George is back from his

George is back from his two-week trip to Taiwan. Yay! I like having George around, plus he brought me presents: a package containing fourteen tiny plastic models of spacecraft and airplanes, made in Taiwan, of course. Very cool. He said he had a good time — he re-met family that he hadn’t seen in 20 years. Taiwan apparently is very business-oriented. No trees or pretty green space in the city, just buildings and businesses. But outside the city he said it was prettier. And hot and humid. Just like Houston.
I had a lovely Memorial Day weekend that, of course, wasn’t long enough. Friday night we all had dinner at Chili’s, and I was in bed at a reasonable hour because I got up at 6 a.m. Saturday morning to meet Debbie and head downtown to Minute Maid Park for the Astros Race for the Pennant 5K. Debbie was running and I was photographing…with a beautiful rented 70-200 f/2.8 lens that I really want to buy but it’s too expensive at the moment. Especially because after this weekend, I was motivated to upgrade my camera. (No comments from the peanut gallery!) Anyway, I have ordered a 20D to replace my 10D, because after two months of shooting races, and with no end in sight since I’m really enjoying it, I need a faster camera. My new 20D will be here this week!
The 10D is just a bit too slow on the write speed and buffer size. Before I was even halfway through the race, the camera had slowed down to the point where I could only take one shot per ~1.5 seconds. I still got a lot of shots, but I missed a lot too. Too slow for race photography. So I’ve bought a new camera, and will be selling my 10D. I’ve already sold some old equipment I had to make up the price difference (I got rid of the 10D battery grip and the enlarger that I never used on eBay, and am trying to sell my AE-1P). If anyone is interested in buying it, leave a comment. Otherwise, on to eBay it goes.
So let’s see. I spent the rest of Saturday running a few errands and watching baseball. Saturday night I headed over to Gavin and Jen’s for Chinese food, a game of Settlers, and watching Pirates of the Caribbean (can I say again how much Johnny Depp cracks me up in that movie?). I was exhausted by the time I got home at 11:30, having been up since 6, and ended up sleeping from midnight straight through to noon on Sunday. It was glorious.
I dragged myself out of bed to watch some baseball and work out on the elliptical machine before going over to Debbie’s to help her paint her front door. Somehow I have become the painting expert. 🙂 We had fun, and now the door is sparkling white again. A bit later I headed over to the Becca/Cari/Nick household for pizza and to see Tiffany’s adorable chihuahua puppy. While there, we had one of the more spectacular thunderstorms in recent memory pass through; on my way home, the lightning was coming so fast and frequently that it felt like daytime. Anyway, Tiff got her dog a month ago, but I didn’t see her then so this was the first time I met Chloe.
Chloe is SO cute. It made me want a dog all over again, and made me very sad to think of Leo. All last week I thought of calling the Humane Society to check on Leo and see if he was adopted, but I’m too embarassed to actually do it.
Yesterday I celebrated Memorial Day by sleeping another 10 hours (yep, 22 hours of sleep in two nights, it was beautiful) before heading out on a round of errands. I was looking for silver sandals for the wedding, and found red sandals instead. So I bought them, but the search for silver continues. Let’s see, I also got a bunch of random stuff at Target, a new basket for my bathroom, a new fuzzy bath mat, and two leafy plants from Lowe’s for my balcony. I almost bought a little plant stand at Pier 1 to make my balcony decor complete, but I couldn’t justify the expense. Ah well.
Yesterday afternoon we had a Memorial Day picnic that moved to Debbie’s house instead of the park because of the threat of rain. The rain never materialized, but I’m sure it would have if we’d actually gone to the park. Tiffany brought Chloe, of course:


And I still thought she was adorable. We sat around on the deck because the weather was a bit cooler after Sunday’s thunderstorms. Finally, it was home again and bed.
All in all, it was a lovely long weekend, even though I didn’t accomplish half of what I wanted to. But since most of my plans involved cleaning up my wreck of an apartment, it’s not the end of the world…