Sushi!

Last weekend I took my dad to go get some sushi. Prior to this he typically eschews the raw delicacy, but he did mention to me that after undergoing 4 surgeries, chemo, and a near death experience, a bit of raw fish isn’t going to be the end of him. So we took him out and he really likes it! Unfortunately some of the sushi is hard to eat because some of it is too tough for him. But we’ll eventually go down the sushi list until we try everything on the menu.

My dad with his ginourmous single long eyebrow hair heehee.

Walking to the sushi restaurant. It was a nice place near Sand Canyon called Niko Sushi.

I’ve been on a vintage post processing kick lately. 80’s or earlier.

Ahh yes, an action shot worthy of a 1D sports camera. As my dad screams across the pavement in his walker. Zoom Zoom!

 

Thoughts on Haiti

I’m reading a lot of heart breaking stories on Haiti, and seeing some horrific, editorial photos regarding the disaster over there in Haiti. Unfortunately, they put themselves on a map, literally. In an age where most highs school kids/adults don’t even know the states in North America, let alone where Haiti sits geographically in the world.

At one point I did want to be a newspaper photographer, going on location, documenting the world’s events and people, but the more photos I look at from Haiti, the more I realize I don’t think I have it in me. As people are hurting, or screaming for their loved ones, how can I just stand there and aim a camera at them, snapping pictures?

You can objectify it to some point, and when I’ve taken pictures at funerals, to some degree, that’s what I do. Trying to be emotionally detached is one thing, but the scale and magnitude of Haiti’s disaster far exceed a single death. I’m reading stories of Doctors working 24-48 hrs straight under obscene conditions trying to stem the tide of death, I just don’t know. I would feel inadequate. Yes, you are trying to save lives, your skillset is much more useful towards helping others, all I’m doing is taking pictures.

In some situations, for example during the Iran elections where there were civil unrest, or the strict censorship of media in China. That’s where I think photography, and telling a story can help humanity. By exposing, or documenting atrocities so that others may learn from them. I’m not going to cite George Santayana’s quote, “Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it” because I feel it’s an exercise in futility. Because no matter what stories those pictures tell, we seem to repeat our mistakes over and over again.

I guess the one thing pictures and images from Haiti do help is, that it allows people over here, living in luxury compared to over there. Walking in our supermarkets, using things that we take for granted. Trivial things, such as clean tap water coming out of our faucets, sanitation, heat. It allows us a glimpse into their world, their pain. Gives us pause, to be thankful for what we do have, and to donate, and try to make a difference, whether it be in our own little surroundings, or somewhere else in our small little planet.

 

The Money Shot

I’ve started upon the path of documenting how things are done just so others can learn from them. So here’s the problem/solution.
Problem: My cousin wanted me to take a picture of this rare gold coin he wants to sell on flea bay. Only 1000 were made, and it’s 1oz of gold.

There are two solutions to this:
A) A professional setup, requiring strobes, softboxes, backdrops, etc.
B) The lazy man’s minimalistic setup.

Since I’m doing this for free, and I’m too lazy to go to my gear closet to whip out the setup required for A), I chose the path of least resistance. B)

Ingredients:
1) Camera
2) A macro lens (I’m using a 100mm macro lens) but if you don’t have one, Any other lens greater than or = to 50mm will suffice.
3) An understanding of manual mode for your camera, and overriding your autofocus so you can focus manually.
4) Tripod
5) A window for lots of sun. If no window or sun is present,
I recommend full spectrum light bulbs
These bulbs pack a punch and they don’t have the nasty orange hues that traditional tungsten bulbs do. They’re daylight balanced at 5500Kelvin. You take a few of these, turn them on and you’ll have the power of the sun at your disposal. I’ll go over a typical setup at a later date with a DIY (do it yourself) softbox.

My setup, I decided to shoot straight down. I knew there wasn’t much light to begin with and I didn’t feel like dragging anything out. Under ideal conditions, to get the sharpest picture, I would normally shoot the aperture at F11 or so. But that will require a lot of light. So I compromised and shot it at F 5.6 aiming the camera as parallel as I could to the subject.

