The Old Is New Again

Last weekend I took a one day Photoshop seminar, on imitating historic film development processes. It doesn’t sound very useful I guess, but it was for me; I learned a couple of skills I hadn’t had before, and got some good practice time using Photoshop in general. Here’s an example of a photo I worked with in class. Slowly, slowly I’m starting to understand how to use it, and can make improvements to a mediocre picture pretty quickly now.

Annual Denver Blizzard

It seems like every spring we get a big dump of snow. Somehow it still manages to surprise everyone, and we all end up wondering when to leave the office, and getting stuck in traffic for a couple hours. Yesterday was no different, except for one annoying little tidbit – my car got stuck! We had to abandon it, and dug it out this morning. This is NOT to say that the Prius is bad in snow – we just haven’t replaced those factory tires yet. So we saved 400 bucks for the season, but we earned that money yesterday.

It's Goofy Hat Day!

Sunday I took Ada and Logan to the park, and we had a little fashion show... This gave Leslie some pretty funny inspiration on Monday!

Echostar Is New Again

Last week I packed up all the files and pens at my desk, put them in a box, and walked away from the building I’ve worked in for almost eight years. Can you believe I’ve stayed anywhere so long? That is high school – twice.

They moved my files and pens two doors down, and now I work in building 100 instead of building 90. Exciting, huh? Actually, when you work in the same place for eight years, it kind of is. Building 90 was the first Echostar / Dish Network building, which means it’s old and gray, and can’t keep the temperature stable, and there’s a warehouse, so the parking lot is a long walk, and the breakroom has deafening vending machines. My new building is pretty. Well, prettier anyway. The parking lot is close, we have a nice shiny sign at the entrance, and walls are painted warm colors. I even have a handy little kitchenette nearby.

My cubicle is a little bigger too, although I’m pleased to say I don’t need it – after eight years, it only took me 15 minutes to pack, and again to unpack!

Bargain Hunting

I’m sure you all know that I’m a bargain hunter, and if you haven’t heard me say it before, I am Craigslist’s biggest fan. Now that I have kids, it’s even more of an advantage! Over the last couple weeks I made two really great finds. Unfortunately their crib mobile stopped turning, and it was breaking my heart a little when Logan would look up at it expectantly. Mobiles seem ridiculously expensive to me, so I probably wouldn’t have replaced it for 50 bucks, but for 10 I found one even better – their new one plays prettier songs and has a little light on it!

After a month of wishing for a particular toy box that is just too expensive, one turned up on Craigslist and I literally dropped everything to go snap it up. Woohoo! Between these two items (that I wouldn’t have bought new anyway), I’ve saved 100 bucks.

And today it looks like I’m getting the dvd collection of Sex and the City, one of my favorite shows. The reruns are much shorter shows than the originals, and I’ve been wanting the dvds for some time, but again, expensive. I’m saving another hundred bucks!

I’m telling you, if you can live with used stuff, always check Craigslist first. Save your pennies for something worth splurging on, like a new purse. I have mine already picked out. : )

High Chairs and Hockey Masks

Dave recently assembled the high chairs, and it’s such a pleasure, we should have done this ages ago! They are much easier to feed baby food, and it’s handy to have a place to keep them (Ada) still. They seem to like them too!

Here's a picture of a cute toy a co-worker gave to us, they really like pushing the house door back and forth. I foresee many more happy hours.

Here is Ada playing with Dave’s new hockey gear. He has volunteered to play in a charity game next month, to benefit Colorado Sled Hockey. He’s gone to a few practices now and seems to love it – enough to think that giving Ada a sharp object is a funny photo op. : )

Sherlock Holmes

For those of you who don’t know, one of my all time favorite books is the Sherlock Holmes series. These stories have it all – a smart, old, English writing style that’s smart but not too tough, London atmosphere, clever mysteries, hilarious and charming main characters, and heavy on the plot to keep the pages turning. I love them! They’ve been made into lots of movies and tv shows, but I’m excited to tell you that another film release is coming, featuring one of my recent favorite actors – Robert Downey Jr.! I think he’ll be perfect for the role, he’s quirky and weird and it’s easy to believe he’s a secret genius. Jude Law is cast as Dr. Watson. It releases Christmas Day.

Alter Aura

My brother and sister-in-law are starting a little business! I'm always skeptical of homemade things, but have been proven wrong several times recently - those cute little pouches on etsy.com, Leslie's gorgeous baby shower decorations, and now my brother's candles.

He sent me a little sample of eucalyptus, ylang ylang, and jasmine. They came in adorable little tins, the color of the candles was a pretty creamy white, and best of all, the smell was beautiful. I would absolutely buy these!

Their business is called Alter Aura, and they are working on a website, and some new aromatherapy recipes that blend multiple scents. I'll let you know when they are up and running!

