Shelby's Life and Whatnot

Frustration

There's a little picture of Scout on the icon before the web address and in your favorites folder if you save this page. Other sites have icons there as well. Unfortunately in IE they disappear randomly for no reason. I lost my little Scout faces today and nothing has worked to fix the problem. I tried restarting, tried emptying my cache, nothing. What a bummer.

Things have been good in the Hogan household. We've gotten lots of packages in the mail. Today there was a package for Kevin that is a present for me. So far I've gotten two packages that are for Kevin. Hooray for Internet shopping!!! It's quite likely that some of our Amazon packages won't arrive in time. We're planning on asking our neighbor Sonny to pick them up for us. Sonny is super friendly and is NOT the daycare neighbors (who are actually very nice to us, but with tension as Kevin has had to complain about their noise level and parking problems). Sonny breeds and shows champion bulldogs and his dog is very well-behaved, unlike Duke, the german shepherd (ex police dog) next door, who seems like a nice dog but barks a lot. Anyway, the idea is that we won't have a lot of packages sitting on the porch, which is exposed to the street, for a few weeks while we're gone.

Kevin got a new digital camera. I would have bought it for him for Christmas but one, he has the money, and two, he knew exactly what it is that he wanted. The new camera arrived yesterday and he's been playing with it ever since. Haunting the dog (who hates the flash) and taking little movies. Personally I don't see why we need a new camera. We have a perfectly functional digital camera already. But that one becomes "mine" now, so that's good. Kevin is an actual photographer and takes artistic pictures and everything. Now me on the other hand, I'm a terrible photographer. All of my pictures of landscapes and stuff all look terrible. So I have a policy where I don't take a picture unless there is a person in it. My nature pictures are just a total waste of film. I can take decent snapshots of people, but you know, it's just not my talent. Kevin likes this new camera because there is an automatic mode (for me) and a manual mode where he can adjust the settings to his liking. He's a very good photographer and I'm sure he'll get a lot out of his new camera, but I'm still a little leery about the money spent. I think that money could better be spent on...a diamond for me!!! Oh well. When I get that huge advance on my next novel I can have my diamond :D.

Girl's night out was a blast last night. We ate at Pho, which is, as I've now learned, is pronounced "fuh." Actually it's pronounced with a vocalization that I'm not able to make, but fuh is the closest approximation. And all this time I thought it was pronounced "foe." Goes to show you. Anyway, however you pronounce it, it's Vietnamese noodle soup. Perfect on a cold evening. After dinner we just hung out and talked, which was very fun. Dorothy, Hai-Nhu, and Sandy still work for IBM (that's where I met them) and I have to say, after hearing their stories I'm SO glad I don't work there anymore :D.

I must really love Kevin because I put on TWO of his Christmas albums. The Brave Combo Christmas and the Toolbox Christmas. The toolbox Christmas has different songs made out of people playing the saw and things like that. It's a little, uh, funky. To say the least :D. I hate to say it, but I think it's time to invest in some different Christmas music. I love to fill the house with music at this time of year, but our CDs get old playing over and over again.