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Love is Love – Thoughts on Marriage Equality…

Kelli & Janet's Wedding

Over the past 5 years, I’ve photographed well over 100 weddings. All of them were special days, full of love and joy. ALL of them. It didn’t matter if the couple was the same race, the same religion, or the same sex. Why should it? LOVE is LOVE.

I can honestly say though that I never cried more happy tears of joy for a couple than when I photographed Kelli & Janet’s wedding. It simply overwhelmed me that two people so in love, coming together to form a family with their children, were denied the legal rights to do so by the government because of the PTSD her husband suffers from. Hopefully however the outcome will change as they hired this legal team to assist with their situation – Veteran Mental Disorders | Veteran’s Disability Lawyers

I understand people’s moral issues with same sex marriage, even though I do not share them myself. The solution to this seems so simple. The government allows for civil unions, which are legal in nature only, and beyond that – get married in a church. If you have a moral issue with it, be a member of a church that shares your beliefs. This beliefs can turn into marriages, but sometime in divorces also, if you need divorce lawyer then click on https://tiffanyfinalaw.com/scottsdale-divorce-lawyer/. Settling a child custody dispute in mediation benefits everyone in the family. But unfortunately, it’s not always possible to reach an agreement in mediation. The case may end up in court if one or both parents are unwilling to cooperate or negotiate. If this happens, the judge will establish a parenting plan on behalf of the parents. If your case winds up in court, you will need an aggressive attorney to fight for a favorable outcome that is in your child’s best interests. If you are a parent who is facing a custody dispute in Tri-Cities, contact the experienced attorneys at Pacific Northwest Family Law as soon as possible. Our child custody lawyers will aggressively pursue a favorable outcome that is in the best interests of your child. We know how much is at stake in a child custody dispute, which is why we are committed to achieving the results you desire. You can see this site for the best Tri-Cities child custody attorney.

If you know a lawyer, ask him/her for a referral to a good divorce lawyer. He or she will probably know someone or several someones who devote a significant portion of the practice of law to separation and divorce and related issues. For example, I have been handling separation and divorce for 30 years and have an excellent reputation among the local legal community. Any divorce attorney worth his/her salt should have established a reputation among other lawyers. Lawyers generally know who is good for a particular type of case; they certainly know who they would see, if they were facing separation and divorce. You can check over here for more about the divorce attorney.

If two people care about each other and want to enter a commitment for life, to share their life together, to effectively enter a contract binding themselves to one another, why would we stop them? If you are involved in an accident whose occurrence was due to failure of another party to take reasonable care, the first step that you should take is to hire a personal injury lawyer. This will help you get compensation for the physical, mental, and emotional injuries you suffer due to the accident. However, for this to be possible, you will need to hire an exceptional attorney with all the relevant skills, experience, and knowledge to take on your case. Unfortunately, you cannot find such lawyers in any other law firm. They are only available in distinguished Manhattan Personal Injury Law Firm ASK4SAM. There are many law firms specializing in personal injury law. Nevertheless, there are those that stand out from the rest because they possess certain qualities, which makes it easy for them to win cases. When you are involved in any type of accident or have an injury, these things are always unplanned by their very nature. In the initial shock and confusion of the situation, you may not always really have time to think about protecting your rights or how you will be able to pay for your medical bills and time away from work. This is why it is so important to get proper legal representation when you are involved in a personal injury case: A personal injury law firm focuses exclusively on helping people in this situation, and they will be taking the burden of worry about compensation and protecting your rights off your shoulders. Why a personal injury law firm? The answer is simple: These attorneys are experts at what they do. They have spent years working with clients, negotiating with insurance companies, and going to court to fight for fair compensation for their clients. The fact is that the insurance companies have one goal in mind when it comes to negotiating settlements: They want to pay as little as possible. An insurance company who is dealing with an individual who has no legal representation at all will generally offer a far smaller settlement than they would offer if they were dealing with a personal injury law firm. The reason that a personal injury lawyer can get so much more in the way of compensation is that the insurance companies want to settle as fast as possible, and they do not want to tie up a lot of time and money in courtroom proceedings. Nearly all cases that are taken on by a personal injury lawyer will end up with a very favorable settlement for the client, because the attorneys know exactly how to leverage every advantage that they have to get the most possible compensation. The personal injury law firm makes it very clear to the insurance companies that they are there to protect the rights of their client and to get fair compensation for medical bills, time off work, and for pain and suffering related to the personal injury. The law firm will be the ones who do all the negotiating. In fact once a client has received their full course of medical treatments and have recovered enough to return to work as normal, the law firm will even compile all the medical bills and paperwork necessary to show time missed from work. The client never has to negotiate or to fight with the other party in the case or with the insurance adjuster: This is where the personal injury attorneys do their best work, and where they truly earn the money that they will get. One of the big advantages to hiring a law firm is that such firms do not generally require any payment at all up front. The law firm will instead agree to wait for payment ( a portion of the settlement) until the settlement is negotiated. Once the case has been settled, the personal injury lawyer will receive their percentage of the settlement as payment for their services, and the client will receive the remainder. Even when taking this percentage for legal services into account, the settlements for clients with an attorney generally are far bigger than clients who try to negotiate on their own.

