Chapter 1

I logged off and my 36" DLP monitor reverted to my desktop. All the icons were lined up around the perimeter of a photo I'd taken of Jill sitting on the couch with Laurie on her lap. Bozo was sitting on the floor, leaning against Jill's legs. Laurie's right foot, wearing a bunny ears slipper, was scratching beneath the big dog's right ear. My two girls were holding a Harry Potter book and Jill had been reading it to Laurie. The love between them was evident, looking more like mother and daughter's than that between sisters. It was one of those unexpected moments I just happened to catch with my camera in my hand as I walked into the living room from the kitchen.

I had my camera in hand a lot more and in a lot more places these days. I was taking an online course on portrait photography and had been able to use that picture for one of my assignments. The panel of five professionals who reviewed the student submitted assignments all had high praise for that shot.

It was February and both Jill and I had finished high school eight months ago. Jill actually completed her home study project in early May, but we'd both gotten our diplomas in the first week of June. I finished with a 3.93 GPA and did the whole graduation ceremony thing. Jill was perfect at 4.0 and should have been the class valedictorian but the administration was hesitant to make an example of her. She had demonstrated that a majority of the school's employees were unnecessary by studying at home, completing almost three years' work in less than one. If word got around about what she had done, the results would have probably been catastrophic for the school system. She was handed her diploma the day after graduation by Audrey Evans, her guidance counselor. That she didn't walk up on a stage and get a robotic handshake from her principal didn't keep all of us who love her from being proud of her.

We took over Perlione's, the restaurant her father took us to the first night we met and invited a couple of hundred of our closest friends to celebrate our graduations with us. We had the whole restaurant to ourselves and the food was fantastic. There were no menus but I don't think anyone was disappointed. The food just kept coming until nobody had any room for more. There were several varieties of pizza, ravioli in dishes too big to fit in our oven at home and bowls that could probably hold five gallons, filled with spaghetti and meatballs. Pitchers of a half dozen kinds of soft drink, lemonade, three or four flavors of ice tea kept coming throughout the meal. The only thing approaching alcohol was John's imitation beer.

Our families, Charlie, Myra and her kids, Wanda and her fiance (surprise, surprise), Laurie's friend Jamie, now completely over her leukemia, her grandma, most of the people who worked on our apartment over my mom's garage and dozens of our customers were there, as well as our teammates from my swim team and Jill's volleyball team. Jill had her own letter jacket for being on the team but I never saw it on her. She wore the one I gave her soon after we started going together and Laurie wore hers. Both had sleeves a couple of inches longer than their arms and both girls beamed when they wore them.

I did some research, looking for a traditional college that would give me what I was looking for late fall the year I graduated but I didn't find it. After all, you're supposed to go to college after you graduate if you want to amount to anything.

Jill could tell my heart wasn't in it and we sat down and talked it over. As far as I was concerned, it would be a waste of my time taking 60% of the courses required to get a degree. There were some intro photography courses at the junior college Jill went to but they would have been mostly review. We found a couple of specialty schools that taught photography, but I had no desire, nor could I afford to take a year or two and go to Chicago or New York without Jill. She was finding the same thing about her web design career. There were lots of trade schools that over charged and under taught and neither of us wanted to have anything to do with them.

We decided that we would do better to take on line courses. There were many to choose from and the advantages outweighed any negatives. In fact, as long as we chose reputable courses, we couldn't spot any negatives, other than the possible criticism by some that our education was somewhat lacking because we didn't go away somewhere for four years and try to drink and fuck ourselves silly while putting in the minimum effort required to get passing grades. We could still be together, continue to work and grow our businesses and study at our own speed. Plus, we could pick and choose those subjects we were interested in that would benefit our businesses the most. Or, take elective courses strictly because of interest, not units needed to graduate or fill some arbitrary educational category. Neither of us could care less about a piece of paper with a seal at the bottom. As a matter of fact, we'd probably end up with a pile of them if we kept taking courses as planned.

So, Jill and I made a pact that we would study the equivalent of three hours a day, five days a week, for an average three out of every four weeks. Fifteen hours a week for thirty nine weeks a year or its equivalent. Jill had been able to fit hers in around her work. I knew myself better than that and knew I'd always be able to find something else to do so I studied every morning from 9 to noon. I did a lot of my work in the evenings and if someone wanted to see me during the day, we had the whole afternoon to do it. In this course, a quarter of the time was spent learning but the other three quarters was out in the real world, using the material to find and take pictures.

Our businesses had both taken off and we each had enough work to keep us going full time. Myra was doing sales, bookkeeping and invoicing for both of us and customer service for me. Rick Hobart, one of the guys from my swim team was into photography and was doing the processing that Myra used to do. He was in his last year of high school and worked three days after school for a couple of hours, then as needed on Saturday. We also had one of my former clients, Maria Hernandez, acting as receptionist evenings and on Saturday.

I first met Maria through Jill. They were both in the same history class and she was one of my earliest clients. When I got her to tell me about her relationship with God, it was as if she was visited by him, right there in my garage. The picture I took of her showed an inner beauty, her faith, her belief. It was what artists have been trying to create for a couple of millennia with portraits of the Virgin Mary.

She was also responsible for a similar look on Bozo's face. She also had a black lab, Princess. When Princess came into heat, Bozo got lucky.

A 24X30 of that picture of Maria was one on those on the walls in our office. Yes, I said office.

We realized quite soon after starting our businesses that there wasn't enough room in our apartment over my mom's garage. Even taking over the garage as a makeshift studio didn't cut it.

Our folks got together over the holidays. They knew what our education plans were and decided that we could use some of the money they'd put aside for our college funds to get office space.

The economy and the proliferation of shopping centers combined to make property in the downtown shopping district very affordable. We found a building that had been a thrift store This particular outfit had been around for decades. Their standard procedure was to find a space, fix it up, move in and stay for five years or so, then find another and move the whole operation. The place was trashed, to put it nicely. There was a back area where the incoming stock was received, inspected and tagged, one manager's office, a couple of bathrooms which weren't complete disasters because they were for employees only plus one big room that had been the sales floor. There was a counter along one wall that had been for cash registers. The whole front was glass. It was also three doors down from the phone company's central office, which meant we could get the highest speed internet access available with little or no problems.

The building happened to be owned by one of our accountant's clients and had been vacant for a couple of years. That particular area of downtown was popular in the 50s and has been dwindling since then. The death blow was some bozo's idea to install parking meters downtown. We happened to be on the other side of a parking lot from a bank that had no problem with us using a few spaces. It helped that both of us used the same bank for our business accounts.

Liz worked out a deal. We signed a two year lease and handled our own renovations and we got a bargain. Charlie rounded up a half dozen kids and they spent a weekend cleaning the place, fueled by Perlione's pizza. Alex and his crew were low on work and were able to build six offices, paint and carpet the place in a week and a half. Part of that work was paid for with pictures and a web page for Alex, getting us the buildout done at his cost.

Jill cashed in on George Silverwood's offer of cabinets to get some custom cabinets and bookshelves installed in the reception area. Of course, there were a couple of tasteful signs stating that the cabinets were designed, built and installed by Silverwood Cabinets. They were also featured prominently in blowups of webpages Jill designed that were on one side wall, in frames on the bookshelves and in her half of the window display. Her office had more, as did our conference / meeting room. That's where we met most of our clients. It had a 46" monitor that we used to display photographs or her web pages.