I’ve gotten a ridiculous amount of compliments on the photo I’ve started using for my icon on Facebook, Twitter, etc. I’m not an ugly person, but I’m not a serious contender for Miss America either, so getting this much attention over my photo is kinda weird. You’d think I’d bathed in buttermilk and hired a stylist or something, but all I really did was hire my friend Kyle Hepp, who’s a professional photographer, to take my picture. So I thought I’d take this opportunity to thank her and pimp her services.

Kyle is a girl (with a boy’s name, yes, she knows) who I met through our blogs. She is a US expatriate who lives in Chile for most of the year with her husband, Seba, who she met there during school. When I heard she’d be in Nashville last summer, I decided to trek down I-65 to meet her. I hired her to do a photo shoot too for several reasons.

I needed new promotional images of myself because everyone thought my hair was much shorter [...]

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I’ve been thinking of two people this morning. First, my friend Kyle Hepp (who’s a girl, despite the typically masculine name), who is a photographer in Santiago, Chile. I opened up my web browser to MSNBC this morning to see the words “8.8 quake hits Chile; huge tsumani feared” in all caps, with the big, red, breaking-news bar above it. All caps and big red bars are very bad news indeed. The pictures of overturned cars aren’t very reassuring either. I haven’t heard anything from her on her blog or Twitter. I’m going to tell myself she is ok and is most likely without Internet and electricity to tell us so. But, hopefully she will check in soon.

UPDATE: Kyle is okay! Yay! Read about her earthquake experience here.

Second, I wanted to wish Erin Shea good luck. Good luck, Erin! Erin is running a half-marathon today in New Orleans. She’s been tracking her training on a group blog. I remember how much work training for my own half-marathon was and I wish for her good weather, [...]

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