Ginger Gets Busy

So Ginger had her session in how to cook Korean food today over at CeCe's house. The kids went with her since they get along with Perry and Drew so well. I armed Ginger with the fully powered mini point and shoot Nikon thinking I would get lots of shots of the kids playing to post tonight, but I got nothing. Ginger claims she completely forgot she even had the camera with her. So instead of pictures of the kids at CeCe's or Ginger learning a new way to cook, you get a picture of some of the stuff she made that she brought home for me to snack on. Homemade California rolls and some dumplings. Mmmmm.

Ginger was evidently pretty busy today considering she also finished putting up new shelves in my office. She spent some time yesterday and today putting them up. Pretty sure it's because she's trying to get rid of the clutter than continually accumulates in my presence. Not sure the shelves are enough to counter balance the clutter gravitational attraction I seem to have, but we'll see. They do look nice though, don't they?

Quinn In Rhodopis

This should be interesting to just about no one except for family (and maybe not even them). It's a brief clip of Quinn's role in the opera they put on last weekend. You get to see him lead the King's procession on stage (and gets a bit lost in where he's going), and you get to see later in his scene where he starts getting fidgety.

Check out these reviews: *

Ginger: I think Quinn did a wonderful job.

Nana: I had trouble seeing it since I'm so short, but I'm sure it was great.

Grammy: I can't believe how good Quinn did.

Troy McClure: Don't kid yourself, Jimmy. If a cow ever got the chance, he'd eat you and everyone you care about!

Random Person: It was much better than Cats. I'll see it again and again.

JamesF: Five stars! It beats "The Bone Collector" hands down.

* Most, if not all, quotes were fabricated.

Actually... Come!

The kids have picked up some phrases and speaking mannerisms. Not sure exactly where they got them from to be honest. With Catherine, just about every other sentence starts with "Actually". "Actually, I ate all my granola." "Actually I don't want to do that." "Actually we're going to go to the park." It's one of those things where now that I've started to notice it, it's all I hear when she talks.

Quinn's new phrase is not quite as cute. It's "<Insert Person's Name>! Come!" He can't politely ask you to come to where he is, he has to yell and demand it. "Daddy! Come!" It comes across as very bossy. I've heard him do it with other kids also, so I'm hoping they don't get offended (although with kids I doubt they understand why that phrase might be considered offensive).

I watched Bone Collector last night. I thought this was going to be good. Netflix even assured me I would like it based on my previous ratings. I had this foolish idea that it would be some interesting type of thriller or something. Turns out it was extremely weak all around. The plot was pathetic and so many situations have to occur for the story to work where there's no way it would *ever* happen that way in real life. It's just completely ridiculous. Angelina Jolie plays Amelia, a beat cop with a 'knack' for forensic that suddenly finds herself working for Denzel Washington, who was apparently some whiz bang forensic scientist back in the day before he went and got himself paralyzed, but now he's taken Amelia under his wing and is sending her (without any formal training) into crime scenes to process them. Having him mutter clues to himself in what feels like a variation of chain letter game as he sorts through clues to come up with some obscure answer (that just happens to be exactly what the killer intended) then coming up with some off the wall explanation of why it 'makes sense' just seems bizarre. There's a mystery that's there only for the sake of providing a mystery. To be honest, it feels like they're fighting E. Nigma (the Batman villian also known as the Riddler). The whole movie just reeks of bad writing and Denzel seems to be just phoning this one in since he's playing a role where every scene with him in it has him lying down. Must be nice making some serious actor salary bank and not even having to really do anything other than lie in a bed. Do yourself a favor and skip this one, I wish I had.

Art Camp, Now With Less Art

So I'm not exactly sure how I would rate the art camp / classes the kids are attending at the school this week. I asked Quinn yesterday what he did and I got informed they had a train in the classroom and he apparently played with that most of the day. Wonderful, we're paying for him to go play with a train. Catherine at least told us how she had mixed colors to make some new colors. I didn't get the impression that she did anything with the colors she made, but I suppose making colors is at least somewhat art related.