Here’s a crude drawing I did to explain why:

Note: this is simplified! So people can understand! I don’t want any complaints as to why I’m not factoring distance and lenses into the equation) Imagine the coin is the flat line. The red X is where I’m focusing the camera. The circle, is what would be considered ‘in focus’ or sharp. At F2.8 The circle only covers a smaller section. So at lower apertures, you get less of a circle.
At higher apertures, F11, the circle is larger/Deeper. Therefore at an angle, I could get most of the coin to be sharp. Which is why I had to be as close to parallel to the coin as possible. Because I knew I didn’t have enough light to shoot at F11…so The more parallel I got to the subject, the more I could get away with at shooting at smaller apertures. This is the reason why I shoot groups of people 2 or greater at F5.6 or stopped down further (towards F11).

For this shot, you can see that the background is blurred,
with some of the text being sharp. If you note my crude drawing above that, I followed the same principal. I aimed my focus point (the red x) on the text at the lower end of the frame. Since everything else was at deeper behind it, I knew it would be blurry if I shot it at lower apertures. So I intentionally shot this at f3.5 to make that ‘circle’ smaller, to make everything else blurry.

The final shot: 1/20 a sec F 5.6 ISO 800
I wasn’t too happy with the outcome, but quite frankly was too lazy to setup lights. Remember, usually for macro photography, you want to be in manual focusing mode. As great as autofocus is, nothing beats the human eye when it comes to narrowing focus at that range.

 

lato poker charity event

I volunteered to cover a charity poker event called “All-In”, hosted at the Commerce Casino. The charity is Love across the Ocean who helps children in Vietnam. It was a rough year, there was an decent turnout, but as I heard, there was nowhere nearly as large as last years. But people did turn out to give and that was the most important part. To sit in at the table was $350 dollars. Ouch, yes that’s pretty expensive! The shoot was interesting from a technical perspective, the lighting at the red carpet area was atrocious, and it was a long day. I think the one thing I did get out of it, was I can cover corporate events. I did it for my company, and though it’s boring work, it’s something I would consider doing if I lost my job or something.

Jackie Johnson a local weather reporter

Erik Aude – Actor

Brad Garret – Actor

Scott Elrod – Actor

Quinten Taratino’s father

Nadia Dawn – Actress

Tamara Braun – Actress

The entire Gang, including Leyna Nguyen KCAL news

 

Family photos, pocket wizards, and how I suck with Flash.

Yes, it is that time of year during the holidays, where families get together to celebrate health, and happiness, and to be merry and festive . Usually when families get together, they take a lot of pictures to commemorate the moment. And what generally occurs is the ‘family picture’. To which I kindly stepped up and offered my services. (In truth, my mom said, “Ohhh Nghia will do it”). So technically, it’s not like I had a choice to begin with! But that’s fine, I really wanted to give it a shot. I generally deal with families or groups of people during wedding photography all the time. What makes this one unique is, I have to actually be in the picture. Since the camera will be on a timer and I won’t be able to see anything, I have no control over who is actually looking at the camera or not, so it’s a whole different ball game.

Now when taking large groups of people, I think of it as a cookbook recipe. The variables are ‘how many people are we talking about, and what the environment will be).
I know my family size, roughly 12-13 people. Take into the account that some people won’t show up, I estimated around 10-11 people in a small living space full of clutter. (yes, my parents like to have clutter, so I won’t be nit picky about what junk gets into the picture, as it will be out of my control). Given those parameters, I got my check list:

1) 5D camera for the full frame effect
2) A 24-70 lens. One of the widest I have without major distortion.
3) tripod (no tripod means I can’t be in the picture)
4) Two flashes (not sure if one can get the entire group of people
5) My stupid pocket wizards which I purchased but never really had a chance to use

Now before I begin, let me put a disclaimer. Pocket Wizards are a great company that puts out great products. It is due to my inexperience that I call them sucky. =) I’m sure given time when I master how to use them properly, I’ll change my statement.

Ok, so let me back up. This whole post was originally intended to describe my experience trying to take a group photo for Christmas. A little background about flash photography. There are two ways you can use a flash: The automatic way, whether it be Nikon’s i-TTL or Canon’s E-TTL technology, or the manual way. Up to this point, I’ve been babied and have used the automatic way. Which is to say, when you aim the camera, and shoot the picture. Really smart little math wizard gnomes in the your camera use special binoculars to determine how far the distance to subject is. They do the calculations and make a phone call to the light/intensity adjusting elves that live in your flash, and tell them to properly change the output of the flash to get a proper exposure. Granted, sometimes the gnomes have been drinking or they get confused, so you have to manually tell them to adjust plus or minus the output given any situation (called flash exposure compensation). But other than that, these genius gnomes run the show when it comes to flash photography.

