I was able to get off of work a bit early today. No one was home and I still had a couple of hours of sunlight left, so I decided to break out the new camera gear and try and take some pictures. Seeing the sun this time of year is a very rare occurrence as most of the time it is overcast and the times it’s not I’m stuck inside my cubicle and never see the light of day. Yes, sunrise is 7:45 and sunset is 4:00. So I never get to be outside when it’s sunny.
I was able to use my new polarizing filters to try and capture the very pretty sunset we had tonight. Here is a sample. The rest can be found on my Flickr page.
December 29th, 2006
Ah, Christmas was good to me. I awoke to the sound of excited kids yelling that “Santa Came!!!” and a house full of happiness. Well, Santa left me something special in my stocking this year (no, I wasn’t expecting coal). I’m now the proud owner of a new Canon 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM lens.
I haven’t had much time to get it out and take any pics with it, but I hope to take care of that today. I’ll post results.
Thank you so much honey. You’re still in trouble for blowing the Christmas budget though.
December 27th, 2006
The other day Mike posted a blog entry that described the random thoughts he had throughout the day. It also reminded me of a story on NPR’s Wait Wait, Don’t Tell Me that I heard the week before where they mentioned a line in a book saying that the average man thinks about sex every 54 seconds out of the day. I thought both pieces were interesting, so I decided to also jot down the things that I think about during the day. But for me, I have to keep my random thoughts to under 54 seconds as to not encroach on quality time. 
Sitting here with the power out wondering if Mike is going to ever show up to take me to work. Either his alarm didn’t go off, he hit snooze too many times, a tree fell on his house or he’s being blocked by the power company fixing the lines down the road. I’m also wondering if I should be the good neighbor and go up the road and help the people that are obviously cutting the rest of the trees out of the road after the wind storm last night. Oops, times up. I’m getting in the car as I don’t think Mike is going to make it.
Ummm, no power and it’s Friday. That means I get to eat an extra large breakfast at work. Yummy.
I wonder when my annoying coworker will ever shut up. I sure hope Santa brings me those noise cancelling headphones I asked for for Christmas. Somehow I don’t think they would block out all the sound, but it would be better than nothing.
Man am I behind on my Christmas shopping. Guess I better order that stuff I wanted before it’s too late to get here. Done, should be here next week.
I’m getting very tired of the comment spam since I went to WordPress. Wonder if there is a good plug-in out there to take care of that.
Will the power ever come back on? It’s been out for 15 hours now and I’m sure BJ is going nuts with the kids not having anything to do. What would they do with a week without power? That would be an interesting experiment. Anyone want to take my kids and try it out?
Sitting in my boss’s boss office wondering why he’s getting so excited about multi-line tooltips. I thought it was cool when I found out about how to do it, but he’s about ready to have an accident. Wonder if I should just leave him alone and let him enjoy the moment.
Having a couple of beers with the group to celebrate a coworker’s recent engagement. I don’t understand why the guys in the room keep talking like they are back in the dark ages about marriage. It’s the best thing I’ve ever done. I know, sometimes anyone can get on your nerves, but the good times seriously outnumber those. I hope it all works out for them.
Oops, forgot Mike wasn’t driving home. Wonder if he left me the keys before he took off? Yup, there they are. Got lucky. He forgot the other thing I asked him for the other day before he got 100ft from my house, how could I expect him to plan ahead and leave me the keys. Just my lucky day I guess.
What can I bring home to the family to make them feel better after a long day without power? Nothing came to mind.
Long quiet drive home alone with not much to think about. It’s Friday and my brain is dead.
Time to work on the Christmas movie again. I’ve lost my enthusiasm when I had to start all over. It will be very cool when it’s done, but right now I wish I was done with this #%&* thing.
Time to curl up and go to sleep. I set my alarm so that I could get up early and work on the movie again. I don’t actually think I’ll get up to do it though.
December 16th, 2006
Well, success may not be all it’s cracked up to be. Following my catering endeavor last weekend I’ve now received a call from someone to cater a luncheon. Just my luck. I would love to do it, but there are a few technical matters that may keep me from being able to. First, I don’t have a business set up, two, I don’t have a place to cook food, third, I still have a regular job to do… the list goes on. I hope this great word of mouth doesn’t go wasted. It makes me very happy that people thought so highly of my cooking to recommend me to someone, but it also saddens me greatly to know that I may not be able to take advantage of it.
We’ll see what happens. Who knows, this time next year I could be catering my company’s Christmas party instead of going to it. Wouldn’t that be something?
December 8th, 2006