Catherine's Jazz Dance

Catherine's Jazz dance from the rehearsal. I think Catherine's is done with the traditional ballet dances. Or at least she doesn't seem to have the interest in them that she once did.

Quinn's Hip Hop Dance (Again)

Ginger and the kids returned home. Otherwise not that much interesting happened. Time to start posting the videoes I have from the kid's dance recital last weekend. I only have the rehearsal, but it's not that much different than the real thing.

Google Video Chat

Ginger was originally planning on coming back tonight, but a storm passing through Richmond made them rethink their plans. That coupled with the fact that I don't think the kids really want to come back just yet means they're staying until tomorrow. They have to be back eventually though because this is the last week of Catherine's Spanish class and that's on Tuesday and Thursday. While Ginger and the kids have been in Richmond, I've been using Google's Video Chat to say goodnight to them. As near as I can tell this can only be accessed from within a web browser. You bring up gmail and enable chat and if the person on the other end had video capabilities you'll see a little video camera symbol next to their name. From there it's a simple matter of starting up the chat and choosing start video chat in the popup window that appears. Over Christmas I gave everyone in the family small web cams. So in theory we should all be able to video chat, but I don't think anyone other than me has installed the camera. Ginger's Macbook though comes with a built in web cam (and hey, so does my windows laptop which only cost about 1/6 of what the Macbook cost). Anyway, saying goodnight to the kids is now infinitely more entertaining. My favorite has been when the kids decide to play hide and seek over the web cam. That's lots of fun. In retrospect I should have done a screenshot of the chat, but that didn't occur to me at the time.

Boom! Head Shot!

Ginger and the kids are still in Richmond, and from the look of things will probably end up staying down there even longer so that Ginger can have some more time with her grandmother. So this meant I had time to work on a request Ben had made to have some head shots taken. He needed a head shot and had asked me if I could take some. Having never done this before I reluctantly agreed and told him I couldn't be blamed if we got nothing usable out of the experience since I've never tried this type of thing before.




I tried google'ing how to do it, and after weeding through all the websites that give advice to people having the head shot taken and all the sites of professionals saying why you should pay someone to do it instead of doing it yourself I finally found some useful advice. Unfortunately it wasn't the advice I was looking for (like what type of lens to use, what f-stop, best mm, etc).




We got a fair number of shots. I'm not sure which one Ben finally decided on, but the longer we went on the harder it was to keep taking it seriously so there ended up being some pretty amusing ones too. After the photo shoot I got to hang out with Ben for a while playing Little Big Planet until Katilyn and her family got back from shopping. Another reason why getting a PS3 is looking good since that's a PS3 only title and you can play it with four people, although just from playing with two people I think that playing with four would be tough since everyone has to stay on the screen.

Timecrimes

A somewhat low budget science fiction foreign film (I'm pretty sure the version I watched was dubbed, either that or the audio was horribly out of sync at times). The title can probably give you a hint as to what aspect of science fiction is involved in this. It's an interesting story and the acting is decent. As always with these types of stories there's an inherent paradox that you have to ignore to enjoy it. But the following the ripple effects and the falling dominoes is entertaining. I was pretty sure I had the whole movie figured out as to where it was going and how it was going to end until about two thirds of the way through. Then it took a turn that I hadn't seen coming (which is what saved the movie from being simply mediocre in my mind).

Gran Torino

Got a chance to watch this. I've heard a lot of people saying how good it is, so I figured I would give it a shot. I'll start out with that fact that enjoyed the movie. Clint Eastwood plays Walt Kowalski, a set in his ways Korean war veteran / recent widower with more than a few racial prejudices. The area he lives in has evolved into a Hmong neighborhood, leaving him surrounded by the people he looks down on. His relationship (if you can call it that) with his children (who are grown adults and have families of their own) seems to be strained at best. Through a contrived sequence of events Walt ends up taking one of the Hmong, Thao, under his wing and mentoring him on what it means to be a man. In doing so he also incurs the wraith of a local street gang who has been trying to initiate Thao into their gang. I found the story to be a somewhat interesting commentary on racism. I'm still not exactly sure what it was trying to say about racism. Walt had obviously been conditioned during the war to feel this way. And you can tell as the movie progresses and he learns more about the Hmong culture that he begins to at tolerate it more if not accept it.

