We're going to a concert! !
All right, it's not until the end of April, but I'm still excited. Loreena McKennitt, who makes beautiful music, is finally doing another tour. Last fall, she released An Ancient Muse, the first album she'd done in close to ten years. (Long story, but she took some time off after her fiance's death.) I didn't discover her music until after the last tour, so DH and I swore that we'd get tickets the next time she was anywhere in our area, which we figured would be Chicago at the closest. And we were giving "area" a very broad definition, including the option of going to Canada for a concert if we had to. She's been touring Europe the past few months, which unfortunately is too far away to fit our broadly-defined area. :(
But, last Friday, the Loreena Yahoo-group was buzzing with the news that some tour dates had appeared on Ticketmaster's website. More buzzing, all weekend, because tickets went on pre-sale today, and everyone was excited and somewhat frantic over the passwords that TicketMaster requires for pre-sales. But Quinlan Road, Loreena's music publishing studio, came through with the passwords and a complete schedule today. And, after choking briefly at TM's assorted fees (*), DH and I now have two tickets to see Loreena at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville TN.
(*) Seriously, folks - TM charges $2.50 for the honor of printing out your own stinking ticket! Using your own paper, printer, and ink. It's insane. Plus the $9.80 per ticket "convenience charge."
And get this: we got awesome seats. Front row, not-quite-center. Beautiful! The Universe is compensating for the really, really, really crappy seats I had for the George Strait concert at the state fair about 15 years ago.
I mean, it was bad. The concert was in the grandstand, so there weren't assigned seats. If you got there early, you had good seats. Otherwise, not so much. I was there with about half a dozen family members, including a cousin, aunt and uncle. We spent the day at the fair, and my uncle made the mistake of giving my cousin B her ticket, and telling her to meet us back at the grandstand gate at a certain time. The time came, we got in line close to the front, and B still hadn't shown up. So we kept letting people go in ahead of us, while we waited for my cousin. Finally, we went in and left Uncle standing near the gate. By this time, the folding chairs were full and we had to hunt for a seat. We finally ended up with the worst possible seats: no chairs, we were perched on a pipe rail in front of the chain link fence. Between the beer wagon and the ambulance, and right behind a very drunk woman who was standing on her chair trying to sing. It was an unforgettable experience. Oh, and my cousin? Well, since she had her ticket, she went in without finding us. She was in the first five rows somewhere. I don't recall my uncle's reaction, but I could have smacked her. And as you can tell, I'm still a little bitter.
Monday, February 12, 2007
Friday, February 9, 2007
An epiphany of sorts
We've been plagued with gnats lately. Okay, not plagued, at least not like a few years ago (more on that later), but there's enough of a population to be irritating. And this morning, I found out why.
I decided to poke around in the variegated ginger plant that I mentioned yesterday. What's left of it, anyway, since it's dormant and all the leaves are thus dried out. I was hoping to find that I hadn't really drowned the poor thing, after spinning in mental circles for a full day before buying it. So, upon poking in the dirt around it, I see a handful of gnats take flight, and have my "Aha!" moment. Fungus gnats. Again. Oy vey. These little buggers like to live in damp soil, and are pretty hardy. They're also attracted to light, which is why my LCD computer monitor always has at least one knocking into it.
Anyway, the ginger rhizome doesn't appear to have rotted away, I don't believe, so there's hope for it yet. I disturbed the soil in the pot, to hopefully help it dry out faster, both to save the plant and control the gnat population. I haven't been watering the houseplants as often as they'd like, so the gnats aren't too out of control yet. Thank goodness. About two years ago, they were thick in the house. Nasty little critters, with a habit of taking kamikaze dives into my water glass, as well as trying to fly up my nose as I was waking up in the morning. Fun, no? After much research, I decided that the common gnat-killing liquid (Gnatrol ®) was too expensive for my taste. After more research, I discovered that the remedy for gnats, a bacteria called Bacillus thuringiensis var. israelensis, is also the active ingredient in the little mosquito dunks that hardware stores sell for ponds, etc. So, on to the home-grown idea - soak a mosquito dunk in water, and use the resulting brew to water the plants with.
