cameras...

a pretty vanilla subject here on the 'net, but one of interest at the moment. With the new baby on the way, my frustrations with our current cameras are escalating. I fully plan on dutifully taking way too many picture of our first-born and would prefer if my underwhelming skill was the major problem with the pictures, not the cameras. Of course, if I had great skill, then the camera probably wouldn't matter as much. I liken the phenomena to needing that new driver for the golf bag... "man I could hit it 10 yards farther into the woods with this club!"

I currently have a Canon A70. The A70 is a good compact camera - and more importantly when it was bought, a great value (quality/cost)... and it still is. But, it has the sort of issues you expect with this type of camera (and one that was used in a mini sandstorm in a dune field in Death Valley) - focusing is sometimes there, sometimes not - only 3.2 megapixels. And the real thing is that I am not a fan of the flash in general. fixed flashes often washout the subject, etc. this one only has one setting - full blast. I really like natural light, which typically means a lot of digital noise because of the small CCD (not enough photons getting to the detector).

So, I have been digging around and looked at a few cameras... there is the replacement Canon A620 a 7MP camera... noise will probably still be an issue, but with the extra MP's it could be okay. Then there is the Nikon D50... which looks to be a great D-SLR at the entry-level, and the Canon 350D (another D-SLR)... I have seen some great photos in natural light on the daily dose of imagery, and on flickr of course... the downside to these last two cameras is they are some extra coin, and the examples are of course by people with serious skill... but hey, even Tiger Woods needs a good driver to succeed!

There will certainly be future posts on this subject sometime... especially if I ever follow-through and purchase a new camera - which will be balanced with other baby needs, and the wife's desire for a camcorder, which is a whole other subject....

One of my favorite photos we took in 2005

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Originally uploaded by sahii.

This picture of Danette is one of my favorites. We were up in the London Eye on our first day in England this summer for some friends' wedding. I like the prespective as well as the subject (of course :P). Big Ben is in the background over her shoulder and the Thames is at lower right.

of young and old(er)

We are home now and have completed the holiday circuit (fortunately half of it was at home this year)... seeing both sets of our parents (grandparents-to-be!) as well as my grandmother (see previous post) and my aunts... When my mom and I were sitting with Grandma, we were counting out all of her descendents... our baby will be her 16th great-grandchild when it is born.... that is a number that boggles the mind... My parents also put the old 8mm films from my Mom's childhood (and that of her older siblings) on DVD and we watched it today. It was pretty cool to see what everyone looked like back then... what my great-grandparents looked like other than the couple of pictures I have seen, etc.... pretty cool that we can do those things now and protect that sort of family history.

Since I was speaking of the incoming before, man is that kid starting to let us know it is on its way. About a week ago, I who knows my wife could barely, barely start to make out that her belly was a little different... in the last week (and especially even in the last day!) it is much more obvious to us, though maybe not the stranger-on-the-street yet. Sitting at 19 weeks now, this shouldn't be a surprise, I guess... anyway her abdomen is more like abs-of-steel, than normal. Needless-to-say I just keep grinning (and no, not my usual devious grin)...

95 Christmas's

Just finished visiting my 95 year old grandmother in Midland, Michigan - home of the Dow Chemical Company where my grandfather was a Research Chemist. Unfortunately, she is in a nursing home now - but she still remembers a thing or two, with a little confusion. It is amazing how the mind works (and sometimes gets a little cross-wired). I only hope that if I live to see 95 xmas seasons - that my mind and body works as long as hers has.

Today we are spending some time with family in Ann Arbor, MI - home of the Wolverines of the other U of M... The "real" one is the University of Minnesota, of course. And then tomorrow we will make the trip home so that we can start back to work on Thursday. Been a pretty good holiday season - happy and healthy. Not to mention that the little baby on the way is starting to make its presence known. Most exciting to this first-time father-to-be.

X-mas eve

I had a couple of pictures I have taken around the house in the last couple of weeks and I thought that I would share them. A picture of our tree close-up and one of Danette's Santa Bears sitting in the dining room.

This afternoon is going to be spent slacking after our new tradition of Christmas Eve lunch sushi. All cooked this year, of course, but good nonetheless... and I got to have yakisoba, one of my favorite meals from when I was staying with the Nakajima's in Japan in high school.

Danette and I have been engaging in our annual Christmas reparte on that age-old question: Do you open gifts on x-mas eve or x-mas morning? Of course, the correct answer is x-mas morning. But, since the in-laws are here, we will mostly open gifts tonight. Obviously I can be flexible, but we are going to have to figure this out in the next year or so before the incoming kid gets confused, but we have a little time to get those traditions to gell.

Whatever your holiday/winter solstice traditions... enjoy them. Merry Christmas (Eve)!

Ice, snow, and rakes...

The weather here in Cleveland has been a little nuts lately. About 2-3 weeks ago it snowed for several days leaving us a bunch of snow... but something about the temperatures and the amount of snow led to major icicles... even on houses that typically don't have them. We got new gutters this summer and thought that would clear up the minor icicles that we would get over the front door (poor mailperson). We got rid of the ice around the front door, but we got some major ice buildup anyway, probably the weather as much as anything. We are fortunate that the roof is well-insulated (the eaves don't seem to be quite accessible from the attic, so who knows how the insulation was put in there)... but then the snow doesn't melt quickly and can really buildup.

Well... we finally went and got a snow rake and I have been slowly trying to rid the roof of some of its snow. It works reasonably well, but it is a serious workout on the arms. This rake is easily 10-15ft long and you have to lift it over your head onto the roof and try to pull off heavy wet snow ~8 inches deep... definitely a workout.