There are some quirks to movie. Since most of the movie is Clint Eastwood alone we get lots of scenes with him talking to himself or talking to his dog to let us know what he's thinking. I understand why the writers had to have him do this in order to tell the audience what he was thinking, but it still came across as odd at times. And some of the things Walt teaches about what it means to be a man seem antiquated. I'm unsure whether the movie is pointing out that this is how older people see a man's role in society or whether they really cherish these qualities and wish to see more of them in today's society.

Overall I liked the movie. It's a character development film, and does about as well as you could expect in the short amount of time it has to present it's story. Clint does a fantastic job of playing the grumpy old man (he comes across like a retired Dirty Harry). And while I'm still not sure what all the messages it's trying to say about racism and patriarchal roles are I still enjoyed the film.

And Then There Was One

Ginger and Catherine left for Richmond today after Catherine finished her Spanish class. This is good since it'll give Ginger some time with her grandmother. But now I'm at home all alone. However will I cope with all the silence. The picture up above is a left over shot from the recital. In theory with the kids gone I should be coming up with some type of thing to do with brick, but this might end up being the first time I break with tradition and don't do one.

Dance Recital

Today was the big dance recital day. Nana, Grammy and Pop Pop all came up to watch the performance. First we had to drive over for the dress rehearsal early this morning. Then it was back home and waiting until we got to drive back over again for the actual performance. Unlike previous years they were allowing photographs during the performance, but no flash photography and no video photography.






Quinn's group was doing hip hop dancing in case it isn't obvious.


None of my shots from the rehearsal or the actual performance came out looking too good. This was even using my 50mm 1.8f stop lens and shooting at something like 640 ISO. From the looks of the pictures I should have gone even more manual as it appears the white balance favored a longer shutter trying to get the background correctly exposed versus the people on the stage. One of these days I'll figure out how to work my camera correctly then all will be right with the world. But then then what will I have to complain about (who am I kidding, I would find something)?




Okay, in looking at the shots I picked for the blog it's become apparent I took lots of shots with Catherine's arms up in the air. Let me assure everyone that her arms were not constantly up in the air as these pictures imply.




Funny thing about looking at these pictures of the performance. Just from looking at them it seems like Quinn is having much more fun up on stage than Catherine is. Not sure why, but Catherine just doesn't look like she's enjoying herself that much whereas from looking at the pictures Quinn is just having a grand ole time.


And speaking of not enjoying herself, afterward Catherine was very sad because we didn't get her flowers after her performance like a lot of the other kids got. She did get a stuffed webkinz kitty cat though, and that seemed to brighten up her mood a bit. Now we know next year to get flowers no matter what.




Quinn went back to Richmond with Grammy and Pop Pop and Ginger and Catherine will be heading down in a couple days to join them for the week.

Dawn Of The Pool Post

Ginger and Catherine had another birthday party to go attend today. So I let Quinn pick what we would do while they were out. To be honest I wasn't overly surprised that we ended up riding our bikes over to the pool for a bit. As cold as I thought the water was last time I swear I thought it was even colder this time. That didn't stop Quinn at all though. Or stop him from insisting I get in also.


We did have one minor incident though. There was older kid (male) in the pool that looked to be mentally challenged. A couple other kids were playing on the basketball goal, and one them went up to dunk the ball and the back of the board broke off. At this the one guy start shouting out profanity at them. Calling them GDMF's and C's and all sorts of vulgar names. And the profanity just kept flowing, the kid obviously wasn't going to stop. Quinn of course started watching this intensely. I tried my best to distract him because quite frankly I don't need him to be asking about those words just yet. I settled on the "Quick, jump in the pool and see how long you can stay underwater" tactic. And once he came back up the "That was good, let's see if you can beat that time, go!" Eventually what I assume was the parent of the kid led him away, so the crisis was partially diverted.

