You guys wouldn't believe how many recent unfinished posts (including some almost-finished ones) I have languishing in my queue. So in the interest of actually finishing an entry and posting it, today's post is going to consist of a brief, facebook-status-update-like comment.

Up at 6 today to get Spaz to church for a youth group outing to the Fort Wayne Zoo. This is a good 2 to 2-1/2 hours earlier than I've been getting up this summer. It's kind of nice, actually. After getting back, I did some touch-up painting around a window in my bedroom in a spot I had missed yesterday. I started this window-trim-finishing thing on a lark last Friday (it had needed doing since we replaced windows well over a year ago) and this should be the last thing. Maybe I will get the room put back together by the weekend, but i really doubt it, since I plan to do some clutter-elimination and reorganizing.

Uh yeah, I knew I couldn't actually write an FB-status-update-ish post... but that's okay. Continue...

On the agenda today:

1. Begin editing a manuscript. I am trying to break into the editing/publishing field, which is difficult when I lack experience. So a nice editor I know (who happens to be related to me) is giving me a chance to show what I can do. I already did a practice manuscript for him; this one is real. He has much more confidence in my ability to pull it off than I do. This is scary!!!

2. Have lunch with my birthday boy, who turns 22 today. This means I have been a mommy for about half my life!

Definitely too long for an FB status update... Continue...

3. Go pick up curtains that are supposed to come in today. Right now our living room windows have six different curtains/valances on them because we are trying them all out. What doesn't work gets returned. So far everyone (hubz, kidz, guests who've happened by) are unanimous on one set-- the one that I don't like. Too dark and hotel-ish looking, in my most-important opinion. The ones on order from a different store are the same pattern as those but in different colors; here's hoping they'll be "the ones".

4. Maybe go to the farm market and maybe not; we've yet to consume everything I got last week.

5. Enjoy not driving the 35-mile round trip to piano lessons, since the teacher is on vacation. (And the next two Wednesdays, both Spaz & Fuzz have all-day events, and the two Wednesdays bookending these three, Spaz had/will have an all-day activity... C'est summer, when lessons are sporadic but the mom still requires the practice...)

6. Take Fuzz to a free horseback-riding session at a local ranch ministry and then probably have her friends sleep over.

Okay, so that wasn't really facebook-status-y at all. But for me, it was indeed brief. And hey, it's a post; that's what matters.

Time to quit procrastinating on my editing. Must... get... off... the internet. Must put in scary CD-RW and start scary job so that it will cease to be scary... After I get some more coffee...

My bloggy friend Melissa (aka The Blogger Formerly Known as Chickadee), is doing a series on getting the most out of one's camera. I'm not necessarily planning to participate. After all, the series is called "Using Your Camera Without Reading the Manual," and I like reading the manual. Okay, granted, in 2-1/2 years of owning my Olympus E-500 dSLR, I still haven't finished reading the manual. But it's kind of big and there's a lot there and I forget a lot of it so I have to keep backtracking and... but I do read it. Sometimes. So I don't need this series, but I find it interesting. (Actually I find nearly everything TBFKAC aka Melissa posts interesting because she is a good writer and a good photographer, but that's neither here nor there.)

TBFKAC's first installment in the series dealt with "moving out of the green zone". You know, as in putting your camera dial on something other than that green AUTO setting? (Actually, it's blue on my camera.) When I commented on something in that post, TBFKAC asked whether I was planning to participate in the meme or class or whatever you want to call it. The Using Your Camera thingy. My reply was in essence, "No, I am way beyond that." Which sounds arrogant, I suppose, but it's true. I rarely if ever use AUTO. Who buys a dSLR and then keeps it on auto?

(By the way-- chasing a little rabbit here-- everytime Hubz uses my camera, he asks, "Where's the Auto setting? Is it this A here?" No honey, the A is the Aperture-Priority setting -my favorite, by the way, and you really ought to try it. "No, I just want Auto. Where is it?" Um, doofusbrain honey, that would be this little blue word here that says "Auto". It's the same place it was the last 73 times you asked. "Oh. Well, I never see that because it's blue." This conversation never fails to amuse me.)

Anyway... out of idle curiosity, I stopped by TBFKAC (okay, that's getting annoying) Melissa's blog yesterday to see her okay-post-your-pictures-now post. In it she noted that "If you're way beyond the automatic settings, feel free to join in too." Huh. Coincidental wording, or ya think she was talking to me?

