Photography and how it changed my life

A friend of mine formed this photography group. The condition of the group is that we post a picture every day. In the group, we have the opportunity to ask for feedback on our photos, offer our insights, and share any tips we have found on photography. I'm not a professional photographer. I mainly joined this group to improve my skills enough that I can take pictures of my students playing tennis. After having been a member of this group for almost 2 months, I've learned a lot of lessons. First, taking a photo every day forces me to take time out of my jam packed schedule and savor the beauty of my natural surroundings. I know that sounds corny but its true. In winter, I often battle seasonal depression and feel overwhelmed. Forcing myself to take a picture each day, even if its ten degrees and we are buried in ten feet of snow, makes me see the positives around me. From photography, I'm able to see the quirky expressions on people's faces, the glorious landscapes in our community, and the color combinations that shine. In addition, I've learned how to use instagram to correct poor lighting. I use instagram as a metaphor for life. I believe that you always need light to see a situation clearly and that a situation is can be brighter than it seems. Thanks ladies of 365 Moments Captured !

Snow day humor

Snow day with a neurotic:
Have 5 different weather apps installed on your iPhone only to conclude that where you live is most phucked out of everywhere.
Examine the driveway for 30 minutes before deciding that the house is definitely going to crumble on you and shoveling will give you a heart attack but can I trust the neighborhood kid to shovel or is he on crack?
During commercials frantically change to channel 12 news and command everyone in the house to be quiet while you frantically also
Listen to an online report about the weather and print out the weather map prioritizing which friends you need to call to warn ( because they
don't have internet or anything)
Debate for an hour if your neighbor will snow blow for you and how much you should tip him.

Part 2 of Snow Day with a neurotic: get up and shovel a few inches of the snow and after consulting your heart rate monitor/ activity app on your phone decide you will indeed have a heart attack from the shoveling. Then consult the neighborhood list serv to determine if the high school kid is on crack, after careful consultation decide to let him shovel because the guy with a snow blower gave you a snotty look at the bus stop. Let the crack head shovel and invite him into your house for hot coco feeling guilty about your thoughts about him. After he leaves frantically search your house for stolen goods and do an intelius background search on the crackhead even though he didn't steal anything. Put channel 12 news on frantically watching for your kids school to be listed as a delay or closing. When it isn't listed search the district website and Facebook post about it praying school is cancelled.

Part 3: After you have checked every possible site to see that school is indeed open tomorrow, write a protest to the school district but then decide not to send it because you are afraid it might hurt your kids chances of getting a good rec. Plot out all possible routes to the bus stop on an iPhone app and determine which one is fastest. Look up frost bite on webmd and determine that your kids are bound to die while waiting for the bus. Realize you forgot to write a stolen goods report even though the crack head didn't take anything. Then panic because you realize you didn't check your medicine cabinet for stolen aspirin. Check medicine cabinet frantically even though your husband is screaming at you to help him put the kids to bed.

USTA Humor

Pre season:

Competitive captain:
2 days before the final ratings are supposed to come out look on the computer. Keep checking every hour until they finally do come out. Get all of your former players to sign oaths they are playing for you. Stalk down all of the bump downs and people from other regions and see what you can do to entice them. Of course you don't steal from others as you aren't like captain so and so who did that to you 2 years ago.
Non-competitive captain: casually mention to your players that you are having a team and ask them if they have any friends who want to join. Accept any requests you get to join your team.
Registration time:
Competitive captain: send your team a 3 page email detailing the schedule, the practices, the game plan for the season as well as a desire to stomp that team that beat you last season. Keep sending registration reminders daily. Check the registrations three times a day of your team and the other team and run an analysis on the computer of your team's chances. Freak out and almost have a car crash when one of your key players doesn't sign up.

Non competitive captain Check registrations once in a while. Oh no, it looks like Binkie, the best singles player got bumped up. Oh well.

Match day
Competitive captain:
Run all hypothetical matchups on an app on your iPad figuring out how many points you will take as well as figuring out how many points your rival will take in their opener. Curse out the apple guy when the app crashes. Triple confirm with every player scheduled and make sure their rides are set. Pay the über guy double to get that slacker guy there early.
Non competitive captain: casually send a text to all your players reminding them of the match. Go out and buy some beer and plan on ordering pizza for afterwards. Hope for the best against a notoriously tough team.

