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!