Weekend update

I drove 1.5 hours west to Battle Creek Friday. I went to Battle Creek to photograph a state semifinal baseball and softball game. I walked into the stadium where my first game of the day was going to take place with my camera around my neck and carrying a book. A young vendor stopped me and asked what book I was reading. I showed him the cover of my book, Lindbergh by A. Scott Berg. I've never seen someone so excited. He told me that he thought it was awesome that I brought a book to the game. As he is a reader as well. I told him that I usually bring books with me to read before shooting a game. He just thought that was the neatest thing.

It was a sunny day and I sat in the dugout during warm ups to read and to avoid a getting a sunburn. About 15 minutes before the game was to start, I was asked if I came here to read or work. I'm was just keeping myself busy. I read a few pages before the game started. The game lasted two hours and I did a good job of avoiding the sun. The team I was there covering won and advanced to the state championship.

In between games, I put my book back into the car and walked over to the softball diamonds. I got something to drink and waited for my second game of the day to start. During the softball game, there was no way to avoid the sun. The photographers had a media box on the field on the first base side. No shade anywhere near us. Before leaving home, I put on sunblock. During the softball game, I could feel myself burning. My face and arms got the most sun. This game didn't turn out like the baseball game. The team I was there for lost.

I photographed two games back to back. That meant standing for a long period of time. During the baseball game, I sat down a couple of times in between innings. But I stood on concrete. During the softball game, I never sat down and stood on dirt. My feet were hurting. My left heel was in pain. I stretched my feet a couple times during each game. It didn't help. Nothing seemed to help.

The plan was to finish work and eat dinner with my husband when he got done at 10 p.m. I received a phone call from my husband around 9:45 p.m. He asked if I was still working, the answer was yes. I asked him if he was being held over. He said yes. That meant no dinner together. I was disappointed. But at least we would have dinner together Saturday night. So I finished editing at my home. Burned the images onto a CD and took my contact sheets to the office. I stayed around longer to talk to co-workers and left around 11:30 p.m. I needed something to eat, I went to my usual Friday spot: Subway.

I went to bed around midnight and woke up around 6 a.m. Saturday morning. I got up and did some work on the computer. Once that was finished, I went into the office. I read the rest of the morning before waking up my husband. We ate lunch and he had to go to work. While he was at work, I took a nap, started the laundry and went to church. A couple people at church said that I got some sun and that I looked tired. The answer to both was yes. My face was a nice shade of red and I had bags under my eyes. Standing in the sun and not getting enough sleep made me tired. After church, I finished the laundry, read and waited for my phone call. Around 10 p.m. after dosing off a couple of times, I was expecting a call from my husband. It didn't come. I got a call from him at 10:45 p.m. He said that he was held over again and would be home at 11:30 p.m.

He pulled into the driveway and I got into his truck. He asked what I wanted for dinner. I really didn't know. We drove to a restaurant that I knew closed at midnight. He wanted to go in. I saw the time was 11:40 p.m. and I said that I didn't want to go in. No other cars were in the lot. I said that they probably had the kitchen all cleaned and they were waiting to go home. We drove by another restaurant that was open. It was the same thing. They closed at midnight and had a bunch of cars in the lot. I told him to just to go to Taco Bell. They were open until 4 a.m. We didn't go to a sit down restaurant, but we did have dinner together. Really late.