Our New Toy

For more than a year now we have been research DSLR cameras. All the photos you have seen up until this point, and for those of us who have been friends for years, everything since 2005, has been taken with my Sony Cyber Shot.

This camera was top-of-the-line at the time when my mom purchased it as a birthday gift. It spent half of my college years with me and has captured many memories with college friends post-graduation. It took the first photos of Brad and I and documented all of our adventures to different states and countries including Germany, Malta, Belize and the Dominican Republic.

At the end of May during my trip to Rhode island I noticed a spot on the lens. Whenever photos had the sky in them, there was this dust spot, almost like an orb, that showed up in every single photo. I am able to edit it out, but it reminded me that we should get back onto the DSLR pre-purchasing wagon. So we did.

After comparing cameras in the store, testing out how hard/easy it was to hold them, cost of additional accessories such as lenses, flash, etc, and mainly the quality of the camera and photos it takes, I decided on the Nikon D3000.

I was summoned for jury duty last week so I purchased the camera at the end of the day since it was available at a store closer to our home. Well, after ten days, I am thrilled with our purchase! Of course the first night I started trying the different settings by taking photos of Jake, our little fur baby turned model. We will spend time learning our new camera and taking all sorts of shots, some of which I will share with you here. Happy snapping!!

My West Coast Experience

San Francisco, City by the Bay

Oh you've got me

San Francisco

Take me to the water

(Thanks to The Village People)

Sorry for the delay of this post, I have already taken another business trip since and am happy that my next trip will be with my husband to see friends for several days. It also doesn't involve an airport. Anyway, I was in northern California for three days the week before last. I took advantage of the three hour time difference and flew direct to SFO early in the morning and rented my first rental car. It is quite nice that you can also order a GPS too - saves alot of hassle before you leave home.

I headed north on Rt. 101 towards Pier 39 because I knew that the few "must see" spots on my list were all within walking distance of this area. Since I could hear them from the parking garage, I started off by gawking and laughing at the sea lions for awhile. Some of them were huge and being bullies to the smaller guys. did you know that male sea lions have "bumps" on their heads?

For lunch I walked about ten minutes to Fisherman's Wharf and chose the restaurant with the most people inside and outside. I figured it was a good gauge of the food quality (or taste at least). There are bars outside for people to stand and eat on-the-go, although I don't know how you can eat stuffed shrimp salad sandwiches sandwiched in crunchy sourdough bread on-the-go...

Next adventure was a ride on a cable car up the steep (didn't realize how steep they really were) streets towards Lombard Street. I hung off the side of the car like they used to do in Full House while trying to take pictures. Within two minutes I almost got smashed by a truck, but I recovered quickly and continued to hang out. The ride to Lombard on the Hyde-Powell line was shorter than I hoped so I went to the next stop and then walked back up the hills to Lombard Street. Did you know that all of the flowers in and out of the crookedest street (I think I counted seven curves) are hydrangeas? I think they may be the lacecap variety because they are small and dainty, not as large as the variety in my yard.

The best part of my day was the part I planned in advance: a catamaran cruise on the Bay. Yes, it was chilly as the pictures suggest, but did I have another option? Nope. For a very reasonable $25 I took a 90 minute cruise past Alcatraz and towards (even under) the Golden Gate Bridge. There were less than two dozen people on board and a nice Swedish family offered to take photos of me. I wish brad was there to enjoy the scenery and be part of the memory I created that day. The bridge wasn't as red as I thought, which may sound strange, but maybe the paint has aged or maybe it is enhanced on television? Both scenarios seem likely to me.

Garden Update

Short post - only photos, well besides this intro and two questions: What do you have growing? Do you prefer to grow fruits/vegetables or flowers??

Where does my time go?

Last year I started to realyl feel like time was passing quickly - almost too quickly. Now I don't necessarily mean every day at work, but a week is over before I know it, which is great considering relaxing weekends, but alas, those two days off go by just as fast. It was my first wedding anniversary before I thought about how long it takes to thaw the top layer of wedding cake and Christmas almost before I recovered from Thanksgiving. Here we are, a few days into June, and I still am wondering what happened to my first five months of 2010.

I know for the past few weeks, and the next few weeks, I will not be in the office more than four days per week. At this rate I am going four, three, four, two, two.five, and then a full week only to have a three day week for the Fourth of July and then four, and four. The partial work-week trend continues through the summer months since my employers graciously offer a Summer Hours program where we can work extra time during the week and be off every other Friday.

My project for this weekend, one of the few we don't have planned out, is to paint our master bathroom. This may seem easy, but all the "architectural elements" I liked while designing the house and enjoy daily, will not be as fun to paint. I just hope I'm better at picking the color the first time around than I was with our bedroom!

