Posts

first_grade

preschool

wow, today was a big milestone for our family...it was the first day that both girls were in school at the same time. the little princess started first grade and the munchkin started preschool! the princess made us proud by just walking into her class behind her teacher. we were a little worried because she was attending a different school from where she had attended kindergarten but she was a trooper. the munchkin had a moment of anxiety when she first walked into her class and came running back out but after a little bit of reassurance and then pointing out something in the classroom that caught her attention she went back into the room which gave us the opening to leave. they both came home saying they had a good day at school so we are both proud parents.

"first grade, here i come" happened to be the book we read with the princess before she turned in for the night.

black widow spiders apparently like cool dark places and i guess the inside of the crocs i leave in the backyard meet those conditions. yesterday evening i was heading into the backyard to grill up some steaks and when i slipped my right foot into those crocs i felt something moving in there so i quickly kicked them off to find a black spider sitting right on top of my foot. i quickly got that spider off of my foot and smashed it but apparently not before being bitten. at the time i didn't notice any red markings on the spider so wasn't sure if it was a black widow or not but after developing black widow bite symptoms...pain and redness at the bite site, muscle cramps, sweating, and lower back and abdominal pain, i'm pretty sure now that it was a black widow. that night was a pretty miserable night...tossed and turned and didn't get any sleep because i couldn't get comfortable with all the muscle pain. called the doctor's office in the morning for some advice and was told that i should probably head into the ER to have it checked out. so, i headed into the emergency room and after waiting all they bascially did was confirmed that i was probably bitten by a black widow and tell me there was nothing they could really do about the venom that was in my system. they usually only administer the antivenom in life threatening cases usually in cases with young children or the elderly. the venom would probably take about 24 hours to work itself out of my system and until that happened i was pretty much out of luck. so, they gave me a tetnus shot because the skin was punctured, an oral antibiotic to prevent infection around the bite site, and some pain meds to get through the rest of the time that it took for the venom to work through my system. as i write this post, about 24 hours after being bitten, the pain has subsided considerabley but its not completely gone. hopefully i'll be able to get some rest tonight and by the morning this whole experience will be behind me.

note to self: no more leaving footwear in the backyard that can used as dwellings for bugs!

smugmug _logo

seeing is believing. i was at first skeptical about one of smugmug's claims that their auto color processing makes prints look better. i was having trouble finding any first hand comments on the web so i decided to run a comparison of my own. i chose a couple of pics we had ordered previously online to be printed at our local costco and ordered the same pics via smugmug. the costco prints were printed with a glossy finish but we went with the lustre finish on the smugmug prints but that was the only difference between the two orders other than the auto color processing offered by smugmug. here's a link to a smugmug gallery of the two pics that were used. the pic with our two daughters, there wasn't a significant difference between the two prints but the pic with the wife and our older daughter...wow! not only did the print look more in focus and brighter but the colors of the flowers and bushes in the background of the pic turned out more vibrant. the difference in the print quality is enough that we are going to pay for the standard account for $39.95 a year.

test_pic

崖の上のポニョ - Trailer

崖の上のポニョ - Performance

recently noticed that the theme song for the newest miyazaki hayao directed studio ghibli animated movie, 崖の上のポニョ,    has been on the oricon charts. the movie is currently showing in japan.