Switching it to manual mode, would be the equivalent of telling those gnomes and elves to bug off. They’re all fired, and Christmas is canceled for them! Keep in mind, these gnomes and elves were born and bred for one sole purpose….and that is to adjust the light output based on gazillions of algorithms, and you just told them they’re fired. You can see where this story is going.

I thought I was somewhat experienced in all things photography, and in my hubris, I told those gnomes to pick up their pink slips and head to the unemployment line. In employing Pocket wizards, I essentially did just that. They are radio triggers, that tell the flash to just fire. The one advantage of this would be that I can tell a flash to fire in the next room if need be. If you are using multiple flashes, the way flash systems work is they either use pre-programed pulses that tell the other flashes to fire. Or they use a semi line of site laser-ish line of site trigger. The one problem with this is if it’s blocked for any reason, the other flashes won’t trigger (yes this has happened to me in the field before, and it’s very frustrating). The disadvantage is you lose the smart gnomes. I told myself I’d invest in these pocket wizards one of these days. Whelp! That day has arrived!

When the gnomes were fired, the moment you tell the camera to fire off the flash, it does so at full blast. Let me tell you, it isn’t a pleasant sight. It’s as if the sun exploded right in your living room (For a fraction of a second, the room lit up so bright, I think all the camera literally took was white). I immediately barked orders to my little gnomes to lower their output, via the camera. Then I realized…Oh wait… I fired them all! So I literally had to walk up to each of my flashes and dialed down their intensity, and take multiple test shots. Positioning the flashes in dark corners makes this feat a bit tiresome. I had the bright idea of adding a catch light by placing the flash behind the couch. But this meant that any adjustments I needed to make would require me to reach down there to change it (so there goes that idea). I ended up placing the flashes directly beside me. One to the left, and one to the right. Both I think firing at 1/128 capacity and one firing at 1/64th capacity. But with flash photography, nothing is a fixed variable. The moment people move, or get added or subtracted, the moment you move the camera back further or change the shutter speed or aperture. All those variables had to be calculated and adjusted. Even when the gnomes were employed, it still required some human input in adjusting the output. But in full manual, boy did I feel really inadequate.

So the long and short of the story is, I backed out and re-hired my automatic E-TTL gnomes for the shot. I didn’t feel comfortable in my experience or abilities to do a full manual shoot, especially when it came to an important family photo. And as with all photos that require group dynamics, you only have a ’small’ window of opportunity before they get restless. So I un-cancelled Christmas for them and went for TTL shot of the flashes. The resulting picture is below. Unfortunately the flash I placed to my left made a shadow on the wall, this could of been mitigated if I angled it differently, or if I used a third flash in the rear to offset the shadows. However, like I said in my previous statement. When a group of people are together, their patience in starring and smiling at the camera is very limited, so rule #3 of photography. “It is what it is, and sometimes you just have to live with what you shot”.

I set the camera at F5.6, there were only two rows of people so I figured it would give me enough deph of field at that distance to get a sharp group shot. Generally with a group of people, a common question I get is…What do I aim at? Well if your aperture is set enough where it will cover the entire group, it doesn’t matter if you aim it at the person in front center, or the person in the rear center. They both should come out sharp. If I set it at lower apertures, say 2.8 or so, and the camera was closer, if I aimed it at the front main person, the rear row will be slightly blurry, and vice versa. So with that said, I calculated F5.6 would be sufficient, however humans are very error prone. Instead of losing more light and going to F8.0, I played it safe and aimed the focus point directly at my dad. He was the most important person in the shot, and if anything I want him coming out sharp.

The end result is below:
Don’t ask me why I didn’t move that stupid table in the middle of the room. Don’t ask me why there’s a huge shadow from the lamp to the left. Next time, I’ll try to do better.

