Five for Friday

1. It's a rainy day here in Washington, D.C. Actually, it's the second day in a row where it has been rainy, gloomy and chilly. I can't believe I'm wearing a long sleeved light weight sweater in June! The good news is that this weekend is supposed to be gorgeous.

2. Artomatic kicked off last Friday night with huge success. So far, 63 people have entered my fishbowl giveaway for a matted 5x7 print and, judging from how dirty the rug in front of my space is, I have definitely been getting a lot of foot traffic at my site.

Tomorrow is my first volunteer shift at Artomatic (all participating artists are required to participate in three, five hour volunteer shifts). Since I'm a pretty Type A person, I'm excited to get there and meet the public! If you're looking for something to do tomorrow, come on down. I'll be there from noon - 5pm, but Artomatic goes until 1am.

3. My summer vacation has officially been booked, thank goodness! Brad and I will be cruising on the Carnival Pride August 21-29 down to the Caribbean. We went on an Eastern Mediterranean cruise on our honeymoon and loved it, so we're looking forward to trying out a different destination this time. Really, all I wanted was a lounge chair where I could sit and read for a week. Cruises are an absolute steal right now, and we're lucky that the Port of Baltimore is close by, so we don't have to fly.

4. Speaking of flying, isn't the story of Air France flight 447 heartbreaking? As someone who is a nervous flier anyway, I tend to have a morbid fascination with airline disasters. My heart goes out to those who lost loved ones in this somewhat mysterious circumstance. Having been on several transatlantic flights, you go into it with the mindset that once you're cruising a few hours into the flight, it's almost like you're not even on a plane any more. To have the plane go down in such a dramatic fashion (whatever that fashion turns out to be) must have been incredibly frightening.

5. On a happier note, I met up with our wedding photographer, the very talented Mary Kate McKenna to do some fun shot searlier this week. I realized when I launched my web site that I had zero decent pictures of myself, so I thought it was time to rectify that. I received the edited images from her last night, so I'll post a few over the weekend. For now, I leave you with this teaser:

As you can tell, she and I had a lot of fun together. And, yes, that is a Segway tour going on in the background!!!

Happy weekend everyone!