can think about is that i'm running out of time or that i'm behind schedule. when i was growing up, i always had the "old" parents. they were older than everyone else's parents and never wanted to go camping or to concerts or to the beach or even sit on the floor. i swore that i would have my kids early (not too early) but that i would still want to have fun and not be old. i know that even as i write this i can see it is totally silly. that voice in my head that tells everyone else who has issues that "you are being ridiculous" is saying the same thing to me. but it doesn't help. i also realize that you are only as young as you feel and all the other warm happy stuff that greeting card companies tell you, but that doesn't seem to fix it.

so one minute after midnight on the 29th of jan., i realized that i am now closer to 30 than i am 29 and it terrifies me.

which do you like?

so i am putting together a temporary logo until my design lady can come up with a better one. i made the one with the black background yesterday but today i don't like it as much since it is being displayed on a white background. so i made a new one. let me know what you think about the white background one or whichever you like better.

Go Steelers!!! Heaven is watching...

So i have never rooted for the Steelers in my life being a die hard Pat's fan with my beloved Arizona alumni Tedy Bruschi playing. But yesterday i witnessed something that i found so lovely that i couldn't resist. Jason's grandmother, a fanatic Steelers fan who loved football so much she had newspaper clippings of upcoming games with her picks circled, passed away yesterday. She lived out on Cape Cod near Hyannis. We drove up there yesterday because jason's parents had called saying she had had a rough night and that if we wanted to see her we should come. We got there about 1pm, and went up to her room. jason's parents went downstairs for some coffee so jason and i sat with her. she was in a coma and her breathing was very labored. it was almost like she was waiting for jason's parents to leave the room before she died. it was very peaceful. we all decided later that she decided to go at 1:30 so that she could get the st. peter-at-the-gates part over before the steelers game at 3pm. which if you watched that game yesterday, you could see she definitely had her finger in that game. so yes the steelers are in the superbowl and someone in heaven is watching.

sandman issues?

so i have had issues sleeping this week. weird dreams, not sleeping through the night, blah, blah, blah. i have talked to a few people i know and they have all said that they were having issues too. so my non-east coast friends/relatives, how have you been sleeping? is this just an east coast thing? my friend marcia thinks it is the moon. but it isn't full anymore so i don't think that is it.

Rural Long Is.

Here are some of the promised photos from Long Island. I really expected Xavier Roberts to pop up and name the cabbages. I recommend clicking on the images to make them bigger in your browser, especially the cabbage one.

same ol' #@%#@@!...

yep nothing exciting to report. i did a lot of shooting this week. i got sent up to hartford twice to shoot uconn men and women's basketball games. that was pretty cool. free food anyway. i also went on the cross sound ferry over to long island on wed. the ferry goes from new london to orient point long island. of course the new london side is an actual metropolitian area but the orient point side is in the middle of nowhere. it is a very rural farming community. some of the pictures i took look like sections of kansas with big fields, vineyards and an actual cabbage patch which i had never seen before. i'll try to remember tonight at work to post some of those pix. anyway, the ferry company over the last couple of years has increased their runs as the popularity of the casinos just north of us increased. the people that live near the ferry on the long island side are pissed because they have to deal with all the traffic. so we are doing a story on the people that are not pleased and what the ferry company has to say about it. needless to say the ferry company is not a big fan of ours. since we have written stories in past months about the pollution they put into long island sound and other not so great things. they had our newspaper boxes removed from their premisis and the ferries themselves. always a classy move in my opinion.

continuing on the sewing theme

jason gave me a sewing machine for christmas which i am so excited about. it was a little creepy though because the first one we got, i was reading the instructions when i noticed handwritten notes in the margins complete with pictures of the bobbin and such. i then tried the machine and it was clearly broken although i fiddled with it forever to make sure it wasn't just something i was doing. so back to target it went. last night i opened the new one and was pleased that at least it wasn't me not knowing what i was doing. it worked fine. i remembered some of what my mom taught me as far as how the machine works, now i just have to deal with my inability to sew in a straight line. it has tons of different stiches which i have tried all of them on a piece of scrap fabric. very cool.

so- a needle pulling thread

I recently read on my friend ann's blog that people most frequently start their posts with the word "so". i just scrolled through my last 10 blogs and 8 out of 10 start with "so". from now on i will have a concerted effort to not use "so" as to break free from english repetiveness.

when slurpee falls from the sky

today was gross. picture that giant slurpee from 7-11 that you had last summer on a really hot day. wasn't it nice? ok today it fell down the back of my neck. all day in fact. it didn't really snow and it didn't really rain, it slushed. i guess at least it didn't have that cherry syrup or i would have been even more grumpy.