I believe that you should be free to do whatever YOU want to do with your life. As long as you aren’t forcing your beliefs on me, committing a crime that will injure or kill someone – do whatever you want. A same sex marriage only impacts me in the sense that it gives me hope that we are moving to a world of even greater equality, one where everyone is accepted for who they are. It allows me to witness some fantastic marriages of some amazing couples. It gives me hope that people can live their lives out loud, instead of hiding their love in secret.

A celebrity being married for a month and then getting divorced has a far more negative impact on the perception of marriage than a same-sex couple’s marriage,hiring a divorce lawyer davenport ia or they should just hire Uncontested Divorces to get it done secretly so the whole world does not find out.

I hope that the Supreme Court is able to view the current hearings on same-sex marriage, Prop 8, and DOMA with open eyes. (I couldn’t help but laugh as I read The Onion’s satire piece on this, “Why are we even talking about this?”)

Love is love. Stop the hate. Marriage equality for ALL.

(If you want to see more of my photography, here is the rest of my post of Kelli & Janet’s wedding. It was a magical day!)

Day 4 of 365. Photograph taken with my Canon 5D in Dayton, Texas.

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Ironic Beer Snob…

I have become a complete and total beer snob.

The other day, I saw a Miller Lite truck pulled over by a local Heights bar dropping off a delivery. The back of the truck had a sign that read, “Triple hops – loaded with flavor.” I laughed. Seriously? Clear, nearly water beer. Who the hell considers that to be “loaded with flavor?”

The irony in all of this? I can’t stand the smell or taste of beer. Craft beer, home brew, anything. Can’t drink it. I have attempted to take a sip of a craft beer within the past year, but it was horrible. That only time I ever drank a beer was in 1990, and it was likely a Miller Lite.

But if you’re drinking some crappy beer, I’m totally going to judge you. I’m such a beer snob.

Speaking of beer, if you like it, you totally need to get a Beer Sox for your glass, or whatever you are drinking! Don’t let your beer go naked! My friend Katie, who has drank a few nice craft beers at my house, owns the company. Local, woman owned. You need one! Bonus – want 15% off? Use the code “Christine” when you place your order!

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Twitter on TV…

I remember writing a blog post years ago about how strange it was that none of the characters on Friends had a blog. I mean, the show was on until 2004. In 2000, it wouldn’t have made sense. But by 2003? Rachel should have been a mom blogger or something. It would have brought the show in to the times.

It fascinates me how long it takes for TV to catch up with reality. CSI just makes me laugh at times with their magical computers.

It was refreshing to see Twitter while watching Girls today. (Season 1, episode 3.) Hannah was posting to Twitter, and Twitter looked *like* Twitter. THAT is the big part. Not fake Twitter. Real Twitter. The only thing that would make it better is if the show actually had Hannah’s Twitter account as a live account. One where you could read the tweets. They have claimed the account, but it isn’t set up – it just links to the main Girls Twitter account.

