For those of you who aren’t familiar with the background, this whole thing started as a little project Vicki and I came up with, mostly because we couldn’t think of any good Christmas present ideas. We thought it would be fun to make calendars featuring our own photos, and to give them to a few relatives. When we started sending them out, friends of friends and relatives saw them and asked how they could get one for themselves. I put them in the store so folks could order them, and the whole thing kind of snowballed from there.

The cool thing about getting copies of both of these books sent to me is just that it was completely unnecessary. Both publishers asked my permission to use the photos, even though they didn’t have to – and both sent me copies of the book, once again, even though they didn’t have to. That’s just sweet, you know? Having a signed copy of Brown’s book is major-league icing on the cake.

Anyway, November is here, December is drawing nigh – and with it the end of 2009, so I spent most of this weekend working on photos for the upcoming 2010 Calendar. I’m really excited about the way this one is coming together, and I think people are really going to like it.

But so far? So far I’m loving this camera. When you take it out of the package, the first thing that strikes you is how small it is. It’s nowhere near the size of a dSLR. In fact, it looks more like a point-and-shoot. Then you pick it up, and the second thing that strikes you is how heavy it is. I mean, this little sucker is dense. It’s like picking up a bar of steel, which makes sense due to the fact that it’s got an awful lot of stuff all crammed into a solid metal frame.

That’s Vicki’s story, anyway. I kind of suspect she was jealous that I got to rescue these cute kittens while her and Marshall were gallivanting all over South Dakota, so she waited until I was at work one day and stole one from a neighbor. Probably a senior citizen neighbor. In fact, she probably stole it from a sweet little old lady with no relatives or friends, who is bedridden and blind, that counted on this kitten to read her the newspaper every day. I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say that this kitten was probably the sole source of joy in that poor woman’s life. But when Vicki gets an idea in her head, what are you going to do, you know?

My photos have also been used to illustrate a couple of books, but as far as I’m aware this is my first book cover. It’s a young adult title being published by a company in the Netherlands called Olga Kinderboeken. Translated, the title is The Youngest Spy in the World.

So naturally I found myself trudging up the road to rescue the kittens. We’ve already got two cats and a dog, and I didn’t want anymore pets, but what are you going to do, you know? I’m an idiot (I think that’s been pretty well-established by this point) so I didn’t bother to take a bag or a box or gloves or anything. The result being that 15 minutes later I got back home with two snarling little hairballs of fury, and a nice collection of scratches.

I’m setting up the Smashmouth Fantasy Football League again this season. It’s been so popular in the past that we’ll be expanding the league to 12 teams this year, and we’ll be using the NFL’s official fantasy system at NFL.com as our host. NFL.com works well, has a good ruleset, and it’s free.

So why am I selling prints of my photographs? Mostly because people kept asking for them, and because I think I’ve found a way to do it that isn’t a major nuisance. I’ve set up a partnership with a company called ImageKind that will handle all the printing, billing, and shipping for me, and their prints are of a much higher quality than what any of us could achieve with our home printers. They also offer a ton of size and framing options that seem pretty cost-effective to me.

Still working on the site, and still adding features.