Halcyon Repose

Just got back from Vegas, and I got a few good shots. Check out the new page for all the details, or the slideshow below should have some highlights.

Time for the Women’s World Cup! Brenden and I are heading to Vegas to watch some fencing, and I am hoping I can put the camera to good use. I want to try playing around with it a bit to see what I can get to come out. Should be a fun time.

Last night I met up with Ed, Frances, Joe, Jon, and Zach at a local Irish bar, and I must say, I was not impressed with the place. It kinda had an unclean smell to it, and this morning my stomach is rolling over, way more than the three beers I had should warrant. I better not have gotten any food poisoning from that place, if so, I will be a very unhappy Jaime.

When I moved in with Brenden, my cats, Lois and Clark, went to live with Ed and Frances. I knew they would be well loved, and I would get to go and visit whenever I wanted. Unfortunately over the last few weeks Clark began getting really sick. It started with seizures, and once he recovered from that he stopped eating and started losing his strength rapidly. Despite having Frances and Ed to nurture and mother him, he continued to get worse, and last night the vet recommended that he be put to sleep.

Ed, Frances, and I were at the pet hospital last night, to say good bye, and to hold him as he received his shot. He was peacefully asleep when it happened, which is all we could have asked for.

We love you bunches Clarkie, I hope you are off chasing birds and running through fields in the kitty afterlife.

After a weekend full running around I finally got some downtime today. Things started off Friday night with a call from work about 11 at night, and I wasn’t able to get away till 6:30 Saturday morning. I overslept the next morning since I was planning on getting a hold of one of the other fencing instructors to make sure he could handle the class, but I slept through the alarm, and didn’t wake up till 9:45. I frantically made the phone call, found out that he was already there and the world wasn’t going to crash down around me. Just as I was about to head back to bed for some much needed sleep, I realized that the Sabre coach was out, and I had to take his class, so I got dressed and ran to the fencing center.

I made it to the center and started the sabre class off, and about 11:30 I got another call from work, and stayed online till about 3. Once I finished up with that, I ran from the center over to Kenny and Chris’s for some Tamale goodness (just as good as the first time), but I had to bail out at around 7 I was so tired. I got home around 8, and just as I was about to drift off to an early sleep (since I knew work was going to call around midnight), I got an early call and had to get back up. I worked till probably 1am, and then fell into a, thankfully, uninterrupted sleep. I slept till 11 the next morning, played some Age of Conan for a few hours, went for a 2 mile run, and then headed up to Upland for Louis’s Memorial day party. He made some wonderful burritos, and just as we were going to get a poker game started, I got a call from work yet again, and it was then that I found out that Louis did not have internet. I tried logging onto his neighbor’s but it was locked down, so I was forced to drive all the way back home and miss the rest of the party.

I worked till about 1 am again, but this time we finally managed to get everything worked out so I was looking forward to another full night of rest, and thankfully I got it. I got up at noon, played Conan for an hour or so, then went to get some lunch. When I was done I started on washing and waxing the car, sprayed down the side patio, then I carried my cleaning spirit into the bathroom where I did the counters, mirrors, toilet, tub, and floor. I also swept and mopped the kitchen, and then waxed the kitchen floors as well as the bathroom, and then I went for a 2 mile run.

I sit here now totally exhausted, but satisfied. While I didn’t get extensive leveling done in Conan, I did get a lot of other work done that I have been meaning to do, and that is fine by me. Most of my weekend was spent working, but since I could use the money, that worked out just fine. Sometimes it is good to be hourly.

