While my wife is at work, I’m trying to catch up on my postings.  So bear with me as I might have a lot of stuff to get out.

Saturday in the city was a nice relaxed day.  We lounged about for a while, then went mall-hopping for clothes, and other stuff.  I got myself a new knife!  It’s just plain sexy, nice titanium handle… Sweet blade… It’s a great knife.  Brandy got a variety of shirts, and some letter openers.  Then for both of us, we got a lava lamp!  I’ve been wanting one forever, and she used to have one but missed it.  So when one of the stores we were at was selling them for $19 (for a HUGE one) we couldn’t say no.  We spent half of last night staring at it, waiting for it to melt all the wax properly.  I had no idea it took that long.  And at some point, we’re going to get another lifetime desire of mine, and invest in a fog machine.  But that won’t be for a while, as it’s rather low on my list of things to buy… But she does want it too, which is nice.

After getting back to the hotel, we decided to give the hottub a try.  That was the biggest disappointment of them all… It wasn’t a hottub.  It was a roomtemperaturetub.  Oh well, was still rather relaxing.

Sunday we went to the local zoo for a day of picture taking.  Looking at the prices, and how much we had enjoyed the past trip (and were looking forward to this one), we decided to get the couples annual pass.  Just have to go two more times in the next year to make it pay itself off, and then some.  So, if anyone wants to go to the zoo let us know!  We’ll get you discounts inside

This round at the zoo was a lot more relaxed than last time, as we had more time to get everything done.  I was enjoying all the photos I got to take, but alas I was enjoying them a bit too much… a 1 gig card is just too small for this camera.  Before we were even halfway done with the zoo, I was getting close to running out of pictures to take.  So, we just went to the bird show and took off.  I did get a whole lot of good pictures though!  The best of which are located here.  Also, go look at my flora pictures here.  Please give feedback on the pictures, I want to get better and need criticism to do so!

And here is the promised report of the reunion.  Alas, since it’s been so long, chances are I’ll not have much in way of detail… But there really wasn’t much to detail to be honest.

Saturday morning we head to the “lunch in the park” and I smirk to myself (and Brandy) about the number of mini-vans in the parking lot, and me on my motorcycle.  We get there, and a few people were nice and came and introduced themselves.  Mostly joined with “Yeah, I don’t really remember you much from school,” but that was just about what I expected.  I realized too late that this really was just a chance for all the families to come and show off their kids.  So naturally, we felt a little out of place.  Then, seemingly out of nowhere an actual friend showed up!  Ironically, it was the one I mentioned in an earlier post, with my Led Zeppelin CDs.  Thanks to him showing up, I felt the lunch thing was worth it.  He has a lovely wife, and a adorable daughter.  We spent the whole time chatting, and being avoided by everyone else.  Was just like highschool!

That evening was the big dinner.  My friend and I had planned on sitting together, so we didn’t feel like total outcasts.  It’s a good thing we did too, because no one else came to our table until literally every other seat was full.  Again, just like highschool.  At least this time around I was amused by it, and not depressed   The dinner was ok, mostly just chatting with my friend and remembering all the stupid things we did.  They did some slideshow thing with pictures of everyone to music.  Was rather lame.  Then they did an “open mic” thing for a while, and several people got up and said their speal.  Fortunately, I didn’t have any urge to get up and say anything.  Did think about just showing off my wife… But that would have been without class.  And if nothing else, I have class

The night ended, we sat for a couple minutes to see if anyone came to say hi, then headed out.  All in all, was an ok day, but not something I’d look forward to doing any time soon.  Was nice to get back together with my friend, and we are planning on keeping in touch this time around.  Guess we see what happens in the next 10 years!

There should be more coming soon, but I wanted to post the pictures I took at the aquarium. Feedback is desired!

I will have more pictures up soon, it takes a lot longer than I thought to narrow down 500+ pictures to a couple dozen…

So, we have a little bit of downtime before bedtime, and I thought I’d do a bit of updating.  Today has been absolutely wonderful to say the least.  But where to start…

I made waffles!  Ok, waffle.  The place we’re staying at has a really cool waffle iron for breakfast waffles.  I will admit, it’s almost enough to make me want to have one at home… Fresh waffles are better than I thought they’d be.  After that, we went on a photography tour of the city.  Or at least a couple blocks of it.