Today when I asked Quinn what he did at art camp I got informed that he played with Tinker Toys. I guess he forgot that he had told me this morning he was actually going to do something art related today. Catherine on the other hand did do something art related again. I couldn't completely understand her description of what she did when she explained it, but I think it had something to do lemon juice and stamps or painting. Maybe it was that 'invisible ink' that shows up when heated or something.

So basically what I've gotten from talking to them is that we're paying for Catherine to get some art / craft exposure and meanwhile we're paying for someone to watch Quinn while he plays for a couple of hours. Great, just great.

Ginger took the kids by Frying Pan Park today after she picked them up. This is the park Catherine went to a while back on a after school play date with some of the other kids from school. It was Quinn's first time and it sounded like he really enjoyed himself. And he kept quizzing me on information about the farm during dinner (asking me how many horses the stables could hold, or how many cows were there, etc). I hear they even got to go on a tractor ride. My guess is this will become a semi regular destination over the summer. No pictures of the events today though since Ginger didn't have the small point and shoot with her (although she did stop by the camera store to check out the Nikon D40 since she thinks she might like that, but if she's going to get that, I might opt for her to get the Nikon D40x instead).


Had a quick rain here tonight, and I snapped a couple of pictures after it was all said and done. Nothing spectacular, and it was getting dark so I had to take a ton of shots just to get a couple that were actually in focus.

Watery Graveyard

Remember back almost a year ago when we set up a fish tank for the kids. The picture above is from back then. See all those fish. Yea, none of those original fish are alive anymore. One of the mollies got sick and died pretty fast, which we replaced, but then both mollies died maybe a month later. The clown pleco probably made it two months before it kicked the bucket. The dwarf gouramis probably lasted the longest making it almost four months before dying. We've since then gotten lots more fish, all of which have died except for one. We do have some type of loach / catfish type thing in there that hides during the day that's lasted a good while now (easily the longest survivor in the tank). In between we've gotten an iridescent shark that obviously wanted a larger tank and various other colorful fish that have all died. The algae in the tank is out of control, and I've noticed the pH tends to gravitate towards the acidic if left to it's own devices. How acidic I can't tell since the kit I have to measure it only has colors that go down to 6 and it's definitely gotten to at least 6 so it's probably been even lower. Which, perhaps not coincidentally, is also about the time fish start dying (fish deaths usually prompt a pH check, which then results in adjusting the pH). To be honest I thought the tank would have balanced itself out as far as pH goes by now (in the past it's only taken a couple of months for a tank to get to the point where it settles into a reasonable pH range). We've gone through 3 dwarf puffer fish in the past two months (two of which I just found floating in the tank tonight). Not sure what to do about the puffer fish since those were Catherine's (she doesn't know they're gone yet since I just discovered them floating tonight). Last time the puffer fish died I went out and got two more and never told her the original one died. Catherine never even noticed the fact there was an extra one in the tank (but they are rather small, so it's possible once she actually located one she just stopped looking because she didn't know there were any others).

Marble Madness

Since Nana is still up, the kids spent a lot of time playing with her today. Ginger and Catherine did head off by themselves down to the local playground for a while so Catherine could swing. All the baseball pictures are from Nana's camera.




The kids were still running on empty from lack of sleep. At least tonight they went to bed around their normal bedtime, which is good since they start their art classes tomorrow. Speaking of sleeping, how can kids sleep so soundly? I went in to check on Catherine tonight and she was on the floor partway under her bed. No idea how she got there, but I dragged her out, rolled her over, picked her and turned her around and laid her down on her bed and she never even opened an eyelid. Seriously, at what point do you lose the ability to sleep that soundly so you can go through all that and still not wake up?

And to continue on that sleeping motif, I was too lazy to get up early this morning so I missed out on my chance to buy a Wii. The local Toys R Us got a shipment of 40 of them in today and had I gotten there around 7 this morning I could have probably gotten one, but I waited until after the store opened so they were long gone by then.