No grass under my feet

Over the next several weeks I will be traveling several thousand miles. This past week I traveled to Connecticut/Newport, Rhode Island for my sister's college graduation and yesterday I was in New York City for the day. We are spending Memorial Day in ocean City, Maryland with some dear friends and then I will be spending part of the week of June 9th in California for a conference and then going back to New York City the week of the 15th. Less than two weeks later we will be going to Georgia. Honestly - I'm tired just thinking about it!

This past weekend was full of celebrating in honor of my sister Brittany completing her undergraduate degree at the University of Rhode Island. Our grandmother flew up from South Florida to spend the weekend with us and I am lucky that I just saw her a few months ago in the Sunshine State.

   

We had lunch on the Newport dinner train which at times felt like the sinking Titanic because the track was a bit angled in some spots. Even though I ride the train to and from work everyday, I have never had a gourmet seafood meal and cheesecake while in transit. We went around the Narragansett Bay on the same rails that were once taken by the wealthy from Boston with homes on the Rhode Island coast.

                         

                          

Then we walked to the harbor and boarded the Majestic for a cruise around the Bay. It was pretty foggy at the beginning, but it did start to clear up. Something funny was on my camera lens so unfortunately several of my photos (boat one above) have a mark on them. We went by the oldest and second oldest lighthouses, in the U.S. I think, and also by the estate where Senator John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Bouvier were married in 1953.

Graduation Day was Sunday and the second Campbell child received her college degree!

Being at her graduation made me think back on mine and I don't remember anything about the ceremony except walking across the stage to receive my diploma and Blair whispering to me since she was seated behind me. I don't remember who the speaker was, but I'm sure a Dean spoke as well as Clemson President James Barker. URi invited John King of CNN to this graduation and I enjoyed listening to him talk about his past as a URI student working for the AP in providence and Boston. His AP job actually caused him to miss his URI graduation - this is the first one he has ever attended.

My sister is going to be working for a year and then attending graduate school to become a Child Life Specialist. I hope she finds/earns/enjoys lots of success!!

Facebook Birthdays

On Monday I celebrated a birthday. I am now old enough to rent a car without paying any extra fees. When I was a senior in high school and wanted to drive to Myrtle Beach for Spring break that seemed like the best method for traveling. Alas, no one was old enough so we never went. Now I don't even want to rent a car!

Last year my birthday fell on a Saturday and I went with Brad, my mom, and some other relatives to an Orioles game with the Clemson alumni club. It was great fun. This year, my birthday fell on a Monday which didn't really make it seem like a birthday. Does that make sense? Since Facebook came to Clemson in 2004, I have been keeping "in the know" about what "friends" are doing, their families, their jobs, vacations, etc. Well on my birthday I could not believe that more than 75 of these FF (Facebook friends) took a few moments out of their day to send birthday wishes my way.

It made me think about how, to be honest, I do not send many birthday wishes on Facebook, but I do call my close friends and/or send them and/or their children cards. I think I should pay more attention to the birthday list on the right side of the facebook homepage because if these FF were able to bring joy to my day, I should do it for them too.

I was also a little intrigued by the FF who sent messages. of course I had cousins, aunts, and close friends, but there were also old friends, like from elementary school and college friends, who I'm not in touch with anymore, don't know why sometimes, and looking back it is so trivial, but regardless they decided to say Happy Birthday. I have started to shy away from facebook, or at least I think I have, but now I think that even if I don't personally think it is a "proper" way to keep in touch, sometimes you ened to take what you can get from friends who may not be in your life otherwise.

Thanks everyone for distracting me at work on Monday as I kept getting Facebook alerts ;)

How Does Your Garden Grow?

Ours grows with lots of hard work and the help of my expert gardener husband!!

If you saw the last issue of Southern Living and the beautiful hydrangeas maintained by one southern man (yes, I said man), then you know why I love these plants. When we moved to Virginia in 2007 I was surprised by a large hydrangea that had the deepest periwinkle flowers in June and I knew I wanted to plant my own. This weekend, after reading about the type of light they like best, etc, we bought three of them. Consider them birthday gifts for me :). Last year we planted trees and this year we opted for two beautiful deep pink hydrangeas, a blue one, and a bright pink peony for the sunny side of the house.

Did you know that hydrangeas are known to bloom right around Mother's Day? Well, this was exciting news for me because that means they should always look nice right around the time of my birthday (May 10th). As you can see, our pink ones are in full bloom right now and our blue one is a few days behind. Last night I noticed some of the flowers opening up so I will take another picture once that happens.

In order to plant our new bushes, we had to till the ground, dig an edge, and mulch the flowerbed. Brad is a perfectionist, which is usually quite helpful, so he did the edging and I raked, shoveled and planted everything. I even buried an old rusty hook in the hole for the blue plant since it is supposed to make the color of the flowers better due to the acid content.

I am happy with how it looks and can't wait for them to keep growing. It sure is nice to see them everytime I pull into the driveway!