At the same time, I also went the Darwin route and stopped watering the plants, which allowed the potting soil to dry out, and thus made a more hostile environment as far as the Stinking Gnats were concerned. I believe the plants went at least 6 weeks with little or no water, and probably longer. What water was given was the B. Thuringiensis water. Luckily, I didn't lose any plants, but then I tend to only keep the tough ones around. Like the aquarium inhabitents, anything with seriously picky constitutions doesn't last long. I gave up on poinsettias for the same reason I stopped buying neon tetras - I can't get the darn things to live. So I have my spider plants, Christmas cacti, and zebra danios, all good hardy stock.
Anyway, now that I know what's going on, I can dry out the poor ginger plant, hopefully save it, and cut down the gnat population as well. Luckily I still have some flystrips left from the last go-round.
I decided to poke around in the variegated ginger plant that I mentioned yesterday. What's left of it, anyway, since it's dormant and all the leaves are thus dried out. I was hoping to find that I hadn't really drowned the poor thing, after spinning in mental circles for a full day before buying it. So, upon poking in the dirt around it, I see a handful of gnats take flight, and have my "Aha!" moment. Fungus gnats. Again. Oy vey. These little buggers like to live in damp soil, and are pretty hardy. They're also attracted to light, which is why my LCD computer monitor always has at least one knocking into it.
Anyway, the ginger rhizome doesn't appear to have rotted away, I don't believe, so there's hope for it yet. I disturbed the soil in the pot, to hopefully help it dry out faster, both to save the plant and control the gnat population. I haven't been watering the houseplants as often as they'd like, so the gnats aren't too out of control yet. Thank goodness. About two years ago, they were thick in the house. Nasty little critters, with a habit of taking kamikaze dives into my water glass, as well as trying to fly up my nose as I was waking up in the morning. Fun, no? After much research, I decided that the common gnat-killing liquid (Gnatrol ®) was too expensive for my taste. After more research, I discovered that the remedy for gnats, a bacteria called Bacillus thuringiensis var. israelensis, is also the active ingredient in the little mosquito dunks that hardware stores sell for ponds, etc. So, on to the home-grown idea - soak a mosquito dunk in water, and use the resulting brew to water the plants with.
At the same time, I also went the Darwin route and stopped watering the plants, which allowed the potting soil to dry out, and thus made a more hostile environment as far as the Stinking Gnats were concerned. I believe the plants went at least 6 weeks with little or no water, and probably longer. What water was given was the B. Thuringiensis water. Luckily, I didn't lose any plants, but then I tend to only keep the tough ones around. Like the aquarium inhabitents, anything with seriously picky constitutions doesn't last long. I gave up on poinsettias for the same reason I stopped buying neon tetras - I can't get the darn things to live. So I have my spider plants, Christmas cacti, and zebra danios, all good hardy stock.
Anyway, now that I know what's going on, I can dry out the poor ginger plant, hopefully save it, and cut down the gnat population as well. Luckily I still have some flystrips left from the last go-round.
Wednesday, February 7, 2007
Decisions?
I may have finally decided on a camera, after much frustration and hair-pulling. Maybe. Have I mentioned that I'm the High Queen of Indecision? Especially when faced with information overload, and too many options.
At any rate, I seem to have decided on the Olympus SP-510 after finally managing to download the PDF manual and figure out the answer to the aperture question. Apparently, the f2.8-3.7 range listed in the online specs is just the minimum range. To find the full range, I had to spend an hour or two waiting for the 8MB file to download over dialup, twice, because I got an error the first time I tried to open it and it froze Acrobat the second time, and finally get DH to download it at work. According to the manual, the aperture can go up to f8, as does the SP-500. I'm still wondering why this isn't mentioned in the online specs. I also emailed their CS, asking for the aperture range on both cameras, and got a reply of f2.8-3.7, which is wrong. Go figure.
The other factor tipping the scale in favor of the SP-510 is the fact that while both the 500 and 510 have a bulb setting that will take up to an 8-minute exposure, only the 510 will work with a remote. With the 500, you apparently have to physically press the shutter release for the duration of your bulb exposure. Even with a tripod, that would cause some movement, which defeats the purpose of being able to take long exposures. It makes no sense.
