Had a good Christmas this year. My folks came up the Tuesday before XMas and stayed at the new house till they left this past Sunday (ie Amanda and I ran out and bought a 2nd bed the weekend before they got here). Had a pretty good visit with them and got a chance to get my Dad’s input on some household projects.
We opened our presents to each other (Amanda, my folks, and myself) Christmas Eve… my folks and Amanda liked the panoramic photos I got from LaPayne Photography (thanks Rachel!). We gave my folks a fall scene for XMas, my Dad a southwest photo (Skyline Arch - Arches National Park, Utah) for his birthday (in a few weeks), and I gave Amanda a vertical panoramic with some Colorado mountains in the background and a bunch of wildflowers in the foreground. Highlight though has to be Amanda’s big gift to me… Merry! Amanda adopted a kitty for us! She’s a cute little 6-month old kitty with tortoise shell fur and little orange tiger stripes on her cheeks. Lots more pictures at the kitty gallery.
Anyway, we all went over to Amanda’s folks’ place for Christmas Day to open stockings and presents and so forth. My folks had a good time with Amanda’s family. Well, I should get going. Need to call a vet and see if I can’t schedule an appointment for Merry to go in and vaccinated and so forth.
Decided to make a new header graphic yesterday. Figured the Matrix-esque binary conflicted a bit with the title “Pondering Dragonflies”… especially since I’m using the header graphic throughout the site and not just on the blog, and the site’s named Malkier. So what better to catch the essence of something like Malkier? An old castle of course! Dug through some of my Ireland photos and came up with that pic of Blarney castle. I’m not 100% happy with the graphic as it currently stands. Had to rework some stuff to make space for the title, and I’m not totally happy with that. Also, the link text that appears at the bottom is not entirely readable at present.
Oh, and I’ve finally decided to maintain a history of previous header graphics that I’ve used.
So it seems LBB (that’s Little Boy Blazejack) has finally come into his own. If you don’t know him, he’s the “little” brother of someone I went to high school with. Those of us who knew him always wondered if he would eventually find himself gainfully employed and at the same time doing something he enjoyed. Last I knew, I think he was getting ready to graduate from the University of Hawaii with a major in photojournalism. Looks like it suits him. I did a little digging and have run across a fair number of sports-related shots. He’s got a sample of his portfolio over at Sports Shooter, has several photos that appear in the Ka Leo O Hawaii University newspaper, and has even had some of his stuff picked up by the Star Bulletin (Honolulu’s paper). Very cool I say.
So last weekend (not yesterday but a week before that) Amanda and I went to Bloomington to meet up with a couple of her friends from work to go see a comedy show. It was held in a dive bar (didn’t seem all that bad by campus bar standards, but it definitely wasn’t a ritzy comedy club either), and featured the Disgruntled Clown. He’s the “ex-ex-stepfather” of one of Amanda’s friends (we’re not quite sure what’s meant by the ex-ex- part… not the last ex-stepfather, but the one before that?). Anyway, it was quite an act. We weren’t quite sure what to expect, but lo and behold out steps this big guy in full clown get-up. The show was pretty damned funny albeit a bit vulgar. I didn’t have a problem with that, but it is a little extra weird when coming from a clown. If you ever get the chance, check out his show, but definitely leave the kids at home… and yourself if you’re easily offended. I think he mainly tours The South and the east coast, but you can check his calendar to see his upcoming dates. Just checked and it looks like he’s actually performing at someone’s wedding. Man, I hope they know what they’re in for. 
Well, I finally broke down and bought myself a photo printer.
I’d been surviving until recently with a close to 10 year old, increasingly finicky laser printer. It’s served me well, but I’ve had paper feed issues with it for quite some time (ie years) and have been somewhat limited by its inability to make pretty color prints and its dismal speed (did I mention it was an old parallel port model). Fairly recently, my computer up and stopped talking to it out of the blue. Everything looked ok. Printer powered up, the computer thought the printer was ok and could read its status, but when I tried to print it acted as if the printer wasn’t responding (and the incoming data light on the printer didn’t blink like it should).
Decided that was my opportunity to retire the old beast and look into something new. Hadn’t looked too hard when my Dad told me about a printer deal he was getting for my Mom for XMas. She’d apparently been eyeing the Epson photo printers when they were in CompUSA recently, and the following day he saw a deal for an Epson Stylus Photo RX500 via CompUSA.com. The RX500 is one of those all-in-one dealies that couples a high-res scanner, with a decent 6-color photo printer to meet all your scanning/printing/photocopying needs. Since it came out to $100 after all is said and done, I figured what the heck. Just received mine today and it looks pretty slick. They were kind enough to include a few 4×6 premium glossy photo pages to get you hooked. Printed out a few pics from our honeymoon in Ireland, and have to admit, I’m hooked.
Prints on regular paper don’t look too bad (don’t even remotely compare to good photo paper, but not too bad if you get far enough away and don’t examine the details much). I think I’ve still got some “premium inkjet paper” or something similar in one of these boxes, so perhaps I’ll give that a try too. I’m afraid I’ll find myself at the store in search of high quality photo paper now to make some nice big prints from my new Digital Rebel. Should be able to get some nice 8×10s from that bad boy. Will probably have to wait for spring before I can take any really good pictures again with it. Well, at least pictures of things that aren’t all dreary and depressing like good wintery shots of naked trees. I’d like to take some of those, but I suspect Amanda would appreciate some cheerier stuff too.