Guess I should talk about my new child, huh…  It seems my dear wife took my birthday hint from a few posts back to heart, and actually got me that amazingly nice camera.  So I am now the proud owner of a Canon EOS 30D.  His name is Odin.  And all I can say (without a huge post, that no doubt will come eventually) is WOW!  This camera just makes taking amazingly beautiful pictures easy.  I’ve been using him every chance I can get lately, and am constantly impressed by what he produces.  But more details about that will come.

So yeah, we did a whole lot of playing with the camera.  I’ve been finding myself drawn to taking close up pictures of everything around me.  I’ve done a ton of floral shots, even catching a few bees here and there.  Also played with settings for long exposures of moving water, making indoor shots look good, and other such things.  The accessory we picked up for Odin was a mono-pod for ease of use and stability.  I really like what I’ve been able to do with it, and it compacts down pretty good as well.  Brandy, who is actually better trained in photography than me, has also been making good use of our new baby.  After a couple hours of snapping photos, we ran back here and dumped the memory card (Eventually need to get a much bigger one… The free 1 gig one we got just isn’t cutting it).   Then off to the aquarium!

I fear in general the aquarium was actually quite the disappointment.  It’s currently housed in an old supermarket, and is a lot smaller than I had expected.  Turns out this is just the preview for what they will be able to do, if they get tons of money.  I’m not saying it was a terrible time, just that I had been expecting a whole lot more.  But, there were some pleasant surprises to be had there anyway.  The lighting was quite dim through the whole area, so I was worried that my current lense on the camera wouldn’t be able to take all that great of pictures.  But hey, digital pics are free so I figured why not just take a ton and see what happens.  About 200 pictures later, we finally left.  I expected maybe 1/3 of the pictures to be ok, but when we got them to the computer I was surprised to find that just about every single one of them was tons better than I expected!  There were some crappy shots, as will happen with anything, but there were so many really good ones.  When I have my real internet connection back up, I’ll upload a selection and find out what everyone thinks
After that, back here to dump the memory card again, and off to dinner.  I’ll spare everyone all the details… But we did eat at Benihana.  Mmmmm…  Was simply divine.  Not sure what the plans are for the rest of the weekend, but we might go try and visit the zoo again at some point.  If anyone has any suggestions of what to do in the city, feel free to let us know!

So I know I’ve promised to write about my 10 year reunion… But you get to wait a bit longer for that than I expected.  But for good reason.  See, it turns out my wife has been planning a surprise for me for over three months.  I knew something was going to happen, but nothing about what, when, where, or who would be involved.  I guessed the why, but turns out I was wrong for that one as well.  Turns out just about everyone I interact with has been involved in it as well to some level, so before I go into more details I just want to say Bravo to all who took part.  I was completely blindsided by the actual surprise.  You all did an amazing job!

So, last night (Wednesday night) Brandy and I went to go see Journey and Def Leopard in concert.  I will have to do another post about that, as it does deserve a full post by itself.  After the concert, we sat in the parking lot forever waiting for the crowds to leave, while having a wonderful conversation.  Headed home around 12:30, but stopped to pick up some slurpees.  On the way back to the car, a most unusual event occurred…  She asked me for the keys to the car.  That never happens!  Fortunately, she had warned me weeks before that at some point I was going to be asked to do something odd, and she’d let me know when that was.  Guess that was it.  I seriously had no idea what on earth was going on.  I had expected a gathering of people or something, so finding out that the surprise was happening in the middle of the night… Going further north from where we were (I live 50ish miles south from there)…  Just threw me completely for a loop.  I helped her get back on the freeway (Northbound!) and was told I’d need to keep my eyes closed for a while.  Not trusting myself to do so, I took my overshirt off and blindfolded myself.  That took a lot more trust than I expected… I can’t handle not being able to see where I’m going in a car.  A short drive later, I’m being led through a parking lot.  Good thing I blindfolded myself, I know I’d have opened my eyes when I started bumping into cars.  Then in through a couple doors, and up an elevator?  Where on earth was I?  One more door later and it was all revealed to me.  See, she had gotten us a nice room in a hotel here in town for the rest of the week.  It was a surprise vacation!  Also, we did it because we never really got a real honeymoon.  The plotting and planning for this event had been going on for months, and it went flawlessly.  I have to say I am so proud of her, that she did such an amazing job with everything.  So, now I know what really happened that morning…