So now, it seems that the only remaining decision is how to actually obtain the SP-510. If I go to a local store, say, Circuit City, I can come home with the camera in my hands, but pay $299 plus tax. If I order online, I may wait a week or so for shipping, but only pay $240. Then I have to decide on and buy the extra accoutrements that I'll need for the Big Camera Switch. For example, I'm going to be dealing with xD cards now, instead of Old Faithful's SmartMedia cards - which means deciding whether to get Standard xD, H-xD, or M-xD. And probably a new card reader, since the old one doesn't read H- and M-xD. And a new lens adapter tube, since the 510 won't use the CLA-1 from the 3020. And searching for a source for the cable remote, other than the Olympus Emporium website that will not load on my PC, no matter how empty my cache or what browser I'm using.
In other news, I got the latest, and as it turns out, last, issue of Night Sky Magazine today. Apparently there aren't enough subscribers, so they're stopping production and filling out subscriptions with Sky & Telescope instead. I'll miss my Night Sky, it was written for amateurs and beginners, which is what I am, and I liked the writers. And I procrastinated too long, so I won't get to submit any of my photos for their reader page. Darn! And just when I was going to have a neat camera that could take some sky shots. At least I've got my back issues to read.
And, after finally remembering to Google it, I discovered that my variegated ginger plant (3-gallon pot, for the awesome price of $5 at Westlake's last fall) is actually dormant for the winter. It didn't come with any info on the pot, so I didn't know if it was resting for the season or if I'd killed it. However, apparently you aren't supposed to water them much while they're dormant, and I have watered it, so I may have killed it anyway. Crap.
At any rate, I seem to have decided on the Olympus SP-510 after finally managing to download the PDF manual and figure out the answer to the aperture question. Apparently, the f2.8-3.7 range listed in the online specs is just the minimum range. To find the full range, I had to spend an hour or two waiting for the 8MB file to download over dialup, twice, because I got an error the first time I tried to open it and it froze Acrobat the second time, and finally get DH to download it at work. According to the manual, the aperture can go up to f8, as does the SP-500. I'm still wondering why this isn't mentioned in the online specs. I also emailed their CS, asking for the aperture range on both cameras, and got a reply of f2.8-3.7, which is wrong. Go figure.
The other factor tipping the scale in favor of the SP-510 is the fact that while both the 500 and 510 have a bulb setting that will take up to an 8-minute exposure, only the 510 will work with a remote. With the 500, you apparently have to physically press the shutter release for the duration of your bulb exposure. Even with a tripod, that would cause some movement, which defeats the purpose of being able to take long exposures. It makes no sense.
So now, it seems that the only remaining decision is how to actually obtain the SP-510. If I go to a local store, say, Circuit City, I can come home with the camera in my hands, but pay $299 plus tax. If I order online, I may wait a week or so for shipping, but only pay $240. Then I have to decide on and buy the extra accoutrements that I'll need for the Big Camera Switch. For example, I'm going to be dealing with xD cards now, instead of Old Faithful's SmartMedia cards - which means deciding whether to get Standard xD, H-xD, or M-xD. And probably a new card reader, since the old one doesn't read H- and M-xD. And a new lens adapter tube, since the 510 won't use the CLA-1 from the 3020. And searching for a source for the cable remote, other than the Olympus Emporium website that will not load on my PC, no matter how empty my cache or what browser I'm using.
In other news, I got the latest, and as it turns out, last, issue of Night Sky Magazine today. Apparently there aren't enough subscribers, so they're stopping production and filling out subscriptions with Sky & Telescope instead. I'll miss my Night Sky, it was written for amateurs and beginners, which is what I am, and I liked the writers. And I procrastinated too long, so I won't get to submit any of my photos for their reader page. Darn! And just when I was going to have a neat camera that could take some sky shots. At least I've got my back issues to read.
And, after finally remembering to Google it, I discovered that my variegated ginger plant (3-gallon pot, for the awesome price of $5 at Westlake's last fall) is actually dormant for the winter. It didn't come with any info on the pot, so I didn't know if it was resting for the season or if I'd killed it. However, apparently you aren't supposed to water them much while they're dormant, and I have watered it, so I may have killed it anyway. Crap.