Flower Power

Haven't had a lot of chances to take picture of the hydrangeas this year. Whenever I do take pictures though the blue that's evident when looking at them never seems to translate properly to the picture. It's like the color balance always accentuates the yellow versus the blue.

Dance Outfit Picture Day, Sans Picture

Today was Quinn's dance picture day before the upcoming recital. And for some reason we didn't actually take a picture of him in the outfit beforehand like we did with Catherine. So in lieu of a picture I'll post this video that Catherine took of the dance practice. It'll be hard to spot which one is Quinn, but I'll give you a hint, he's the only boy.

Starting Spanish Class

Today was Catherine's first day of Spanish classes. She's enrolled in one of the summer classes that meets for an hour on Tuesday and Thursday. When I got home tonight the only thing she could say in Spanish was her name since she had already forgotten how to say hello and goodbye. I was sort of expecting her to ask where the bathroom or the library was since those are common questions people get taught when learning a foreign language. The bathroom one I can understand, but if you don't know the language well enough to ask for directions then how is a building full of books written in said foreign language going to work?

Dance Outfit Picture Day

Today was Catherine's picture day at dance. So she got a chance to sport the outfit she'll be wearing the upcoming dance recital.

Princess Rules

Quinn has a birthday party to attend today so this morning Ginger and Quinn went to get a gift. While they were gone Catherine decided I would be playing Barbies with her.

Catherine usually gets upset with me playing Barbies because "I don't play the right way." Meaning I have the Prince doing stuff like scaling the castle, or sitting on the couch watching TV or (and I got chastised for this once) having him go see his subjects to see what he could be doing better.

Since Catherine was going to be in charge of this session she laid down some rules.

The Prince can't see the Princess changing clothes.

No problem. I can fully get behind this rule (not sure why this is a rule though). Then it started getting a bit odd.

The Prince can't marry the Princess because the Princess' Mom won't allow it.

Hmm, okay. That's not really a "rule" per se, but whatever. Not sure where this came from, but I'll go with it.

The Prince can pay to the Princess' Mom $2 and gain her approval.

Two dollars? Really? Just two dollars? I tried explaining that the Prince probably has a large kingdom, and he's living it up in the fancy clothes and stuff while his serfs are out tolling for their food and having to pay a portion of everything they make to the ruling caste. So they probably have a bit more than two dollars in the treasury. Never the less, two dollars was all that was required (it makes me think she has something she wants to buy that costs two dollars).

The Princess' Mom will use the $2 to buy a computer.

Now just wait a minute. Even if they buy one of those crappy netbooks they're going to have to spend more than two dollars for a computer. I mean that's not even show price.

Once the Prince and Princess are married, they immediately have a child (it just shows up upon getting married).

No comment at all from me. If that's what she believes I'm going with it for now.


Later in the day Ken and Amanda came over. While Amanda and Catherine were playing I took Quinn to the birthday party, which just so happened to be at a laser tag place. This was Quinn's first time playing and to say he loved it would be an understatement. This was also the first time I dropped off Quinn at a party and left him there on his own (too bad, I might have enjoyed Laser Tag, never played it myself since it's not like they had that when I was growing up). Once Quinn got back home all he did was talk about the Laser Tag game and how much fun it was (and how much he was sweating while he played). And then he informed us that's how he wanted to have his next birthday party.


After we got back all the kids played outside for a bit. This of course involved Quinn moving from activity to activity faster than you could keep track.

Quinn's Last Day Of School

Today was Quinn's last day of school. The kids put on a very minor show for the parents and there was a graduation / progression ceremony for the older kids that are moving on to the next phase of school.


