Jennifer’s Christmas present (from me) arrived, an iPAQ 3115 Pocket PC. As much as I hate to buy a Windows-powered device, it seems pretty cool. It has builtin wireless, so it was fairly easy to get on our home network. It has Bluetooth, an SD slot, it plays a bunch of different types of media, and probably a bunch of other stuff, but as far as I’m concerned, everything pales compared to having a web browser that fits in your pocket.
Since we’ve had the week off, I have really been cooking up a storm. Last week, I made buñuelos, a traditional mexican treat I remember from growing up. For Christmas, I bought a ham, which we ended up not eating much, so I froze most of it and used the bone for split pea soup, which I haven’t had in a really long time. I ended up making two gallons of soup, most of which is now sitting in the freezer. Also, I made a big batch of chili, which was too hot for Jennifer and Anna to eat, so I ate some and froze some, and the last of it made it on to a chili omelet this morning. Today, while Anna’s friend K. was visiting, I made some tortillas; they turned out well enough, but next time I need to use more shortening–they were a little too stiff.
Yesterday, I made a trip to Bisher’s, and still have a nice steak and two racks of baby back ribs in the fridge, so there is still some cooking left to do.
I had almost forgot to mention that Monday, Jennifer and I had date night. It’ was Jen’s idea that since it was a Monday, maybe the popular places we usually avoid might be less crowded. We headed to P. F. Chang’s, and there was an hour-plus wait, so we took our beeper and headed to The Cheesecake Factory, which also had an insanely long wait. What to do? We got cheesecake to go, grabbed a bench at the mall, and ate our dessert and chatted while we were waiting for our table at Chang’s. We finished and walked back just in time to be seated. Perfect.
Tomorrow, we’re heading out to the Edgewater Grill for a double-date with our friends M. & K., while C. keeps an eye on Anna and C.
I never had a diary growing up; in my mind that was something for girls, or at least for the girls in after school specials. Now, in effect, I do have a diary, and I believe it’s starting to affect my brain. It’s something like being the newspaper editor in Spider-Man, looking at every situation with the ultimate goal of selling newspapers, making a big story out of something. I find myself having experienced something, and in the back of my mind I can not help but work out what would be a good title for the inevitable blog post.
In a way, this blog is a creative outlet for part of my brain I don’t get to use much as an engineer–the part of my brain that scored 700 on the verbal part of the S.A.T., and can’t help but copyedit the non-parallel sentence structure in Curious George books on the fly1. It has, however, taken over my brain in a way that is now keeping me awake in the middle of the night, on a night when I should have been able to pull off close to 10 hours of uninterrupted sleep.
Tonight, at about 11:45pm, Anna screamed very suddenly. I was headed out bedroom door almost before I was awake, and it’s a really fortunate thing that there was nothing on the floor between me and the door. My first thought as I was jumping out of bed was that she must be hurt. Jennifer said something like, “It’s alright,”2 and I slowed down for just a moment, before the second thought hit me, which was that there might be someone or something in her room. I was prepared for anything.
As I ran down the hallway, she was running from her room into the nursery, still shrieking. As I picked her up, she stopped crying, but she was shaking and her heart was racing. I carried her into her room, verified that nothing else was in there, and sat on the bed with her for a couple minutes. Via some head-nodding I was able to ascertain that she had a nightmare, saw something in her room, and did not remember what it was. She yawned, and surprisingly, wanted to go back to sleep. I tucked her in and headed back to the bedroom.
The next hour was spent trying to go back to sleep, unsuccessfully, and to think up how to write this post. I’m hoping now that I have the post out of the way I can go baczhydrfegt;p/
1 I’ll put an example here, but the gist is that one should write “to be or not to be,” rather than “to be or not be.”
2 She just didn’t want my to hurt myself, because there usually is something on the floor between me and the door.
‘Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house,
Daddy was dining with child and with spouse.
A great mango tart was our lovely dessert.
Mom might be allergic, but what could it hurt?
Once slice each we had, and then said the mother:
“I’m eating for two, may I please have another?”
And so did we all, then it was time to go bed;
Clothes were changed, teeth were brushed, and two stories were read.
Mom and I still had some gifts left to wrap,
So I hurried my daughter off to her nap.
Then the light was put out and I went back downstairs
Finding the worrisome worst of nightmares:
Mom started itching; her face, it turned red.
In fact, from her waist the to the top of her head
she was red as a lobster, and her face, how it swelled!
Our Christmas Eve might be emergency room hell!
The mangoes, so tasty, they were the cause
of my wife turning rosy as ol’ Santa Claus.
Mom jumped in the shower to cool herself off,
then I called the O.B., and I said with a cough,
“My wife is allergic, and she’s feeling ill.”