Tuesday, February 6, 2007
Things to look forward to (and not)
In a word, TV tonight. Multiple hours of lovely goodness. Tuesday nights are like TV overload night around here (along with Fridays). On Tuesdays, we have Gilmore Girls, Veronica Mars, NCIS, The Unit, and Dirty Jobs. Talk about fun. Fridays are almost as fun, with Monk, Psych, Stargate, SG: Atlantis, Doctor Who, and occasionally Numb3rs. The saving grace for Fridays is that USA and SciFi are staggered seasons, so we usually don't have to deal with first-run eps of everything on the same night. Not so with Tuesdays - everything is new tonight. Thank goodness for VCRs. GG and VMars get recorded, the others are watched live. Mostly because the dialogue on GG and VMars is fast enough that I often have to rewind to catch something, in spite of watching with the captioning turned on. (Doesn't help that our CW affiliate has crappy reception which occasionally garbles the captioning.) The dialogue on GG isn't as fast or witty as it was in seasons past, but it's still enough that I have to pay attention. Which, since I'm usually eating dinner in front of the TV while reading the paper, is why we record.
And a note: sometimes, it's not a good idea to eat dinner while watching NCIS, especially during autopsy scenes. I'm just saying.
Speaking of Fridays, we only have a few months before Stargate returns. In a way, I'm not looking forward to it, since the unspeakable suits at SciFi decided to cancel it. Just ten new episodes left, and I'll be left with only my DVDs to enjoy. I can sort of see their point, the show has been on for a while. But while I like Ben Browder and his character, he'll never be able to fill RDA's shoes in the show. I miss O'Neill at times. But then I don't seem to be the "typical" SG1 viewer. I like the dramatic episodes, but I also think Window of Opportunity and Wormhole XTreme were freaking hilarious episodes. For humor, though, The Other Guys is probably my favorite; the scales were tipped by the appearance of Patrick McKenna and John Billingsley in the episode. For the unaware, Patrick McKenna was a regular in the Red Green Show from Canada, and had a guest role in Due South, way back when. He can portray an amazing geek, and a pretty good used-car salesman. John Billingsley was Phlox in Enterprise. (And yes, I liked Enterprise. I liked the theme song, too, specifically the early version before it was up-tempoed in later seasons. Like I said, I'm not the "typical" viewer.)
And a note: sometimes, it's not a good idea to eat dinner while watching NCIS, especially during autopsy scenes. I'm just saying.
Speaking of Fridays, we only have a few months before Stargate returns. In a way, I'm not looking forward to it, since the unspeakable suits at SciFi decided to cancel it. Just ten new episodes left, and I'll be left with only my DVDs to enjoy. I can sort of see their point, the show has been on for a while. But while I like Ben Browder and his character, he'll never be able to fill RDA's shoes in the show. I miss O'Neill at times. But then I don't seem to be the "typical" SG1 viewer. I like the dramatic episodes, but I also think Window of Opportunity and Wormhole XTreme were freaking hilarious episodes. For humor, though, The Other Guys is probably my favorite; the scales were tipped by the appearance of Patrick McKenna and John Billingsley in the episode. For the unaware, Patrick McKenna was a regular in the Red Green Show from Canada, and had a guest role in Due South, way back when. He can portray an amazing geek, and a pretty good used-car salesman. John Billingsley was Phlox in Enterprise. (And yes, I liked Enterprise. I liked the theme song, too, specifically the early version before it was up-tempoed in later seasons. Like I said, I'm not the "typical" viewer.)
Monday, February 5, 2007
A non-productive weekend
Well, that was a non-productive weekend. I don't feel like I accomplished anything at all, although we did do the grocery shopping and go to a birthday party for one of DH's nephews. Oh, and we started on our taxes. Yep, that's about it.
The birthday party demonstrated pretty effectively that ceiling fans and helium balloons don't co-exist well. The balloons survived the encounter, but the ribbon leash ended up wrapped around the fan every time. Now, why did it take everyone not one, not two, but three tries to realize this? Kids younger than 10 may say "okay" when you tell them to keep the balloon away from the fan, but there's no follow-through.
Things I meant to do, but didn't:
The birthday party demonstrated pretty effectively that ceiling fans and helium balloons don't co-exist well. The balloons survived the encounter, but the ribbon leash ended up wrapped around the fan every time. Now, why did it take everyone not one, not two, but three tries to realize this? Kids younger than 10 may say "okay" when you tell them to keep the balloon away from the fan, but there's no follow-through.
