March 6th. For real…

That’s it. The ONLY digital photo I took today. I have searched all over for those lollipops and finally found them in Charleston – and paid a ridiculous $4.29 or something like that for it…BUT picture it in photos (in Camden’s mental photo, he saw sticky colored faces and SAND all over the lollipop and the sticky face and wasn’t thinking this was such a good plan).
We shot 3 rolls of 35mm film today. Well, three rolls worth of shots across 4 cameras. We only got to change out one roll that was at the end and one is almost at the end. The changed out roll was 200 ISO recently purchased the almost done one happens to be 400 ISO that expired in 2003 – I am really excited about THAT film…but that story and sickness is for Drink More Tea :D

February 23 – March 5th…time flies when you’re having cough…

I only took the photo of these cookies to tease Mr. Hinkel with. For real. I actually had intended to take one to our meeting, but you know me, a little blond, a little sketchy, and yeah…sorry. forgot. 02.23

Meeting day, February 24, Abby just made herself right at home on the sofa in the classroom. Isn’t it cute how she…slipped in some webkinz…or something.


02.25
This dude. He kills me. I have been searching for RAINBOW colored large swirl lollipops (at least 3” but I would prefer 5” or so). I didn’t find rainbow, but on the commercial easter aisle at Wal-Mart, I did find duo colored swirl lollipops in white, with blue, yellow, green or pink – and they were cute and came in two packs with other decorated lollies so I bought one set of each color and two sets of pink (because I have two girls and they will wear white flower girl dresses in a couple of weeks and white dresses with pink lollies is just too cute…) Anyhow, no, I didn’t make an error on the capitalization of easter – to me, that’s the holiday with the bunny and the froo froo and the candy and it’s more like a commercial party of mahem and madness (don’t get me wrong, I like candy) – we celebrate Resurrection Sunday and commercial easter the Saturday before (Sause puts on a whing ding egg hunt).

On the 26th, Friday to be precise, we went to the Sixteen Cities concert at The Green Spot. Entry fee was non perishable foods for local food banks. A local worship band opened for them and it was super cool to see an old co-worker’s son on the drums – he seems to be about 9 or 10 ish. Anyhow, I took lots of photos with grainy ISO and it’s OKAY, I’m down with that. I would rather have a little grain than use a flash and this was good practice and a good test to see what the 7D would do in the dark. Manual focus worked out better most of the time. Meet Joel, the bass player. He and the drummer in the back were difficult to get photos of – and Josiah did keep stepping in front of whomever else I was focusing on :D Awesome concert, super nice bunch of guys – and we had a pretty good youth group turn out from church as well.

Saturday was official DAY OFF day for me (right up until I got called in to work) so we were heading to the park…and while we were there we saw this guy who had total iPhone-itis. Now, we were waiting for the big tsunami from the Chilean earthquake to hit us, and hit the Hawaiian Islands – but we never did see it. All we saw were state troopers clearing the beaches, kids playing in the puddle under the swings (after promising not to get wet) and throngs of people who had gathered round to watch for the tsunami. To be honest, I didn’t even notice them until we headed back to the car to go home since we couldn’t play frisbee on the closed beach.

we won’t talk about work.

Sunday. I missed church do to poor communication with Kurt about timing and dough rolling, I needed to leave the house at 9:30 without kids to get the dough at Gino’s rolled so they could open and I could get to church. While this was a solid plan, it failed. He started to leave BEFORE me, WITHOUT children. SO I rolled dough through church, and hooked up with kids after church and we went to the park to play for a bit. Kayla made me sick on the merry-go-round. Folks, this is not a good spot to sit and try to take photos, even if it seems unused and lonely, the minute you sit…they spin you. Rotten little things…02.28
SIGH in relief. There is no photo from March 1st because it’s FILM and still in the camera. There is 200 ISO color film in my 35mm Canon t50 and in my Minolta MG-X. I am dead set on shooting 3 to 10 shots a day with film to increase my abilities – and I plan to shoot at least a couple of rolls of film at Kortni’s wedding (one of those will be black and white, and one will be going into a cheesy 3 lens *toy* camera – and it will be FUN).

Just a funny. I was shooting through a cut off play dough container. I think with my cell phone camera. Shhhh. Don’t tell Kurt. March 2, 2010 (almost his 44th birthday folks).


Happy Birthday to Dad – our Fix it up Chappy repaired the cabinet in the bathroom – he removed the plywood he’d screwed on to cover the hole where the entire front face had been destroyed when a supply line blew off and flooded the entire bathroom, built a new frame around it and put doors on. Awesome. His assistant had a few suggestions apparently and was freely giving her advice and opinions. She was very dramatic about the whole thing, including the part where she was shouting,

“MOM! He’s got Dad’s TOOOOOOOOLS!! WIthout PERMISSION!!”