I goofed around with the macro shot setting on my small point and shoot camera today. Took some pictures of the kid's marbles. I actually took a lot, but most didn't turn out too well or you can see too much in the reflections, so these were some of the only ones I thought were decent. Looking back if I had to do it again, I would probably not do it directly under the skylight.

Where's The Park?

The kids got up pretty early this morning considering they didn't get to bed last night until ten. Grammy headed home before lunch and we spent some time today just driving around looking for a new park we wanted to visit. We never did find it. As it was we ended up just stopping by a park nearby. Catherine played on the playground equipment while Quinn hung out watching baseball games. I did managed to locate the park we were trying to get to using Google Map's satellite view once we got home (Oh Google, is there anything you can't do?). My picture's for today turned out less than optimal, that's probably because I had set the camera's ISO to 800 when I was taking pictures of Quinn's dress rehearsal, but forgot to set it back to something lower (D'oh!).




We made a mistake I think in inviting people over later. Amanda and her Mom and Dad came over but didn't get here until after six thirty, considering the kids are usually getting ready for bed around seven, I could already tell it was going to be a long night. Quinn was happy they came over since Amanda brought him a birthday present since she had missed his party. And much to my surprise though everything went pretty well until eventually Catherine just had a complete meltdown and forced us all to call it a night (although it was almost ten at that point, so it was way past time for the kids to be asleep).

I Smell An Academy Award

And the academy award for best supporting supporting actor goes too... So Quinn performed in the opera his school put on tonight. The opera was based on Rhodopis, which is basically an Egyptian version of Cinderella. I skipped out from work this morning so I could see the dress rehearsal (since we were allowed to video tape and take photos during the rehearsal). Quinn's part was ... limited. He was the guard to a King (or someone important) and he's only in one act (there were 7 acts total). He walks on stage with the King and then stands beside him hands on hips bodyguard fashion for the next ten minutes or so. Then everyone exits the stage. No speaking lines or anything. He didn't even sing during the one group song. On the positive side, he didn't pick his nose while he was on stage. At least not during his scene. He did get a finger up there during the curtain call, but hopefully everyone was busy watching the center of the stage at that point.


I had thought there was going to be a fight scene since Quinn had told us at dinner the other night there were pirates in the play and the pirates outnumbered the guards. But alas, there was no fight scene. I have to admit, part of me started looking forward to the opera once I heard pirates would be involved, about the only thing that could have made it better at that point was if you had told they had ninjas also.


Here Quinn's leading the procession onto the stage for the king to take his place. Now I don't know about anyone else, but if the guy assigned to protect me is unarmed and significantly shorter than me, unless the dude is Wolverine, I would be worried if I was the King.


Here's Quinn on the lookout for anyone suspicious. He's just waiting for someone to slip up so he can nab them.

"How you doin'?"

During the actual performance tonight a significant number of people in the audience did not follow the rule about not taping or taking pictures, so I did take a mini movie of the act with Quinn on stage. I may put it up sometime but I need to find some way to jazz it up since it's just him standing there for the most part.

Yeouch!

Quinn had a minor mishap today. Seems he decided to jump off the swing before the swing had come to a complete stop. He got a bit scraped up on his face and elbow, but otherwise he's fine. Of course Ginger called me at work to tell me about it and immediately started in on the whole "where do you suppose he got the idea to jump off a swing" thing. I happen to know that while I've done it front of him a couple times, I've seen him see the kids at school do it also, so I don't think this one can really be pinned on me (at least not all of it). When I asked him about it and how it happened, I was told that he was swinging really high and that Catherine told him to jump off, so he did. And then he told me landed on his stomach and scratched up his face. He then proceeded to inform me how it was Catherine's fault that he got hurt because (and I'm not making this up) she made him jump off the swing. I couldn't help but smile a bit at this, and he just kept on going about "How she really really did."

