Empty Bowls with Mikell and Lily, Liam and Alex at Trivia

April 29, 2023: Well I’m doing the first part of my photo mid-day. It’s about 3pm now and a lot has already happened. First of all I drove my mom to the airport. Well, actually first of all I took my meds at 5:37am with a cup and half of oat milk for 12g fat. I messaged Luis some Spanish and took photos of my green notebook and put them into Adobe Scan, and washed off my Patrón Shirt that I had worn yesterday and put on the Oxy shirt I also got from Hannah yesterday. Then I picked mom up and brought her to my house for like an hour where we went over some packing stuff and she made sure I had the printout of the lab order for my blood test on May 2nd. Then I dropped her off at the airport and went straight from the airport to Good Shepherd Catholic School to shoot an event for Open Door. It was brilliant. It really felt like my first photo assignment in over a year. I was just doing candids during the Empty Bowls event that they had going on. The cool thing is that the Executive Director of Open Door, Jason, was there too, and I talked to him and offered to take more photos of stuff. He also knows I’m on disability so I’m not expecting to be paid for it. They gave me lunch too, which was just a serving of the soups they were serving at the event. Or rather, I wish I’d gotten the soups. What I actually got was the mac and cheese, which sounded good but it was a bit watery. So then I also got some of the Chicken Tortilla soup from Qdoba to take home, which they said was spicy and I kind of wished I’d gotten. I also got some lemonade and coffee. What I did was I sat down in the volunteer break room and ate without anyone around. Then after I ate I screenshotted the time I last ate, which was 12:30pm, and then I drank some coffee, which had a little cream so I noted I finished it at 12:48pm. Then I finished up with a few more photos and also talked to Mikell a bit more and took the photo with her. With Mikell I literally told her about my history in journalism, and said that this really felt like the first photo assignment I’d done in over a year. Mikell also told me that the mobile distributions are starting in a few months and there’s also a 5k in August that would be good for photos. I also got Mikell’s Instagram and gave her both of mine, and she agreed that I should post the picture I took of us on my personal Instagram at some point. There was also a different videographer there, named Nick, who was shooting for Eagan TV. Ah well, then I went home and started editing all my photos. I also kind of accidentally told Papa to come over, so he did that for like 5 minutes. While I was home I also messaged Luis a bit about photography, and he told me I should go for it as a career. Then I messaged the same thing to Papa. I admit that with regard to photography as a career I’d actually be kind of interested in it but I’m concerned about how I would get the health insurance for my medication. Ok so today I could easily just leave this the way it is for my photo of the day, but I have something else coming up that’s good. I’m gonna go over to Liam’s soon and do trivia with them. Lotta good things happening this week. Oh and I also took my meds at 4:30pm today with a 9mg fat hot pocket, which was good because I was a little bit hungry. Then I’ll be good to eat whatever with Liam and whoever else by 6:30pm. In a way I’m wondering whether I should take the morning meds earlier than 5am so I can have them 12 hours apart more easily. Ok, it’s 5:20ish and I’m gonna head over to Liam’s, back in the tequila shirt that I washed this morning. Oh my god I’m writing this in the morning. Well yesterday we didn’t do super well at trivia. I didn’t take a picture of our sheet, but we just didn’t do well at all. There was one question about a capital city being the same as a country’s name that I really felt like I should know because I know capitals, and like I guessed that it was São Tomé and Príncipe. I don’t know if we actually wrote that guess down though. Whatever happened, we did really bad. What happened for beers was I had the St. Paul Water, which Burning Brothers had just gotten a new shipment of and they haven't had for a while, and I also tried samples of the British Imperial Stout and Northstar Radler. Chose those just talking to the bartender and some lady at the bar. I had a fantastic day yesterday though. What happened was Lily and Alex and Liam and I met up and did trivia and we got nachos from the food truck, which was called The Pork Chop Guys. The nachos are in the photo. There weren’t actually pork chops though, even though it was called Pork Chop Guys. God I’m just glad I brought my computer and charger. Oh and I admit that yesterday the Empty Bowls shoot made me think about becoming an actual professional photographer again, and I texted Papa about that. It really felt like an actual photo assignment, for the first time in well over a year. Oh and at night Alex and I both slept over on Liam’s couches.