Zipporah was just bent on getting as many workbook pages as she could do – without doing any math because borrowing makes her brain hurt and then she has to cry.
03.03.2010

March 4, 2010. A bed bug has been spotted. See her?
It’s the curly haired version. They take up the entire bed and prefer to sleep perpendicular to the other occupants of the bed.

Narcissism. That’s my boy. Took a series of portraits of himself today because the ones I took and sent him via email for his FB profile were not up to snuff. And this? Maybe he’s smelling…his pits and needs to shower? I dunno. March 5, 2010

19th – 22th of February 2010

And here sleeps the hand that feeds us, exhausted, and still a little twitchy, but sleeping. Kurt actually hates it when I take his picture…while he’s sleeping, but to me, capturing his hand was significant. It’s a part of who he is and what he does. Calluses, carbon stains, burns, scabs & scars, strong hands made beautiful by the sacrifice of their own comfort so that others will not have to work so hard to eat, sleep, play and learn. This was actually late on the 18th.

It does count as brunch, even when served between 1 & 2 PM. Sunny Friday triggers allergy symptoms…countered by self pampering with sleeping in and having pancakes and coffee for a late lunch/brunch.

By computer screen light. Not exactly romantic, but it is cool :D




My Zipporah on the 21st at Sunset Beach! Isn’t she cool??







Camden. Whining at Mr. Hinkel’s today. February 22nd.

9th February – 18th - 2010

Look, I don’t even feel all guilt ridden about being BEHIND (again, some more, as usual). I will do my best to try to remember what’s been going on :)
Cam got a little lecture from the pediatric nurse practitioner on how not taking his allergy medication could have an adverse effect on his behavior, it could cause him to lose sleep and be unable to pay attention…and he could even have trouble in school. Go figure. His ear infection is gone though…and he said he’d try to be more responsible about taking his allergy meds and staying away from things he shouldn’t be around (anything fragrant basically…and tons of foods he likes).

Wednesday we hit Mr. Hinkel’s room (again). We had stopped in Tuesday to check on Cam’s newly formatted old computer – and he was reading to celebrate…okay, so really he was reading because he figured out that if he DOES SOME WORK he gets to use the computer that now connects to the internet…which means he can watch Stargate…
I cannot for the life of me remember Thursday, February 11th. I wish I could…it’s that brain damage again.

12.Feb.2010
Now, I still haven’t figured out WHY they set Camden’s computer up UNDER the desk, but there you have it, it’s under the desk instead of on it, usually they also have a pile of pillows and a blanket there…more comfy to feed the Webkinz that way.

Very late when I finally got home from Gino’s, but I still wanted to frost our Valentine cake for tomorrow anyhow…but the kids had eaten the frosting AND the bag of butterscotch chips. REALLY?? SO…I dumped some brown sugar into a pan with a chunk of butter, added sweetened condensed milk and stirred for half and hour to make caramel sauce to dump on Devil’s Food Cake – and it was YUMMY.

Folks, this is my Valentine, brought him to church with me ;o) I kind of like that streak of light :)






Sushi. Now before you go all queasy like – hear me out. THERE’S NO FISH IN THERE (well, maybe in the seaweed, like essence of fish or something) – it’s just RICE, seasoned rice vinegar and green onion wrapped up in nori (seaweed). I was too lazy to even mix up some wasabi! AND IT IS YUMMY!! Now we’re out of rice vinegar and Abby is really irritated with me. 02.15.2010

I had to take the car to Ford and have my oil changed (okay, 2,500 miles ago, but today I finally made it – on Feb. 16th). I was looking through a WIRED magazine and decided I should subscribe – there were lots of cool ads in it. I think I need one of these flashlights. It comes in chartreuse.



FEBRUARY 17th, 2010… the day that changed history. Okay, not really, because it really got here on the 16th and I took the photo of it after midnight…but it is the night (early morning?)(cuz that’s when the battery was fully charged)  my EOS 7D arrived…and UPS tried to deliver it to my NEIGHBOR’s house at 9AM and she wasn’t home so they didn’t leave it because it needed a signature and when I tried to track the truck down I discovered UPS customer center has an unlisted number so I had to drive there and get the number and was told my driver would be in around 6PM!! So, I wait. ALL DAY. And at 6:30, my truck still wasn’t in. I finally got my 7D at 8PM. That’s right, night time. Oh well, it’s a sweet new body :D Someday I will have a lens worthy of it, for now, it’s wearing my super beat up cheap 70-300mm telephoto – and I’m okay with that :D

