It finally got hot. But what do we expect, it's July. Let's see, got the concrete poured for the landing outside the new basement door. We stayed home a week ago this morning to do it. (dang, haven't posted since the 19th? I really ought to get better about this).
We were going to have a graduation/birthday party for Tom who got his MBA quite recently. We were going to have everyone out here on the 4th -- but Tom's got stuff to do this weekend, and Dawn wanted to do the party special anyway-- the original plan was to have it at Dawn and Joel's. When I talked to Tom we said it would be July 12 at Joel & Dawn's -- and Tom was going to call Joel. But somehow we didn't communicate (you do that by not talking) with Joel that that meant this weekend was a no go. But all our plans fell through anyway. And Joel called last night wondering when he should show up Friday.....
answer? 10am.
He ain't heavy. He's my brother.
I was kinda bummed about spending the 4th not doing anything special anyway. Burgers and dogs and splashin' in the pool. And beer ;-) Ain't that America?
Kevin's in town. He and his wife are separating. He's taking a leave of absence at work to sort stuff out and re-position himself mentally for life. It'll probably be good for him. He pops over to use the internet connection and hang out every couple days. He bought himself a Misubishi Evolution VIII -- that's "car" for "more car than Phil will ever own". He's gotten into cars since he moved to Michigan. Gotta admit it's a pretty snazzy car.
Brian will be here working for his dad off and on all summer. He got himself a dog that his dad can't get rid of... a very cute Malamute puppy named Koti --- he wanted to name it Kodiak. I think he should change it to Kodi for Kodiak.
Colorado is coming up in a couple of weeks. I'm getting psyched. I think Mark is, too. Talk about camping by the seat of your pants, though. We have very few plans. Go to mountains. Soak them in.
Take lots of pictures :-)
I bought a new camera. Ok. Bad me. But it was a great deal, and this camera overcomes so many of the limitations my other camera has. Plus it's 3 megapixels. It's an Olympus C-720. 8x optical zoom. You have full control over f-stop and shutter speed if you want it, and you can bump the exposure +/- 2 stops instead of 1 (by 1/3 stops). Plus it has a very powerful flash that's adjustable so you don't wash your subjects out. You can't manual focus, but everything else is overridable. And it'll do 15 second movies.
I got a wide angle and doubler teleconverter for it. The doubler doesn't work right. I'm sending it back to HotDigital... they said they'll send me another or an equivalent. MAYBE in time for Colorado. I hope so. But I probably shouldn't hold my breath.
One last thing.... something's wrong with my hands. My knuckles are sore, and this has come on relatively suddenly over the past few weeks. Haven't been doing anything unusually physical to irritate them. It seems semetrical (same knuckles on each hand). Stiff in the morning. Painful without ibuprofen starting this week. It used to get better as the day wore on, but starting this week, not so much... Mom has rheumatoid arthrits. I remember mom describing her symptoms when she first got it at 32. I'm 39. I might have it, too. I sure hope not. That would positively suck for guitar. I have a doctor appointment on the 10th. They can do a lot more for it now -- still not curable, though. Wish me luck. So far, I still have full range of motion, it just doesn't feel good -- even now typing this isn't horribly comfortable.