The match
Competitive captain: get there two hours early to check out the courts. Because after all, who needs to work. Stalk the parking lot and make note of who arrives redoing your lineup ten times. And who is that guy with red hair? Take a photo of him and run it through an identity search. He must have signed up late. Damn iPhone for freezing. Keep redoing the lineup and curse out tennis Identity search for charging $20.
Non competitive captain: get there 15 minutes before the match. Put the beer in the fridge. Text the one guy not there and hope for the best.
Bring over your lineup to the competitive guy who has now thrown his iPad across the room for messing up the identity program. Offer the guy a beer as he seems stressed. He then accuses you of trying to hurt his chances of winning. Grab a beer yourself and head down to the court.

Competitive captain: recover the ipad you threw across the room. Thank god there's only a few cracks. Ask the ditzy receptionist for the wifi password which she doesn't seem to know. Try to google the red head's name on your iPhone but it's out of power. Head to your car to charge it a bit but the internet doesn't seem to load. Call your research assistant and leave her a Voicemail ordering her to google the red head, Rob Micheli. Then charge your phone a bit more but not too much as you can't miss the match, head back into the tennis club and stare at your phone waiting to hear back from the research assistant while munching on pretzels and pacing. After five minutes the red head is upstairs and he holds his head down and is like, " I lost 60 60. I didn't realize 4.0 was this tough" you shrug your shoulders and are like, “well John Appelbaum is top of the level. You can join my 3.5 team next year" then you breathe a sigh of relief and keep your eyes on that first doubles match that could be close. They don't seem to be changing the score and you have a conniption. The second and third doubles head up and they both won. Then the bell rings, time ran out. It looks like second singles was up 64 53 and first doubles split. Ok, this is acceptable for the first match. You summon everyone over and tell them they better gear up for next week which is a tougher match, you remind them of practice on Friday and tell them your pro, Bridget is available to give the first doubles team lessons on poaching. Then you telephone your research assistant to see if they have any info on the other match taking place.
Non-competitive captain. Head to your court and be ready for a tough match as this team is usually very good. Fight the good fight and feel pleasantly surprised when you split sets and time runs out. Head up to the lobby and get the beers out. Order the pizza and celebrate. Casually remind your team of the practice this Sunday.
Competitive Captain: Frantically telephone your research assistant, who is busy writing a legal brief. She picks up the phone and you bark into the phone, " did Rubin post?". She of course, at first has no clue what you are talking about, but then quickly drops everything and navigates her browser to the already bookmarked USTA site. Keep yelling into the phone, " well". Trying to suppress laughter she says, " they won 22-0". Silently curse your first doubles team while demanding she recite the individual scores. Then order her to meet you at the diner (which is 20 miles from her house) where you will review the results. Use your app and your mathematically oriented brain to calculate the odds of getting first place over Rubin in the division running point scenarios for the remaining matches in the season. Curse the app for crashing and then call your math assistant ( who is an analyst at JP Morgan) and impel him to also meet you at the diner, honk at the guy driving at a little funny and finally go around him as you honk even more. People have places to go and problems to solve. Smash your hand through the diner door as you are so eager to get into the diner and confer with your research assistant and math assistant. Even though your hand is bleeding, once you see the two assistants, "do you think I should cut larry and jake from the team. They split with Doug and Vlad who are really only 3.7 players. Maybe Larry and Jake aren't top 8." Then freak out when you see that that guy Romanoff who you were trying to recruit has signed up on the Rubin roster. He said he didn't' have any time to play for any team. Damn him.
Non-competitive captain: Decide to stay a little later and drink a few more beers than usual with your buddies. Mmm, this pizza is good. You are happy that you were able to split with a team that made regionals last year. As your buddies start to pack up, contemplate going to a titty bar. After all tomorrow isn't your early day at work and you played well. Hopefully your wife wont mind you getting in a little late. Get in the car and turn on your favorite song as you bop up and down with the music on full blast. The car zig zags a little but you don't care, you had a great match. Man, that overhead you put away to win the second set felt good. Then, your ears start to ring and you notice the guy behind you honking. When did people get so intense? You decide you are a little drunk and better get home before you end up in jail with a dui.