Things I meant to do, but didn't:
- visit the toy store downtown that's going out of business (it boggles my mind that a town with 100,000 people can only support a freaking Toys R Us)
- go to Hobby Lobby for the supplies I need for the Stick Horse project
- sort out the clothes that El Burrito has outgrown, which are taking up so much space in his dresser that I don't have room to put away all of his clean laundry
- hang up the night light and mobile for El Burrito so he can enjoy his crib time more
- figure out the totals for a bunch of ornaments I sold for a relative, and decide how much to charge her for doing so. Her proposed 10% was almost an insult, but she has never sold on Ebay, so she has no idea how much work there really is.
- box up enough model horses that I could then
- water the houseplants, which are woefully neglected
Friday, February 2, 2007
Trying to keep up
These days, I usually feel like I'm falling behind on everything - email, cleaning, the Never-Ending To Do list, just everything. There are things I have to do, that aren't getting done, and I don't know why. I feel like I'm doing good in that the laundry gets done every Monday, and we usually have enough clean dishes to eat dinner on (although DH washes the dishes these days, so I'm not taking any credit).
For example:
For example:
- We rearranged our life insurance last summer, after the baby was born. My policy came back higher than expected, probably from postpartum weight and all that. So, our agent says let's wait a year and get it re-rated, which would supposedly give me time to lose said weight and get into something resembling shape. I've got 5 months left. I lost some weight immediately after the baby was born (although, no joke, I was exactly one pound lighter when I got home from the hospital. I was retaining impressive amounts of fluid, mostly the $80/liter hospital saline.) but for the past six months the number on the scale hasn't moved. I haven't exercised, for whatever reason. I am seriously unmotivated, for starters. Plus, any exercise during the day has to be something I can take a baby along on. Yeah right. In the evenings, we're doing good to feed us, feed El Burrito, read the paper, and get to bed before midnight.
- EMail. Oh lord the email. My Yahoo inbox has, right now, 1307 messages, and it isn't even my main account! I have a problem with saving things to do "later" but never getting to them. An email might have a link I want to check out, or something I need to reply to, and instead of doing it now, I say "I'll do it later" or something.
- House-hunting. See yesterday's post on the lack of space. We've been saying for more than a year now that we need to get a house. All we're doing to further that goal is to look at the Real Estate Book every two weeks. That's it. Again with the unmotivation and apathy. About four years ago, we actually got a realtor and were looking at houses, but we couldn't find anything that we wanted that was also affordable. At the time, we were looking at houses with land (minimum 10 acres), and those, around here are either in truly sad shape, or horrendously overpriced. We saw some affordable, but truly scary homes, but more on that later.
- De-cluttering. I tend to be a pile-er. Piles spring up out of nowhere, I swear. I try to take care of the stuff in the pile, but it seems like I end up just rearranging the piles, consolidating piles, moving piles, and on and on and on. Right now, I've got a pile of things to file, and a box of things to sell or otherwise get rid of. I just need to actually get around to it. Then there's the large pile of things that need to be packed up. There's a massive pile of books in the hallway, blocking the closet door, that need to be boxed up soon. And a smaller pile of Breyer horses to pack up because I'm out of space. We've actually been boxing things up for at least a year, on the theory that whatever we pack up now, we won't have to pack in a rush before we move. Plus, it makes the condo look less cluttered, which helps my frame of mind, and is nice for when we have company. Good theory, but we need to implement it more.
- Errands and shopping. I used to go every Thursday to do the shopping and errands, after having lunch with DH. I could get everything done in one afternoon. Needless to say, that screeched to a halt after the baby was born. I was pretty much homebound for 6 weeks after the C-section, so I didn't go anywhere. Even after I recovered, there was still the fact that I couldn't schedule things so that the baby was fed at a certain time, and that getting both of us dressed and out the door was taking at least an hour back then. It got a bit better for a while, but I've been backsliding lately. We go to the library on Tuesday afternoons, but usually no errands then for some reason. This past six weeks, it's been cold enough that I don't take the baby out much at all. But this leaves us doing everything on the weekends, and it isn't working out at all. We sleep in on Saturdays, and with everything else, we end up eating lunch somewhere around 2:00. That doesn't work for me, especially with no breakfast - I am used to eating at noon, and I'm not pleasant to be around when I'm having a caffeine headache and my blood sugar is dropping. We also tend to be uncoordinated, DH gets up and says "Let's go" with little warning, and we end up shopping without any sort of a list, which bugs me unbelievably. Step one in fixing this is to start doing the shopping lists on Friday night while watching Monk and Psych, or on Sunday afternoon, while I read the ads in the paper. That way, we'll be a little more prepared.
