I just ordered a Crackberry phone. Now don’t get me wrong, I love my Nokia N80, but I am doing a ton of email and texting on my phone and I desperately need a full keyboard. The Curve also has GPS and a fast, rock solid OS. Basically what I need from a phone is a solid email and sms client, google maps, opera mini for web browsing. And the occasional ability to call someone.

As for what’s been going on with me, it’s been all about the photos.. I’ve had five shoots in the last five weeks, and the last one has national exposure. The calendar isn’t set yet, but the summer will likely be as busy as I’m willing to allow. Maybe I’ll be able to blog some of it from my new phone. Probably not.

I know that Wednesday is supposed to be my regular blogging day, but it just hasn’t happened. I really don’t have the energy for a legitimate blog post, so here is a list of excuses.

• Jennifer’s hockey season ended, so instead of being out playing hockey on Wednesday nights, she’s been home with me.
• I have a huge photo gig at the end of the month that I’ve been preparing for. I even went ahead and bought a Canon 5D because I just can’t wait any longer for full frame. I’m actually a little disappointed to be buying it because I really wanted a NEW camera, not one that came out three years ago and has the same technology as my other three-year-old camera.
• I’ve been shooting gigs for Hawaiian Tropic again. On Wednesday nights.
• The cough that I picked up at work before vacation and spread throughout the house has been replaced by various other colds that the kids have picked up and spread throughout the house and the new cough that I just started is absolutely terrible. I feel like my lungs are on fire.

In other news, we had been planning to have an exchange student live with us next year, and the whole thing just got nixed by the budget cuts in the state of California. We’re pretty bummed about it, especially because we had a pre-arranged match.

Anna started softball, and has really taken a liking to it. I got some pictures at a game last week, hopefully I can get a few more good shots when the games are no longer in the middle of the day. Don’t these people know anything about lighting?

Our vacation in Palm Springs turned out spectacularly. What a great week! I really needed the break, and a week off was just what I needed. We ended up doing three hikes during the week with the whole family, and Anna took to hiking for the first time. Both kids did quite well on the hike, actually. By accident I realized a terrific way of getting Anna to go hiking in San Diego, when I ordered a portable GPS navigation unit after realizing that I hate driving in unfamiliar places. I’ve known about geocaching for a long time but never actually tried it. Tomorrow, I’m going to take Anna out to find our first geocache with the new navi. It’s not really made for handheld use, but Anna doesn’t know that.

Yesterday, I went on a photoshoot at the beach with my photographer friend. The time has come for Hooters waitresses to submit photos for consideration in the annual Hooters calendar, and several local Hooter girls called on my friend for photos. My friend called on me to assist, and in addition to holding the reflector, I got some time with the models to shoot my own pics my own way. They turned out spectacularly considering it was my third time shooting with that lighting setup and I only had a couple minutes with each girl and it was 60 degrees out and they were standing in the Pacific Ocean. The girls loved the photos. Validation is good.

BTW, remember last year when I went to the Hooters International Swimsuit Pageant and thought it could never possibly happen, and when it actually did I thought nothing could possibly top it? Just wait.

During my trip to Singapore last September, I realized how nice it is to blow a lot of money on a nice place in a great location. Since then, I’ve been wanting to take the family on our very own vacation just by ourselves. In a nice place. In a great location. So here we are in beautiful Rancho Mirage, all ready to throw down and have ourselves a good time. We arrived last night and promptly went out to dinner at one of the resort’s restaurants. By this morning, Anna was sick of eating out, and wanted to cook something at home. Our pantry contained goldfish crackers and pancake batter in a spray can, so we went out for breakfast and a hike. While Tara and Jen took a nap and went swimming, Anna and I shopped for groceries, ate lunch, and went out to Boomers.

Later in the week, we plan on doing some more hiking, horseback riding, taking a tram up to the snow, visiting the museum, and, Anna willing, eating out at some more restaurants. Oops, gotta go, room service is here.

Tara turned three this week, and I can hardly believe it. It seems like it was only yesterday that she was at least five, and in other ways, she’s still a baby.

She learned how to defend herself from her older sister. She learned a lot about swimming. She became a picky eater. She developed a fear of spiders, even if they’re barely large enough to see, and of Oscar the Grouch, because he’s grumpy. She still has very little interest in using the potty. She still sleeps in the crib after several unsuccessful tries in a big kid bed. She decided that sometimes life is not fair. She went from being a terrific sleeper to being a terrible sleeper in the course of a couple months. Her cuteness is nearly overwhelming at times. She is almost always in a good mood. She learned some Spanish. She became a little more moody and a lot more headstrong.

It’s been a big year, and to me it seems like it’s been an awfully long time since she turned two, which is a good thing.

Denial. When I first read the press release, I was sure that Canon must be announcing more cameras for PMA. Seriously, are they showing up to the biggest photo trade show in North America with a Digital Rebel and a couple point ‘n’ shoots? On the heels of Nikon’s D3? Really?

Anger. I have been waiting for @$#$ months for a successor to the 5D, and I had spousal pre-approval to spend the @#$#$ money! How dare Canon do this to me?!?!

Bargaining. Maybe I can just go ahead and buy a 5D and sell it in the fall when Canon announces a successor at Photokina. I’ll lose a couple hundred in depreciation, but I’ll have the camera all summer and can make the money back on gigs…

Canon have just announced the least interesting camera ever. I don’t even remember the model number or specs, and I just read the announcement. Every other manufacturer is announcing a new flagship, and Canon unveils a dinghy.