As another disclaimer…you can purchase pocket wizards with gnomes. But they cost a heck of a lot more than the $500 I’ve already spent. So I couldn’t afford them =(

 

holiday vaca and doing absolutely nothing

Ahhh…for once, I think it feels good to do absolutely nothing. I’ve taken the rest of the year off of work, so I’ve spent the past feel days just unwinding, and doing absolutely nothing. I’ve been catching up on some video games, doing a little reading, and watching some movies. Recently, I’ve watched Julia & Julia. It was my wife’s choice and at first I really wasn’t interested in it, but the movie grew on me. It was actually the first time I really took note of the cinematography. Not the landscapes, or anything, but particularly, the lighting.

Maybe it’s because most of the movies out there try to be dark and brooding for anyone to notice. Julie & Julia was was very well lit, and I’ve noticed it in a lot of scenes. To the point where I literally just stare at it in awe and fascination. Mostly what goes in my head during such scenes is, “Wow, this scene is very well lit!” or “whoa, that looks like a really nice photo, how did they light it that way?” The only way I can describe it is, it’s like a photography done very well from a technical point of view. Not necessarily the composition or the photo, but just the lighting of the faces or the clothes. I’m not sure if it’s just the combination of dynamic range and lighting, spurred on by the digital age where these things just couldn’t be done with traditional film? I don’t even have any idea how this particular film was shot (whether they used digital cameras or not), so I’m not even going to pretend to venture into that area, but it is my understanding that a traditional film is shot basically by cameras that must follow the same rules of lighting as regular 35mm film. The director of photography has to deal with the same lighting hassles, the same fstops and film speed, grain, etc. Only his/her job is exacerbated by the fact that people and things are constantly in motion in the scene. So kudos to them, and kudos to the fine technical work they’ve done. It actually almost inspired me to go out and take pictures again. Note the word ‘almost’. Heh, it’s waay to cold outside, and I’m still enjoying my ‘doing nothing’ moments. =)

On a different topic, my mom is throwing a holiday party in two days, so I’m looking forward to taking pictures (mostly of my dad), but it will be an opportunity for the family to get together and I guess I’ll whip out the good ole tripod to do family photos. Merry Christmas everyone!

-nl

 

stats and babies, oh my!

Woo, as of today 12-12-09, my flickr account has had 243,518 views. Not much in the whole scheme of things, but it’s big numbers to me!

Nothing much has been going on as of late. I’ve been uber busy with work. I called my dad today to wish him well. The conversation went something like this:
(translated to English from Vietnamese of course)

me: “Hi dad, how are you feeling?”
dad: “I’m good”
me: “I miss you, sorry I’ve been busy haven’t had a chance to see you”
dad: “You miss me? where do you put it when you miss me”
me: “In my heart of course!”
dad: (laughs) “good good”.

That was pretty much it, I wanted to be sure he was still following his exercise and therapy regime. He is still under 125lbs (56.7kilos) so the Dr refuses to do chemotherapy on him. So we’re waiting of him to gain some weight. He’s been given medicine to boost up his appetite.

So work was busy, but I’m glad I had time to take pics of a very cute baby “Paloma”, her parents visited from Spain these past weeks and booked a photo session. Initially it was postponed due to rain, but the Sat that we did it had some very cold weather. But I think we made it through ok.

I’m a sucker for dad photos with their kids. Fernando was carrying Paloma towards the photo site, and I pretty much walked beside them and grabbed this shot.

The shoot went on schedule at around the 1hr mark. Babies attention spans usually wear thin if you go any any further. Traditionally, I like to use natural lighting for the shoots. Flashes are distracting to the babies, and I doubt any good for their young eyes. I think at one point I had this teddy bear on top of my lens, just to try to get Paloma to laugh.

She didn’t fall for it, but I think the teddy bear did make my gigantoid camera look less menacing.

I think shooting young tots is akin to shooting pets. They’re very very unpredictable, and you can’t get any expression out of then. Since it’s so random, you pretty much have to have the camera on ready at all times. Or else you’ll miss a look or an expression that will occur only for a brief second, and it will be too late to capture it.

Also I think with kids, since they cry 60% of the time, it’s good to capture those moments as well. Because everyone has pictures of themselves as a kid smiling or looking cute, it’s the natural moments in life, where they’re crying or needing and wanting attention. Now that’s real life, and that’s what parents will cherish the most when they’re all grown up and eschewing their parents. Wanting to be dropped off a block away from school because they don’t want to be seen being taken to school by their mum or dad.

