There are exactly 5 full months between April and October. Did you know that? I did. I do.

First, let me say, I can’t believe people are still visiting my blog even tho it is very clearly neglected. A big thanks to all of you that come check it out even tho it’s barely alive and breathing!

Second, I’m just dropping by to say that the moment before I logged into my blog, I was working on my website for katiemauerphotography.com. That’s right, I’m finally doing it. It took a year. Or more. Probably more. But I made a promise to a bride, and I can’t break that promise. So in the next few weeks, expect it to be up and running. I’ll be tweaking it until the day the internet dies, so please bear with me as I make a mess of things and eventually clean them up.

And another big thanks to everyone out there who has encouraged me, told me they like one or two or all of my photos, told me I could make a living at it, pushed me, bugged me, made me uncomfortable, and overall supported me (and continue to support me). I have a tendency to doubt my abilities and talk myself out of things because I’m afraid to fail, but you’ve all been there with me, telling me I can do it and helping me to believe in myself. And you guys are the ones that I will blame if all of this ends up falling down around me. :) Just kidding.

Maybe.

I’m sitting in the San Diego commuter terminal as I write this. Snooping around, listening to peoples’ conversations (the lady next to me is meowing into her cell phone…), unfairly judging horrible travel outfits. I’m about to embark on an adventure of a lifetime. This flight is going to take me to LA, the next to Houston, and after that, Buenos Aires, Argentina and finally Cordoba, Argentina. Hey thieves, try my condo, I won’t be home and I have lots of electronics!

My brother and A2 (the girlfriend) are currently waiting for my mom and me to arrive in Cordoba in a couple of days. They’ve been down there for something ridiculous – like three weeks – now and have been doing and seeing and eating their way around South America.

Truth be told, I really need this trip. I’ve had a bit of a heavy and rocky start to 2011 and could use a little adventure to escape the reality of every day life for a bit. My personal life has been flipped upside down and slammed on it’s head, and I’m at the point where I could really use a reward for keeping my shit together and not absolutely losing my mind. So here you go, Me. Go see Argentina.

While I’m there, I’ll be eating, seeing, talking, laughing, jumping out of planes (I KNOW!), and thoroughly enjoying. You’re jealous, I can sense it. But in the meantime, take a look at what’s been happening since we last visited.

Nick graduated!

I was there to witness it.

Christmas happened.

The fire department paid a visit.

I saw an amazing sunset.

My mom came to visit and we ate dessert.

A whole bunch of us went wine tasting.

Downtown exploded! Not really, but there were 14 fire trucks out one night.

San Diego got some new street art.

Here too.

I went to a car swap meet & saw this fixer upper.

Laura made an amazing King’s Cake. She also got married.

I got a rose shaped like a heart for Valentine’s Day.

I did NOT get to go to this, but it would have been awesome, I bet.

I got these for Valentine’s Day from my parents, and I’m not done eating them yet. They’re too pretty.

I don’t know what to do with myself. The past few weeks or months (I’ve lost track) have been busy, to keep it simple. It has been fantastic and exhausting at the same time. I AM NOT COMPLAINING! But one tends to forget how amazing free time is when one no longer has it.

Here’s what I’ve been up to since you last heard from me (which was in October I’M SORRY) (I’m actually referencing my google calendar because I can’t remember what all I’ve done in the past month):

++A lovely couple of nights out with the ladies in an attempt to squeeze every minute possible out of Hope being around (she has since moved to Glasgow to be with her manly man).

++Twenty-two quick hours spent in San Francisco at the Making Strides Against Breast Cancer event.

++Tree’s halloween party

++A week of editing photos.

++Twenty-four quick hours spent in San Jose at another Making Strides Against Breast Cancer event.

++Clippers vs. Mavericks

++Another week of editing photos

++San Diego Beer Week: in which I participated in ONE event. :(

++San Diego Gas & Electric – Metro Family Fun Day: where I played photographer

++John Legend concert at PETCO Park

++Sunday Funday, bottomless mimosas for Ari’s birthday

++Another week of editing photos

++Nick Lee turned another year older and we celebrated with fish tacos

++Played third shooter at an engagement session with the gracious Megan Ann

++Bridal shower for the lovely Laura, who is getting married in less than a month!

On top of all of this, I’ve been trying to fit in a normal life – working, exercising, breathing, eating, spending time actual people and generally trying to stay sane. It has been an amazingly fun whirlwind of a month, but I’m ready for some free time and lounging on the couch!

Hi everyone! Remember me? Gosh, I hope you still do.

I’ve been on a bit of a mental vacation lately. For the past month. Or so. But now I’m back and I’m ready to start sharing (almost) everything about my life with the internet full of strangers! Yay!

So what have I been up to on my mental vacation? Lots. I can’t even remember half of it, so you’ll just have to bear with me.