Thursday, February 1, 2007
Headaches (the figurative kind)
Headache #1 - Camera shopping. I've sort of decided which camera will replace my beloved C-3020, since Olympus hasn't bothered to reply to my email asking for a repair quote. It'll probably be the SP-510, unless I change my mind. It has some nice features that the 3020 didn't have, like 10x zoom, more megapixels, and the ability to do really long exposures (a "bulb" option on the shutter speed). Now, according to the manual, which I downloaded from the website, the bulb setting can go up to 8 minutes, but the catch is that you have to hold the shutter button down the whole time. Yeah right. Apparently, though, there's a remote control that works with this model, which should get around the holding-the-button-down problem. I think - Olympus' online store is down right now, so I can't find specifics, and Google isn't being unusually helpful.
Then I remembered that Olympus sells on Ebay, which is how I got the lens adapter and polarizing filter for the 3020. They're selling refurbished cameras online, and I've got a notion to get a smaller (pocket-sized) cheap camera to haul around in my purse for occasional use. That way, I don't have to risk the "good" camera having an accident like the one that has presumably done in my old Faithful. It just comes down to figuring out which model or models look good and are in the price range I like - think sub-$100 here. So there's more research to do online. Gah.
Don't get me wrong, I like the idea of a new camera. Kind of. I really like my 3020, and for someone who's as much of a geek as I can be at times, I am oddly resistant to change in some areas. Maybe I just don't look forward to the learning curve of a new camera, which isn't helped by the fact that Olympus likes to send out their manuals as PDFs only. If you, like me, would prefer a printed manual to read, make notes on, flag things with Post-It's, or whatever? Well, sorry, you'll have to print the stinking thing out on your own printer, or pay to have a printed manual sent to you, if one's available. And trying to do research as far as user opinions, available features, prices, reviews, and all that is time-consuming. Especially since I'm home alone with El Burrito all day, which isn't really conducive to research, since the amount of time I have without distractions is practically nil, and not helped by my increasing tendency to be scatterbrained, unfocused, and easily distracted.
Yes, I'm whining. I'm alone most of the time lately, and my conversational skills are dwindling rapidly, along with my vocabulary and probably my patience. That's what you get when your only company is a pre-verbal 8-month-old. He's cute, but he ain't much of a conversationalist yet. At least not in a language I understand - but he spent an hour last night babbling something to us. Probably winning lotto numbers and a best-selling novel.
Headache #2 - Space. As in, we don't have much. This is a small condo, relatively speaking. Roughly 1000 square feet, 2 bedrooms, 2 very small bathrooms. May seem palatial to someone used to a 500 sq ft apartment in New York, but to me, it's cramped, heading for freaking claustrophobic. The floor plan is abysmal to say the least, as is the air circulation, which is why there's probably a 5-degree temperature difference between the bedroom and the hallway. The only square rooms in the place are the bedrooms; the living room has seven sides (9 if I count the nooks where the TV and aquarium are). I tried to draw a floor plan once, and gave up after an hour. The bedroom has exactly one place to put the bed that won't block a door. The only large furniture in the living room is a love seat, glider/rocker, and coffee table, but there's basically one configuration that doesn't block the path from the door to the hallway.
We've got a playmat for El Burrito, maybe 2x4 feet, so he can have some floor time, and there are, right now, exactly two places to put it. One blocks the path from the front door to the rest of the house. The other means stepping over the boy to get from the couch to anywhere else. (And we eat dinner on the couch - there's no room for a table to eat at.)
I'll spare any readers (are there any?) my rants on the extreme lack of light in this place, natural or otherwise. There are no windows, just doors, although the doors for the most part have large panes of glass in them. For built-in lighting, we have a light in the kitchen, one over the stairs, tracklights over the kitchen bar/counter, and vanity lights in the bathrooms. Oh, and florescent tubes in the closets. That's it. Everything else is lamps. It's like living in a cave.
Headache #2.5 - Again, lack of space, baby-related. That same lack of space means less space for El Burrito to explore. Right now, he's not crawling yet, and the place isn't totally baby-proofed, because we meant to be moved into a house by now. And there's not a lot of floor space, so there's really no good place to spread a blanket and let him roll around. Also no room to put a playpen or exersaucer-type thing, which is what he's ready for. He had a bouncy chair (somehting like this one but without the canopy or remote control) that he loved to death, and so did we, but it gave up the ghost last night. He's still got the battery-powered swing, which is supposed to be rated to 30 pounds, but it hasn't had enough oomph to swing the boy since he hit 15 pounds. I've resorted to powering it myself, with some yarn, but that won't last much longer before he outgrows it altogether.