He would have to go and do this right before his big acting debut tomorrow night in the opera the school is performing. Now the talent scouts in the audience might pass over him because his pretty boy looks have been damaged. So much for me living the life of luxury while Quinn brings in the big bucks with his acting career. We've received notice that we're not allowed to take pictures or take video during the opera itself, but they'll put out a DVD that we have to pay $30 or $40 if we want to see the performance. Seems like a that's a racket to me. Catherine's ballet recital is going to be the same way. No pictures or video and they'll sell you a DVD of the performance. What a ripoff. Doesn't mean we won't be there purchasing one of both of them though.

Grammy came up today so that she'll be here for the opera tomorrow night. And while Grammy was up she helped Ginger sow some new curtains for the dining room. I only got one in the picture, but there's another one that looks like this one on the other side of the window. I forgot to ask if they went out to eat for lunch, but I think Grammy might have gotten here sometime after lunch. I should add though that we did eat dinner at home tonight. So maybe that whole Grammy's here let's eat out trend has gone the way white leisure suits.


Yet another flower picture. I keep hoping to recapture the magic in the flower photo from last week, but no such luck.

Docktar Voom

I know what you might be thinking. What? Another comic book post? Well, not really. This one is about Second Life. What's that you ask? Good question since I had never heard of this thing myself until Buddy did a post about it. It's another in a slew of MMORPGs, although I'm not sure this one qualifies as a game as much as an experience. There's no real goals, you just hang out and either try and make money or just socialize. Finally, a computer game I can play that simulates how boring regular life can be! Log on and go to work! Yes! It's like telecommuting in my free time. The Wiki page on Second Life probably has a more unbiased opinion of it. The one thing I found interesting is that creating a basic account (that doesn't allow land ownership) is free (and we all know how I like free).


So I downloaded it gave it a whirl. Your 'name' is your unique identifier. And the way you pick your name is a bit limited. You can choose any first you want, and then you can choose from a list of last names. This was disappointing and expected at the same time, since I was going in with the idea of choosing something like Phil McKraken or Ben Dover (yes, I'm actually that immature), but obviously the designers anticipated there would be people like me and came up with this system to prevent that. So I ended up choosing Docktar Voom. And yes, I had to got through a crap load of possible iterations before I found one that was available. And there's some character customization which I obviously used. It's nowhere near as comprehensive a character designer as you would get in something like City of Heroes. I'm sure there are ways to make it more tailored, but it was tough just getting the basic Doom look (which I don't really think I got). So instead of Doom's costume, I look like some dude wearing a skirt who has a really big butt. And I couldn't make a hoodie either. The game isn't the prettiest thing I've ever seen, but the graphics are passable. There may be a way to improve rendering, but as slow as it was running, I won't be doing that on my machine. And it runs windowed, so it's pretty darned slow at times (at least on my old clunker 1.5 GHz Athlon that only has a Gig of memory). Some of the movement is non intuitive to use, freelook in particular. There are basic navigational aspects that most people would be familiar with from other games though (and apparently everyone can fly). Having said all that, I might log on just to see specialty things like National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration's island (once again, thanks to Buddy for pointing that one out to me).


Oh yea, the obligatory kid shot. Quinn wanted to wear his goggles to school this morning. As cool as he looked, I had to make him leave them at home.


And what the heck, why not throw in another flower shot while I'm at it.

Leveling

Quinn wore the shirt he got at his birthday party from Pump It Up today. Both him and Catherine spent this morning coloring it. They were pretty proud of it so I promised I would put it up.


Been playing around with Gimp some more. Trying to get a handle on the Levels and Curves tools. You seem to really be able to cause some drastic changes with those tools. The two images I was playing with only got limited benefit from the tools since the Green channel was present across the entire range for the most part. I obviously don't have a complete handle on it just yet, but tonight was a wonderful learning experience. I tried using Photoshop Elements to do the changes first, but it didn't appear to have the tools for Levels or Curves. Either that or I just didn't know how to access them (if I had to guess, it's probably the later rather than the former).

Ace Wins

So here's pictures of the stage that we built last night. The kids in the school painted the tarp. There are actually two tarps, and yes, we realize that the colors don't match up, but that wasn't us. We built a wooden frame to support the tarp, the brown paper and the black sheets. I also reran the wires for the microphones (they had all been going over top of the stage before). I still can't believe the thing is as sturdy as it is consider how little overall time was spent putting everything together.