Cutest Video From Pagosa

Weekend Baby Pictures

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

One of the only complaints I’ve had about my Kindle is that I tend to gravitate to “fun” books, instead of ambitious ones. I download a sample of about 20 pages, and at that point, I have to pay my ten dollars or move on. But ambitious books rarely grab you in the first 20 pages. It’s the Shopaholics of the world that do. And for the first couple months, I think I re-read the entire Kinsella and Dan Brown canons.

Finally I had to force myself to buy something challenging, so I bought The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, rated well on Amazon’s bestseller lists. Lo and behold – it got going about 5 pages after the sample ends! I was delighted with the book, it’s a translated Swedish corporate espionage mystery turns murder mystery, with several main characters converging in places. You’ve seen it once, you’ve seen it a million times, I know. Be forewarned it can be graphic, but definitely worth a try. There are two sequels coming to the US, the second book is in July.

Madame Butterfly

On Saturday, I attended a real-time broadcast of the New York Metropolitan Opera – at a movie theater! For $22, I got to see Puccini’s Madame Butterfly, performed by world class musicians, one mile from my house. It was an amazing experience. Two theaters were sold out, so there were probably 700 – 800 people attending with me. We got flyers that described the plot of each act, and the whole thing was subtitled. But the best part was, during the intermissions we got to see backstage interviews with the performers, including the lead, Madame Butterfly herself! I thought the whole thing was amazing, I would definitely recommend it. Here is the website – this is something that is done across the country, for all of their operas, and a few other events too. They showed a commercial for the operas next season, and they look amazing, I’ll definitely go again.

Incidentally, there was also a commercial for a new documentary called The Audition, about an opera singing competition that the Met organizes, and I’m hoping to go see that as well. Maybe by the time I’m 100 I’ll know something about culture…

Baby Shower

I threw my first baby shower yesterday! It was for Stacey Kelly, a great friend of mine from the University of Iowa who has since joined me in Denver. It was quite an education for me on hosting a party, but I felt like everything went really well. I’ve always hated games at baby showers, I find them silly to the point of embarrassing, and decided to borrow a friend’s idea – instead of games, buy white onesies and puffy paint, and have everyone decorate an outfit as a gift for the mom-to-be! I was glad to find out that this was a huge hit, we had a lot of laughs and spend half the party around the decorating table.

For a few more photos, click here.

Amazon Kindle, Take 2

As I wrote a couple months ago, Dave was kind enough to get me an Amazon Kindle for my birthday. I am still in love with it, it is my little friend, my treat at the end of the day, my favorite toy. I don’t miss paper books at all, I prefer this one after all. And I have actually found very few flaws in it – this is an “A” product right out of the gate.

So imagine my surprise a couple weeks ago when Amazon announced their second version is up for sale! I was dying of curiosity to see what changes have been made, I only had one or two minor quibbles, the most significant being the buttons on each side of the device, which are large enough that you can’t hold it very well by the sides, and you can’t hand it to someone without them turning the page accidentally.

The new version corrects this design flaw, the buttons appear to be smaller. But the other improvements are all icing on a tasty cake! Page turns are faster. The grayscale is much better on the new one, so images look better and the text is generally sharper. The battery lasts longer, there is storage for 1,500 books, instead of 200. It is ½ the depth of an already thin device (although the weight is about the same). And apparently it can read to you.

The price stayed the same at $360, but there is even more bang for your buck. If you’ve been contemplating it, allow me to push you over the edge…

Pagosa Hot Springs

We’re back from our first vacation as a family, Pagosa Hot Springs. This has always been one of our favorite vacations, we’ve gone several times. It’s within our tolerance for road trips, it’s affordable, relaxing, Dave can ski and I can read and get massages, the restaurants are good… Pretty ideal actually. But we found that bringing three extra people created some challenges!

On the down side: Logan spit up before we even got in the car. Then Ada spit up when she bonked her head in the hotel room. Ironically, our rented floor didn’t incur the damage, I was holding her so I got it from neck to toe. I did laundry the first night we were there. We had a hard time juggling babies so that everyone got enough soaking and skiing time, and Dave and I didn’t have time for a date.

On the up side: Logan and Ada got to soak in the tubs with us twice, and they really seemed to like it. Logan was great at pumping his legs and splashing with his palms! Ada was good at showing off her second tooth (click on photo to enlarge). We all got to soak until we’d had enough, and Dave skied two half days. We got to spend time with friends, and learned that we need to plan an agenda before we take a trip. Our travel went pretty smoothly; I have to say that the drive home might have been the highlight for me! We played peek-a-boo for belly laughs, picked up some tasty snacks, had a smooth lunch stop at Taco Bell, and I got to read a great book (The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo) for four hours or so. I was in hog heaven.