Managed a couple of trips this past weekend. I’m not sure if I’ll post any photos, though. Lots of other stuff going on at the moment.
Sunday morning, I finally went to the Austin Cars and Coffee. Actually in Leander, it’s held the first Sunday of every month. I’ve been meaning to go for a long time, but always missed it. Well, I am glad I went! There were dozens of cars! I’d say half were recent Corvettes, Camaros, and Mustangs with the rest a random mix. It seems like if you want to show your car, you can, as some of the cars were not exactly what you would expect to see. Anyway, I’m looking forward to going back. Although it really makes me want to get a new car now.
Second, we went to the Capital of Texas Zoo. After two visits to the Austin Zoo, I didn’t have high hopes. This one, while still not a ‘real’ zoo, was much more enjoyable. The animals were more interesting and their habitats were much bigger. The staff is nice, too. If you want to visit an Austin zoo, I would definitely recommend the Capital of Texas Zoo over the Austin Zoo. I look forward to checking back in a couple of years and seeing how they’ve grown.
Also, I just discovered I never finished processing my Wood Duck photos, so I’ll try to get those up by this weekend.
I started this post almost a month ago. I’ll explain what took so long later.
Zilker Botanical Garden
Last month, the winds finally let up enough that we dared a visit to the Zilker Botanical Garden for some flower photos. We were last there in September 2009. As promised, I brought my telephoto lens instead of my wide-angle. This worked ok, but I will go back to the wide-angle next time. The only flowers I can’t get right up to are the ones in the water, which is just a handful. The telephoto can’t get enough of the flowers in focus for my taste.
Full Gallery
PRK Surgery
After years of waiting, I finally decided to just get laser vision correction 3 weeks ago. I went with PRK rather than LASIK, as it held fewer risks for me. This was sort of a letdown, as PRK is older and one of the reasons I had waited was for newer stuff to be proven. LASIK has a faster recovery time. Everything went fine, and the procedure itself took just a few minutes. The first week was pretty miserable as I was very sensitive to light, had to wear a protective contact lens, and everything was pretty fuzzy. After 4 days, I could see well enough to read text up close. The next day the doctor removed the lens. I tried to work the next day from home, but just wound up with eye strain. Two days later I went back to work full-time.
It will likely be at least another month before I clearly see everything. Text is my biggest issue right now. Signs, price tags, menus, etc. It’s essentially like having your eyes mildly dilated 24/7. Hence, I’m not on the computer much at home. I’ve been using my iPad mostly. It’s really been helpful, and much more pleasant to use than sitting in front of the computer. So no photography posts for awhile. Not a big deal, as I don’t get out much during the summer anyway. But missing May was disappointing. Even though most everything is blurry from a distance, it’s still much nicer than wearing glasses.
To ring in the new year, I changed the blog’s theme and downsized from 3 columns to 2. I was rather tired of the Garland theme since I see it everyday at work. There are a couple of drawbacks. One is that the comments link is at the top of the post, rather than the bottom. I think this is really only a problem on the front page. If you’re reading an individual post or via RSS, it should be ok. The other problems is that this is a fixed-width theme. I intensely dislike these. I much prefer flexible-width to fill the screen. Unfortunately WordPress has few flexible themes from which to choose. So I just sucked it up and picked this one. Images will limited to 600 pixels wide. This should be fine, as most images I post link to my photo gallery.
I also intend to take advantage of WordPress’ Pages feature. This is the reason I switched from Blogspot in the first place. I hope this will allow me to move off some of the non-core posts to permanent pages.
The core of the blog will attempt to return to just photography: equipment, birding, and vacation photos. I think this is what most people (ahem) are here for anyway. And this is shaping to be a Big trip year, so…. :)
I’ve been waiting forever for this. Corner Gas, one of my favorite shows, is finally available in a Full Tank box set. Strangely, I cannot find any info on this, nor have their been any reviews on it. It looks official, though. The price is decent, but I wish it was available in BluRay, esp. as some of the seasons were broadcast in HD. I will probably hold out for awhile to see if it come out. Any feedback, please post!
In case anyone was waiting for Lakefest photos, I did not attend this year. After 3 years of 100+ degree weather, enough was enough. And with no new equipment this year, I had no desire to make the trek. The weather here had actually been fairly mild (<100) for most of the summer, until the past couple of weeks. If I can ever remember, I might go to the Showdown in San Angelo, since it is at a more hospitable time of year.
In other news, I closed on my Hilton timeshare purchase. So far all has gone well. I am waiting for the official notice from Hilton, then I will post my timeline and how it went.