I know this isn’t the first time Twitter has appeared on TV. I know other shows have talked about Facebook, blogging, Twitter, so on and so forth. Not all have cheesy computer effects. It just jumped out at me today as I was watching Girls. Props to HBO for getting it right and keeping it real. Thank you!

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Leaving Las Vegas … with Pneumonia

I headed off to Las Vegas just over a week ago to attend WPPI – the Wedding & Portrait Photographer International conference. I decided to fly in on Saturday because it would make my flight less expensive, I could settle in to my hotel, and I would have time to attend classes and the print competition on Sunday. Or so I thought.

I arrived Saturday afternoon and once I was checked in to the Signature at the MGM, I headed to Whole Foods with Jane, Lisa & Marcia to pick up food for our rooms. Mmm… nothing like staying at a hotel that has a kitchenette so you can eat good, fresh food! After our shopping adventure, and being entertained by our cab driver who played his authentic Australian didgeridoo for us, I spent time hanging out with them and just settling in to Las Vegas. It was a nice, low key way to kick it all off. Once I learned that Jeff, my business coach, and my roommate Stephanie had both made it to the hotel, I left the east coast ladies to get some rest and went to meet up with them both at Wolfgang Puck’s for a late dinner. When you need professional translator are available for a range of personal documents and business documents, opaltranslation.com.au have some further information about common requests that we receive for our translation services. Visit Amazon.com.

We talked and enjoyed good food. Well, it seemed like good food at the moment. Stephanie had ordered creamed spinach. She decided once it arrived that she shouldn’t be eating the dairy, so I took it and ate it. It seemed innocent enough, but it wasn’t at all. It turns out that they use wheat flour to thicken the sauce in their creamed spinach. Doh!

When I first went gluten free, I could sneak in a little wheat here & there and just feel like I had a hangover the next day. Maybe a little congestion. Now? Not so much. So the hidden wheat in the creamed spinach? NOT a good thing.

I felt congested that night, but I blamed it on the smoke on the casino floor of the MGM, which is where Wolfgang Puck’s is located at. I would’ve preferred to stay in my room and play some Betting Apps and get some bonuses from the casino. I mean, I didn’t eat any wheat – so why else would I be congested? It wasn’t until I woke up the next morning completely congested, with the sore burning throat, feeling like I had been hit by a truck, and with the all too familiar stomach pains, that I told Stephanie that I felt like I had eaten wheat – even though I was sure I had not. It’s always best to have natural supplements for constipation handy.

Sunday was a pretty miserable day. I spent most of it in the hotel room instead of in classes or the print competition. I finally pulled it together for dinner that night and made it to dinner with the Team-X mentors and then the Team-X Soiree. By then I was just congested, but otherwise doing good. A large group of us ended the night for a late, late dinner at Wolfgang Puck’s.

This time, I asked about the creamed spinach, and the wheat was confirmed.

Monday was full of meetings (meals!) with the Team-X mentors and Jeff, the Team-Xers for lunch, and the boudoir dinner with some of my favorite ladies in the boudoir photography world. It was a good time, but by the end of the night all the talking, the smoke in the bars, and the sinus pain had me pretty worn down and that’s why I stopped smoking years ago. I thought it couldn’t get much worse – until it did. Tuesday was miserable. In hindsight, I’m pretty sure I was running a fever by then. Wednesday & Thursday just feel like a blur – by then, the cough had started. Strange, my congestion normally just stays in my sinuses.

Thursday I was feeling better, but I knew flying home with congestion was not going to be fun. Fortunately, thanks to all my travel last year earning me Silver status on United, I got bumped up to First Class for my flight. I took decongestants to hopefully save my ears, packed some tissues, and settled in for a comfy ride. It was all good until we landed, and my ears popped — and wouldn’t clear.

