This morning Jen and I stumbled around the house trying to get ready for work, still stuck in the lazy patterns of vacation established at my sister’s house, where we got used to rising after 9:30, sipping coffee until noon and then venturing out into the freakishly warm upstate New York weather. (Really—60 degrees in January up there is a bit like snow in Jamaica. There are whole regions of Siberia that are warmer in the wintertime.) Five cats who had grown accustomed to having our house to themselves dodged between feet while I attempted to make two cups of coffee out of half a tablespoon of beans. Jen was out the door early to tackle a big project at work, leaving me squinting at the latest BG&E bill while listening to the weatherdork predict a week of sub-freezing nightly temperatures. Oh, and the county decided to re-assess our property—for an extra hundred thousand dollars.
I broke down and bought an iTrip for the iPod before we left (the rental only had a CD player) and I have good news to report. With the exception of changing stations, the unit worked flawlessly. We were even able to transmit Motown to Renie’s stereo receiver during dinner on Friday night.
The macro lens for the G3 works exceptionally well; I may break down later on and buy the fisheye lens for it now that I have the adapter ring, but for the time being this one will capture my attention and hold it.
1973 wink contest (from the super-8 film festival), 1.1.04
Hey folks— I’m reporting to you live from my sister’s living room, where she and I are geeking out while Jen showers. Lots to write about; a fantastic Christmas here in NY State, preceded by a very low-key New Year’s at my parents’ place (we were in bed by 12:15, romantics that we are).
Jen and I are thankful, happy, and a little overwhelmed by the sheer Christmas-osity of the Dugan clan; between my folks and my sister, we have to figure out how to fit an entire furniture store’s worth of stuff into our rented Chevy Trailblazer. Jen has a new garden composter the size of a cement mixer; it will provide rich, meaty humus for the entire neighborhood. We have a brand-new amplifier with enough inputs on the back to control the Maryland power grid. It will be the command center for our wedding music selection and the basis of our entertainment center, supplanting the hand-me-down Sherwood receiver I inherited as payment for moving my friend Sophie seventeen times after college. I have a new close-focus lens for the G3, which means I will be bombarding all five of you readers with macro shots of everything under the sun. We have enough cookbooks to start our own library branch, more boxer shorts for me, and Jen has a heavenly pearl necklace from my sister which could possibly (but not definitely) be a stunning counterpoint to a wedding dress.
We stopped in to see my Grampa Dugan on Saturday, and it was great to sit with him for an hour or so. He looks fantastic for a man of 89 (definitely better than he has the last few times we’ve been up), and he’s looking forward to the new golf season. My aunts and uncles have each arranged to take him for a couple of weeks this winter, which will be good for him, as he’ll be eating better and actually using the heat.