Last Saturday, with Zach in tow, we ventured to the far lands of Lynnwood to see Danny and Cynthia. Much to our enjoyment, we played some mini golf. Sadly, I wasn't feeling super great - and I think this fact is reflected in my lack of photoskillz for the day. Somehow I wasn't shooting in RAW when I thought I was, may have been on macro for a while, etc. etc. you name it. :-s BUT for posterity, here are a few to share!
This has been a really cool day. Amanda and I stopped by the hospital for our first* ultrasound. As far as we can tell, our baby has all of the limbs and features one would expect a developing baby would have. Our radiologist, Mike, meticulously looked for dozens and dozens of features and didn't say anything was missing.
However, we do not know anything about the presence (or absence) of features that would determine a gender. Doctors do, perhaps. We do not. That's our current plan and we're sticking too it. No looking at Christmas presents in the closet here.
Though we both were anxiously looking for anything telling while Mike was working. Looking and painfully resisting the urge to ask.
One thing I DID ask for, however, was whether I could get a copy of these pictures digitally. I was surprised (not sure why) to hear that I could indeed! If I called back in about four days, I was told, I could ask for digital copies of these pictures on a CD. That's awfully nice.
These pictures are scans of thermographic printouts he gave us on-scene. I'm hoping the actual pictures will be much higher resolution, but this is the real deal; our baby has taken part in a kind of photographic process.
A couple of weeks ago I started to notice something was not right with my iPhone. Scrolling was ridiculously hard, and produced some very unexpected results. It was like the phone was going out of its way to irritate me.
I realized a bit later that part of the touch screen interface was malfunctioning. Certain sections of the screen, important ones, were not responding to touch. Considering this is a like a little mini computer with only three buttons on it, the touch screen is critically important.
When a reboot didn't fix it, I got worried. When a hard reset didn't fix it, I got scared. When a wipe and restore didn't fix it, I cried.
Well, I didn't cry. But I knew there was nothing I could do. I had to get it serviced. And with these tiny little devices, one doesn't really "service" them; one replaces them. And I knew when I bought the thing. It was July 30th, 2007 at 1:00 PM. Hey, that's what logs are for! But my warrantee only lasted a year, so service (a.k.a. free replacement) was out of the question!
So I decided one Thursday that I would take it upon myself to go to the store and beg for forgiveness. I waited patiently for my appointment with the Mac Genius, who tried touching it funny, restoring the software, and touching it funny in other ways. These were ALL things that I'd tried before! Finally he said, "Well, that's a broken iPhone. I'll go get you a new one."
"A New one," I asked?
"Well, the same one. You're still under warrantee right?"
Without blinking I said, "Uh, maybe. It'd be pretty close now." This was, of course, a lie. I'm sure they're trained that when a customer says "maybe", they mean "absolutely not". He checked, and (to my violent surprise) my warrantee expired not one nor two but two-and-a-half months ago.
My options were as follows:
Accept my shell of a functional iPhone.
Purchase a replacement "Olde" iPhone for $200.
Or Purchase a new iPhone for $200 (+$240 for the more expensive data plan).
After a long decision making period, and for a variety of heavily vocalized reasons, I settled on replacing my old phone with an old phone.
But then, a miracle happened: after beginning to set up the purchase, he realized Apple had acknowledged a known issue with my generation of iPhones. As such, the warrantee was extended for another year for free! He happily replaced my iPhone for no charge. My faith in Apple, though shaken, was never broken.
And besides all my big talk, I couldn't be happy without my iPhone. It's the one gadget I've ever bought that I use literally every. single. day.
Welcome back, iPhone. It's like a new Enterprise. This one is called iPhone-A.
A rather dead and rotten tree currently graces our front yard. It became a concern one day, when, walking under it on the way to the porch, Tristan noticed a giant chunk of bark laying at his feet. Looking up, we realized the thing was FULL of holes.
It has been a good tree for many years. In fact, while readying it for falling today, I had to take down a "Squirrel X-ing" sign, a wooden woodpecker pull toy, the squirrel feeding stand (where my dearest Jack Ball has been for many, many years), and our outdoor thermometer. For our safety, however, the tree must come down as it is now a threat to our persons, the house, our cars, and various utilities.
Yesterday Tristan met with the man who will do the falling. He seemed extremely knowledgeable about such things, and we have great faith that it will be removed safely. There is a good possibility that the tree will come down today.
I share with you a couple of pre-fall pictures of the tree.