I remember I used to be very nervous the day before. I used to lose sleep over them, going through in my head in meticulous detail what shots I wanted, and how I intended to get them. I quickly realized things you plan very rarely works out in reality. So now I approach them like I would be any other day at work.

I analyze the environment, pick out the best spot given the conditions and just let things just happen. If need be, I’ll nudge things along. “try standing here, try standing there, lets do this”. The only pre-planning would be what camera and lenses to bring the day before. With short shoots, bringing too much equipment is a real burden. So I stuck with a simple two camera, 3 lens approach. I knew it would be outdoors, so a 70-200 for family portraits, and the rest would be closeup of the babies. (35mm, and 85mm)

“Mother is the name of God on the lips and hearts of all children.”
-The Crow

 

A lot to be thankful for

Had a very good Thanksgiving this year. Our family went to HealthSouth, the physical rehabilitation hospital he’s been staying at for this past week. We all sat down and enjoyed an Asian Thanksgiving lunch! By Asian, we eschewed the traditional turkey and went for rice cakes, pork, buns, with flan and the round sesame mung balls for dessert! I decided to go ‘old school’ and take my film camera with me, so there aren’t pics to be posted yet until I complete all 24 exposures and get them developed. Something about this Thansgiving made me decided to go with the physical tangible film, instead of digital. I guess I could always print digital copies, but we rarely ever do. They sit in my hard drives forever, and with film. Well, they get developed, and will be there for me to remember them for years to come.

But I did take my dinky little hand held video camera. I’m just really bummed that the sound wasn’t so good, so I didn’t get a chance to record him saying prayer at the table. It’s something I think I will cherish much later on, so I’m going to have to record that when he gets better and goes home.

father saying prayer on thanksgiving

Originally uploaded by GreenBeanPrime

It’s a bit interesting, I’ve been doing either morning or afternoon shifts hanging out there and feeding him either during breakfast, or dinner time. He looks healthy here in the vid, but Cancer is an interesting disease. You have good days, and you have bad days. Not to say that he’s at that point where he’s in pain during the bad days, but he just looks tired, and you can tell in his eyes. I really just want to say don’t give up hope, fight it. You’ve gone this far, just keep on fighting!

But yeah, I must admit sometimes I’m tired, and I don’t want to do my shifts, but I guess I do it, and trudge on because I do think it is a privilege and an honor to be able to take care of a loved one. Either feeding, or helping him use the restroom, I think it is entirely true. When you’re born, you’re pretty helpless, and towards the end of life, you do revert back to that state. And it is how you lived your life, and how well you teach and raise your kids (if you had any), that will determine whether or not you’re leaving this world lonely. Or among friends and family who will be there to take care of you.

After I feed him, every night, he’d ask to give me a kiss, one on each cheek. (He used to say if he only gave me one I’d be lop-sided, so he’d have to give me two just to balance myself out). I think every time he does this, I pretty much have to man up and be strong, because I almost break every single time. It’s real because I really don’t know how many more times left I’ll get to hear it.

I know I quote this a gazillion times, but it does seem apropos, so I’ll quote it a gazillion and one times!

“Because we don’t know when we will die,
we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well,
yet everything happens only a certain number of times,
and a very small number, really.

How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that’s so deeply a part of your being that you can’t even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more, perhaps not even that.

How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless.

- Paul Bowles. The Sheltering Sky

 

Cooking and photography

Today I volunteered to take photos for an organization run by my friend called charitable chef. It was at a home up in LA, the family donated 5k to helping homeless children obtain shelter, education, and medical relief, etc. What they get is a chef to come to their residence and cook them a meal. I guess where I come in would be to help the organization get pics for their website. I’d volunteer to cook, but I don’t think people want to pay a lot of money to get cup o’ noodles or boiled eggs, so I’ll stick to what I do best (or try to do best), which is take pictures.

What’s interesting, is I’ve watched cooking shows on TV, and of course I’ve witnessed my mom and my wife cook at home. But it’s casual cooking. I’ve never experienced first hand how a life in a real working kitchen is like. I find that it is surprisingly similar to a photographer’s working environment (Under the stipulation that you are a traveling chef and have to do these sorts of things at other people’s homes, not just in your controlled kitchen environment).