The regular television season is over. We've entered the repeat wasteland and I've burned through all the shows I had stored up on the TiVo that I was even marginally interested in watching but could never find the time. Back to watching movies I suppose. I got Smokin' Aces through Netflix because I had seen the commercials for it when it came out and it looked like an interesting action flick. The movie isn't long on plot, it's about a guy that's connected that decides to turn state evidence and the mob decides they don't want him saying anything. Once word about the size of the bounty hits the streets every hitman (and woman) within driving distance is coming to take the guy out and claim their reward. Stir in some Feds trying to protect him and add a dash of flavor with some behind the scenes manipulations and you have yourself the basic movie. There are a lot of players in this film. In fact part of the whole aspect of the movie is how many people are out to whack this one guy. The movie is very very predictable in that I personally think they telegraph just about everything (except for one minor aspect at the end that I missed). But I didn't rent this one for a twist ending or mystery, it was all for the action scenes. And there's a fair number of them. There are a lot balls / plotlines being juggled simultaneously in this film and it's hard to keep everything tight with that much going on. Having said that, it does a really admirable job of keeping everything moving and staying on message, and they even manage to squeeze in minor bits and pieces of character development here and there (no small task when your cast is twelve plus people). If you do grab this, be sure to watch the outtakes / blooper reel. There's a scene in it with Ben Affleck playing pool where I was just about dying from laughing so hard. Overall if you're looking for an action flick, this one I feel is a bit better than average.

I Am The Weakest Link

Ginger had to help with some annual nursery cleaning thing after church, so I had both them until she got home around 3:30. And it was raining today, so playing outside wasn't an option. First though we had to get through lunch, which took close to two hours all by itself. I don't know what the deal is with the kids not wanting to actually eat when they're at the table, but this is crazy. I finally had to bribe them to get them to actually finish. I told Quinn he could play some video games and I told Catherine she could watch 1 TV show. That seemed to do the trick initially, but then they stalled and it still felt like it took forever for them to finish.




After the video games and the television show, the kids found other activities to entertain them. Catherine played with playdough and Quinn put together some small foam cars he had gotten earlier. Quinn also played with Catherine at the playdough table for a bit while he was waiting on the glitter glue he used on the foam cars to dry.


I don't know why, but this bugs me to no end. We have playdough in a huge container with red, yellow and blue in it. And when the colors get all mixed up it drives me nuts. I really don't understand why it bothers me so much, but it does. And Catherine just mixes and mixes the colors (if I didn't know better, I would think she knows how much it bothers me). Check the first picture today and notice the huge wad of purple playdough on the little table? Yea, that's all that's left of the red and blue. And from the looks of things the yellow won't escape much longer.

Once Ginger got home there wasn't much time left before I had to leave to be at the school to help setup the stage for the opera the extended day kids are putting on next week. Ginger volunteered me for this task. I foolishly showed up thinking it would be about an hour of moving some stuff around. Then I walked in and all the other guys had power tools. I pretty much knew I was in trouble at that point. Yea, so when they said 'setup' what they actually meant was build an entire set. I wish I had taken my camera to get pictures of it during construction and then when it was finished (I may get a chance next week to get a picture when I drop off Quinn at school). So I ended up being there for three hours. I was definitely the weakest link of the lot of us and if there was a vote I'm pretty sure I would have been the first one off the island. I ended up with lots of the moving stuff around tasks. Move that grand piano over there, move this frame, hold it here while we drill, rearrange the stage pieces. Fun stuff. I was sweating like a pig through most of the work. Luckily one of the guys was a professional contractor and had brought his work tools. He was without a doubt the most competent and fastest guy there. Without him it would have taken significantly longer. And I hear Ginger also volunteered me to help tear the set down after the performance this coming Friday. More fun.

