Well, let's see. Last weekend (weekend before this past one) I helped Ryan finish the siding on his house. That project, I'm glad to say, is done. fin. He rented a man lift -- probably weighs in exess of 10,000 lbs. It needed to, to counterbalance the long arm. It made the job a lot easier, but we did rut up the yard a bit. Ryan and his dad fixed it this past weekend.
I also got the deck all straightened and the waterers in the vegetable garden going.
This weekend we went down to Warsaw for Kristin's wedding shower -- no, I didn't go to the shower. Hung out with her dad (John) instead. I went down to the Truman Dam visitor's center where her brother Brian works overlooking Truman Dam, which divides Truman Reservoir from Lake of the Ozarks. Checked out the view there and read some of the historical stuff and watched a little thing on how the generators & flood control works. Then I went down to look at some log cabins and an old home that's been preserved on the grounds.
The one log cabin was about 12x12 -- MAYBE 15x15, with a stone fireplace and a table, then a loft upstairs for sleeping. Makes you realize how rich and spoiled we are. Apparently that place comes alive during Heritage Days in the fall -- there's only the two cabins and a smokehouse, but it looks like they're building a third. Sounds neat.
John was out showing his new boss around town trying to find him and his family a place to rent -- and they were successful. So he was flyin' high the rest of the day. We went to the car show across the street in the park and looked at cars. He knew a lot of folks -- first of all, everyone in town knows him, and second -- he's a bit of a car enthusiast and that helped as well.
It was hot. We didn't spend more than about 45 minutes there. Went back and helped tote Kristin (& Brian's, I guess) haul back to the house -- from next door, where the shower actually was. Then John whipped up some fantastic BBQ and we had a good time visiting.
Mom's down for the shower -- I take her to the airport tomorrow to fly back to Fort Wayne.
Wednesday I get my windshield replaced. Thursday I go to traffic court for my accident, what, 6 weeks ago? Busy week. Somewhere in there I need to solve some server problems and split some services out to at least one more server at work.
I bit the bullett and ordered a new digital camera. Got a digital SLR. A Pentax *ist DL with a Tamron 28-300 AF lens (that translates to about a 40-450mm equivalent in relation to 35mm). That's what, about a 20x optical zoom? It should be here tomorrow. But I think I'm going to want a wide angle lens for "big" scenes. But to get started, I decided to go with one lens that will cover 99% of what I want to do. It's not here yet, but it should be tomorrow. I'll pick it up on my way home.
My Olympus C720 UZ had a serious dusty lens problem. I'd taken it to Columbia Photo to ask what I should do. They said they could ship it off to Olympus, but that they'd charge $100 minimum no matter what. So I posted to Steve's Digicams Olympus forum and asked what my options were. One guy replied with a link to a series of pictures walking you through taking a C700 UZ apart. It turns out that it's not too hard to remove the front lens. Most of the dust was between the two elements in the front lens, and I managed to carefully pry that apart and get the dust out and put it all back together. That will still be a good camera to take places I don't want to take the bulky SLR to. Plus it has a nice builtin flash. It's a 3MP camera. The new one's a 6.1
I still have a table to re-finish sitting in the garage. Hacked back the trumpet vine last weekend. Um... Well, nothin' else too exciting going on. Ken and the boys (including Scott) are up in Canada for a weeks' fishing on their own (for a week) private lake about 150 miles from nowhere with a cabin. Sounds like lots of fun. John showed me a picture he took a few years ago when he was up with his dad and brother doing the same thing. It was gorgeous. I'm gonna need to do that sometime.
So, that's it. Go back to your regularly scheduled surfing.
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