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a Hodge-podge, but no Brady

Damn woman – have a little patience!

The uber-in-laws called while I was cooking dinner. Over the speaker-phone I promised to post a pic of Kyle’s new haircut. 20 minutes ago, while I was still helping Kyle with his homework, I received the following email:

“I rushed home (okay, there was a pizza stop in the ‘rush’ part) to see Kyle’s haircut on your blog!!! I was promised!! Oh, deceiving phone calls on speaker.”

Well then. As promised! The new and improved Kyle – BEHOLD!


I had forgotten that he even had eyebrows!


Reading list

And while I have your attention P, how is Lamb coming along? I finished Island of the Sequined Love Nun and it did not disappoint! It wasn’t as laugh-out-loud as some of his other books, but the ending had me grinning like a fool. 5 Stars. Classic Moore. Yum!


2 days ago…

Sunday afternoon, I finally scanned the negs from the roll of film I shot with the Supersampler. Today I uploaded 7 of the 12 ‘keepers’ to Flickr. I’ll post the rest tomorrow – but gee wiz, if I don’t get them up right away, cut me some slack eh?!

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GRAPHICs – how NOVEL…

I am procrastinating. I should be changing into a pair of pants that fit so that I can go to the grocery store. But I made a quick stop by my desk and here we are. And here a couple photos of the kiddies that I did some Photoshop magic to.


Yes, another tutorial. This one was the Stylized Comic Book Effect by Corey Barker of PlanetPhotoshop. Fun for me!

And here is a super simple Halftone Dots and Linear Light Effect:

In other news, I am reading Island of the Sequined Love Nun by Christopher Moore. It’s…

Oh.
Now I must find pants and get out the door. Chris just came upstairs and told me to buy drugs. Lots of drugs.

I’m sure he will clarify exactly what he is looking for before I leave. He knows me a little too well…

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Intergalactic Translator

Were you aware that Erin turns 2 next month?! Holy Aging Me Batman. That’s crazy. So I guess that means she is right on the mark of the developmental scale. Cause as I’ve said before – that baby is crazy.

And she is getting big. Some long lean little girl who is all limbs has disappeared my cute chubby moon-faced baby. She probably ate her. I swear Erin eats twice as much as Kyle! She’ll eat her dinner, then mooch off Chris’s, mine and Kyle’s. And now she’s making requests at breakfast! She will ask for eggs. In a bowl. Sometimes after she has already eaten her yogurt, banana, bread and a handful of cheerios. Damn. Its kinda scary how much the girl can eat.

Since she is so advanced, she has already been displaying the typical Terrible Two’s most endearing behavior – the temper tantrum. By now you know about her lung capacity, so you can well imagine how much fun those fits can be. And just who taught her to dislocate her shoulders so that you can not pick her up?! She can also go the other way – pressing her arms tight to her body so you can’t lift her out of the crib. She’s obviously brilliant! I also detect quite a bit of talent in her line-drawings. You might also file them under scribbling.

Erin also has a lot to say. She chatters on almost as much as Kyle. And I’d say about a third of what she says is in English. Baby is bilingual! Although Chris and I can not agree on what the other language is. He says it is Vietnamese, I say Swedish. (By the way, Chris does not know pig-latin! How can you not know pig-latin?! Gah, we are going to have to start spelling soon!) Anyway, on the off chance I can convince you to come over and baby-sit, I’ve put together a handy Erin-to-English translation sheet for you.

Erin-ese     English

Bears        cranberries (will also accept raisins)
Baby         yogurt (because the Yo-baby containers had a pic of a baby on them)
Beer, wine   just what you think! Do not let her have any.
Linner       dinner (or lunch – really any meal)
Moon         spoon
Buttas       boots
Ollies       glasses
Hammer       helmet (bike)
Bella        Isabella (baby-sitter’s granddaughter) or crayons
Minny        Mickey Mouse – or Manny from Handy Manny
             (damn! Now I’ve got that Handy Manny song stuck in my head)
Mama         Grandma (Papa is Grandpa and often uttered in a low growl. Do not be afraid.)
Mote         remote control
Pie          pacifier (only to be used in bed)
Cracker      animal crackers (she does not want a Scooby snack)

The rest of what she saying you can understand pretty well. Unless it is in Portuguese.

She also has quite a few short sentences she’ll throw down:
“Where’s (insert missing object)?” – comes with arms out, palms up, slight shrug
“I don’t know”
“No want” (or “No want to”) – she usually puts her hand over her mouth – funny

And our personal favorite:

“Okay, bye later.”

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Progress. It’s what’s for dinner.

or Progress. The other white meat. I couldn’t decide.

I hate having to push the picture of Erin-in-the-hood down the page, but life moves on. And so does this blog. Albeit at a much slower pace. But hey! Tomorrow is that thing. The Second Saturday Event at Mather Golf Course that has been ruining my life for the past month and a half. Besides adding the rest of the price tags to the prints, finding my folding chair in the garage, withdrawing cash from the bank for change (which I better well need!), and packing the rest of my stuff – I am done. I think.

I talked to Sharon yesterday afternoon. Told her that at this point in time, I no longer feel the need to cause her physical pain. Although, Chris might, when he goes to balance the checkbook and sees how much money I have spent on this affair! And then I told her that while I was not necessarily looking forward to Saturday, I wasn’t dreading it either. Yup, that’s as much as I was willing to give her. She who finagled-tricked-hoodwinked me into this gig. And she’s already talking about next month! Um, lets wait and see how tomorrow goes first eh?

