The Occasional Occurence

Sarah, on why she snatched Eli (our 19 mo. old) from me last night at 3am when he woke up crying:

It was my zombie-mom nurture mode.

I was happy to return to "zombie-dad sleeping mode".

cw

We just got a new digital camera today. Our four year old Minolta DiMage S414 likes to say "Err" more than take photos, so it was high time to get a replacement. After looking around for a couple months, we settled on the Nikon Coolpix S10. We definitely wanted a smaller camera than the S414 and I am a big fan of a powerful zoom, so the Coolpix S10 fit the bill. It isn't quite a shirt-pocket camera, but it is a nice size for a digicam with 10x optical zoom. I think I am really going to like the versatile swivel design too.

Eager to try it out, I brought it to the bustling metropolis ghost town that is downtown Canton, OH in the evening.

I usually get together with my brothers-in-law once a week to ponder the deeper things in life, and tonight we went to Muggswigz Coffee and sat around the patio area downtown to chat.

I was pleased with how the camera operated and the photos turned out well. For those of you dying to see downtown Canton or curious to see pictures from the S10 in the hands of a complete amateur, have a look my photos from tonight.

Anyhow, I'm excited to have a decent camera for my upcoming trip to CA. Maybe I'll actually take some pictures this time and get less flack from everyone here at home when I come back. :-) We are also going on vacation right after I get back from my trip, so more pictures should be forthcoming!

cw

Curtis and I joined a bunch of men and boys from our church for a canoe and camping trip on the Little Beaver Creek this weekend. The trip was a lot of fun and I was very proud of how well Curtis handled it; he had a lot of fun and was very patient during 5-1/2 hours of canoing on Saturday. Anyhow, check out some pictures from the trip if you want to.

cw

Update: more `photos from Jon <http://www.flickr.com/photos/83055285@N00/sets/72157600211104403/>`_.

Whew. We are two-thirds of the way to our new home. We are camping out in South Charleston, Ohio tonight. Not really camping; we are staying with my mother-in-law and brother-in-law. The drive went great, but packing up took longer than expected (as we should have expected). We had a 3-vehicle convoy. All three vehicles had a little short-range radio, so we kept each other entertained. From John singing "love" songs to Curtis yelling "chicken-butt", a good time was had by all.

Ok, abrubt ending.

cw

The moving van is loaded. We are sleeping on a mattress on the floor. Hopefully we have a place to move into on Tuesday.

It has been a roller coaster ride this weekend. Our lender has thrown a hissy fit about problems with the furnace in the new house, even though the seller is replacing it and wanted to escrow the money so we could close on Tuesday. The bank told us 1.5 business days before closing that they weren't going to proceed on the day we had been planning for for a month. Bastards (pardon my French, and if you are French, pardon that expression). ;-)

Our real estate agent worked hard this weekend trying to get the seller to agree to us renting the place until the closing. Things looked bleak yesterday evening and she said it wasn't working out. I called Uhaul to cancel our truck for today, and when I told her that, I think she was a bit surprised. She must have negotiated really hard, because she called back and said we had a deal and could move in. I called Uhaul back up and got a truck again. Whew. The Uhaul guy was really cool about it all and didn't charge us any extra fees or anything.

So there you go. The moral of this story, I think, is that no matter how on the ball you are in life, things can go down the tubes in a hurry. Maybe this was a little wake-up call from God saying; "Hey there Mr. and Mrs. Everything-Under-Control, remember me?" In any event, that was the message we got. I think that is a good thing.

cw