Well, I am usually too lazy to jumps through the hoops required to post pictures, and I am really bad at keeping up with memes or whatever you want to call them. So I am not promising to participate every time. But Melissa is my bloggy friend and friends humor each other, so what the heck. I'll participate this time. But I really don't have any great pics from the last few days, so I'm going to post some I took in June that go along with the theme. Also, I am going to be too lazy and/or arrogant to nab that cute little "Get the Picture" button.

Yeah, that one. I changed my mind.

(And yes, I know I'm a day late. That is to be expected. My epitaph will no doubt read, "I would have died sooner, but I didn't get around to it." Or perhaps just, "Sorry I'm late again.")

Okay then. Melissa encouraged her photo-tutees to experiment this week with some of the other auto settings this week, such as portrait, landscape, action, macro, or the "scene" modes. Now while I rarely use straight Auto, I do often use the selective auto modes. Especially portrait, because I like that wide-open aperture look. And although my personal challenge to myself the last 6 months has been to stop using them and use primarily the "creative" or manual modes, I do still use them. Just not as often. Well, unless I am being lazy or... okay, I still use them a lot. So can post a picture or two or forty-six using some of these settings.

I don't use my "Scene" modes very often, but I do like the Sunset mode. I took some sunset pictures at Lake Michigan last month and I used that setting. However, I forgot to use it for the first picture. I'm not sure what my dial was on, but it wasn't sunset. Here's what I got:

Kinda blah, right? Now here's one taken with sunset mode:

See the difference?

(Skip this paragraph if you are happy on auto or barely out of it or not really into photography. I'm adding this next part for those who, like me, are working on using the manual modes. It's possible --I'm not certain-- that the picture above was taken while not technically in sunset mode but still using the same settings. That's because I had a brilliant thought while sitting on the beach with my camera. Since I am trying to train myself to use manual modes more often, why not put the camera on sunset mode, compose the shot without actually taking it, make note of all the settings the camera decided upon --the shutter speed, the aperture, the white balance, the ISO-- then put the camera on manual and mimic the settings the camera used? That way I learn what settings work best for sunsets and I get used to making those adjustments myself. So I did that for some of my shots. Whether this was one of them, I couldn't say.)

By the way, here's the same shot, adjusted on the computer for contrast and cropped differently:

I know that has nothing to do with "using your camera", but it was kind of hard to post the other and not show you the "final version". And I have many more sunset shots, but I'm going to move along.

I have a great action shot from that same day at the beach, which I'm going to save for a "Wordless Wednesday" tomorrow. (Or Thursday or whenever I get around to it.. .) Because it's been a month already and I am old, I do not remember whether I took it using an auto mode or a manual mode because I did some of both. I can tell you this, though: when I do use an auto mode for action shots, it is often not "action" mode (the little running man on the dial) but portrait mode (the face). I find I get better focus that way, and because the portrait mode uses a wide-open aperture, the shutter speed is usually fast enough to stop the action.

Here's an action shot taken in portrait mode. (I am fairly sure about this because this pic was taken less than two weeks ago and the memory has not yet expired. Don't ask me about it a couple days from now, however; I'll look at you glassy-eyed and go, "Huh? How would I know? That was two weeks ago.")

On my camera, little-running-man mode doesn't give me any focus points, which is the main reason I don't care for it. Portrait mode does the trick nicely for a shot like this. I set my focus point on Spaz. He was a big target, so it wasn't difficult to keep him in focus even though it was an action shot. I think the camera did a pretty good job of stopping the ball in action here. The kid in the background is bothersome to me, but apart from that, I like this shot. (This photo, by the way, was framed and given to Hubz for his birthday the other day.)

Well, Melissa said to "tell us how you got your picture so we'll know how to do it too." That I have done, but now I feel like I'm the one trying to give a tutorial. Sorry about that, Melissa. I knew I wouldn't be a very good "student", but you asked.

That's more than enough from me for tonight. I'm off to get tomorrow's post ready... seeing as it's actually tomorrow already.

As mentioned, last month we lost our internet service for an entire week. Of course, we had called our cable internet provider as soon as service went out, and we called again when the problem was not resolved. When told that it would be several days before a repairman could come out, we fussed and fumed. We grumbled aloud about it every day. Life was rough, I tell you. Boy, were we glad to get it restored.

