My birthday

Yesterday was my birthday.  This year "my" present is actually one I will share with Carly.  We decided to buy a guitar.  She already knows how to play a bit.  I know nothing.  She feels it is something she needs to learn to do.  I think it is pretty, so I'm compelled to learn how to make noise with it.  We will take some lessons together sometime soon.

This, like Kathryn's bike, was chosen in a very atypical way for me.  We went to a few stores, and found a guitar we thought looked nice.  Then we went home to the internets to make sure there wasn't anything horribly wrong with that particular brand and model.  You know the kind of stuff, reports like "um, wow, the body fell apart on day 3."  We didn't see anything horrid, so we felt it was an okay choice.  Then we went to around to local stores to see if they had them in stock.  We ended up going back to the place we saw it originally.  Other stores had the guitar, but not in the cherry finish, even though we wanted a store closer to our house.

For those guitar-people out there curious what this is, it is an Ibanez ART100.  For photo-heads curious about the lighting it is my medium octobox bounced of a reflector, with a gridded light behind it to pick out the edges.  Its tiny bit on the underexposed side, but this is on purpose.  The instrument is a mystery to me, so I kept it in the dark.  Literally.  For those curious why it is so dusty, it is because dust is friggin relentless and I got tired of wiping it down after 6 or so minutes.

I also made a picture without the reflector.  I thought it was cool how the finish picks up the books on the nearby shelf.

Because this is my birthday post I wanted to think a bit.  This year has been the first year I've noticed age at all.  What do I mean by that?  Its the first year I've noticed that I'm supposed to be an adult.  Here are some of the items that tipped me off:

1.  The high school seniors I photographed were barely born before I graduated high school.
2.  Some high school classmates of mine have children who are now attending high school.
3.  My wife has been reading Redbook.  What happened to Cosmo?
4.  I'm now old enough to run for President.  Anyone want to vote for me?  The election is in two years.
5.  Star Wars is over 30 years old.  Star Wars. 30.  Over. Crazy.
6.  I used to think everyone was older than me, now I think everyone is my age, even if they are 10 years younger or 10 years older.
7.  I'm six years younger than Brett Favre, and he has already retired something like 3 times.

And a few other things. 

But, I guess I'm an adult now.  I wonder what I will be now that I'm all grown up?