So I have been contemplating getting into photography for a good long while now. The only thing that has been holding me back is expense, and lack of time to devote to it. I would love to take a photography class to learn all the details about lighting, aperture, shutter speeds, and focal length, but I just haven’t found the time. Joe and I are planning on taking a trip to Ireland this fall, and I have fell in love with so many pictures of Ireland, I really wanted to be able to take a few shots myself. Of course in order to do it right, it would be best if I got a camera a few months before hand so that I could get comfortable with something that was labeled as ‘point and shoot’. Not only that, but my sister’s wedding was coming up this weekend, and it would be nice to have a new camera for it. It really did seem like a good idea…

This weekend, I just so happened to be walking through the worst impulse buy store on Earth, Costco, when I noticed that they had two camera packages on sale. The Cannon EOS Rebel XTi and the Nikon D60, each with two lenses and a starter kit, and both hovering around $1000. This of course got the juices flowing again, and while I didn’t immediately pick one up, I did go home and start doing some research. I also talked to my friend Frances to get her input on things, and she recommended what everyone else online seemed to recommend, which is to get one step up from those offerings and go with the top of the line amateur camera. Of all the reviews I read, the Nikon D80 had very little negative comments, and plenty of gushing, happy comments. I started looking around and Costco carried the D80 as well, and it was only a few hundred more than the packages I saw originally. Unfortunately, that price was a more expensive than I could afford, and I continued to look around a bit more. I eventually discovered that BestBuy had the best price on the camera around, and with a 10% off coupon Kenny recommended from the post office, it would put the camera down into my ‘will definitely buy’ price range. Unfortunately I checked the inventory listings online, and none of the local stores had the camera in stock.

I decided to try my luck at the BestBuy near the fencing center, just in case, and sure enough, they had one more left in stock. Of course you can’t just get the camera, I also got a starter kit with a spare battery, a getting started with digital SLR book, and a camera case, as well as a memory card to hold all the lovely picture goodness. I got the new camera to the fencing center, but didn’t get to take many pictures as work kept me busy, and I had to wait for the battery to charge up. I did get to play around with it some, and I can already tell that I want to get a better lens than the one in the kit, but I also feel that it will last me a little while till I can get some more money back into the account.

My only hope now is that I don’t annoy all my family at the wedding while I play shutter bug the entire time.

Things have been so crazy recently, I have barely spent any time at home. The month of a 1,000 concerts is finally over, and while it was very very awesome, I am ready to just chill for awhile. This Sunday I had absolutely nothing on my schedule to do. My friends were going to go see Forgetting Sarah Marshall (yay Kristen Bell), so while I waited to hear from them, I did absolutely nothing.

A blossoming writer by the name of Brandon Sanderson will be finishing off Robert Jorden’s last book in the Wheel of Time series, and I wanted to get a little bit familiar with his work before it came out, so I picked up his first book Elantris. Too say that I enjoyed this book was a total understatement. It really drew me in, and I spent all day Sunday reading. I got up, read for a few hours, started getting hungry so I jumped in the shower. Got out, read a bit more, went out to Taco Surf on 2nd ave where I read some while waiting for my meal, then, since was such a nice day out, I decided to take a walk on the beach. I found a nice spot in the sun, I pulled out my book and I read some more till it got too chilly out on the beach. I went back home, crashed on the couch, and read until Brenden called me letting me know he and Adam were coming home, and they were going to go out and get some drinks, so when they arrived, I went out with them for a bit. After a couple of hours of beer sampling, we got back home and I read till about 2am. I didn’t manage to finish my book Sunday, but I got a good chunk of it taken care of…

I never did hear from my friends about the movie, and while that did make me a bit sad, I was nice to not have to jump in the car and drive anywhere for an entire day.

It’s about time for a lot of things.

It is about time… I mail off this strange package I have. About 3 months ago, I received the queerest box from Amazon. I had ordered 2 HD-DVD movies, and the box that arrived weighed much more than expected. I opened it up, and to my amazement, the packing materials seemed to be a bunch of photos, letters and postcards. Amidst the mess, I found the two movies I had ordered, but the rest of the contents totally threw me off. I torn open the box at work, and all of my coworkers immediately began trying to figure out what had happened. It was pretty obvious that the pictures were all personal pictures, and there were even letters addressed to an Ali Prosch withing the jumble. I took another look at the box, which was in pretty bad shape, and I realized that I had somehow missed the post office tape on the top of the package that stated the package was received in damaged condition (yeah right). Apparently somewhere in transit, my box busted open, and Alli’s box blew up, and in an attempt to set things right, the postal worker stuffed everything into my Amazon box and taped it right back up.