Hmm. All this brings me back to thoughts of trying to sell prints on-line. I was toying with the idea at the beginning of the year and doing some research into Etsy.com. Going that route, I would post the items for sale, and do the printing and shipping myself. Another option is Imagekind. For them, I would create a gallery (up to 24 images) and they would handle the rest; printing, shipping even framing. Which seems like a no-brainer. Except it’s not. The big problem is aspect ratios. Good god how I hate the whole concept of aspect ratios. The skinny is that my camera’s sensor creates a picture that has the same aspect ratio of a 4×6 print. Now if you go and make an 8×10 print of that file, you are cropping off A LOT of the picture as I had intended it to be! Because I frame my shots in camera. So, using Imagekind puts my photos at risk of unwanted cropping whenever someone orders an innocent 8×10 print. 99% of my photographs do not work at 8x10inchs. The stuff that would be cropped off needs to be there! Ugh. Now I want to hurt someone again. Maybe a mathematician (or Chris). I knew I was correct in blaming math for all my woes.

Oh. I apologize. I spoke too soon. In going to their website to create the above link, I found out that Imagekind “will never change the aspect ratio of your image (the ratio between height and width) or arbitrarily crop your images.” Well, that changes everything. I’ll probably start there and save Etsy for a later date. Depends on how many prints I end up bringing back home tomorrow afternoon.

And I’m not going to edit the above paragraph about Imagekind and aspect ratios because that rant about aspect ratios has been a long time coming! That is why I had to cut so many damn custom mats for tomorrow’s event. When the hell are the mat-makers that supply Michael’s and Aaron Bros going to get on the 3:2 aspect ratio band-wagon?! Half the world is shooting with cameras that have this size image sensor. Make us mats that fit our pictures! Must I do all the work?!

Damn.

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Lidsville – Street Punk Edition

If you encounter this baby in a dark alley – run the other way. That baby will mess you up! At the very least, she’ll steal your hat.*

This hat used to be mine. I bought it in Fort Bragg several years ago. I gave it to Kyle last year to take camping. At some point Erin got her hands on it and won’t give it back. That’s cool. I’m not gonna try and take it away from her – have you heard her scream?! I’ve got another hat.

I took these photos on a Saturday morning – this is how the baby kicks it around the casa.

So, I was going to tell you about Sharon and why she should pay for my suffering. Well, somehow she managed to get me to agree to be a vendor at Mather Golf Course’s Second Saturday Event on March 14th. omfg. How did that happen? I don’t drink, so I wasn’t drunk. Why would I agree to such a thing? Selling my photographers? Sure, it sounds so simple. Wrong. It is a major pain in my ass! And it will probably be the death of me. Or a small part of me. Hey, I’m definitely losing sleep over it! I’m not even going to tell you about the traumas I am having over printing these photos. Then there are the logistics of displaying the prints. And at some point I’m going to have to figure out pricing! I am so going to kick Sharon in the shin the next time I see her. Damn it! She was just here on Saturday and not only did I NOT kick her, we fed her abalone, and then I took photos of her (106!) so she would have a new profile pic for freakin’ Facebook! Ugh. Now, I’m really mad. I made her look good, and I’m sitting here having heart palipitations while some Canon bigwig is buying another Mercedes on my dime!

Ok, maybe it is time for a little yoga break. While I go stand on my head, you can ponder the cuteness of the Bean. In this shot she looks just like Chris!

* She’s also been known to sticky-finger a cell-phone out of a purse without anyone noticing. Next up: Mug shots!

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Lidsville

I have a cold. Or the flu. Possibly a random plague. I blame Julie. She cursed me – a pox upon my house no less! Sure, sure, she promptly lifted the curse, but obviously not fast enough. Because a couple weeks ago Kyle got sick. And Kyle never gets sick! And then while we were in Santa Cruz, Erin started getting sick. She was sick all last week, poor baby. And now I am sick. So yes, I blame Julie. Although I believe she has paid for her sins. She was also sick last week. And then yesterday she called me for tween anecdotes for an article she is writing. Ha! she ended up listening to an almost certainly feverish me babble on about Kyle for 30+ minutes. I have no recollection of what I said to her. More ramblings of a lunatic. She should have been recording that shit. Chopped it up, added some random images and a funky electronic dub, uploaded to YouTube, and become an instant internet phenomenon. Oh well, maybe next time she’ll be ready for me.

Warning. Abrupt change in subject.

I have been collecting images of Erin in all her hats. Girl likes to wear hats! And if Chris wants to point his genetic blaming finger at me for that one, well I’ll take it. Hats are cool. Use to wear them all the time myself. Still have a couple funky hats, but most are of the practical and warm variety now. Hmm, will have to remedy that situation at some point. More funky hats for the people! Anyway, Erin loves to wear random hats around the house. She’s also obsessed with her bike helmet. Shocking. This hat was pilfered off a stuffed dog that Kyle gave her. It always cracks us up when she wears it. She looks like a stoned snow-boarder, or one of the McKenzie Brothers.

“Beauty Clark!”

“Take off, eh!”

And that’s all I’ve got for ya today. You too can blame Julie. Or Sharon. Sharon has not yet paid for all the suffering she’s causing me. I’ll tell you more about that tomorrow. Or as soon as Julie’s pox removal cream starts working. The nice man on the TV said the results were guaranteed or I’d get my money back less shipping and handling. That’s a good deal right?