Christmas

When the youngest person in the house is almost 17, gone are the days of sneaking out after she's asleep and eating the cookies and leaving a note and filling the stocking because she'll be bouncing on your bed at 6:30 am wanting to see what's there.  So we all slept in this morning.  Around 11:30, Ann came over and we opened a few gifts, Kaylee read the Christmas story from Luke, and we had another big brunch, with pancakes this time too. 

Kaylee got Steve a "Fishing for Floaters" game, so we put water in the bathtub and went fishing for poop.  The piles were easier to snag than the logs, for the record.  ;)  Ann got a new, larger phone to work with, that hopefully makes it easier to read and call on, and should take good photos, too.  Kaylee was tough this year.  She's going out of the country in the Spring so that was really her big gift, but still you want something to open on Christmas.  I got her some small things, and Steve got her the hair curling wand she wanted.  But I feel guilty that I had a bigger Christmas than she did.   I got a new digital camera, a Nikon D3400.  I'd been with Canon since my first digital camera, but it seems like Canon has fallen behind Nikon on some things.  I couldn't take good night shots, and had been having more trouble getting it to focus with the big lens on for anything in the sky.  I'd sometimes have trouble getting it to focus on Kaylee on stage, too.  So tonight I take my new Nikon outside, in the dark.  No moon.  Overcast.  I point it at the tree, with minimal ambient light on it...and it takes the photo.  No searching for a focus.   I took about 10 photos of the same shot on our tree using different modes to get a feel for some of the effects.  I'm pleased as punch. I'm going to take it in an airplane at night and see if I can get a decent night shot out the window.  I can get an okay shot with my cellphone if I'm over a huge city with a lot of lights, or if the sunset is still happening with some light.  I'd like to see how far I can push it, see if I can get any stars even, maybe.  Maybe not with all the light in the cockpit in the way, but I look forward to seeing what it can do.  And it's a pretty burgundy color, too.  It looks sharp.  It also sends the photos I take right to my cellphone, even if my camera is shut off.  They aren't the full sized version, but I can post them from there, or do whatever I want.  That's pretty cool too, and other than the storage space concerns we're about to have, I'm very pleased.  :)

Right now we're watching "Life Below Zero" about people living above the Arctic Circle in Alaska.  I'm watching these stories, seeing a woman's hands freezing to a knife while she's trying to clean a deer,  looking at the snow blowing in the cold and dark, alone out there minus the cameraman of course, and all I can think is WHY WOULD ANYONE WANT TO LIVE THERE?  I'm torn that my version of hell might be less about fire and more about living life below zero.  Or maybe same/same.  I wouldn't want to be that cameraman either.  I'd be sitting inside a running truck with the heat blasting at all times yelling "Can you speak up and come over to this side of the truck while you do that??"  Of all the places in the world I'd love to visit, that one falls somewhere on the same line as maybe North Korea.  Pass.

Well, Ernie could use some prayers.  He's been really sick, especially these last couple days including Christmas, which is just no fun at all.  So they need to find out what's going on and fix it asap.

Christmas Day is winding to a close.  We're going to go pack a bag, and tomorrow there's a little flying to do.  The Cheyenne is going over to Pennsylvania, and I'll be chasing him in the Aerostar.  Then we run Ann and Kaylee down to Tennessee.  The one problem here is that the airport has 3" of snow and ice over every surface, and due to the winds today they didn't get it cleared off.  So...tomorrow morning may be a problem getting out, and if that pushes back to too late, it runs us into a full on schedule problem.  The HIGH temperature for tomorrow here is 8 degrees, too.  That is miserable.  We have sub-zero temps tonight (What did I say about my feelings on that??).  So the airport guys are going to have a chore tomorrow, and we may have a real problem digging out the two 80' and 50' hangar doors to boot.  It's sure not going to melt off.  *sigh*  We shall see.