Lobster Bisque. Since I had the evening off and this is what Sandy & I were going to do tomorrow…we did it tonight instead. Thursday night lobster bisque instead of Friday night and it was YUMMY!! (how could anything with a cup of melted butter, 6 cups of half and half and lobster be bad?) I only took about 10 photos of it – playing with the cool white balance adjustment on the 7D – you can set white balance using the color temp. adjustment!!! So much cooler than trying to choose between icons depicting lighting situations that usually aren’t all that accurate.
That soup might have been…unhealthy…just a teensy bit :) But it was after we went to the beach and the fog rolled in and we were freezing to death :D

February 1st through 6th, 2010

Alrighty folks, this weekly updating is MOSTLY awesome, except that  I have been using Abigail’s camera and it resets the time/date that tags the image data…so keeping days straight is wretched :D I will do the best I can to keep it straight.
February 1st was my mother’s birthday, folks, she is officially 36 this year…(just kidding, it’s a joke, she skipped her 36th birthday and decided to be 37 twice).
OY! It is also maddening that due to operator error, my phone was saving my images to the phone and not the mini sd card, and those stinking images have to be moved one by one to the card! GRRRR!
So, February 1, I find myself at Wal Mart after work, in thick fog…because we were out of milk at home AGAIN. Camden always gets the blame for drinking the entire gallon in one day, but he was innocent this time, he wasn’t home :)

February 2, after picking Cam up from the pool, I made him show me all of his ribbons. He got three 1sts, three 2nds and two 3rd place ribbons! Amazing boy! His fly is AMAZING now and we were all very impressed with his 200 IM and hope to see him swim that again! No ‘A’ times, but we weren’t exactly prepared to go to state yet anyhow. He did an awesome job at this meet and we are proud of him!

Wednesday, this photo is basically how I felt. Fighting off some kind of icky tummy bug for a couple of days left me wiped out. We met with Mr. Hinkel, left Camden’s computer there in the process of being formatted to Linux and updating drivers so he could get himself *back online*, however it stays in Mr. Hinkel’s room until Camden begins to show some effort in producing some kind of work. Camden still claims he doesn’t remember that part of the deal.  Remembered or not, that’s the deal (and all of the unreasonable, mean, brutal parents of teens say AMEN).

Alright folks, the dude in the sailboat is CRAZY! It’s cold, it’s raining…and that’s Kurt. We caught him taking half a day off on Wednesday (we were on our way home from Resource Link) to sail the boat to the California Street public boat ramp to pull the Zipporah out of the water for a while. Seriously, blowing rain, we had to run down to the casino parking lot so we could find a place to stop the car and take some photos – his location when we first spotted him was in the area where all of the commercial boats, barges and tugs were, and on the 101 side, there was no place to pull over and flag him down.
Thursday, that would have been the 4th, and I remember having gone in to Gino’s at 3:00AM to roll dough, suspecting that it wouldn’t be there, and guess what…it wasn’t. So instead of rolling dough, I made dough – scared the daylights out of one of the Register Guard newspaper guys on my way out – went home and went back to sleep. Dropped Cam at swimming around 3 PM and waited around for him at Gino’s until Dad called and said he’d pick him up and keep him for the weekend, he had some chores to do. SO, back home and back to bed (to the best of my knowledge).

Friday, PAYDAY. Okay, well, I nearly forgot to pick up my check. I rolled three tubs of dough and piled the car to leave for Lincoln City for the weekend. Hard to tell if we took photos on Friday because Abby’s camera time/date RESETS every time you shut the stupid thing off (yes, need to replace an internal battery because that totally BUGS me).  This suspiciously looks like me, on a last minute check of the *do I have everything we need* visual scan, before we head off toward town/gino’s/grandpa’s and then LINCOLN CITY…3 hours later than I had wanted to be leaving. Whatever. We got out of there and Angie knows about me and my straggling.
AND, I read several chapters in a really cool book, Rowing to Latitude, by Jill Freston that Mr. Hinkel suggested (and loaned me). It’s awesome so far…resulting in my not going to sleep last night until early Saturday morning.
Then for Saturday, February 6th…we have this STELLAR photo of Angie’s arm/hand, some blurry rocks covered with mussels and a wave that you can’t see that caused the chaos. Okay, so I knew lying on rocks only exposed at low tide to get a photo of incoming waves was a little risky, but Angie was already soaked anyhow after trying out a teeter totter rock unknowingly, so what did we have to lose except for a handful and pocket full of electronic equipment. UM…wish I had a nice wide angle, that would have been MUCH more fun than cell phone camera. At any rate, nothing broken. Just a little spray on us. SO, we tried some more :D 




(those are sandwiches they be eatin’)

Friday, January 15, 2010

Alrighty folks, there is a COSCO on Oahu. We couldn't stop to eat at the many, many little authentic *mom & pop* type trailers of authentic, local food, it scared Kadi, they probably aren't safe...(right. like they could get much worse than my own kitchen at home). So we had lunch at COSCO folks. Same food they sell at every Cosco I have ever been to. Comforting...yet somehow just not...well...exotic enough for vacay lunch.

