School Time

OK, so the post rate has been very low.  We'll try to get back in the habit.  Maybe I need some guest posters ;-).

SCHOOL TIME!

First up this week, M headed out for the first year of Kindergarten this week, and the first time riding the bus to/from school!

Ready to go

First time on - she did very well!

 Waiting for bus, day two.

 Think the backpack is big enough?  For her lunch?

Isla waiting to "take a picture" of Margot's bus.

I's turn to start a new school is next week...

Cape Cod Thunderstorm

Thunderstorm over the Bay, seen from East Sandwich on June 24, 2013. Had to work on the technique for a while, but the storm was obliging and the air between us and it was clear. Winning formula is to have a long shutter speed (e.g. 30 seconds) to give the greatest chance of catching a flash, but a high f-stop (e.g. f-10) to catch detail in the lightning (and so that the hand-held 30-second exposure didn't having moving, blurry, weak-lit foreground objects).

These have had no processing - JPGs off of my Rebel T2i and EF 28mm 1:1.8. I have RAW copies which I can play with more later.

The following two were earlier attempts with a low f-stop so they lose detail of the lightning, but show more context of the storm over the water.  Similar shots with bigger lightning strikes just washed out (though they show some interesting reflection artifacts, I think, in the lens).

Choices, choices

Margot: (trying to pick which mac and cheese to have for lunch) Eeny, meenie, miney, mo.  Catch a tiger by the toe.  Ellie Hoffens, let him go.  Eenie, meenie, miney, mo.

You've gotta watch out for that Ellie Hoffens!

Big ideas

Isla latches on to the most exciting part of something and uses that as the word to describe the thing.  Birthdays are known as "birthday cake", as in yelling "Happy Birthday Cake!" on someone's birthday. Similarly, the big things we drive around are "car seats".  Daddy drives his car seat to work every day.

The other fun part of this stage is that whatever is in front of her at any given moment is likely to be "my own favorite" or "my new favorite".  She'll sit with a pile of books, pick up each one in turn, and declare it to be her favorite.

It's such a pleasure to be around such enthusiasm.

Getting to the bottom of it

Gonna go with the short cryptic posts, as the long verbose ones don't seem to be happening. 

Floor is going down!

Be Jealous

We're having fun!

Merry Xmas

Yes, we got plastered.  Well, our walls did.

Yes. we moved in.  Yes, we had "real" movers.  And help and support from much family and many friends. 

Yes, it's taking me too long to post pics.

But for now, Merry Christmas to those who celebrate, secularly or otherwise.

And to Book-face, good night.

Rockin' IN!

Sheetrock is going in as we speak.  What a nice job to not be doing ourselves...

Backing it up

Moving to the back of the room...

I'll share some more pics soon, but following from the Friday/Saturday work of tearing out and rebuilding the subfloor in the front of the new living room, we basically rebuild the framing of the rear corner today, after some head-scratching to find a balance between a _flat_ floor, a _level_ floor, and a floor that meets the rear wall at nearly the same distance from the ceiling as up in the front of the room.  However, you can't (we decided, due to physics) have everything, so we selected our compromises and actually I think it will turn out really well. 

In case I haven't described it well yet, we're reworking some of the joists where needed, adding support and digging away dirt that's too near to the wood.  Then we're hanging two-inch, high-R-value rigid foam insulation flush to the surface, and laying OSB/plywood subfloors.  Should have the majority of the room finished tomorrow and fairly flat (plus very solid).  Then, a little space as we're hoping to have wallboard hung and plaster applied in the middle of the week!

Lots of new joist work, and some of the rigid foam insulation already in place.

 

You can see how much we ended up raising the floor level - the joists here are notched over the ledger board that originally was flush to the old subfloor - those are 2x6s, so we're quite a bit higher, with the floor yet to go on top.

Happy Birthday to Isla!

Isla turned two today!