Paid in Full

February 20, 2010 7:21 pm

With part of our tax return we decided it would be a good idea to pay-off the remaining balance on my car. So we did, and the title / lien-release arrived this week. Now I just have to deal with the DMV to find out how to get a title issued in my name and what mess needs to happen to have mom’s name removed. Then we can finally get all of our insurance needs on a single policy! (Currently there’s one policy with my name and Jess’ name; and there’s a separate policy with my name and my mom’s name.)

We’re excited that there is one less bill to pay and, when the insurance policies get consolidated those two bills will turn in to one. With that bill done we can focus on getting student loans paid down and putting a little more into savings every month.

First Photo Competition

7:10 pm

This week’s camera club competition category was “pictorial” which they use to mean “anything you want”. Generally it’s a good time to submit photos that don’t really fall into the other categories (journalism, nature, travel, and creative). I submitted two of my pictures. Club members are placed into categories based on experience and skill (beginner, intermediate, advanced, and master). Out of 11 entries in the pictorial, projected images, basic my picture of the figurine placed 4th. Not too bad for a first-time entry.
IMGP0155

Veterans Park Photo Shoot

6:53 pm

The photography class we’re taking had a field trip last week to Veterans Park in Livermore. We got up incredibly early and met at the park at 7.

We took a bunch of pictures; many of which we’re still working on cleaning up. I didn’t get nearly as many as I hoped that I really like. We did, however, get to see some turkeys (they were sitting in the trees! and then they flew!), and some deer, and some (what I believe are) turkey vultures warming up in the sun.

Here are some of the turkeys (I was pretty far away and without a fancy telephoto lens this was the best I could do). I tried to get closer, but those things are skittish and ran off:
IMGP0579The deer were a bit easier to catch, being right out in the sunlight helped:
IMGP0788These (I believe) turkey vultures, were just hanging out in the sunlight to warm up. They’d sit there with their wings outstretched for a long time:
IMGP0814I got to try for one of those fun smooth-flowing-water pictures. I need a tripod though, can’t hold the camera still enough for the entire exposure:
IMGP0832So far my favorite picture from the shoot is this wine tub:
wine tub
There’s still some work I’d like to do on it to really make it nice.

Rambling Status Update

February 13, 2010 6:56 pm

I’ve been sick all week, so I’ve been playing video games and not much else. I even had to ditch church last Sunday. I’m doing better now, though, which meant that I was able to go on our photography class field trip. At 7 am this morning. I was very disappointed to not have a valid excuse to miss it. Especially since I’ve had several nights of poor sleep this week. Let’s just say that 5:30 was very early this morning.

Really, though, the field trip was good. We drove out to Veterans Park, which is only about 15 minutes away, and there was a bunch of stuff to take pictures of. Which, I guess, is an advantage to living in California. Not everywhere can you walk around and take pictures of vegetation in mid-February. Of course, I’d love to take pictures of the snow my family has in Dallas. Holy cow. I’m so jealous! (Interruption: Kyle just broke the handle on the patio door blinds. He’s such a drag.) I’m still going through pictures and cleaning up the ones I like, but I hope some are good. Right now, I’m still pretty tired.

Oh, also, I’ve managed to injure my ankle. Running. Inside. Wii Fitting, actually. Done laughing yet? One of the exercises is running (in place, obviously), and you unlock different length courses. I actually don’t run, as a general rule, on account of all my lower joints being ruined in my teen years as a dancer. But the short courses only hurt my ankle a little bit while I was actually running, so I figured I wasn’t really doing any damage if the pain stopped when I stopped running. But then I ran the super long course (it took me about 20 minutes), and that apparently did me in. My ankle has hurt ever since, and it’s been well over a week. The last few days, it seems to be getting worse, which can’t be good. Mostly, it’s like it gets worn out by evening time, but the pain’s really pretty bad and I hobble around like a cripple and I don’t wanna go to the doctor so why can’t it just get better? I wore a brace today at the park, but it’s still really bad (getting the mail this afternoon proved that I couldn’t, in fact, accompany Kyle to the grocery store). So there’s that, too.

I think that’s pretty much my current status.