We bought some mini cheesecakes and other foods Phil liked to snack on once inside and we planned his "reenlistment party" for the evening, with Apples to Apples of course.




We SAW these mochi and sent the photo to Dad and did not buy any. Dad would have bought at least one box, probaby 2. He loves mochi.

Then Kadi dropped Kortni & I off at Hanauma Bay so we could snorkel. We bought new bathing suits at Cosco (they are under our clothes, you didn't want us to frighten children off of the beach did you?) Most of our photos here are with reusable, 35mm, underwater cameras and I haven't scanned any of my prints yet. We'll get around to that eventually. We saw mahi mahi, and schools of convict something fish (black and white striped) and urchins and coral and we had a FANTASTIC time - got back to the beach to find that Kadi had been calling and texting repeatedly...as if we were going to hang out on the beach next to our phones at Hanauma? ARE YOU CRAZY?? Phil was scheduled to pick us up at 4:30ish... We didn't have time to go back in, but we had been in the water over 2 hours :D This is a MUST DO event if you are on Oahu, even if you have to rent gear. It's SO worth it (even if the locals think it's cold this time of year).

Then we have Mike. Apparently the ONLY photo I took at the *party,* during the evening time. We had yummy mini cheesecakes and eventually got around to the Apples to Apples. Phil won...I think. I know I didn't win :( Eh, whatever :D

Lookie What I can do...January 12 & 13 in ONE post

We hit Windward Mall. I found a junk store...aka, the kind with inexpensive Asian foods that I love, and I found Korean Style Nori on sale for $0.95/3pk - tasty. YES, I bought one that I am not opening for RUBY! I also found gen mai cha for $8/lb, but didn't buy any because I just bought 2# back home. We did the crazy photo booth thing, and it's REALLY small in there. Then it was off to Spencer's to buy stuff for Kortni's bachelorette party. The front of Spencer's is full of  cool socks, tights, hats, bags...the back of Spencer's was moderatlely frightening. 
Bad photo, but it's a Kermit stocking cap folks, yes, they sell stocking caps on island. Crazy isn't it? I am not sure why they do this, but I saw them all over.




I found a photo of myself marking the ladies room at Windward, and a Hello Kitty store (yes, I thought of Patricia, NO, I did not buy the very expensive, I LOVE NERDS bag, even though it was so totally cute!! The party store had the most disturbing poster I have seen in quite a while hanging in the window. Yes, they put purplish hair on that child and made her look...like a freakish leprechaun - eerie. Sorry folks, that's just a bit too much, she looks FIVE...just not cool.

After the mall, off to Chinatown. I like Chinatown, it doesn't scare me. Marines are not supposed to visit Chinatown because of the crime related to it, but we were on a mission. We needed mangosteen and to eat something at Pho 97 where Randy & Loan said we should have noodles. We didn't have time for noodles as we were on a schedule, but we did grab some spring roll type things that I like, one veggie, one pork, and they were YUMMY!!!


After that, it was off to Duke's Waikiki, then to the open air market and Kortni and I didn't just find this cool waterfall with Koi pond, we also found 7 for $20 t-shirts!!

I will finish later :D OKAY - the 25th is officially LATER!!
Kadi kept us busy...very busy. Pics from the 13th...

We went to North Shore...we did not buy any overpriced drinks in frighteningly carved monkey coconuts. I think it was supposed to be a monkey.


There were tomatoes in my coconut milk based clam chowder - folks, I'm all for exotic foods, but this chowder was just flat WEIRD!! and gave me stomach cramps.

Then walking through shops (apparently we didn't come to go to any beach or see the water, surfers, etc...we came to North Shore to eat at that surfer tourist restaurant and walk through shops). I liked this piece of artwork...cuz it's 3D - it has cool stuff on it, and fish and it's my favorite colors :D

You weren't supposed to take photos at this crazy...art gallery? I'm not exactly sure what it is, but it looked like an art club/gallery/hippie fest. After several photos I came across a sign in the ground that requested "NO PHOTOS." Yeah. whatever.

We went to beaches with high surf, strong current warnings. Didn't make them any less beautiful :D it did make us less beautiful as high winds blew our hair all about :D