My trip to New York with my mom was a blast! We play Tourist very well, she and I. We stayed at the Marriott East Side in Manhattan and had quick access to everything touristy on the island. We walked up and down 5th Ave every day, window shopping, people watching, museum going, food eating, and many other -ing words. I’m still working on the pictures (yes, still…a month later). If you’d like, you can check my New York 2010 Flickr set. I post pictures little by little. So far I have two of four days done.

Shortly after I got back from New York, Danny and I took off for a quick trip to Palm Springs with his family. His mom and dad’s birthdays are only three days apart, so this year we celebrated by spending some time in the sun, lounging by the pool and eating good food. A vacation from my vacation was exactly what I needed.

After that, I was in Santa Barbara for three lovely days and two insane nights with 9 other girls whooping it up (literally!) for Laura’s batchelorette weekend. What a blast, and what an amazingly fun group of girls! We terrorized Hotel Oceana and the beach, but I think the hotel employees loved us. We hung out at the hotel, went wine tasting, gossiped, laughed, ate our weight in phallic cookies and had some good quality girl time. I took next to no photos. Bad aspiring photographer! Bad!

In between vacations, I’ve also booked three photography gigs! A wedding in October 2011 and two Making Strides events at the end of this month! I’ll be flying up to San Francisco and San Jose two weekends in a row to photograph the teams that participate in the Making Strides Against Breast Cancer events. HUGE thanks to my friend Justin for thinking of me!

September has been good to me!

Here are a few random shots I’ve taken over the past month.

New York!!

I got to go out on a job visit at work, and I was able to talk the crane operator into letting me run it for a couple of minutes. It was pretty awesome!

This is the crane. On the other end of that cable is a basket full of men.

I’ve started running these stairs a couple of days a week as a form of torture.

But the view at the top of the stairs is usually pretty spectacular.

Palm Springs!

I had a little bit of a photoshoot.

Rainy season is starting up in San Diego, but it yields some awesome evening skies.

Somewhere in LA, this exists.

Beautiful Santa Barbara

Caught this guy tagging the wall! Just kidding, it’s a mural.

We checked out of our posh hotel and discussed our options for the day. We decided to spend the rest of the afternoon in Manhattan with the intent of catching a bus into New Jersey around 6 o’clock that evening.

We barely made it to the Port Authority in time to buy a ticket for the bus that would take us where (we guessed) we needed to be. The ticket seller behind the glass apparently had more important things to do, like texting someone, than to help us buy our tickets, even though we were clearly in a hurry. When we asked him where we were supposed to catch the bus, he became irritated and told us that it wasn’t his job to know that. (How do you work at a major bus station and not know how to direct passengers to their busses? I guess texting your homies about god-knows-what is more important than knowing how to do your job.) We got on two or three busses before landing on the one we needed to be on. To this day, I’m still not sure that was the right bus, but it was heading for North Bergen, NJ and that’s all that mattered. We had very little time to figure things out, so we decided that this bus was good enough and that we’d figure it out once we got into New Jersey.

There weren’t many people on the bus, which was good because I was actually pretty nervous about it. I didn’t think that we’d be on the bus for long, but once we crossed the bridge, we headed north…and our destination was south. Uh oh. Maybe it heads north for a while and then swings back down south before going back into Manhattan. That’s got to be it. Boy this is not a nice area of town. There are a lot of bars on windows, run down cars, boarded up businesses, and that guy looks like he just killed someone. I’m uncomfortable. I shoot Danny a worried glance. He puts his arm around me. We keep heading north. The area starts to look like it has syphilis. It looks disease ridden and like it is decaying before my eyes.

We crossed one major street, and it was like the gates of heaven opened up. The cars parked along the streets went from rusted out jalopies to brand new BMWs, Mercedes, and Lexuses. The houses no longer had bars on the windows. The people had all their teeth and looked friendly. Oh my god, there’s a Borders! Danny and I had talked about getting off the bus and calling a cab to take us to our hotel, and I decided that if we were going to get off the bus in a strange town, this was the part of town to do so. I felt safe here.

We decided to hang out inside the Borders we saw a few blocks back while we waited for a cab to come pick us up. While we were making our way to the Borders with all of our luggage, a silver SUV pulled up and asked us if we needed a ride. I saw the word TAXI printed on the side of the window in small, white letters. I must have had a lapse in judgement because I didn’t see anything wrong with the situation. Nevermind that this “taxi” didn’t look like any other taxi I’ve ever seen or have any affiliation with any recognizable cab company. We took this guy up on his offer and we were on our way to the hotel…FINALLY. Once we arrived at our Howard Johnson EXPRESS (“express” means “shitty” when you’re in the hotel/motel business) and got checked in, it finally occurred to us that we may have just narrowly escaped an untimely death. We found out later from coworkers that it is common for the MOB to run TAXIS as a SIDE BUSINESS. That’s cool…as long as we’re not sleepin’ with the fishes.