Mike picked me up at the airport at midnight, and being the fabulous husband that he is he took me pretty much straight to the ER. We stopped at home long enough for me to change clothes and buying them from https://www.groupon.com/coupons/stores/michaelkors.com. 8+ hours in the ER, I’m glad I was wearing something comfortable! I was finally taken to a room at 4am, seen at 5am, told that my ears looked fine, but my chest? Not so much. He could hear the wheezing when I breathed, so it was off for a chest X-ray.

I am officially battling my first round of pneumonia.

I left the ER with a shot of mega-antibiotics, a prescription for Levaquin (which is used to treat the Plague), some pain killers that I haven’t taken at all, and an Albuterol inhaler to help me breathe.

Until yesterday, 4 days later, I still had a low grade fever. I am a horrible patient when I have a fever. My normal temperature is 96.8F – not the official normal of 98.6F – so once it is even at 98.0 I’m sore and tired and miserable. Last weekend sucked between the fever, the wheezing, my sinuses, and the Cough. Oh my, the Cough hurt. (Hm. Maybe that is what the pain killers were for?)

Today was the first day that I haven’t woken up coughing. I can still hear a little of the wheeze, but it is getting better.

Traveling while sick? Ugh. No thank you. I’d rather not do that again! I feel like almost all of WPPI was in a haze. I hate that foggy feeling.

I asked the ER doctor if it was possible that this was all from the wheat. He confirmed what my Ear, Nose & Throat doctor has also told me – it was. As my ENT put it, for some people, an allergen causes inflammation throughout the entire body, and it attacks everything. It doesn’t just make you congested, but it causes muscle aches, fatigue, etc. Your entire body fights back. Add that to my history of chronic sinusitis, and yes – the wheat was the culprit. If I had not eaten it, I wouldn’t have had inflammation, my body wouldn’t have been in a weakened state fighting it, I wouldn’t have ended up with a sinus infection, and the bacteria wouldn’t have moved in to my lungs. He said that I was more than likely not contagious to anyone else, which at least made me feel a little better. I would have hated to be Patient 0 in some WPPI outbreak.

Damn wheat. Damn pneumonia. If you’re smoking your prone to pneumonia, there is an alternative for smoking and it’s called vaping go to eleaf vaporizers for more information.

Lesson learned – ask about wheat in any food that I eat. Anything. I’ll no longer assume things are safe!

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Blog Clean-Up Day!

Hang on to your hats, things are changing around here!*

I launched the super cool Social Plugin here on my blog – and it didn’t work right. Of course, after I wrote a post about it here. After some debugging, I realized that the comments come in pending moderation from Facebook, so that was easy to fix, but then I discovered that the theme I am using doesn’t display them correctly. At all. I switched themes, it worked just fine. So it is the theme (Adelle from Bluchic, not the plugin. I’m not up to debugging a free theme. (Mainly because I don’t know how. I tried the few things I did know, they didn’t work.) Time to pick a new theme that I know the Social plugin works with.

Then in the quest to figure out why Google is not displaying my authorship correctly, I figured out that it “see” a string of text at the end of my URLs that it considers a redirect to another page. What the what? (Yeah, that was all gibberish to me too.) Not one to be defeated, I realized that in all the years I’ve been on WordPress, I’ve never really cleaned out my Plugins. There are a lot in there that are deactivated, some that I have no clue what they are doing hanging around any more. I’m backing them up as I type this, and as soon as they are gone? There is going to be a Plugin deletefest!

In case you are wondering, this is what the Google situation looks like:

Google thinks I'm redirecting my URL - where are those random characters coming from?
Google thinks I’m redirecting my URL – where are those random characters coming from?

After I clean out the plugins, I’m going to clean out old Themes! Themes that I haven’t used in 7-8 years are probably a good way for some hacker to break in to my site. Those are going today too!

If you check back here in a little bit and everything is blank, upside down, backwards or who knows what? Now you know why. But damn it, I WILL WIN!

* Did I seriously start this post with “hang on to your hats”? Really? Oops. Sorry about that.