For some reason that we still haven't been able to determine Catherine started breaking out today. We suspect it's from some form of cross contamination, but at this point don't really know what it could have been. Luckily it's not too serious, but it does make her skin look bad (and it causes her to itch and scratch way more than she should). It was bad enough that Ginger gave her some Benadryl before she went to bed.

Aesthetically Unpleasing Apparently

So a while back KennyG turned me onto the Aesthetic Quality Inference Engine that rates photos via a computer. Basically looking for patterns of things in pictures people rate highly and then applying those rules to the photo you submit. Based on this I should just stop taking pictures altogether.


I went ahead and submitted some of my more recent shots. And when all those came in between 4 (I kid you not) and 36 I had to go back even further to winter. Dobie and Ginger scored my first one that had at least a 50 rating.


So I had to go back even further. This one broke 50, but just barely.




Going back even further I managed to make it all the way to the low mid 50s.


This one came in at 69.2 and was my first one out of the 50s. It still only rated a thumbs sideways though.


This one came in at 72.2 and was my first thumbs up rating of the batch I submitted. It's also one my favorite shots, so I felt good about it getting a thumbs up. But as to which picture rated highest? The winner is.... *drumroll*...


Shaky Christmas Tree Lights. This scored 99.2 for some reason. So basically the only way I can take a good aesthetically pleasing picture is to take a bad picture. *sigh*

Mo Money Mo Money

Our home refinance is finally done. We're no longer one of those crazy sub prime loans that caused so much heartache for the economy. We used to have a 4.75% 7 year ARM that was interest only. We were only four and a half years into the loan, but with the rates being pretty low we figured it was time to lock in something. Unfortunately we're at a slightly higher rate now (4.875% I believe), but it's stable now. For now we're out a fair chunk of change though since the taxes are due in a month on the house and we had to pay those (even though the escrow account at the old mortgage should be covering those, since this is a new loan we have to pay the taxes and fund the escrow account). So we'll be waiting patiently and checking the mail every day for the check from the old mortgage company to show up. And since company's selling mortgages is all the rage, would anyone want to take a bet on how long before our mortgage gets sold from the company we just signed with to some other company?

And in other news it looks like Apple announced their new tech and lower prices today. Which is just fantastic considering we just bought Ginger a MacBook Pro about five weeks ago. In addition they released info on the fancy new iPhones too at seriously reduced prices also. That one I don't mind as much since we've gotten a fair amount of use out of Ginger's iPhone to date and I would say it's been one of the better "quality of life" purchases that we've made.

And as if we weren't spending enough it appears the refrigerator in the garage is dying. It's not exactly keeping stuff cold at the moment. I know this isn't helped by the fact that it's been pretty warm lately and therefore the garage gets really hot, so whatever is wrong is only being made worse by that. So in addition to everything else we're going to be going out and getting another refrigerator (and I say we like I'm going to be involved, but in reality I will probably try my best not to be).

Separate Agendas

Catherine had yet another birthday party to attend today. This was another one of the kids in her class at school. These things seem to be pretty clustered to me. I'm not seeing a equal distribution of birthday across the calendar. It seems like there are an awful lot of them in the spring time.




In addition to having pony rides this one also had an appearance by The Great Zucchini. At least I think that's The Great Zucchini. Since I wasn't there I really don't know who the entertainment was.




While Ginger and Catherine were out at the birthday party the rest of us went on a bike ride over to the local school. We also biked down to the baseball field where it looked like a little league game was taking place. Quinn seems to have the world's shortest attention span. We were barely at the game before he was ready to take off and go to the playground, then after that he wanted to go to a vacant baseball field and try and play kickball, then it was off to the new playground by the pool. I get exhausted just trying to keep up with him.




Oh yea, Quinn got his birthday presents from Nana today also. Big surprise, it's more Lego stuff. There was another Star Wars Lego item in addition to the Lego Batman item above.