The motel was a dump, but it was a “clean” place to sleep at night. The shower looked like it time traveled from the 60s. But we were content with it because we were only going to be there for three more nights, it was cheap, and we were going to spend the majority of our days in Manhattan.

We discovered that a hotel just down the road had a daily shuttle that picked up in the morning and came back at night. The best part was that it was free! That totally beats the shady $8 bus ride every day. The only problem was that it left New Jersey at 8, 9 and 10 each morning and left New York at 4, 5 or 6 each night. That didn’t leave a whole lot of time each day, especially since we planned on catching the 10 am bus every morning. It ended up working out just fine because by that point in our trip, we didn’t have the energy (or the money, frankly) to spend the entire day sight seeing.

The rest of our trip was thankfully uneventful, as we spent the last three days crossing things off of our “must do in New York” list. We went to the top of the Empire State Building and saw the breathtaking views, went by Madison Square Garden, saw some street performers break dancing, went to Grand Central Station, ate New York style pizza while we crouched against a building in Times Square, took a ferry to Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty, saw a mass yoga class happening in Times Square, visited Ground Zero, strolled down Wall Street, and took a nap in Central Park. Of all of those activities on those last three days, the nap in Central Park was our favorite.

All in all, a disastrous trip that I can now (2 years later) look back on and laugh about. Why did so many things go wrong? Does New York have a vendetta against me? Maybe against Danny. How did we end up in so many predicaments? Are we just inexperienced travelers? (No) Is New York just too harsh for our laid back, west coast swagger? (Maybe) Are we just finicky travelers? (Some of us aren’t) Regardless of the reason, New York was not a place that we wanted to go back to anytime soon. I believe we agreed that when we made our first million, we’d consider coming back.

So why is it that two years later, after having sworn off the City that Never Sleeps, am I sitting in the San Diego Airport waiting to board my flight to New York? Maybe I’m a glutton for punishment, or maybe it was due to Jay-Z and Alicia Keys lulling me into believing that New York is, in fact, a great place full of things to do, people to see, and places to eat.

I’m off to Milwaukee first (layyyyyoverrrrr) to meet up with the Mom, and then hopefully, Hurricane Earl pending, I will be enjoying the Big Apple by midnight tonight. I’m SO EXCITED!!!

Start spreading the news. I’m leaving today! I want to be a part of it, New York, New York!

Maybe I’ll just move there. HA-HA, just kidding DANNY!

I just like this picture:

Thus began The Journey of Five Customer Service Reps.

Unlike my Verizon Shenanigans post, I won’t tell you word-for-word what happened, but instead I’ll give you the Cliff Notes version.

CS Rep #1 laughed in my face and told me that the upgrade that was purchased for me was not going to work.

CS Rep #2 told me that I was basically sh*t out of luck and that I’d either have to spend an additional $600 or an additional $700 if I wanted it to work.

CS Rep #3 told me that I could purchase a $200 student edition and then upgrade to the version that had been purchased for me.

CS Rep #4 told me that I could purchase the student edition, but it would not work with my upgrade. I could purchase the $100 Elements 8 and then use my upgrade. I repeated back to him exactly what he told me so I could confirm that I wasn’t misunderstanding. I purchased and downloaded the program. The upgrade didn’t work.

CS Rep #5 told me that my specific upgrade wouldn’t work, but that there may be something that she could do about it. She put me on hold for 5 minutes and when she came back, she had the solution.

I now have a working version of Photoshop CS5 on my computer, and it only took 2 months, 5 CS reps, $100 software purchase and 10 minutes of troubleshooting to get it done. How simple!

Advice to Adobe: WORK ON ALL OF THIS. MAKE IT BETTER.

This leads me to the things that made me happiest this week:

• CS Rep #5 for making things happen as painlessly as possible.
• Hand-me-down Photoshop versions to hold me over in the meantime
• WEEZER concerts!



• Sushi to go
• BATCH PROCESSING! *choir of angels singing*
• Much needed girl time



• Summer finally arriving in San Diego (and the AC to go along with those hot days)
• Birthday dinners at new and interesting restaurants
• http://www.katiemauerphotography.com (there’s nothing up yet, but hopefully there will be soon!)
• My first set of photos that someone paid me to shoot! Groupe Car Club.
• Danny likes vampires.

I’m starting my own business! *applause*

It will OBVIOUSLY be a photography business, and I’m leaning towards calling it Katie Mauer Photography, because what else would I call it?

She’s mighty pensive for a 3 year old…

So you know, I’m famous now. I’ll be signing autographs for the rest of the day, and then I need to take a break because I’m just sure I’m about to start a world tour and I should probably catch up on sleep while I can.