Taking Things For Granted

This blog doesn't have much of a title, I know. But its the message that's important.
I've been in Orange Park with my Great Grandmother for the past 5 days while her daughter, my Grandmother, is in New Jersey helping to move her Aunt down here to live with them. The first 3 days were a giant headache. I'm not even gonna lie. I was miserable. Grandma Rose (Great Grandmother) has such a particular way of life and with her being 94 (96?) she hasn't had kids around to worry about for quite a while. Well, I'm here with my 2 year old son who is constantly "making a mess." I'm glad she's never seen my house on a bad day... if a blanket, pillow and hotwheel on the couch constitutes as a mess here then she'd never make it through my front door.
Eh, while I'm on the subject I'll mention a few of her other perks... if my son uses a fork he's going to hurt himself, what she wants for dinner in the morning she never wants in the evening, she's always trying to get you to eat, she has a tendency to wake up my son whenever he's sleeping, I have to repeat everything I say to get her to hear me, she renamed my son "Buster", ribs tender enough to eat with a fork are too tough, "Do you want to make some eggs for the baby" really means "I want some eggs", she insists that CDs are called records and cinnamon rolls are "cake biscuits". Phyllis is now Priscilla (her other daughter) and I am now Venus (my mother). Rain is exciting enough to announce 8 times in 30 seconds and she REALLY likes all the cute little houses on Suzanne Road. She loves to talk really loud, 2.00 for a shirt is too expensive, she watches tv shows to admire their furniture, if you don't eat as soon as you wake you're breaking some sort of rule, one "bad" experience at a restaurant and she will never go back, she knows what animals will show up in the backyard just by looking at the sky and she wont go to bed until we all do. She pretends she can't cook when Grandma is home yet she's cooked 4 times since I've been here. When you mention a state the first thing she does is ask if you've had their fruit. Apparently I'm Phyllis' daughter (that would me my Mom, not me) and all kids should be potty trained by 16 months. On a side note though, she tells really great ghost stories :)

Picking Up The Pace

I haven't blogged consistently since September. I've been slacking majorly. It is the dawn of the new year and a lot has changed. My boy has grown up much more than I could have ever imagined and my relationship with my husband has had it's own changes. And of course, along with the new year comes tax season. With there only being two days until tax season officially begins, we have already planned our spending/saving tax strategy.

The two major non-saving investments is Shane getting himself a RELIABLE vehicle which he insists must be a beat up '96-ish Mustang. 5-speed, v8. I wish he wouldn't chose something so troublesome. At least it can keep him and his dirty mechanics crap out of my Jeep! Getting a little off topic, but hey. It's a blog. That's what it's for. The second non-saving investment is finally taking a leap into the DSLR world and getting myself a spiffy new Canon EOS 60D with a EF-S 18mm-55mm IS lens, EF-S 70mm-300mm IS lens (which is AWESOME!) along with a .45 Wide Angle Macro conversion lens and a 2x telephoto converter with a variety of filters and other accessories. I am dying to pair a couple of those for reasons that deserve it's own paragraph...

The lenses range from 18mm-300mm which calculates out to a standard 16.6x zoom. But here is where it gets awesome. Pair any lens with the 2x telephoto converter and it doubles your focal distance increasing my maximum range to 18mm-600mm, 33.3x zoom. That alone sounds pretty awesome. But if you take into account that the camera itself has a crop factor of 1.6 which gives the illusion of a stock zoom effect, you're looking at a maximum focal distance of 960mm, 53.3x zoom. Pretty kick ass, isn't it? Even if you didn't understand a word of that you can still see how it's awesomeness computes into a magnificent zooming capability.

I'm dying to dive into the world of shutter speed, aperture and the reluctant use of ISO. Lately I've been spending my free time browsing sites like Flickr, DPchallenge.com and a new favorite, 500px.com. If you've never heard of it don't feel left out. I came across it while reading a photography blog. The website is amazing. It's the Flickr equivalent sporting only high end photographs. It is a great place to meet fellow photographers, browse for ideas and get inspired. And in effort to get you seemingly uninterested readers to give it a look-over, there is an uncomfortable amount of nude photography there too. Yeah, yeah... finish off the sentence and replace me with porn. I get it. Go troll.

Since I have a very low level of concentration at the moment I feel it's appropriate to stop here before I continue to rant about Ray William Johnson and all his youtube adorned fans. So I will leave you with a picture taken on my now 7 year old non-DSLR Fujifilm Finepix S5500 while on the Dam Neck Naval Base in Virginia Beach, VA. Enjoy, and let me know what you think of my picture :)

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