Clearly I’ve fallen off the blogging wagon, and I have a long list of excuses which I will enumerate in another blog post. Really. Ok, I really won’t, but I there has been a lot going on lately which I keep thinking I should be blogging about, I just never do it when I’m in front of the computer.

Anna deserves some blog time for the fact that she is, like her father and mother, turning into a very avid reader. Between Christmas vacation and last week she managed to tear through a 350-page compilation of the Pony Pals books, while reading other stories in between. She writes quite a bit also; every now and then I think of having her write a blog post. When I was writing the holiday letter last year, she was compelled to type up her own on her laptop, basically outing me as a couch potato. I’ll have to dig it up and post it at some point.

Tara continues to be a joy. There are many examples of this, but my favorite from yesterday was when Jennifer was playing hide-and-seek with our girls and the neighbor’s girls:

Jennifer: 27… 28… 29… 30! Ready or not here I come!

Our couch: Hee hee hee!

Jennifer: I’m coming to look for some kids!

Couch: Hee hee!

Jennifer: I hear some giggling, I bet there’s a little girl around here!

Tara: I’M BEHIND THE COUCH!

My only disappointment with Tara is that she continues to grow older. I’m not ready for it. Speaking of growing older, today we celebrated Jennifer’s birthday with the tradition of breakfast in bed, after letting Jennifer sleep in. All the girls lined up in bed and shared Mom’s breakfast, then we opened up presents. Last night Jennifer and I went out to the new Donovan’s downtown. Since we like the La Jolla location so much, we thought we’d try the new one down in the Gaslamp District. It’s quite nice, and I was very impressed when we were seated at our table to find a gold placard with our name on it. The food and service were stellar as always, and their martinis are so large that they should have smaller cocktails in orbit around them.

Later, there will be cake-making and football-watching, and tomorrow we have a day off.

We’re now on vacation, and enjoying what appears to be more favorable weather than my house is currently experiencing. Of course, my house is better off than most of the country, at least until the next earthquake or fire pops up. The girls had a delightful Christmas and have generally been enjoying themselves. I’ve mostly been eating and watching football, so I suppose I haven’t much to complain about, which is bound to make this an uninteresting blog post.

Since obtaining network access, though, I have managed to check in on work, and I can see that I’m either going to have to put in a day somewhere or really have a miserable time when I get back into the office. Or possibly both. It’s really unfortunate to have these deadlines laying about during the holidays, but I suppose it’s the nature of the business. Mostly, though, I am eagerly awaiting the inevitable news that will be coming forth from Canon that a new full-frame camera will soon be available, and I will buy that camera and be truly happy for upwards of several days. The camera will have a 3″ LCD, and a 20 shot RAW buffer and have truly usable ISO 3200 and a nice large viewfinder, and the rest really truly doesn’t matter except that it will be in my hot little hands by mid-April. The price I’m not really sure about at this point, because it’s going to depend on what “other stuff” that the marketing department decided to throw into the mix. I’ve also been shopping for an HDTV, but I really need to see what happens with Canon first. Not because of the money so much as that if I get the new camera, who needs to watch TV anyways?

On the subject of limiting stimuli, I’ve been pruning my blog subscriptions and flickr contacts of late. There’s just too much out there for someone with my attention span. I’m still waiting for flickr to start turning on itself because it really become much more interesting then.

Last, I thought I would mention that we purchased a new eStarling photo frame for the in-laws, and my review is simply this: it does not, as advertised, understand RSS and email and all the whizzy stuff on the package. Rather, eStarling’s web site does all this, and the photo frame understands their single web site. If that web site is down or overwhelmed because everyone and their in-laws got the same photo frame, or if the company goes under, then you have a $250 version of what everyone else sells for $100.

I was going to blog on Wednesday, but Jennifer’s normal hockey game was canceled, so I spent the evening with her instead of you. Sorry. I’ll make it up to you.

I finally put up some Christmas lights last week, probably more lights on the outside of the house than I ever have before, but still not nearly as much as the guy across the street who always has something musical or animated or, more often, musical and animated. I certainly don’t mind that he has more lights than I do, but I’m just trying to give you an idea of how many lights are involved–because I am not the guy on the block who goes overboard.

It’s hard to use phrases like “it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas” in southern California because it’s really not. The weather today is sunny and it will probably reach 70 degrees outside. And I just heard our heater fire up, because if it’s below 72 degrees (or above 77) in the house, then the world may in fact come to an end. I don’t know this to be true because it’s never happened, but I’m just saying.

I put up our fake, pre-strung Christmas tree up a couple weeks ago, and even managed to figure out why the lights on the bottom haven’t been lighting for the last couple years. It’s one of those trees with a spinning base, which is supposed to be so that you can see the tree on all sides, but I mostly find that it is helpful for putting on the ornaments because you and the kids can just stand in one place and wait for empty spots to appear. Taking the ornaments down is just as easy. Genius.

The only downside of the spinning tree is that you have be careful about putting presents underneath it because the branches will scrape along the boxes noisily and occasionally catch a ribbon or bow and take a present for a ride. The brown shipping boxes have begun to appear on the doorstep, so sooner or later we’ll have turn off the spinny part of the tree so that we can fit the boxes underneath. Yes, the brown boxes with the UPS labels and everything. This is what happens when you move 2000 miles away from your nearest relatives. Please read back to the paragraph about the weather to understand why.

This weekend we’ll go out to some Christmas-themed community attractions, and to a party over at the neighbor’s musical, animated house, where their kids and our kids will run around the backyard, the adults will clink glasses of eggnog against bottles of beer, and we’ll chat about the weather.