Swings, A Birthday, Cupcakes And The Pool

Another Saturday has come and gone. Another busy day for us here. Catherine had her hair braided for a while, then took out the braids. She really liked the resulting look and insisted on showing it off for the camera. I still haven't decided whether I like it or not yet myself, but at the same time, if she likes it, that's really all that matters.


Ginger must have read yesterday's blog entry since she decided we should go to the school near our house where there's a playground with swings and a bunch of equipment. This gave me a couple more chances to try to get that swinging shot I wanted from yesterday. They turned out better than yesterday, but it's still not exactly what I'm looking for in the shot. Catherine wasn't swinging as high as Quinn today so that's why the fence is visible in the shot with her versus the shot with Quinn.




We couldn't stay at the playground for too long. For one we had to get home to get lunch. Quinn also had a birthday party to attend today that he needed to be at by two. And since it was so hot out Catherine's face was really turning red. Not sure what's up with that but her and extreme heat evidently don't get along very well.


While Ginger took Quinn to the birthday party I tried to get Catherine to take a nap. Evidently Ginger has the magic touch with that since she would never sit still and eventually we just gave up on the idea of napping entirely and came downstairs and made cupcakes together. I let her do all the mixing of the ingredients and topping off the batter in the cups. I also let her lick the beaters which I didn't see anything wrong with since I used to do that all the time as a kid, but I thought Ginger was going to blow a gasket when I told her later in the day once her and Quinn got home. Ginger's very concerned with the prospect of getting Salmonellosis from the raw eggs. According the egg safety website I've learned that on average 1 in 20,000 eggs may contain salmonella, which puts the chance of getting it at 0.005% (five one-thousandths of one percent). But since the cake batter needed three eggs I suppose the actual percentage is 0.015%. What I've also learned is statistics mean nothing and never do something that a mother feels may threaten their child. Which is a fancy way of saying despite the fact I personally don't think it's a big deal, I promise I won't do it again.


And we decided to cap the day off by heading by the pool later in the day for a bit. Nothing quite as eventful as yesterday occurred since we all had our pool passes with us today.

Spirit Of The Pool Versus Letter Of The Pool

Hang onto your hats folks, this is a long one. So Catherine had a Birthday party to attend Friday in the late afternoon, so while Ginger took Catherine to that, Quinn and I tried to go to the pool. Here's the thing though, they've recently changed the rules for entry into the pool for our neighborhood. You need these pool pass cards now. The problem was Ginger had them and she was up in Reston at the Nature Center for the party. So when we got the gate, I tried to explain the problem, showed them my driver's license which clearly has my address which is in the community, and they still wouldn't let me in. They did offer to let me pay to get in and then later I could get reimbursed for my receipt, the problem being since I never carry cash I only had $1 on me.

So they turned us away and Quinn started crying his head off (which I actually thought might sway the guy at the desk, but no, apparently he was a completely unfeeling pool Nazi simply following orders and didn't care if he made a small child cry). I went home scrounging for money and couldn't locate any there either. I suppose I could have broken into the kids piggy banks, but I didn't think of that until just now as I'm writing this out (d'oh). So I ended up calling the president of the Recreation Association for our neighborhood to explain what was going on and see if there was any type of compromise. I even tried something that's a novel approach for me, during the conversation I was nice and polite. Once I had explained the situation she didn't give me any options and then started being overly defensive about how she was having dinner with her family and didn't have time to deal with this. Despite what all my instincts said to do, I kept on being nice and polite and explained that I was sorry to bother her during dinner, but I just need some type of option here since I had a crying child that really wanted to go the pool. What I didn't do, even though I wanted to, was explain that by holding the position of president of the recreation association she may at times have to deal with things even when it wasn't convenient for her. She eventually calmed down a bit and even offered to have the pool manager Phil call her if I couldn't get in. I still wanted to try and obey the rules though, so I called Ginger to find out if there was any money in the house and she pointed to me where we have some emergency money at the house. Which was a 100 dollar bill.