A week later, our phone service went out. We hardly noticed. We'd pick up the phone to make a call, hear no dial tone, say "Oh yeah, I forgot that our phone must be out," and pick up our cell phones instead. It was three days before we thought to contact the phone company.

Does that speak volumes about our priorities, or what? (Granted, I think we'd have been a tad more concerned about the phone had we not had our cell phones to fall back on. Still...)

Our internet, phone, and TV actually come through the same company. Here's hoping the TV will go out next. I might simply forget to call about that one altogether. Unfortunately, my HGTV-addicted Hubz would be all over it, with the help of lots of friendly reminders from the kids.

(Note, accompanied by deep *sigh*: Once upon a time for many years, we had one TV, with rabbit ears only, and it was hardly on. Cable TV was, in our book, a foolish matter of "spending money in order to waste time." Alas, combining business and residence on one property rendered high-speed internet a necessity, and with it came cable TV. Or to put it more simply, times have changed, and so has Hubz.)

Oh well.

Back to the phone business. Here's the clincher: There was not even a problem with our phone service. The reason we didn't have a dial tone was that someone unplugged the phone cable box, quite possibly for the purpose of plugging in a video game accessory.

And it took us 3 days and a call to the cable company to figure this out.

You can bet that if it had been the modem which was unplugged, we'd have figured it out in about two seconds.

Sad. Very sad.

As if I weren't having a hard enough time returning to blogging already, our internet has been down for nearly a week and was behaving quite poorly for over a week before that. Hubz, Cheez, and I all just thought our computers were having issues until we started talking to each other, which was right about the time Biz came over and got on his computer and informed us that we were having internet issues. Oh. And then it just stopped altogether. Apparently our cable modem is in its final stages of life or something like that. The cable company is coming to fix it tomorrow, hooray. Of course, they will be charging us a service call even though the modem technically belongs to them. Hmmm. All the more reason to switch to another service. We are running out of arms and legs to pay this one anyway. Funny how they hook you with a good price and then the fees go up and up...

Okay, sorry. You are not here to read about my internet woes. (What are you here to read about, anyway?) And I have only yea much time before this coffee shop closes and my computer and I have to go back to our home netless home.

I have oogles of headblogs clamoring to get out of my brain and onto the blog. Unfortunately, I can't blog, even here. There is a lovely duo here at this coffee shop playing some lovely gospel-y bluegrass-y music. Not only is it really difficult to not sing along; it is also really difficult to THINK! Blogging (unlike Facebook) requires thinking; ergo, if I can't think, I can't blog.

But I have to post something. It has been far too long. It doesn't take an abundance of brain cells to copy an old post, so while the majority of my brain cells are engaged in mentally singing along to "I'll Fly Away," the remaining few still in service have found an old post for you to enjoy.

This post was written a couple years ago after I had picked Spaz up from his second year at church camp. Tomorrow I will make the same trip, but I hope not to have the same conversation... 

As noted in my last post, Spaz was at church camp this past week. This was his second year.  Due to certain issues Spaz has (including, but not limited to, a tendency to go into meltdown mode), we were a bit hesitant last year to send him.  But Spaz is well-known, well-liked, and well-understood at church, and we had peace knowing that, whatever arose, he'd be loved and taken care of.  And he was.  One counselor stayed up talking with him til 2 am when he couldn't sleep one night, another calmed him out of his sole meltdown, and the camp nurse deftly removed the head of a tick from his upper thigh.  All in all, he had a great time, and his counselors, despite spending 4 days with a bunch of 9-to-11-year-old boys, seemed to have most of their sanity still intact.

It always helps Spaz if things are kept simple.  (Hint to other parents of KWADs: I also make sure HE is the one who actually puts everything in the suitcase, in hopes that it will help him remember what he has & where it is.)  So in preparing for camp, he & I packed "clothing rolls"-- socks, underwear, T-shirt & shorts rolled up and secured with a large file-size rubberband.  (Socks are not normally a staple around our house in the summer, but state law mandates that kids at camps wear socks and close-toed shoes.)  One roll for each day, plus one extra.  A couple 'pajama' rolls, too (which of course, since he is 11, are not actually pajamas, but rather T-shirts and knit shorts that he uses specifically as sleepwear).  He thought this was great.  I figured that, like last year, he'd come back with a couple rolls yet unworn, but it never hurts to be on the safe side.

