The Leonid Meteor Shower is a yearly event when the comet Temple-Tuttle swings by and pieces of it and it’s tail drop off into our atmosphere. If you want to know more, read about it on WikiPedia — it’s quite interesting. One of the nice things about the Leonids is that you can see them with the naked eye (no, you don’t have to be naked…. and that distracts the other meor watchers).  I wanted to go out and photogrpah it.  There’s a neat site http://www.tabwin.com/leonids/ that lets you see the times the storm will be visible from each part of the world.  I determined that 4am would be a good time for Central Florida (Oh yeah… I just missed the Shuttle Launch yesterday by about an hour. *sigh*). I set my alarm (cell phone) for 4am, and went to sleep at about 1am.  The alarm went off at 4am… it was one of those times when I ‘m dreaming so much that the alarm became part of the dream… then I woke up. Maybe it was because of the Tito’s Vodka drinks that  Eric and I were drinking all night, or maybe I was just tired.  Either way… I knew why I was up, and I had every intention to stand up, walk outside, get my camera, and photograph (as well as enjoy) this incredible phenomena.  Every intention!  The only thing is that I was so comfortable!  So comfortable that I did not move, and fell back asleep into the adventures that dreamland holds.

Eric Farewell is a buddy of mine from 2007… back when I was bllonde, and fairly fresh into couchsurfing.  I met him at Armand Morin’s Big Seminar — my 1st marketing seminar ever.  He is a photographer / adventurer / pilot, and recently newlywed.  Check out his wedding invite, is it not the coolest story ever?

Eric Farewell's wedding invitation

Eric and I befriended each other partially because we’re both into photography, and I had a Canon 1d Mark II (which was new at the time, so other photographers would drool at it– kind of like my 5D Mark II these days), and he wanted to play with it.  Marketing events are fun… marketers party hard, and there are quite a few characters there.  Eric was the one that I hung out with most of the time… Eric, and Rosana, whom I was couchsurfing with.  Eric had also been marketing for 7 or 8 years at the time.

Eric is interesting– check out his blog.  He was selling airplanes from he was 13 to 18, then had a commercial airplane business. He surfs.  He drives a 1970′s bug. He took 2 years off of business to just go explore.  He rode his motorcycle to all 4 corners of the country (http://bowtietour.com/ — get it? Bowtie… 4 corners… yeah- what a rad trip, I wanna recreate it).

These days he’s still marketing, still traveling around, and still doing wedding photography. I arrived just in time to go jogging around the lake (remember yesterday I said I’d be blogging about my fitness / diet over the next month), and catch Eric giving his live webinar on doing launches (marketing terms… a webinar is when you give a seminar over the web… the attendees get to see what’s on your screen, and they get to hear your voice, and ask questions through various chat medium.  A launch is a process of building anticipation about a product, then releasing it, and having lots of sales because everyone’s excited about it (really, it’s more than that… but that’s “in a nutshell”)).

I like his style– we were smoking cigars, and drinking Tito’s Vodka drinks while the webinar was going, and made sure to mention it to the attendees.  I was able to contribute a lot to the presentation, which was fun.  I always enjoy teaching.  I teach art, photoshop, photography, marketing, social media… aww heck… if I can do it, I can teach it. So, I had my fun teaching, drinking, and smoking. Then Eric’s wife, Nelle came in with breadsticks to tide us over till dinner (Pasta, with home made sauce).

After dinner we sat around and chatted, and of course I told many jokes.  The thing that was really excitingand interesting was when Eric told me he had Hyperkinesia (which Wikipedia says is another word for hyperactivity, but there’s a difference y’all)– which is when your mind always has to have something to do.  When this happens, you just work yourself until there’s nothing left, and it’s time to pass out.  That’s how I am!  Which is what he said when he discovered about it.  It’s exciting to find that you’re not alone with a way of being. I had the same excitedness when I discovered I was ENTP on the Myers-Briggs personality test.  Eric said that there’s a book that’s helped a lot, and that his mother made his wife read: An Uncommon Gift.

Eric said that it is like an instruction manual for his neurosis.  Like a guidebook to his life.  I’m going to have to read, and probably recommend this book.  That gives me hope.

Anyways, we’re going to Chalet Suzanne, his family’s property. It looks pretty sweet.  After that, I’m off to Atlanta.

Today’s breakfast by the way was pancakes with syrup, followed by pancakes with Nutella!  So much or diet, right? Well… at least I ran 1st thing this morning- probably about 6 miles.

I’ll post a cute picture of Eric & Nelle — I love photographing photographers.

I’m excited to get to Atlanta, ’cause I have dance lessons coming to me (I have to look up if I blogged that, if not- it’s a funny story to tell you).