yesterday, august 26th, my wife and i celebrated our 2 year wedding anniversary. i surprised her in the morning by driving up on a vespa [ a rented vespa courtesy of windy city scooters ], and we drove all around chicago and explored new parts of neighborhoods that we've never seen, as we made our way north. we ended up in evanston and found a great place on the water to sit and hang out for a while. we drove that vespa back to the lakeview area and picked up some thai food [ duck walk on belmont ] and stowed it away beneath the seat [ how amazing are vespas! ], and drove to belmont harbour area to enjoy our take out by the lake - it was the perfect finish to the day. after food, we went to annettes on armitage and bissel for some delicious frozen yogurt and italian ice. check out flickr.com/photos/thehopeful for a couple of photos.

it's currently 2:17am, and i am 99% packed to leave for vegas [ i have to leave here at 3:30 ]. i'll be there until thursday evening when i fly back. i will then photograph 3 weddings in a row. that will make the whole weekend 4 weddings long [ i will be shooting a wedding in vegas on thursday ]. i'm not sure when i'll find time to sleep between vegas and the friday wedding, but my theory is that i'll be so pumped about the great photographs that i got, that it won't even matter how little sleep i'll have. if all works well, i'll have time for a few hours of nap before heading out.

i'm expecting to be quite worn out come sunday, and on monday, i shall rest. i normally edit weddings on monday, but i'm thinking that I might just relax, and peruse the several thousand photographs that i will have taken during the course of the weekend - not to mention the dreaming that i'll be doing about the film. i've got plenty of it, and two hasselblads to work with.

well, i think i'll finish the 1% of packing that I have left to do. wish me luck on my trip, and many weddings.