Post-camp conversation at the ice-cream shop:

Mom (observing Spaz' filthy camp T-shirt, swimsuit, and lack of state-mandated socks):  So, Spaz, how many of the clothes we packed did you actually wear?

Spaz:  Um, what I came in.  Plus this shirt they gave me.  And I wore my swimsuit all the time.

Mom:  Spaz!!!  Didn't you put on clean clothes after showers?

Spaz:  ShowER, you mean.  I just put my swimsuit back on.  It was clean from the pool.

Mom:  You didn't by any chance wear your pajama shirts & shorts to bed?

Spaz:  The first night I did.

Mom (not really wanting to know):  And then...?

Spaz:  I told you, I wore my swimsuit the whole time.

Mom:  Ooo-kay.  And did you, perchance, use your toothbrush?

Spaz:  Yup!  Once.

Alrighty, then.

Though not apparent at camp & the ice-cream store, the smell became quite noticeable upon our arrival home, and he was sent almost immediately to the shower.

At least I don't have a ton of laundry to do.

*Sigh* Memories...

Well, the singing has stopped but the coffee shop is closing, which means it is time for me to go "Fly Away". Here's hoping we'll be hooked up again tomorrow.

I was shoveling mud off the cement curbing at the bottom of my flower garden a couple weeks ago when Fuzz skipped over to see what I was doing. For reasons we have never been able to determine, water and dirt collect in this spot, melding into a lovely soft mud, and it is a never-ending battle to keep it clear. Generally I don't bother to try, but with Cheez' open house looming, I was putting forth extra effort in all aspects of yard and garden, and this stretch of curbing was no exception.

"Shoveling all that mud off, huh?" was Fuzz' astute observation.

"Yup," I replied. "Not that it will make a whole lot of difference. It's supposed to rain tomorrow, and this will be full of mud all over again."

My ten-year-old looked at me, at the shovelfuls of muck, at the muddy curb, then shook her head and made her pronouncement.

"A noble but pointless effort," she sighed, and ambled away.

Gotta love a kid who tells it like it is, and in fine literary style to boot.

Cooperative limericks at the dinner table last night provoked a friendly debate as whether the word "grovel" ought to be pronounced gruv-el, as per the mother's insistence, or grah-vel, as per the eldest daughter's insistence. Debate was settled by the dictionary, which says both are correct. Likewise for the word "hovel".

Hence, contrary to the firmly stated opinion of Daughter Who Just Won Her School's English Award, the word "shovel" does indeed have at least two rhyming counterparts, thus rendering the phrase "There once was a man with a shovel" a perfectly valid opening line after all. Score one for the Mom Who Should Have Been an English Major.

By the time the debate was settled, it was of little value to the limerick in question anyway, as I had already changed my opening line to "There once was a man with an axe." This was a bit risky, as a couple of my children have a propensity toward violent poetry when given opportunity, and such a line gave obvious opportunity. However, the other tools which came to mind were not easy rhymers. "There once was a man with an edger" and "There once was a man with a pitchfork" really were not going to cut it. Besides, each of them had potential for graphically violent follow-up as well. So "axe" it was, and we did manage to get all the way around the table and complete the limerick without undue grossness. (This is even more amazing considering the fact that we just yesterday became embroiled in a heated dispute with the very organization with the power to levy something which begins with T and conveniently rhymes with "axe"... But that's another post.)

Anyway, you'll notice I was sort of stuck on this theme of outdoor tools, and I really couldn't tell you why that is. Men with shovels and axes make for rather lame openers. Generally our limericks start out along more creative lines. To wit: "There once was a windmill that sang..." "A girl who refused to eat salad..." Or --my personal favorite, from Eldest Son With Strangely Wry Sense of Humor-- "There once was a cow with no udder." (I'm not certain we were ever able to finish that last one, either because we couldn't find proper rhyming words or because we were too busy trying to regain our composure.)

But back to the whole pronounciation debate. After discovering the dual pronounciations for "grovel" and "hovel", I couldn't help but look up one last word. Wouldn't you? I mean, who among us wouldn't love to be able to dig every so often with a shah-vel rather than a shuv-el?

No deal. There is only one correct pronounciation for the word "shovel". I know, I am sad about that too.

But at least we all learned something, which only goes to show that every family ought to do build-your-own-limericks at the dinner table. And that every dining room ought to have a dictionary within easy walking distance.

