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There's been no food in our...well, there's been no actual food in our meals this last week so this afternoon was spent grocery shopping. We thought it'd be a great idea to buy a TON of booze. We'll be scratching our heads on that one later. Sixty beers and four wine bottles later, we made it home from Costco and Haggen's. Watched Maximum Overdrive. What a movie. This whole day was just silly. Now who will help us with all this drink?

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Went up to Birch Bay to visit Morgan's parents on their vacation. I purchased a huge box of Zyrtec to-go packs, so I will never again be taken over by watery eyes and hives when I play with their bulldogs. Even without the defense of Zyrtec, I would still play...they're just too damn cute!

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Happy belated Birthday Sara!

Treated Sara out for the night as a late birthday celebration. We went to a you-paint pottery studio, then out for drinks and dessert. I love how convenient Fairhaven is. So much to do within a three block radius!

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Fishy F. Fish at Morgan's brother's family's house. Whew! (Waiting for his home to be clean.)

I won't knock Best Buy, but the organization of the process of sending my phone in for repair was a bit sloppy. After a month (and plenty of trial-and-error), Best Buy gave me a pretty new red phone. Preeeetty.

Drove around with Morgan to catch up with some friends and family.

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Yarn-painting at my work

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This is the second ice-cream picture in this project so far. Something is not right here.

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First day back to work since last Tuesday! :Þ

Went gift-shopping with Morgan this evening. He does a lot of that this time of the year. Found these guys huddled together at a local toy store.

"..aaaaandBREAK!"

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Happy Birthday Sara!

On my third day of resting on the living room reclining chair, I rediscovered the beauty of the paper-lilies Morgan made for me a couple of years ago.

My body is slowly climbing back to full-health. Tonight was my first time out of the house in...very many days. Morgan thought I needed something heartier than thinned-down chicken broth and Gatorade, so he took me out for pizza. I look back on my life in these last few days and am very thankful that he has been so helpful. At times, I was even surprised at his eagerness to help. I owe my speedy recovery to him (and the juice)!

Also, today was Sara's birthday and I completely missed it! She had a blast :)

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Yuck-yuckie-yuck-yuck-yuck.

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Happy Vernal Equinox!

There're plenty of indoor shots to come. :( Still very ill.

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Tree seen from my back porch.

I am so terribly sick, I can barely move around for very long. Back to bed.

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I. Am. Sick.

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Happy St. Paddy's Day!

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HDR fun!

EV+2

EV0

EV-2

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Happy Birthday Gus!

I, too, was stunned by the menu's offerings.

Celebrated by going out to The Cheesecake Factory. The plan was for someone to treat Gus out to dinner again, but we racked up such a bill that we ended up paying for ourselves. Well, except me. :)

Played at Gameworks for a few hours. The Star Wars Racer arcade game was my favorite! That and skeeball, of course. I would waste some serious money to own one of each. No one would see me again if I did, except when I open my front door to let the electrician in to keep them alive.

'Eres anotha for good measure.

This fire-fighting game was hilarious!

All in all, an awesome birthday celebration.

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Family weekend!

Went South to my family's this weekend. I love the little people in my life!

This is very much a child's room. Sara and I painted this, and another room (which became light pink with ivy and flowers painted on the walls), over a year ago. Those are painted wooden stars! This was a very tiring project, but I would love doing it all over again.

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Mega Man in fondant!

I made these for Gus' birthday later this weekend. Celebrated a few days early by treating him to Red Robin and going out for Cold Stone. Made some Best Buy employees uneasy as we wandered around eating our ice-cream (it was in there and it was freezing outside). We were so full!

Here's another for good measure:

Chocolat cupcakes with marshmallow-fudge and regular fudge frostings.

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(All images link to full-size!)

I'd rather see the world through tone mapped images.

I decided that I have waited long enough to try my hand at HDR imaging so (with a little influence from a certain Ninja-loving photographer) I gave it a shot.

