It's November! The Marine Corps Birthday on the tenth, my birthday a day later and Thanksgiving all rolled in with the beginning of Winter. I look forward to birthdays again after decades of ignoring them. Each one gets me another year closer to retirement. I know, I know, that retirement thing is an obsession. Some folks see it as a major step closer to death - I guess I do too - but mostly I see it as an escape from an imposed schedule.

Time is the most valuable asset. That old saw, "time is money" is flawed in that it emphasizes money, implying that one should sell time for money. And while that's necessary for everyone, being it's so valuable and all wouldn't it be better to have, hoard and use one's time selfishly? With enough time, one can make stories - the only other thing one ultimately has. For me this freedom from an imposed schedule is still accompanied by a fear that I may waste that time rather than use it to make more stories. This is something I have to think about a lot more...

BonBon in our first shoot together. I now really wish I'd used bigger film so this photo wasn't so flat. BonBon deserved more than flat pictures.