Several weeks ago, Lynn was interviewed for the Angie’s List Magazine and the story appeared this month. For those who don’t know what Angie’s List is, it’s a place where you can rate and review all kinds of service professionals. It’s mostly used for finding a contractor, plumber, electrician — that sort of thing. Most folks wouldn’t think of using it for finding a photographer, but there are a lot of categories that don’t get as much use.

We’ve been rated on Angie’s List for 5 years or so and we’ve probably had ten referrals for every review that’s up there. Of course, we love getting reviews and we’re happy to say we have the most of any other photographer who’s on the list. We’re not supposed to say what our rating is, but if it wasn’t very good, we wouldn’t mention it, right?

So, anyway, Lynn was interviewed a couple months ago and it’s a pretty good article. The only thing is that the prices she quoted are from our old, 2008 price list. Because they’ve increased since then, we’ve decided to offer our 2008 session prices to all Angie’s List members for the rest of February. That’s about 2 1/2 weeks from today. You’ll need to book your session before then to get the special price.

Here are a couple images that were published with the story. This is our family portrait that we rushed outside to do because they needed one for the article.And this is the headshot of Lynn.Here’s another one, but they didn’t run it. I think it shows what we’re really like.
I almost forgot — because we love all of our clients, we’re extending this offer (the 2008 session prices) to our blog readers, too, but you must mention this blog post when you schedule the appointment. See, it pays to read to the very end.

The remnants of Hurricane Ike came through Ohio on Sunday afternoon and did a lot of damage. The winds were up to 95 mph (about 150 kmh) and blew down a lot of trees, ripped roofs off houses, and cut power to most of Franklin County, which includes Columbus and the surrounding suburbs. Many people are still without power. We were fortunate that our power came back at about 4:30 early Monday morning.

So, on Monday afternoon we took a walk through our neighborhood and looked at some of the damage. I had to bring the camera, of course.

Lots of branches were blown off the trees.Some yards lost entire trees.Some of the branches that blew down were more like half of the tree.This is what’s left of a huge silver maple that was by the playground in our neighborhood. People who live in the houses there said the sound of it coming down was like nothing they had ever heard.The park bench didn’t fare so well, either.Here’s another view of the tree.The tree in this next image almost fell on some of our neighbors as they were walking in the park. Yep, the top half of the tree is on the ground.Another tree that didn’t come all the way down. We weren’t sure if it was going to stay there while we walked past.It was a scary day and thankfully we weren’t hurt. We were pretty lucky to have power and not have any damage.

This is another personal post. We went on a cruise at the end of March. It was a great break from reality and tons of fun. I had never been swimming in the Atlantic and I have to say — it’s much warmer than the Pacific! And the water (at least where we were) was so clear. I always thought those pictures you see in travel magazines had the colors pumped up. That’s really how it looks.
We saw a bunch of fish snorkeling, learned about Pirates in Nassau, ate a lot on the ship, won some prizes (nothing big, though), and basically had a great time with the family. We didn’t take any way to check e-mail and our phones didn’t work, so we were really on vacation. I took one of the big cameras, but should have left it home. I only took a few photos with it. Almost everything was with a point and shoot.
We ended up staying a couple days in Ft. Lauderdale since our plane was way overbooked. They made us an offer we couldn’t refuse. The airline was great about the whole thing. They were so desperate that they looked through all of our baggage on the plane and got it off. Then they gave us two rooms in the Airport Hilton for two nights. And they covered all of our meals, too. So, it was like another mini-vacation tagged on at the end.
Take a look at the slideshow of snapshots from our trip. Remember, these are just fun, sometimes goofy, vacation memories. They’re not our normal, portrait-quality images. But you knew that, already.

OK, this isn’t a normal blog post for me. The other day our toaster oven died. We’d had it for almost seventeen years (it was a wedding gift). It turns out that with this particular kind of toaster oven, you’re lucky if it lasts two years.
We loved that it had a bracket to mount it under your cupboards — no wasted counter space. It was great. You put the bread in, pushed down the lever, and in a few minutes the lever popped up to let you know the toast was done. Makes sense, right?

So why do almost all toaster ovens out there have a timer on them rather than a lever?
And the timers on most of them are loud! Kind of a grinding noise that’s sure to wake everyone up if you happen to want toast before other people are up. And if you see that the toast is done and you want to stop, you have to turn the timer back to zero and it still stays on for a while. Why can’t you just pop the lever up when you see that it’s done?

And the biggest reason for this post — Why are they so big? It’s toast. We don’t need to bake a pizza in there (there was actually one at Sears that could fit a 12″ pizza).
That one was, admittedly, one of the larger ones (but not the biggest!). It just happened to have a 12″ pizza pan come along with it.

And another thing — none of them mount under the cupboards. So not only are they huge, they take their huge-ness and plant it on the counter.

You might ask, “why not just get a regular toaster?” Well, you see, once you have a toaster oven, you get kind of spoiled by it. Kind of like having a garbage disposal. It’s hard to go back. We reheat leftovers in there, warm up those frozen french bread pizzas (yes, I see the irony), toast waffles that we’ve frozen after making too many (we actually use a waffle iron — something our kids’ friends have never seen before). Our youngest needs his “Tommy Burgers” when we’re grilling outside (he prefers them with only cheese (no meat) and toasted — in a toaster oven! Not on the grill).

So, anyway, a toaster (oven) is kind of a necessity at our house so after Lynn looked online for a replacement (they don’t make them, anymore), we headed out to find a new toaster. We were successful, but we had to make a bunch of compromises.

It wasn’t the smallest, but it didn’t have a timer. It actually has a dial that goes from “light” to “dark” — what a concept. Instead of a lever to push down, there’s an electronic button to start toasting, but I can live with that. There’s another button to stop it mid-way through if you see that you’re about to have a high-carbon breakfast. And there’s even a dial with temperatures like “350″ and “400″ on it so we know where to set it for heating up frozen french bread pizzas. It broils, bakes (a pie, even — it says so right on the box!), and comes with an instruction manual with many “mouth-watering” recipes.

I know, I just took the time to blog about a toaster, but it feels good to get that off my chest. I’m tired of cereal.

Starting Friday morning, we had the biggest snowfall since we’ve lived here. As of late last night (It’s Sunday morning) our street still hadn’t been plowed.

I love the blanket of snow covering everything.