Hopefully it will all be worth it, though. Now it is raining of all things, and we are supposed to have rain and wintry mix for the next few days through x-mas. Hopefully the ice in the gutters will melt down and the snow I have pulled off will help slow any new buildup of ice.

Tonight we are headed to to Love, Janis with the in-laws. My mother in-law is a big Joplin fan. I am not always a fan of the tiny seats in the theater, but I am sure the music will be good.

Winter break(?)

Yup, it's that time of the year again when I can try to get something done other than teaching... finals are over! While this might not be as exciting as Wayne Rooney in the U.K. to the pre-adolescent set (as I learned from Nate, of course), but I like it. Gave my last final today and we got it graded and tallied up final grades.. determining grades is clearly a low-point in my job... What is an "A" anyway? Obviously, I have my opinions on it as I assign grades all the time. But assessment of student learning (I the teacher have learned a thing or two about student learning and techongology over at John's blog, of course) is a difficult thing in my opinion and it takes a bit of work to get it right.

So, now I can try to do a few other things... this basically comes down to a lot of writing this year... manuscript revisions, teaching portfolios, and new courses... pretty typical. The break part of winter break as a professor means a break from teaching... not from work, in someways it is busier, this year at least.

In other news... another first, the first piece of mail tangentially addressed to the incoming kid showed up in the form of a x-mas card from our friend Cari. It is nice to have these little external reminders of what's to come. We actually got our first gift of toys from my Aunt Mary and family last week. That was a bit of a surprise, because the came in a box with a present, but they were unwrapped and some infant toys can be a little confusing to the over-educated... but once we saw the tag with the Lamaze label, all became clear... and I am sure that they will be quite fun...

Trees and Santa Bears

Anyone that knows my little family understands implicitly that x-mas time means time for the Santa Bears. The 2005 edition (20th year!?!) of these bears that Danette collects are down at the base of the tree. This collection began way back in 1985... and she has a complete set. When we lived in STL and DC several of our friends found pleasure in our holiday tradition of displaying all of these bears at x-mas... all over the house.... I probably won't be the only one interested to see how a mixture of Santa Bears and a baby works at our house next year!

The tree, of course, is the one with the L.E.D. lights, the really bright ones (especially the bright blue ones). 

Cornflakes!

My wife found a recipe for a x-mas cookie that makes use of extra cornflakes left over from various dishes she makes this time of year where they make a crunchy topping. The photo does not do the brilliant green of these cornflake wreaths justice... but nice neverthe less. 

Christmas cookies

It is monday morning and I was going to be productive before heading into a meeting (regarding computers ironically enough, really big ones though). But for some unknown reason, DHCP at work doesn't like my laptop before 9 AM... not even wireless, and that's a separate network... but I digress.

It is x-mas time around our house, which as far as my stomach is concerned means one thing - cookies! Got a few batches of ginger snaps and sachertorte cookies made up yesterday. We are going easy on the cookies this year, partly out of time - we seem to be at least a week behind this year. So, only one other kind to make - some corn-flake wreath thing (it involves marshmallows and green food coloring, so it can't be all bad). We also have to add the filling to the sachertorte cookies too. We also are by-passing attempts to make traditional Icelandic or Scandanavian treats this year. We have an Icelandic cake (Vínarterta) that honestly gets better with age. We pulled some from the freezer so that should be good to go. Don't remember whether this one came from Grandma or my wife but it will taste good nonetheless. We've also never tried to make Lefse, but we have some of that on hand too. In all honesty, lefse hasn't ever really grown on me that much - but my wife adores it as do many others, so I try to acquire a taste for it every year. Lefse is definitely a regional specialty in the U.S., you can find it in many grocery stores in northern MN and ND, but not many other places. I plan to see if we can find a supply here in northeastern Ohio at some point, but for now the mother-in-law keeps us stocked.

Holiday expectations

Well, it is pretty obvious that I don't blog here that much, but I think that might start a changin' in the next few months. Part of it is that it is the holiday season, of course. We seem to have gotten a late start this year, we only got our x-mas tree last weekend and decorated it the middle of the week (it took forever for the darn thing to 'fall'). It isn't the biggest or best tree we have ever had. But now that it is decorated, it looks pretty decent. The oddest thing happened while we were decorating it though, we (mainly me, though) both had our eyes start to ache a little. I think the answer is that we put a new type of lights on it this year. We tried L.E.D. christmas lights for just one of the many strings, and they are seriously bright. The lights look nice, but decorating while those lights are on might be a problem in the future. The nice thing about the L.E.D. lights is that they use less power and that they don't give off much heat (safer).

The holidays should be good. We just completed our favorite part of the season - toy and clothes donations. We usually go (wherever we are living) to a Salvation Army Giving Tree and try to help make a couple of children's holidays a little better. We also collect games and a few toys and make donations at one or more local places. In other news, the in-laws arrive this week for x-mas, and then we will head a little north to meet my parents at my grandma's after x-mas.

The major news of the season that we are expecting our first child in May! We are pretty darn excited about it, to say the least. We are steadily trying to make preparations for the big change that is coming. Danette is doing well and the second trimester is treating her better than the first, of course. We don't know the gender... but that is okay with me... we'll see how long that lasts, though - the first big ultrasound is in January.

As is pretty obvious from the history of previous posts here, there probably won't be that many, but I will probably use the blog to share news, pictures, etc with family and friends from time-to-time, especially about events related to the new kid on the block!

Happy Holidays!