APRIL 08, 2014

The day began with a fire at an apartment construction site. A big one (both the fire and the complex). Granted, by the time I got there to cover it, the firemen were in the mop-up phase. Although fires are immensely interesting to shoot, I can’t call this my 100 Happy Days picture because there’s nothing happy about a property loss in the millions.

Just for humor sake, check out what happened to my 2002 Olympic souvenir boots after I got stuck in the mud covering the fire. Ha! The perils of the news biz: had to wear flip-flops the rest of the day.

Definitely one of the happiest moments of the day came after watching a story I shot last week about a guy teaching At Risk Youth how to compost. Usually, we edit our own work, but due to logistics and time, I had to ship my video in for someone else to edit–which didn’t thrill me. But I got lucky. Our chief photographer Sean Browning cut the story and did a phenomenal job. Many thanks to Sean for his editing, Tena for her writing, Keith for setting it up, and Conan for giving the story a voice.

But the 100 Happy Days picture has to be Ryan’s art.

A watercolor painting done by my truck loving Utah pal, Ryan Hadding. I first saw it on Instragram this morning and fell in love. Throughout the day, I kept going back to look at, and every time I did it made me smile. Now if I can convince him to paint the cover for one of my novels! I’m keeping my finger’s crossed.

Until tomorrow’s happy moment…

Later gators!