“She be fine,” said the Doc, “give her two Benadryl.”
So I gave her the tablets and sent her to bed.
The pills took effect, she was no longer red.
She passed out; and alone, I went down to work
To pick up the slack for that Santa Claus jerk.
The presents I wrapped, the cookies I ate,
The stockings I stuffed, and the hour, it grew late.
Then finally I finished, and in bed I lay;
Dreaming of a somewhat more calm Christmas Day.
We have on several occasions been able to take a holiday photograph, have it printed, and send it out to everyone. We probably will this year, except that it will be after Christmas if at all. It’s just been too darn busy the last couple weeks to pull it off, and Anna, who was once the most photo-friendly child you ever saw, is now quite camera-shy. We might also make a Christmas letter summarizing the events of the year, but that is starting to sound more ambitious than the photo. In any case, if you have not yet received a Christmas card from us, it’s because we haven’t sent any to anyone.
In the last couple months, I’ve won a photo contest, worked some paid gigs, and in January, will be published. My award-winning “Flower Child” photo will be published in the inaugural issue of JPG Magazine in January. If anyone is still wondering what to buy me for Christmas, I may be needing some larger hats soon.
Today I stepped out from work to get a CD signed by Dave, Shelly, and Chainsaw, which is a radio show that I listen to religiously. It’s on mornings from 6-10am on 101.5 KGB1. I’ve listened for years, and this was the first time that I’ve had a chance to attend a signing and meet the show. The show consists of:
I record and listen to all four-plus hours of every show, five days a week; since I hardly watch any TV, that means it’s far and away the most “media” exposure I get. I was totally stoked to meet and chat with each member of the show, as well as get their autograph. A few years ago, Jen got me an autographed copy of their annual CD, but it was so much cooler to actually meet and talk to them.
1 Also on 103.3 KTMQ Temecula, goodmorningeverybody.
This has seemed like such a busy week, and it feels like this should be the Friday before Christmas break, but it’s not. I’ve had a cold all week that I finally feel like I’m getting over, and it sure feels like we’ve had a lot of stuff on our schedule, but I can’t remember what any of it was. I still haven’t done any Christmas shopping, so if you’re reading this and waiting for a present–keep waiting. I still keep thinking there’s time to click my way to shopping happiness, but even time for that is running out.
Meanwhile, we have been received stuff on our doorstep every day. I was going to take a picture of a zillion brown shipping boxes under our Christmas tree, but Jen unpacked everything before I had a chance. Seriously, we must have received 20-30 boxes so far, most of them for Anna.
Oops, time to go, somebody’s awake.
Over the weekend I shot four families and more than twenty children. With my camera, that is. Friday I lugged lights and props down to Kidsville, and with the help of my good friend R., shot portraits. Unfortunately, nobody knew we were coming, and most people do not go to Kidsville on a Friday evening dressed to be photographed. Some did, though, and made, for the most part, delightful portrait subjects. We’ll see if their parents actually buy any prints.
Saturday I shot the F. family, and then on Sunday, my neighbors and our family hairdresser. I’m fairly sure I learned a lot, but I really have to sit down and digest the whole process a little bit more. First and foremost, digital postprocessing is really quite wonderful–but if you intend to make money taking pictures, you really want to avoid it at all costs, because it’s really time consuming. Second, poses make profits–you have to rearrange the subjects into different poses, because a customer is going to buy at most one of each pose. Third, props are important; they help fill up the space in the frame.
Sunday, we also attended a holiday party with about a dozen families and Santa (apparently, he drives a minivan with the license plate “OH SANTA“). There were lots of photo ops. All hail ISO 800.
It’s ten o’clock now; time to refrigerate tomorrow’s dinner (chicken & dumplings), put down this darn laptop (all hail SuSE 9.2), and go to bed.
I’ve spent a lot of time lately preparing for a paid photo shoot tomorrow. Not everything is going the way I would like, but I’ll just have to make the best of it. Most notably, I tried ordering something from the website I’ll be using to vend the pictures, and it’s overly complicated; there are all sorts of color management options that I would rather people would not be burdened with. It’s too late to change to a different photo site (or to get my $100 back, either), so I’m just going to plow ahead and see how it works. The usability of the website is really key, though, if I want to have people actually buy the pics.
Since I worked so much last weekend I’m just going to take the whole day off to prepare. I have to prepare the the backdrop, which was folded and has square creases, pick up the strobes and test them, buy some pointsettias as props, produce fliers and signup sheets. To top it off, I think I have to sell something like $1000 in prints to recoup my investment and time. Hopefully the gig will pay off in new customers.
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