Reading In Bed

Here's a nice pic of Haley reading in bed. Please note the joy she is experiencing as she reads a book about outer space. When you are done being amused at her amusement, please turn your attention to the portrait of our dog, Gob, in the background.

Haley's New Camera

 
So, I got Haley a new camera for v-day (valentine's day, not to be confused with Vagina monologues day, also referred to as V-day). Unfortunately, the first one that was scheduled to arrive the day before v-day was stolen from UPS before it ever made it to our doorstep. Then newegg, who is normally incredibly efficient at shipping things out in a timely manner, didn't mail a new one out until Monday (after contacting them 3 times). To make a long story short, we now have the camera and it is cool. We went with the Canon SD1000 which is smaller than a pack of cigarettes. Here is a test shot of Haley cooking tonight.

In other news, did anybody else watch American Idol tonight and get left with the thought "ambiguous gender?" There were no fewer (and maybe more) than 3 dudes who I could have swore were females. Granted they sounded male, but all I could think of was that dude from youtube known for his ambiguity and as a staunch defender of Britney's honor. As intolerant as it may sound, I liked it better when we weren't bombarded by transgender people. Call me old fashioned, but I like it better when men act and look like men and women act and look like women.

Farming

Now that it's been in the upper 60's for a month and a half I decided a couple weekends ago to get the garden started up again. After hours of "researching" through google I came up with planting outside in raised rows. The past two weekend I (with Haley's help) have been preparing our backyard - including digging out more giant roots - I have the sore back to prove it). Additionally, I have quite the germinating setup going on in our office. If you can tell from the picture, I have two suspended fluorescent lights over a number of small peat pots with everything from tomatoes to peppers to black-eyed susan vines, to any herb you can thing of. The strange thing on the outside is one of those $2 reflective heating emergency blankets that you can buy in the camping section at Walmart. It does a great job at keeping the plants around 80 degrees in spite of the inside temperature of our house (thermostat currently set at 62 - though our house is around 72 due to the warm weather as of late).

I'll try to keep the blog updated with our garden progress. I am expecting big things to come out of the garden this year. Oh, and note the brilliant blossoming of our Peach tree. That thing has been blooming for two weeks now.

Multitasking

I don't know if any of you out there are like me where you will have a really good idea about something you want to blog about but then you forget it. I blame it on stuffing my head full of medical stuff that everything else slips out the back door. I've been trying to slowly make my way back into my blog here for a while, but life gets busy.

Anyway, even though I wasn't able to figure out what I was going to blog about I'll talk about Haley's computer. I recently upgraded her (yeah, the computer is female) to a total of 6gb of RAM, up from 2gb. That may seem excessive, but I'll tell you, if you do any kind of intense computing it is really nice. Right now I am popping this blog out, listening to music, updating my other website to Dreamweaver, editing photos to put on this blog, and I have a couple other programs open and my computer doesn't lag in the least. I am currently using up 70% of my RAM at 4278mb. I don't know how we ever got along with 2gb.

All this blogging reminded me of my original blog that I was gonna post. Here it is:

NEWEGG.COM: awesome company. I built Haley's entire computer from parts ordered through them (as well as hundreds of dollars of other miscellaneous computer upgrades through the years). They usually having things out the door and in your mailbox in 3 days. Not only is their service great, but they have competitive, if not the lowest, prices around. So, for Valentine's day I decided I was gonna buy Haley a new camera. She is getting more and more into blogging these days (haleystwocents.blogspot.com) and I figured she'd like to have pictures of her own to go on her blog. Also, with our frequent travels, I figure she may like to join in the photo fun (PS, we are heading back to Mexico this summer after the boards).

Anyway, back to my Newegg story. I order the camera on tuesday from them with a scheduled delivery day of Thursday. Then on Thursday, I get home from school and see a small box on the doorstep of our house. I pick it up and it is much lighter than I expected. I open it to find out they sent the memory card I ordered in a separate box. However, There is no camera or camera box in sight. I then go and check on the tracking number and am presented with the following: 02/14/2008 7:11 A.M. MERCHANDISE IS MISSING. UPS WILL NOTIFY THE SENDER WITH ADDITIONAL DETAILS. / ALL MERCHANDISE MISSING, EMPTY CARTON WAS DISCARDED. UPS WILL NOTIFY THE SENDER WITH DETAILS OF THE DAMAGE. I then contact Newegg (via online chat - their preferred method) and made them aware of the problem. I explain it was for valentines day and that I would appreciate it if they would overnight me another one. The guy on the other end said he would try but no guarantee. He also said he would email me to keep me updated.

Long story short, they didn't do anything else yesterday besides listen to me complain about how this was putting a hurt on my V-day plans. Today I did what I should have done yesterday - called them. After explaining the problem they are overnighting me a new one.

I don't know what the moral of this story is. Maybe it's that if you work for UPS you have access to cheap valentine's day presents for your girlfriend at the expense of another dudes plans to impress his own girlfriend (wife).

Oh, and the picture is one from this last Christmas on the beach in Navarre Fl, where my sister, Maria, lives.