I did some quick Googling and it turns out that Ali is a fairly well known artist type in the Florida area. Unfortunately my searches turned up no contact information. Since there was one letter posted to her from Feb ’07, that address may still be good. I need to actually write up a letter to poor miss Ali letting her know what happened, and mail the package off to see if it can find it’s way to her.

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It is about time… I finally got a real watch again. I have not worn a watch on my wrist for well over 12 years, not since I got my first beeper. It couldn’t have been more than a few weeks after getting my beeper, when my watch stopped working, or I lost it, or something catastrophic happened. Regardless, I remember that I deciding that since I had purchased a beeper, there was no real rush in finding a watch, and I could look till I found one I actually liked. Well I looked and I looked, and being the picky dresser I am, I never found anything that struck me as worth wearing. After I gave up my beeper, I had a cell phone, and then another cell, and yet another. Eventually I gave up on finding a watch ever. I mean, I would casually look at them in the store, but I never expected to find anything that I would like.

Fast forward to last month. I had lost my wallet, and while it was a total pain getting all my cards replaced, I also realized that I would also have to get a new wallet. I don’t like carrying around a lot of stuff, so I was looking for something small, smaller than what I had previously used. I was at the mall with my friend Jess, who was helping do some shopping with my South Coast Plaza gift card that I received from work. I had mentioned that I needed a wallet, and she suggested we hit up the Fossil store, since they normally have some really nice items. Sure enough, in no time flat, I had found a wallet that I liked, and while she looked for a one for her boyfriend Jeremy, I looked around the store a bit. It was then that I saw a watch that I would actually wear. I avoided breaking down and buying it right then and there, and I shopped around at some outlet malls to see if I could find a better price anywhere. It turns out that particular model was not as common as I hoped, and so a few weeks later I broke down and returned to the Fossil store near home and purchased the watch. I have not regretted it in the slightest.

Since you guys NEVER update your blogs, I will do it for you.

Jaime: Doing well. Still busy with fencing and working. In fact, I have been so busy with both, that I have not had the time to update my blog at all! I know! My friends hardly see me anymore and I just do not have the time to keep up with my blog so they can all know what I have been doing lately. Keyla was so kind enough to post a blog entry for me. Well, that is it for now. I hope you all are doing well!

We didn’t get much rain, but it was enough to clear the air of some of the worst smoke, and hopefully it helped put out some of the remaining fires as well.

Last night Brenden and I held the annual costume party. Attendance was down this year, but everyone still had a good night.

Also I don’t think I have made mention of it yet, but I have upgraded all of my photo galleries. I found a wordpress plug-in that totally rocks my world, and does everything I would have liked. The only feature that is missing is the ability for people to comment on individual pictures, but I don’t know how much use that feature would have gotten anyways. It also has a problem with the thumbnails it generates being in the dead center of the picture cutting off faces from time to time, but other than that it works wonderfully.

So I have spent the day home sick with some crazy fever. Most of the day was spent resting up, but I did manage to a good chunk of the day getting the pictures all finished up from my trips to Yosemite. The first trip being earlier this year for Ed and Frances’s Wedding and the second from my camping trip a few weeks ago.

I also finally took the plunge and created a Facebook account last night. Enough of my friends had sent me invites, I figure it was probably worth it just for the networking aspect of the site. All day today have been continually amazed at how many friends of friends in real life all sent me friend invites once I joined. Almost like they are constantly scouring the site looking for familiar faces. Connections are a good thing.