Well, the busy busy month of May is over and so is all the graduation hoopla! Cheez graduated last Thursday, the graduation all-nighter that I helped to coordinate & chaperone was held immediately after, and then many weeks of preparation culminated in our big graduation bash for Cheez and Biz yesterday.

I can almost breathe again-- almost. I have a Kids' Club (Wed nite church) T-shirt project to figure out, exam tutoring at Cheez' school alma mater, and a wedding gift to make or buy this week. Then the wedding to attend this weekend and our Kids' Club trip to the Chicago zoo a week from today, and... and... and that's about it. Then I can really breathe and maybe even blog again.

Except that I was going to start "summer school extra lite" with the kids on the 10th. We'll see whether I actually do. Actually our last couple weeks of school (which we "finished" on the 22nd) were extra extra lite. Sometimes that's just what you have to do when life is busy.

Yesterday I scrambled til 5 pm, partied til 9 pm, hung out til 10, and cleaned up til 1:30. Today I looked at gifts and cards with Cheez until 3 am, slept til 10:30, decompressed over the phone with my mom til just after noon, decompressed with Cheez when she woke up at 1:00, and am still in my pj's at 2! My poor hubz worked just as hard as I did yesterday (although he went to bed several hours before I did) and has been hard at work since long before I was up. I'm a little spoiled, wouldn't you say? There is a truckload of cleanup still to be done, so perhaps I should get started on my day now.

I hope to be back in blogland a little more often now!

G is for Guess What I Did a Couple Saturdays Ago?

I was so eager to post these pictures right after the event... and then I fell asleep in my chair after uploading them, and then we had family coming over for mother's day, and then there were all sorts of things to be busy with, and that was the end of that lovely thought.

But I vowed that I would post them for you, my very bloggy friends, and so I am.

On a rainy Saturday morning, the ninth of May, my husband, younger kids, parents, and I sat in bleachers in a college gymnasium all dressed in our Sunday finery and watched eagerly for this:

Or more specifically, for this:

(Sorry the pictures aren't so great. High ISO, low shutter speed, and all that. Not sure why it didn't occur to me to bring the monopod for stability.)

And so we watched, and we sat, and we listened.

Because it all led to this:

And then they sat back down and the tassels were moved and then it was this:

And finally, this:

Are you catching the significant happening here?

He's. Wearing. A. Tie.

Before you go thinking that that isn't very significant, I should note that the last time I saw this kid --excuse me, I mean this young man-- in a tie was 2005. And I'm pretty sure the last time before that was 1998. (This is true; I am not making it up.)

So there you have it. T is for Tie.

Oh wait. The tie isn't what it was all about. Okay, I have it now:

G is for Graduate.

COLLEGE Graduate.

Yes, on May 9, I became the proud mother of a college graduate. WOW.

Oh, and the tie, we figure, was a requirement for his particular degree. Shouldn't tie ownership be a pre-requisite for everyone recieving a degree in Business Administration?

(And now you know how Biz got his blog name. It was the college major.)

I should add, however, that Biz decided at some point that he hates business administration. But rather than change his major, he went for two minors-- finance, which he likes, and English, which he loves. Like Cheez, he enjoys writing a great deal. (My kids, enjoying writing. Imagine that.) Also like Cheez, he really doesn't know what he wants to do. His required internship this past semester was actually not in the business administration field, as would normally be required, but in the publishing field. His advisor, believing in the importance of following what one really enjoys, made an exception for him. He loves it but isn't sure he wants to sit behind a desk all his life.

Tentative plans for the fall include heading to Eastern Europe to teach English through an ESL program. Paid adventure, he figures. I'm not sure he plans to pack the tie. And after that, well, who knows? He doesn't.

But whatever he ends up doing, he's given himself a good start in life. It hasn't always been a smooth road. I'm really proud of him for hanging in there and finishing out his degree.

Congratulations, Jared!!!

Cornerstone University, Class of 2009

No, I have not fallen off the face of the earth. No, I have not abandoned you all in favor of Facebook. I have just been crazy busy times 73 with two offspring graduations this month and all the accompanying hoopla and all the things I need to do, including things that I should have gotten done months and months ago.

Just so you guys know, I have some special pictures which I have determined are not going to be posted on facebook until after they have been posted here! But when that will be is anyone's guess.

Remember, I did say I was going to be "sporadic" this month. Let's just be realistic and change that to incognito. Or absent without official leave. Whatever works for you.

Two weeks and I will be able to breathe again...