Learn the truth

Although adultery today isn't as taboo as it was fifty years ago, it is still scorned . Stereotypes about the people who enter into extramarital affairs abound. I know about all of this because I was involved in an emotional extramarital affair for almost five years and I've heard all kinds of opinions about this subject matter. I'm here to tell my story because my frustrations and agitation over people's perceptions have built up massively. I'm here to dispel assumptions. Many people assume that men who stray from their marriage are sex maniacs who are simply looking for a romp or looking for variety in their sexual regime. Some people even go as far as to say that these men are pigs, douchebags, etc. In addition, many people assume that women who engage in extra marital affairs are simply gold diggers or that they purposely select married men because they fear rejection or aren't interested in real intimacy. All of these assumptions are in my case, untrue.

I first encountered X through mutual friends in a tennis group. At first, I just casually started talking to him because I'm a vivacious person, he started to confide to me about issues in the marriage and as a naturally sympathetic person, I saw it as my duty to listen. Tales of his wife's lack of acceptance of him, her invasion of his personal space and her constant drive to change his appearance ( which was perfectly good) melted my heart. After that I learned about her lack of engagement with the family, her desire to spend all of his money and force him into being a work a holic. She seemed superficial and unappreciative. I felt terrible for x. I didn't know that I was capable of feeling such empathy. Gradually, I engaged deeper with this man. What was an innocent conversation morphed into regular lengthy texting and email sessions as well as face to face meetings. I gradually began to really like this man and feel that I could be with him for life. I genuinely felt that he understood me and appreciated me. We had inside, secret jokes. I honestly believed that this could be a case of him picking the wrong person and then meeting the right person,

Most people didn't share my optimistic viewpoint on the situation. They would utter cautionary advice like, " once a cheater always a cheater" or "he'll never leave his wife for you". I was dismayed at the time by the people's sentiments but I shouldn't have been. After all, there are so many tales of infidelity that that's it's practically commonplace. However, I wanted to stay upbeat and maintain my hope in the relationship. When you are in your thirties and not married, it's never easy. Everyday you start to feel less and less hopeful that you will meet someone. You feel like an outcast when everyone else seems to be married with kids. Even the ugly, stupid women. You know you are competing against twenty two year olds who are thinner than you and have tighter skin than you. And a mate could help because the cost of living in NYC is astronomical. Ok, now I sound like a woman's magazine.

Anyways, you start to be of the mindset that if you find someone you like, you should try to make it work even if there are red flags. I know the clichéd advice that if you want to meet people you should go on match. But honestly, who wants to go on hundreds of first dates talking to people you have nothing in common with and feel awkward later. And who wants to spend hours scouring the internet, crafting witty messages when you also have to be concerned about your career, maintaining a perfect size four figure, and oh you'd probably like to engage in those hobbies you love. So instead you try to mold whatever seems hopeful into a relationship. And you try and try and try. And let me tell you, I have the stamina of a long distance runner. I would do everything to put my best foot forward. I baked cookies. I offered to refer clients to his wealth management firm and I was especially nice to his kids. Everyday, I grew more frustrated by the fact that I seemed like such a better fit for him than his wife. I started researching the family ( let's face it we all do that). My competitive urges started to overpower me. I kept looking at pictures of his wife on Facebook and convincing myself I was thinner, cooler, and more witty. I thought about getting a guy friend to sleep with his wife and then showing him the pictures. Then I went too far. I'm a writer ( I hope you could tell that already). I wrote a novel and based a character on his situation. After that he became paranoid that his wife would ultimately read the book. Conversations became awkward where he would always be guarded. We kind of reconciled. But then he was charged by the sec for lack of due diligence in a Ponzi scheme and he became more watchful and anxious. I decided to back off after he made a remark that I found condescending. He said, "please try to keep this to yourself to whatever extent possible". I've been bitter since. As much as people may have their opinions on this situation, I have mine, this honestly wasn't a sexual thing, I withheld intercourse to insure that. It was really a truly deep friendship. And it wasn't a sugar daddy thing. I didn't receive any lavish gifts. So what's your vote?