During the day, before we left to the concert, Brandy was in “meetings” all day, and I was “helping” a friend at their house with a computer.  I guess what really happened was I was getting lured out of the house so Brandy could run back and pack a bag for the trip without me knowing.  Then, her second “meeting” that was out of the office was so she could run up here and check in to the hotel.  After that, she just got to sit around being nervous that everything was going to fall apart.  Silly girl, it all went perfectly!

Since then we’ve been having a lot of fun here in the city.  Today we got some supplies for my… Umm… new toy (and birthday present, see future posts for details), ate out, then went to see a laser Pink Floyd show.  The show was outstanding, in a way that only Pink Floyd can be.  Tomorrow the plans so far consist of going to some local sites and taking pictures, and heading to the aquarium for fun and more pictures!  From then on, I guess we play it by ear.

Thanks to the free internet here I might be able to post more, assuming I find time to!  Again, thanks from both of us to everyone who helped out.  I know she couldn’t have done it without you.  And back to my vacation!

Near the end of June, I did some “work” as an assistant photographer for a wedding of a family friend. My brother has started getting into higher end photography as of late, and had been doing a couple shoots for engagement photos etc. One of the couples he did that for asked him to do their wedding as well. He knew I was also interested in getting more into photography as a hobby, so he was kind enough to ask me to join in as a second photographer. I was very excited for the chance!

The day went very well in my opinion. I really enjoyed the role I got to play in the whole scenario, being able to be known as a “photographer” but still getting away with a lot of candid shots, and not direct angles. It really got me wanting to get more into photography… And helped me realize that while my current camera is a wonderful camera, it is still very very limited. As is normal for me, I started looking into what I could upgrade to. A lot. Oh, and in case anyone is curious, my birthday is coming up.

Anyway, the event went very well, and fun was had by all. Some of the shots (though probably none of mine) are available at my brother’s website. We did shots at a local temple, the luncheon, and at a local art museum. We were repaid for our time way too much in my opinion… But then again, it’s nice to be appreciated. The only downside being I’m not looking so much into what better cameras can do that I just don’t seem to want to use mine anymore

A couple weeks after that was the grand 4th of July parade. In my city, it’s an event that causes chaos on the streets for days before and after the event, and this year was no different. I live right on one of the streets that the parade goes down, though I’m in an apartment complex and didn’t really have any sort of view of it, but it did mean that if I so desired I could camp out on the lawn in front of the apartment and watch. I did not desire to do so, but fortunately my wife’s family did! We layed out a tarp several days before the parade, and they camped out the night before to make sure it stayed there. Suffice it to say, we had really good seats for the parade this year.

Even though I lament about wanting a new camera so much that I’d never use my current one, I still used it quite a bit. Sadly they weren’t the more artistic pictures I’ve been craving, but it was a lot of fun. Even took a ton of pictures of the giant Hello Kitty balloon for a friend! Guess I should get those to her, huh.

That’s it for this update. Maybe I’ll talk about the giant spider that made it into my house at some point… Sucker was huge, and was a large debate on if it was a hobo spider, or a wolf spider. I know, the suspense is killing you

So yeah… As predicted I stopped writing posts pretty quick there.  But this time I have somewhat of an excuse!  Once again, I am playing World of Warcraft.  My wife and I started up playing last month, and are having quite the blast playing together.  Currently we have two level 33 characters on the brand new Sentinals server.  We also play quite a bit with a couple other local friends.  Looking forward to finally hitting level 60 this round!

The reunion is tomorrow…  Not sure if I’m ready for that, but chances are I’m building too much into it and there will be like 10 people there none of which will know who I am.  But at least it will be a good excuse to get out of the house.  I do promise my attentive readers that I will have a report on it within 4 days of the event.  And if I don’t… well, come find me and slap me or something!

Sadly it’s been so long since I last posted that I don’t remember all the details of the other subjects I was supposed to write on… But I’ll do what I can.  In another post!