Jolayne and I got back in from Ohio on Tuesday night after a drive that we definitely don’t mind only making once a year. Despite being bookended by long hours on the road, our trip was a good one. It’s amazing how quickly 10 days can fly by though. It would have been great to have had more time to spend with everyone, but at least I got to see a lot of people even if for just a quick visit. I hung out at Phil and Carrie’s in Dayton for Phil’s birthday and our semi-annual Chu Chu Rocket gaming session/freakout. My nerves may be calmed down enough by next year to do it again. There was much craziness, a little WoW, and I got to be in the live studio audience for a podcast recording. In Columbus I got to see Ben, Matt, and Tobin and had my first experience with the excellent Katamari Damacy, one of the games that might yet convince me to pick up a PS2 someday.

As for the holiday itself, our first married Christmas (cue the “awwwww”) was awesome. We spent Christmas day at Jolayne’s parents and my parents came up from Dayton later in the day for dinner. It was a great family get-together and I think everyone had a good time. Being married can make trips home a little more hectic though as it can be hard to spend enough time with both families without spending the whole trip driving back and forth. Who knows, maybe next year we’ll have Christmas at our new place and force everyone to come to us?

Jolayne totally suprised me by getting me the digital camera that I’d been crushing on, the Panasonic Lumix FX9. It’s an awesome tiny little camera with a gigantic LCD display, a great lens, pretty impressive battery life, and most importantly for me, image stabilization. (ok, maybe I should just cut out the caffiene and then I might not need that so much) With my old camera I managed to blur up just about any picture in a slow shutter situation so this is definitely a nice improvement. I certified my dorkdom by being most likely the only person in the world to read an entire owner’s manual (all on Christmas day no less). Following that I think I made Jolayne regret getting it a little by constantly reciting the features to her (“And look, you can see the light meter onscreen as a histogram!”) There’ll probably be an increase of photos on Flickr soon. Especially since while our cat Cleo was terrified of my old camera, she hasn’t yet caught on to the fact that the new camera is also a camera. It’s also much quieter (just the sound of my old camera turning on would send her running) and can take less blurry pictures without the flash (her mortal enemy). So yeah, there will probably be more cute kitty photos in the future, the one thing the internet always needs more of.

Comments

Comment by Carrie on 2005-12-31 11:41:42 +0000

Goodness knows I do my part to keep the internets chock full ‘o cute kitty pictures.

That new cam of yours is one hot little number — nice specs, the ISO sensitivity range is pretty sweet for a point ‘n shoot and DAMN that screen is beautiful.

Stability is a really tough skill to master — it’s all in where your elbows are when you’re pressing the shutter, but hooray for a cam that compensates for wiggly hands.

Happy New Year to you and the Mrs. 😉

Comment by Tobin on 2006-01-01 13:40:24 +0000

What, no integrated GPS? I thought you were a dedicated geotagger.