January 18, 2009
Took The Bug up to Chain of Rocks Bridge this morning for Eagle Days. We met an 11-year-old bald eagle name McGuire, saw two young eagles in flight, walked the bridge, and Zozer got to stand in an actual eagle’s nest, but the highlight of her entire day was getting to ride the yellow school bus that shuttled us from the Missouri Visitor’s Center to the bridge and back.
January 14, 2009
I don’t get it.
January 13, 2009
Took the ZoeMobile in this morning for an oil change and other sundry maintenance work, and the service writer said, “Oh, you’re overdue for your 120,000 mile service.” I know this, since the little “maintenance required” light lit up at 120,000 and has burned brightly ever since. Because my dad is a mechanic (and because my car is a Honda and will run virtually forever), I know that I can, for the most part, skip these required maintenance reminders. The biggies, yeah, I gotta do. I think I did one at around 75,000. Maybe it was 100,000. I change the oil regularly and don’t do jackrabbit starts (unless M drives the car – grrrr) and the car is good and reliable and all that. So when the service writer started his usual spiel about the service I should get done, I sorta tuned him out and made a mental note to manually reset the light on my own. I know how to do that, having done it multiple times instead of shelling out hundreds of dollars for unnecessary maintenance work.
January 12, 2009
We made a very important purchase this weekend: training pants. For Zoe. (duh.)
January 9, 2009
I read this morning that the Illinois House of Representatives voted to impeach Governor Rod Blagojevich, for reasons that you’re all aware of if you haven’t lived under a rock for the past couple months. Really, the guy should have been impeached a long time ago just for his hair, but that’s a whole other blog post.
January 7, 2009
“Be what you are. This is the first step toward becoming better than you are.”
January 6, 2009
We’ve now returned to what has become the normal routine for us. Sleep, eat, work, play with Zozer and study. As we were starting classes this term, I thought that it’s much like taking a deep breath before going under water for an extended period of time. When we’re in class, everything else sort of fuzzes out to a murky haze that’s just out of reach. No time for anything but the bare, basic necessities to get through life.
January 2, 2009
New art in Zoe’s cubby this morning when I dropped her off at school. Made peeling her off me while she yelled, “No!” with tears rolling down her cheeks a little easier. Okay, not really.
January 2, 2009
Zoe asked Daddy to dance to Little Drummer Boy with her. Of course, he obliged. I shot this in the darkroom using only natural light from the window. Because there was no strong light source, I cranked my ISO up to 1600 and was able to shoot hand-held. The high ISO gives a soft, grainy quality to the image, which I think works well both because of her expression and the general mood (after this dance she took her afternoon nap, which means she was seriously winding down).
January 1, 2009
Shot this out the window of the darkroom tonight. Thought it was ironic that the view from the darkroom was so full of beautiful light. Maybe it’s an omen for a photographic 2009. That’s how I’m gonna read it, anyway.