Domestic Vocation: Seven Quickies: Before Vacation Edition

Thanks, as always, to our lovely hostess Jen.

Please drop your covered dish over there on her buffet and look around.

~~one~~

I'm always late with these, but next week I won't be here at all. My mother had her second knee replacement surgery on Wednesday afternoon, and my family is going to Florida for a week to help her recover. I was going to go myself, but we'll be away over Thanksgiving, and Travel Man (Knight in Shining Armor that he is) has arranged to go with us, even though he's out of vacation. His boss is a dear for helping us, even when it came across like this:

"Hey, I just used the last of my vacation days, but my mother-in-law is having knee surgery. I need to go with my wife and kids to Florida for Thanksgiving."

(Sure ... a likely story ...)

~~two~~

I looked at the weather for Florida for next weekend. I've been very happy to have gotten all the laundry finished last week, and I'm ready to proceed with the Great Clothes Exchange that goes on every Spring and Fall. Bye-bye, shorts! Hello, comfy, warm sweaters! Bye-bye, T-shirts! Hello, henleys and turtlenecks.

Let me show you what Orlando is going to be like over the next ten days.

I am completely bummed out. I don't WANT to bring shorts or T-shirts. I want to dress like it's Fall. I want to *feel like* Advent is nearly here, not that it's the Fourth of July!!

I love living in Virginia. Here, it's blustery and chilly and I got to take out my suede coat for the winter.

~~three~~

Last year for Christmas, I got to buy a new camera. Our old one was pooping out on us (and, indeed, it has died a quiet death since then), and I was tired of Sear's "good price" on a single sheet of photos (one 8x10 or two 5x7s) being $7.99. I was sick of paying close to $100 for pictures every time I got portraits done of the girls. So we saved and bought a pretty nice Canon with lots of features that I love. I'm still discovering stuff about the camera a year later, which is partly due to my motto on users' manuals:

Users manuals are for people who can't figure it out alone!

I am too smart for them!

This is in direct contradiction to what my father told me. I used to have to read the directions cover-to-cover before I was allowed to use stuff. This made me frustrated on Christmas morning, when I knew from watching my friends that to make your Walkman work you stuck a cassette tape (which was fresh out of the Christmas stocking) into the Walkman and pressed play.

My father, on the other hand, would just ignore all but the basic "quick start" of a manual and go to town. He's a smart guy. I'm a smart woman. I am following his lead now. But I make my girls read at least the basic directions for anything more complicated than a Walkman, which I'm pretty sure they wouldn't be able to figure out to save themselves, though they are whiz kids with my iPod Touch.

~~four~~

That one got hijacked, didn't it? Back to my camera. It's paid off in spades. Check out the girls' school portraits, which have minimal (read: iPhoto) edits to them.

I printed them off at Sam's Club for under $26 after tax. I'm going back to get these done, because they didn't upload properly onto my SD card. I expect to pay under $15 for what I'm getting, though one is going to be an 11x13, so it might be close to $20 again.

I did get 4x6s of that last one, just for fun. ;)

I'm already dreaming of Photoshop and better cameras, including a REALLY nice digital camcorder that goes straight to a hard drive and records in HD. I don't have an HDTV, mind you, just want to be ready for it.

(Updated already: The new prints, including an 11x14, were under $10. SWEET!!)

~~five~~

I'm proud that we've finished off the first quarter of school. We've got a couple of art projects and some music, but for the most part, I'm ready to do grades and plan the second quarter.

Little Girl has been happy to be doing lots of science experiments. Here she is making an electromagnet.

I might have to put together a video of her doing her static electricity experiments, which were mostly a bust. (I think the air wasn't dry enough, especially since the remnents of Ida, which was a good ol' Nor'Easter, was raining on us and causing flooding in our town.) Her reactions to the balloon NOT sticking to the wall were hysterical!

~~six~~

Fall colors are drawing to a close here, but there is still some beautiful scenery. For example, here are a couple of pictures I took this morning.