So I shot this image yesterday, and yes I'm cheating again on the whole "daily photo" idea. I'm just too sleepy to process another picture tonight when I spent a large chunk of today processing these shots that I love so much.Yesterday was my first maternity shoot ever, and I was a little apprehensive. But man, I had a great subject and a great setting and the photos are really lovely (whew!). And then? I got to do ANOTHER one today!? Right? Crazy. Considering how this week is going, you'll probably get to see that shot tomorrow as I totally cheat on the daily blog again. Ah well!

Miss Margaret here has moved on to her dream job. I am so happy for herReallyThat sobbing? Don't mind that. *sniffIt's just me selfishly wondering who I can lock eyes with and telepathically communicate with now when I'm trapped in ridiculous meetings. Who will make me laugh with her favorite Oatmeal sketches? Who will see I'm so angry that I'm shaking and instantly send me some Metallica* so I can listen as loud as possible through my headphones and not lose my temper at work? Who will look at eight different versions of the vita.mn cover and not make fun of me for being so anal, but rather suggest maybe pushing on further to a ninth? Sigh. Can you tell how much I'm gonna miss her? At least she's staying in town so we can still down tequila and laugh until we snort. That's a special friend, right there.*Calm down all you music moralists! I OWN every Metallica album! I'm not stealing it, I just don't have them all at the office, so it's simply "borrowed."

It was my birthday, and the one thing I did not want to do was lug my camera around all day. So I decided to just instagram with my old iPhone (not the amazing 4G camera, so be forgiving of these images) every so often, and give you a montage at the end.First off, I want to thank all of the amazing people that made today spectacular. From the many gifts and delivered flowers and brunch and phone calls and emails and facebook notes and twitter shout outs and birthday dinners... I was kinda overwhelmed. And happy. Seriously you guys, thank you. Turning 25* is tough, but somebody has to do it.Now, for the photos above. I'll just go from left to right, top to bottom. Got it? First off, I woke up to Memphis just snuggling away, wagging her tail, making happy grunting noises and stealing my pillow. Very niceThen I got up and got dressed and went to brunch with the ladies of the Star Tribune where we had lots of laughs and terrible service. But! Free red velvet cake, which is always a plus. The lovely Catherine insisted I move my coffee cup into the frame so you could all see the lipstick on my mug. Yes, I wore bright red lipstick to lunch. I am me, after allNext, home to open a few presents. I got this planter from my mom, who always attaches notes to explain her gifts. I love how she's trying to tell me this is not pink (because as we all know, I am not into pink), but rather "rose." I will keep this pot forever, and I will also keep the note attached to it. Hilarious.Then I had a floral delivery from Spruce from Julie in Texas! It was these amazing air plants that I LOVE. How cool are these!?! So prettyWhile I was leaving for brunch I had noticed that every time I opened the front door a bird flew out of my hanging plant on the porch. So I took it down and peered inside this afternoon, and look! Eggs! I will be keeping an eye on this nest and filling you in on the updates. I am already concerned that the fourth egg is not getting any attention, but I fear if I move it I will upset the balance of nature. Also, I don't know if you can see, but the nest is lined in Merlin fur. That makes me so happy.And lastly, I had a very small dinner with 4 friends tonight over at Ngon Bistro (amazing food -- go there!) and on the way home, at 10 pm, you could still see daylight because it's the summer solstice. What a wonderful day!*We're all just gonna agree that I'm still 25. Deal? The reality is far too depressing.

Tonight after work Miss Margaret and I went out for drinks. You see, her last day at vita.mn is Thursday, and we needed to sob celebrate. I cannot tell you how much I am going to miss her and how despondent happy for her I am.So we headed out to have some dinner and tequila and laughs. She also brought along a birthday gift for me, which was this game that you see above called Cards Against Humanity. Oh man, did we have laughsThe way the game works (we think -- we didn't actually read the rules, we just dove right in) is you have 10 white cards in your hand and someone reads a question from a black card. You choose your answers from your white cards and the person with the best (funniest) answer wins the point. So the question for this particular round was: Reason for your last breakup. And those were our answers. Wait, you don't think we're funny? Then clearly you haven't had enough tequila.

This photo is more informative than artistic, I'd say. But this is a shot of the (almost) finished Zeus Jones space. These guys have doubled? more than doubled? their offices in the last several months, and it's been fun to pop in every once in awhile to shoot headshots and see the progress. Today they were down to the very finishing touches, and wow does it look good. That area on the right is the "old" space, and everything that turns the corner on the left is new. I was amazed at how seamless it looked -- I never would have guessed it was an addition.Another reason I was super excited to see the finished space is that I've been following my buddy Brad's Pinterest boards that he was using as inspiration for the space, and it was cool to see how it all came together. Lovely, eh?*Um, sidenote. I think the uniformed personel were from the fire dept. to figure out alarms/extinguishers etc. It looks like the cops were visiting, but not the case.

Oh hey, this wasn't shot today. Nope. I'm cheating on this here blog again. This was shot on Friday right before Free Energy and Rock the Garden. Yeah, I had a busy weekend, eh?Anyway, these photos were so lovely (as was the couple!) that I didn't want them to slip through the cracks of all that rock'n'roll. Besides it rained here all day today, and had I not cheated you would have gotten a photo of me a) either watching TV b) cleaning the house c) doing laundry or d) eating strawberries. So this is much better, I promise.I did a full blog post on the shoot over at my *other* blogging location (Rivets and Roses). You can see that hereTomorrow we'll be back to regular scheduled programming, I promise.

What a day! When I woke up it was pouring rain and there was a 90% chance of rain all afternoon. This sucked because today was Rock the Garden, and if there's one way you don't want to spend a festival, it's in the pouring rain. But alas the clouds parted and it was lovely ALL DAY LONG.Today's festival featured Howler, Tuneyards (yes I'm aware they have preferred capitalization for that band, and I'll be damned if I'm going to start honoring such nonsense), Doomtree, Trampled by Turtles and The Hold Steady. And kids? Do I even need to tell you that Doomtree stole the show? Prolly not, but they did, and it was awesome. This here is Dessa just killin' it, and I love the sun flare behind her (I am me, after all, and we all know I get a little JJ Abrams about the sun flares) and I think with all that white she darn near looks angelic.I have a bunch of other shots from today that I'll post tomorrow. For now I want to go relax because carrying a ton of photo gear around all day is exhausting, especially when you come home to a kitchen floor covered in dog diarrhea*. Oh, you're sooooo lucky this blog isn't scratch'n'sniff.*And this time Merlin was the culprit, not our normal demon dog, Memphis.UPDATE: Photos of the day are now up over here. Enjoy!