So armed with that we went back and tried to get in again. Even though I mentioned I had talked to the recreation association president and she said it would be okay, they still wouldn't let me in and next thing you know I'm talking with Phil. The only option I was being given was to pay the guest fee, but they couldn't break the $100. Since they had pointed out that I could get reimbursed for the guest fee later, I offered to pay $50 a person to get in and I would just come back by later and get it once I had possession of the pool passes again. They wouldn't do that either though because they didn't want to be responsible for handling that much money. So once I asked Phil what our possible options were at this point, he finally conceded to let me in without paying the guest fee, but he gave me the 'ultimatum' that he "was going to need to see the pool passes or get the guest fee by the end of the night." Deal! (I didn't bother mentioning that had this been presented as an option earlier we all would be in a better mood at this point).


I called Ginger and told her the situation, and she said that she would bring the passes by on the way home from the party. Although once they eventually did show up Catherine decided to wander around the in baby pool in her dress by holding the dress up above the water, which worked fine until she tripped and got completely soaked. We all ended up sticking around for fifteen minutes more at that point.

So here's the the part that I really don't understand. I asked Phil why that we as residential individuals had to carry around this card to let us in, and why couldn't the cards simply be kept at the pool and the staff could look through for the passes when people showed up. He explained they couldn't be responsible for keeping passes for everyone in the neighborhood (even though last year they had a book with everyone's photo in it). But apparently the whole point of the pool passes was the association thought too many people that didn't live in the neighborhood were entering without paying the guest fee. This would be directly related to negligence of the pool staff checking the book as people came in. And yet, they didn't want to be responsible for handling the $100 because (and I found this out from Ginger later) they had some issues last year with money being taken from the till. Seems to me that the people in the neighborhood are being burdened with all this crap because of the lack of accountability and responsibility of the members of the pool staff (and yes, I know most of them are just teenagers, but come on). Even better, we're doing this new method to insure guests pay a fee that they apparently believe the staff is just going take. What the heck? I just don't understand why they have this hard and fast rule that only sticks to the letter of the rule and not the spirit of it. I mean it was obvious when I offered to pay $50 a person that I wasn't trying to sneak into the pool without paying. I'm not sure who I should be upset with at this point, the recreation association for the stupid rule, the staff at the pool for following the letter of the laws instead of the spirit, or whether I should just be upset with the general state of things in the nation as a whole that actually lead to there being a need for this type of crap. At least the pool was fun once we got there.

Hot School Hot Picnic Hot Hot Hot

The kid's school had their end of the year picnic today. So of course it was about 160 degrees in the shade. Okay, I may be exaggerating a tad on that, but it was pretty hot. Easily low to mid 90s I would say. I was especially feeling it since I had come from work and was wearing jeans instead of shorts like any sane person would wear outside today. And the heat made it so Catherine was ready to leave after about half an hour (although she would get her second and third wind when the swings would open up).


So Catherine's done with school for this year, and Quinn has one more week to go. So that's it for Ginger's free time at home between 9:10 and 11:30. No more staying at home and eating bon bons for her. And yes, that's a joke, she's always very busy doing errands during that time. Which means I'll probably end up having to run some of the errands she normally did over the summer. Either that or she'll just cowboy up and take both kids with her on errands now (that's not something I would envy doing).


I have this neat idea for a picture. I want to take it of the kids one the swing as they swing all the way back. And take it from in the middle of their swing path so you're looking up at them. I tried this a couple times today, but I never got the results I was looking for, the above is the closest I got. Part of the problem is I didn't have the ISO speed high enough to freeze the action so most shots were a touch out of focus. The other problem was trying to get into position, get the shot and get out of the way before the kids slammed into you. That was actually the tougher part. This was further compounded by the fact that Catherine would then try to kick me as she went by, so not only did I have to get out of the way, I had to avoid the foot of death also.


I looked back at the post from last year's picnic just for comparison purposes. In addition to getting the feeling that Quinn's a player and doesn't know it, I believe I've gotten better at composition of shots over the past year. At least I think I have.


And just like last year, Rob and his clan was there this year also. I think I like the photo of them from last year better than this one. I should have used the flash for fill in lighting I suppose.