They’re standing up all day, trying to work under time constraints and pressure, all while trying to make their food look and taste good. To top that off, they’re restricted to the kitchen environment that they are in. If the stove or broiler can’t get hot enough? If they run out of ingredients and are scrambling to find sugar in the household? The main chef has to made alternative decisions based on a constantly changing work environment, and asking the assistant/secondary chef to take care of this and that. Barking orders, managing time, and just trying to get the job done. That’s pretty much how photography works.

We can’t choose the environment we are called to work in. Some days, it’s a well lit, beautiful location, while other times, it’s dark and the the weather is very cloudy, and it just isn’t ideal for shooting. But generally on the field, I have a certain look I try to achieve, I try to get my assistant/second to achieve those shots. And usually if they work with me long enough, they know what I want ahead of time (Which is why as in any profession, having competent, trustworthy team members is key to any organization) You have to trust them, and they have to trust you.

The kitchen has a hierarchy:

• main chef (main photographer),
• sous-chef — second in command– (second photography)
• the food preppers and/or dishwashers (light holders and equipment carriers)
• on occasion, you get the super overseer chef that determines the menu items for the day. I suppose that can be analogous to a creative director in photography land.

But I’ve never really worked with a creative directory, usually as the main photographer, you have to play the that role. Though I would love the opportunity to work with one. I think it will better hone my skills. Sometimes you’re just so busy trying to nail the technical aspects of it down and not screw up the shot, you forget the little details within the shot. And as the old saying goes, “the devil is in the details”.

But it was fun, just to hang around and observe the process. I had the easy job, all I did was take a few pictures!

 

A 3 hr tour that became 7 hrs

Well here’s a pic of my dad on Sun when Chrissie, and my niece Rose visited him.  He was doing fine, he said he was a bit scared of going into surgery, but I think it simply had to be done. He was in good spirits, when they took him to the ICU a few days back, it was interesting. He was pretty much laying there in his bed, and he wasn’t sure if it was going to be the last time, so he kind of outlined his regrets in life.  He started to choke up and almost cry when he said that I should really try to get a long with my brother.  I promised him I would do so, it’s not that I don’t get a long with him, it’s just that his temperament and attitude makes it hard for people to get along with him.  Anyways, so I guess he was in a very contemplative sort of mood.

He looks quite chipper and with his beanie.  He’s wearing a  beanie because with the chemo and everything he started losing a lot of hair.  My goofy niece whom I love dearly drove down from the 909 (riverside) to visit him.

Today he went in at around 7am, for surgery to remove the three tumors in his head.  My mom got to see him before he went under, and she told me he said, “If I don’t come out of this…I wanted to say Thank you”.   Which I thought was very sweet of him.   They’ve been married for a gazillion years, and sometimes he drives her crazy, and she sometimes drives him bonkers, but at the end of the day, they are husband and wife, and they love each other, through thick and thin.    After waiting for a very long time, the Dr. came out and said it went well.  It took longer than expected because the big tumor was the size of a small fist, and he had to be really really careful around that area of the brain.   I think after 48 hrs in post op, I’ll officially declare him out of the woods.  He’s lost a bit of blood and requires a transfusion, but this is nowhere near like last time, where he was in septic shock, required dialysis, the whole nine yards.

We visited him in the ICU a few hrs after the operation.  He seemed somewhat alert, knew that Obama is the president, knows he’s in the hospital, etc.  He was fuzzy as to whether or not the surgery took place.   Note the gigantoid bandage behind his head in the pic below.

I think it went well, I hope he gets function back to his arms and legs after this.  The tumor was blocking and squishing other parts of his brain.   Wow, I’m really thankful there are people out there who pursue medicine, and even go as far up as neurosurgeon.  I mean, that is a long, tough road to travel, and if it weren’t for people who sacrifice themselves for that sort of work, people like my Dad wouldn’t be around today.   I was almost ashamed as to what I do for a living after being in that hospital for awhile.  I grabbed a volunteer pamphlet and emailed the lady there to see if I can do anything to help out.   

It’s just a very humbling feeling, when you’re surrounded by sick or dying people. Just earlier in the ICU waiting room, there was a very young lady there who was talking on the phone.  I couldn’t help but to listen in on the conversation, and she said her husband or brother (not sure what the relation is) had a massive heart attack.  What’s the catch?  He is only 31 years old.  Can you believe that?  It’s just insane, so I’ve had renewed interest in trying to volunteer again to something other than myself, to build up that karma.