Happy Martin Luther King day.

Because of some over commitments made by the boss (OK, because the programmers cannot meet the schedule the boss promised upper management – it’s our fault) we have been asked to put in extra hours. I was working 7am – 4pm, and rather than join the group in staying late (I like getting home early enough to see the sunset) I decided to come in early. So my hours are now 6am – 4:15 or so, depending on those @#$%%^ late afternoon long running meetings.

Coming in this morning, in the dark, I was surprised to see a group standing out by the ‘Welcome to Las Vegas’ sign getting their photo taken. I am assuming that they were out all night, and before retiring they stopped for a photo. Well, shouldn’t say stopped as that sign is rather far away from most of the strip. I usually see people there when I drive home, two or three times a week. Last week was another movie shot – at least there were lots of lights and cameras and quite a crowd standing around.

It is nice and quiet here at work that time of morning. The collections group starts up at 5am. With the time difference they start bugging people on the east coast, 8am their time. But collections is in the other building, there are about a dozen customer service people in the cubes over in this building.

And I finally hit Radio Shack this weekend and bought that earphone extension cord I wanted. So now I am plugged into the computer, and can listen to those verbal posts and my French radio stations. I particularly like French Lazy Radio, they have a lot of ‘old standards’ and slower jazz type songs. I’ve tried some French jazz stations but can’t get one that broadcasts consistently. I like listening to music for background as I work, it hides the conversations around me, so I am not too distracted. Since I don’t understand French even the DJs are unintelligible, so it all comes across as background sound to me. But I do want to take some French classes, so that when we go back I can be better at communicating. Guess I’ll have to switch to Russian radio or something then. I tried Japanese, but that really was a bit too much.

Got a new camera when we were in Prescott last week. I’ve been looking for a Fuji Z-1, but it seems to have been a popular model, and everyone local was sold out after the Christmas rush. We were in the indoor mall in Prescott and Sears had one in stock, on sale, so I picked one up. Our last camera, a Gateway I got two years ago, is just too slow. You push the button to take a shot, then count to five, and the camera clicks. Challenging to anticipate what Eli will be doing in five seconds. The Fuji is almost immediate, and at five megapixels it’s the same quality as the GW. A lot smaller, too. I really like it. The eagle shot down below, and the dam pics are off of the new camera as we returned. Now I have to go through all of the shots I took last week and upload some.

Without my own shots here are two I grabbed off of somebody else’s posts a while ago. Kind of like the mad dog. Looked nice.


About what I feel like right now.

And for those old people hanging around, go ahead.


For Clare:
1. Slivers of morning light, about to become sunrises.
2. White stuff falling from the sky. We had some yesterday, wow.
3. That white stuff melting within ten minutes, so I don’t have to walk in it.