Cruising the Bahamas

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. ;-)

When did toasters get so big?

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.

Snowstorm!

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.

55th Annual PPO Trade Show and Convention

I think the title of this post is almost as long as the post.

Lynn and I went to Dayton last weekend for a big regional photography show. We got some great new ideas and managed not to spend a fortune. We saw (and heard) David Jay speak -- always great stuff.

Here's a picture of me, Lynn, Sticky Rammel, Jim Cook, David Jay, and Camille Ackerman.

Baptism of 5-year-old

Tommy got baptized a couple weeks ago! He was so cute saying his verse and was really brave to go under the water. He was so happy afterwards. He was thankful for the cake afterwards, too.

No slideshow this time. Just these images.

Polyphemus Moth Found

This morning I was leaving from my son's preschool, and his teacher (who parked right near us) saw a huge moth in the parking lot. Knowing that a parking lot isn't the safest place for a moth, we take it home. At first I thought it was a Common Buckeye, because the postcard stamps right now feature a picture of it and it looked similar. Turns out, the Common Buckeye is a butterfly, not a moth, so we turned to the "Oracle of the Mighty Web" to figure out what it is. I say, "we" like I had something to do with it. Lynn found it.

It's a Polyphemus Moth and they only live a few days. The wingspan is about 7 inches across. It has little circular "windows" in the wings. I thought they were holes at first, but there's some sort of membrane in there. They emerge from the coccoon in late April and Early May (doesn't get much closer than today) after spending the winter hanging from a tree. We were trying to find out what to feed it, but they don't eat! They don't have any sort of digestive tract at all, because they only live for three or four days.

Since our boy's preschool class is doing a unit on butterflies right now (they have some that they'll release on Thursday) we'll be taking it in tomorrow morning to show everyone else. We thought it was pretty cool.

Coca Bunny passed on

Our rabbit, Coca, died this morning. I was up with him all night making sure he didn't hurt himself. He had "head tilt" come on suddenly. That's when a rabbit's head turns and they can't keep their balance. He kept sort-of hopping in circles, losing his balance, and violently rolling trying to regain his balance. Rabbits' backs break fairly easily so he had to be watched and held.

I took him to the vet early this morning and we decided it was his time to go. He was a brown mini rex: our real "chocolate bunny." One of the most easy-going rabbits I've known -- so good with kids and loved to snuggle. When kids came in for their portraits, often the first thing they did was to run to his cage and pet him.

He was with us for over six years, which is fairly old for a pet rabbit, and will be missed by many people. These pictures were taken when he was just one year old, so they're pretty old.

Our house

So, this morning we were hanging out in the living room and I decided to open the curtains. No big deal, except that last night some people thought our place would be a good one to TP. We still can't figure out why our house was targeted -- it must be a random thing. There was TP all in our trees and bushes, and shaving cream all over our door, windows, and my car.

The windows and car needed to be washed, anyway, so that was OK. Lots of neighbors came out and helped get everything cleaned up so it wasn't too bad.

I'm glad we were able to get fingerprints off the shaving cream cans that were left and one of our surveilance cameras got a few images that should be very helpful. ;-)

Back from Minnesota

Well, we're back home from a quick trip up Nort by da lehk, doncha know? Actually we got back last Monday but we've been trying to catch up. We stayed with good friends and visited Lynn's grandfather, which was nice. Of course, it wouldn't be a trip to the Twin Cities without going to the Mall of America! These pictures were taken on the ferris wheel in the amusement park. Yes, it's all indoors, if you don't know what I'm talking about.

Surgery was a success!

Last Tuesday I (finally) had surgery on my wrist. I had injured it nearly three years ago and despite therapy and time, it was still bothering me. I couldn't really lift much with my right hand. And, you know, photographers never need to lift anything heavy, right? ;-)

So anyway, I went in early Tuesday morning and was out of the hospital by 9:00 a.m.! It went really fast and the recovery went well so they let me go. Of course, I didn't think it took any time at all, but my watch told me otherwise.

We had deliberately kept this week open with just a few things going on so I can recuperate. The bandages are now off and it's just covered with a big band-aid so it doesn't look as bad anymore. I'm able to do a little bit of work, but I can't do too much without it starting to hurt. The good news is that I should be good to go in a week, and we're looking forward to what September has in store for us.

Things are looking up, which is a great feeling!