Since I still do not own my own tripod, subject matter can be a bit limited when outdoors. I propped my camera up on a picnic table across from this brightly colored jungle-gym by my house that I have been eying for this purpose. I took my photos, spun the camera to face the opposite direction, and took a few more shots of some buildings before my battery died. This jungle-gym is not the best subject to show off how neat hdr imaging is, but it will just have to work for now.

By the time I was done outside, Photomatix Pro 3 was done downloading and I was ready to go! Here are the three source images I used for today's photo:

EV +2

EV 0

EV -1
(EV -2 was a bit blurry)

And here is what is on the other side of the park:

EV +2

EV +1

EV 0


After tone mapping

All in all, an extremely fun project from start to finish.
And tomorrow I get my tripod!! On to bigger, better and brighter images. :D

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Love these guys!

Sara is the light of my life, the most loyal person in the world to me, the keeper of all my secrets, and what do I do to her? I leave her hanging for two weeks and she still whisks me away for a whole day of fun and excitement. A very hungover Sara met me in town for coffee. Today's picture would have been of her but I don't think she would have...actually, I doubt that she'd have cared at all. I got a few creative tasks done that required an extra brain, so I am grateful to have spent time with a female, and get away from the seemingly boys-only zone that is my apartment. All in all, a good day.

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Yesterday's snow stayed through the night. It came down most of today and on the way back down south to go to Morgan's family's, we got stuck in terrible traffic. We were stopped for so long that people were getting out of their cars to scrape ice off. I got out to take a few pictures. :)

Here's one more for good measure:

Morgan took this one while I was giving Caesar a bath. Look how blissful he looks!
Not bad :)

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Caesar is pouting because A)I won't eat snow with him. B)That is the only face he makes. C)Both A and B

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When I woke up this morning, it was starting to snow. I tried my best to capture it in a picture, but I couldn't quite figure out the best way to do that. By the time I was ready to give up, the snow went away. I tried for snowflakes, and found something completely different. :)

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I donated plasma for the first time today. I brought my camera, but forgot about it until I was hooked up and it was far out of reach! Maybe next time.

Morgan has been donating for a few weeks, but he never really described the process to me. I had all these wild visuals about being hooked up and unplugged multiple times in order for them to extract my plasma and return my blood. It was nothing like that at all.

My let arm is hooked up to a machine. As my blood is getting drawn, it flows up the machine to a tube that spins fast enough to separate the plasma from red blood cells. I squeeze my hand to help speed up the extraction, and after awhile the machine beeps to let me know that it is about to return the red blood cells (and retain my plasma), and that I should quit squeezing my hand. I go between the extraction and return process a few times, and then I am done!

I was a bit loopy after the process, which was to be expected. Morgan had scheduled his appointment to coincide with mine, and after we got home we made a great deal of food and chowed down in front of the TV. Got to bring those protein levels back up!

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I cut off one side of the box our Sony Bravia came in, and have slowly converted the panel of cardboard into a photo board. I can't wait until it's done!

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Went to cheap steak night with Morgan. I never though I'd be one of those people, but it sounded like it would make for some good people-watching. I was right. I ate Filet Mignon for the first time, and it simply melted in my mouth. If red meat was always presented to me like that, I would definitely eat it more often!

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There are only twelve of these purple flowers among the hundreds of white!

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I decided over the weekend that this year I will eat my vegetables. After telling Morgan this, he told me that it was Girl Scout Cookies season. What kind of boyfriend is he? Hit up the grocery store and actually spent less by cutting out processed foods and buying more fresh. I also bought a box of cookies. How could I pass up an opportunity to help the Scouts?

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Happy Birthday Hunter!

Treated ourselves to Cold Stone in celebration of Hunter's birthday, who I actually forgot to call and wish a happy birthday.
Ice cream in celebration of being alive, then!

Here is the best birthday photo ever, taken last weekend.