Happy

Dropped the ball again, didn't I? This every day stuff is WAY harder than I thought it was going to be!

Had an eventful weekend; got everybody together to make banners to send to the guys down range for Thanksgiving. Had a really great turnout throughout the battalion and we're sending some very colorful and creative messages down there!

From a photography standpoint, major fail on my part. Didn't take my big flash and tried to do without one at all, but there was just too much movement and too little light. Also, should have taken the kit lens, which is considerably wider angle than my Tamron zoom and even if the Tamron does stop down to f/2.8, the larger aperture was no match for the poor light in the room. Should have gone with the image stabilizer lens! Lesson learned: don't try to be all artsy-fartsy when large groups of small children in dark rooms are involved!

Ground view

Sometimes it's not practical to take my big dSLR out. I'm afraid of getting rained on, Heidi is being psycho-dog on the leash, or I just don't want to be stared at. At those times, I dig out the Canon Powershot SX100 that we bought a few years ago for my first foray into digital. It's a fine little camera (not as fine as the new Canon S95, by my saying so puts my husband's head in imminent danger of exploding - "ANOTHER CAMERA?!") and among its many desirable traits my willingness to put it places I would never put my big camera. Like on the ground.

Not so burning bush.

Still trying to play catch up. Something is desperately wrong with the Deutchland portal to Yahoo and Flickr, and sometimes Blogger. It's maddening. But also, there is the fact that "trying to stay busy" has somehow morphed into "OMG-the world is spinning too fast! Make it stop!" But unfortunately I set myself on this speeding bullet of personal projects, FRG madness AND GUESS WHAT?! The housework still doesn't do itself! What the heck, man?

9

I finally got to talk to R last night.

Pffft. Listen to me, "finally." When he deployed in 2003, it took two months to get my first letter and I thought that was awesome! Of course, we weren't married then, so perhaps my perspective was somewhat different. The other thing that skews my perspective this time is living in Europe. "Down range" is no longer halfway across the world, and in fact is only ahead by a single time zone. It feels closer and quite frankly I don't know if that makes it easier or harder. On the one hand, logistically he could be back home in a couple of hours, but in practice he's as unreachable as the moon.

Took Heidi on a long, meandering walk this morning. Bright fall colors have begun to darken to that charcoal gray grunge look, but this tree is hanging onto its red. These spots reminded me of something utterly alien to northern Europe - as though a bit of Africa had set up shop beside the river. I spent several minutes observing it from different angles, and this shot is my favorite. Very straight forward and direct, which is an acurate reflection of how I'm feeling today.