To be continued, later on. I've got a never-ending list of things to get done.
Then I remembered that Olympus sells on Ebay, which is how I got the lens adapter and polarizing filter for the 3020. They're selling refurbished cameras online, and I've got a notion to get a smaller (pocket-sized) cheap camera to haul around in my purse for occasional use. That way, I don't have to risk the "good" camera having an accident like the one that has presumably done in my old Faithful. It just comes down to figuring out which model or models look good and are in the price range I like - think sub-$100 here. So there's more research to do online. Gah.
Don't get me wrong, I like the idea of a new camera. Kind of. I really like my 3020, and for someone who's as much of a geek as I can be at times, I am oddly resistant to change in some areas. Maybe I just don't look forward to the learning curve of a new camera, which isn't helped by the fact that Olympus likes to send out their manuals as PDFs only. If you, like me, would prefer a printed manual to read, make notes on, flag things with Post-It's, or whatever? Well, sorry, you'll have to print the stinking thing out on your own printer, or pay to have a printed manual sent to you, if one's available. And trying to do research as far as user opinions, available features, prices, reviews, and all that is time-consuming. Especially since I'm home alone with El Burrito all day, which isn't really conducive to research, since the amount of time I have without distractions is practically nil, and not helped by my increasing tendency to be scatterbrained, unfocused, and easily distracted.
Yes, I'm whining. I'm alone most of the time lately, and my conversational skills are dwindling rapidly, along with my vocabulary and probably my patience. That's what you get when your only company is a pre-verbal 8-month-old. He's cute, but he ain't much of a conversationalist yet. At least not in a language I understand - but he spent an hour last night babbling something to us. Probably winning lotto numbers and a best-selling novel.
Headache #2 - Space. As in, we don't have much. This is a small condo, relatively speaking. Roughly 1000 square feet, 2 bedrooms, 2 very small bathrooms. May seem palatial to someone used to a 500 sq ft apartment in New York, but to me, it's cramped, heading for freaking claustrophobic. The floor plan is abysmal to say the least, as is the air circulation, which is why there's probably a 5-degree temperature difference between the bedroom and the hallway. The only square rooms in the place are the bedrooms; the living room has seven sides (9 if I count the nooks where the TV and aquarium are). I tried to draw a floor plan once, and gave up after an hour. The bedroom has exactly one place to put the bed that won't block a door. The only large furniture in the living room is a love seat, glider/rocker, and coffee table, but there's basically one configuration that doesn't block the path from the door to the hallway.
We've got a playmat for El Burrito, maybe 2x4 feet, so he can have some floor time, and there are, right now, exactly two places to put it. One blocks the path from the front door to the rest of the house. The other means stepping over the boy to get from the couch to anywhere else. (And we eat dinner on the couch - there's no room for a table to eat at.)
I'll spare any readers (are there any?) my rants on the extreme lack of light in this place, natural or otherwise. There are no windows, just doors, although the doors for the most part have large panes of glass in them. For built-in lighting, we have a light in the kitchen, one over the stairs, tracklights over the kitchen bar/counter, and vanity lights in the bathrooms. Oh, and florescent tubes in the closets. That's it. Everything else is lamps. It's like living in a cave.
Headache #2.5 - Again, lack of space, baby-related. That same lack of space means less space for El Burrito to explore. Right now, he's not crawling yet, and the place isn't totally baby-proofed, because we meant to be moved into a house by now. And there's not a lot of floor space, so there's really no good place to spread a blanket and let him roll around. Also no room to put a playpen or exersaucer-type thing, which is what he's ready for. He had a bouncy chair (somehting like this one but without the canopy or remote control) that he loved to death, and so did we, but it gave up the ghost last night. He's still got the battery-powered swing, which is supposed to be rated to 30 pounds, but it hasn't had enough oomph to swing the boy since he hit 15 pounds. I've resorted to powering it myself, with some yarn, but that won't last much longer before he outgrows it altogether.
To be continued, later on. I've got a never-ending list of things to get done.
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