things they don't teach you in business school...

i didn't actually go to business school, but if i had i don't think they would have taught me about last night. (this is long but worth the read)

let me first say that yesterday was a great day. church was great and immediately after that we set out for chattanooga with some friends to see the aquarium. i should also say if you live in birmingham and think birmingham is a cool place to live... don't go to chattanooga. they've got it together. as we were discussing with our friends, we think the key to their (and many other city's) success is that they have a river (and actual mountains), so what we suggested is we tweak/scrap the whole dome idea (as great as it is) to include a lazy river around the city. we could turn it green for saint patrick's day (is that today?) or you simply take a ferry tour for the evening. yeah, yeah, i know some of you may be saying "but we have the cahaba river." i know, and i'm very thankful for the cahaba and the medication i have to give my dog every time he swims in it.... but it's just not the same. anyway, i digress.... on to my story.

i would like to think i'm an optimist but i must say that when things start going really well, i start looking for the other shoe to fall. and, maybe through a self fulfilling prophecy, it actually does.

so it's getting late. erin and i are having some ice cream and watching some story on national geographic about people getting killed by polar bears (don't ask).... basking in the memories of a great day.... mind you there are only about 2hours left in this day. around 10 o'clock my cell phone rings. i check the caller id and it's not anyone in my directory so i let it go to voicemail (there's your proof stokes-if you read this). eagerly i wait for my message indicator so i can figure out who this is. Q: i mean really who would be calling someone at 10pm on a sunday night. A: someone who thinks i'm having an affair with his wife. still there?

the message goes something like this.... "corey nolen, i just checked a message from you on my wife's voicemail that said "hey baby, just want to know if you still want to do this, i still have the files". just letting you know that you better get rid of this number because if i ever see it again i'm going to track you down and kick your ass."... more or less.

let me really emphasize the lack of words i have to describe my feelings at this point. i'm being made aware that i'm having an affair with someone's wife and soon going to die.

so i call the guy back thinking we can somehow figure this out and come up with an explanation but unfortunately this guy really did just want to kill me and wasn't entertaining any other options than what he initially thought. after being threatened a second time i decided to pray and call the police.

erin and my first thought was "who would call someone saying they are me". honestly that was the worst moment, thinking someone was playing a prank/signing a death warrant on me (which is not beyond some of my friends). my sharp, smart, detective like, wife began to think outside the box and we thought of every single person i've called in the last 3 months. we even went into our cell & office phone records to try and find this #. during this time the fine officer who (really did a great job) i filed the report with called my assailant to try to figure out what was going on. he actually listened to the message that was left and ACTUALLY AGREED that it sounded like "hey baby!" i explained to the officer that "baby" is not in my vocabulary. i've never in my life called anything baby unless it was a baby. my wife was there to verify. i also, explained that we run a business and have to call clients on occasion, so the explanation must be somewhere in that.

no matter, the pressure is now on us to figure this thing out. it felt like some movie where the innocent guys fingerprints are all over the crime scene. erin and i sat at the computer for what seemed like forever looking through phone records. we found an outgoing call to these people on thursday afternoon... FROM OUR HOME PHONE! okay so erin's thinking who's been in our house... and who's in our house right now.... i'm thinking, am i having an affair and forgot? after maxing my brain out, cross referencing phone records, going through every phone number we have written down or in our directory, my beautiful and smart wife (i'll call her baby now) figured it out.

i am beginning to do some freelance work for a company who's CEO is named "beatty". beatty gave me 2 numbers to contact him with 1. his actual office 2. his home office. the number beatty gave me for his home office was the number of the assailant. apparently i did leave a message with beatty that was asking him about "the files" he had given me in which i was about to "do this" presentation with. it was like we cracked the case... it was awesome.

so i called the officer back, explained everything to him. he talked to my assailant explained the mistake to him. my assailant apologized and i was finally able to go to sleep. the end.

because this is a photography blog i thought you might like to see what it looked like through the various stages of this nightmare... all before the end of an otherwise wonderful day. and btw, the other shoe did fall.

the following is a dramatization...

my first love...

before this blog was about photography, it was about music. i love to write, play guitar and sing but especially love it when it's with ethereal. there has always been chemistry with us and somehow we have made it for almost 10 years.

we don't play very often at all. in fact we actually thought that we had quit. but somehow we keep getting sporadic gigs and we still throw a set together from time to time. a few months ago we all sat down at panera, the place where business happens, and talked about our future. we're not young any more and we all have fairly demanding jobs and home life's. but if you've ever performed music you know that it gets in you and stays in you and when you don't have it you feel a void. with an accumulation of new and in my opinion much more versatile songs, we decided to give this thing another year of focused attention. now remember we had thought we quit so this is a big deal. so we've been practicing for a month now and it's just like old times.

anyway, this weekend we had one of our bi-annual shows which was actually a 2 day event. we went up early and pretty much had the whole day together to play music and then just play. i had more fun friday than i have in very long time. i think after times like this we would all agree that it's as much about our friendships as it is about the music. i am very thankful for this part of my life which i feel like has been suppressed for the last year or so. hopefully it will re-emerge soon.

the pictures: at some point in the last 2 years stokes became an outdoors man. as soon as we had finished rehearsal stokes got us all to go "mudding" (and i use that term loosely) with him. after that we had a friendly game of paper hand baseball where will actually had a sustaining injury. it was a good time. here are some pics.