We bought a Kodak digital camera several years ago. It served long and well, but has finally given up the ghost, and we find ourselves in the market for a replacement. We want something digital with at least 2 megapixels. I found that my least favorite feature of the Kodak was that it was fixed focus, which tended to flatten out the composition of photos, so adjustable focus is important as well. Fancy features that don’t work well like recording video and audio are fine to skip. Finally, it needs to be pretty durable to survive life around our house.

So, if you’ve had any particularly good experiences, bad experiences, or you own stock in one of the camera companies, please let us know!

I’ve started on a new programming project today. I’ve been working on its design document once in a while for several months. It’s going to be a lot of work, so I probably won’t talk much more about it until things get more interesting, but thought I’d give you all a hint: it’s a game, and the code name for the project is “Daikaiju”.

I know you’ve all been waiting with bated breath. Well, you can put an end your asphyxia, as we have conquered the pool. A combination of siphons, a new pool pump, and loads of duct tape allowed up to completely empty the pool in a mere 10 hours, sucking out most of the bio-yuck along the way. Deep and heartfelt thanks to the McGinnis and Hendrick contingents, whose contributions would have been worthy of at least a guest spot on the Red Green Show. (Why don’t we Yanks get the movie in theaters here, anyway?)

The annual Prairie Home Companion Joke Show is now online. Some great stuff, and some delightfully bad stuff. Big fun.

Today is the day that we evict the toads, kill the waterbugs, and spread the nitrogen-rich algae over our backyard. Spring has sprung, and we’re going to be doing penance for our neglect of the pool over the winter. If you haven’t heard from us by the weekend, send in the CDC.

Chris asked me this morning about how public school was treating Emily, so I thought I’d provide an update here in case anyone else was interested. Emily was pretty nervous about her first day, and was up prowling around the house at 3:00am the night before. Since she’s actually started, however, she seems to have had little but good experiences there. She’s getting up to speed on math with a minimum of difficulty, and has been blazing through the accelerated reading program, where she’s reading books at her own rate and taking tests on the computer as she completes them.

Additionally, the TAAS test, which is the minimum academic achievement test in Texas, was earlier this week. Em apparently blazed through it, and thought she did great, though she won’t get her results back for a while. Her class is going on a number of field trips this week, including a local huge playground and the San Antonio Zoo.

So, all in all, this continues to look like a good decision for her. She’s making more friends, learning more readily, and hasn’t been subject to many of the horrors that sometimes accompany public school.

Bones the cemetery cat had kittens over the weekend. She and her three little bundles of mewling puff have settled in under the computer desk in the schoolroom. If anyone’s in the market for a cat, we’ve got some adorable ones that’ll be ready for a home in a couple months.

Last night, our next door neighbor and Jedi guitarist Grant Mazak had several of his cronies over for a rehearsal on his back porch. I took the kids over and eavesdropped for a few minutes, and later went back with Kathy to listen some more. The ensemble, which included guitar, string bass, dobro, lap slide, and harmonica, was excellent, and it was great fun to hear the music and enjoy the enthusiasm of the musicians.

After chatting with the bass player a bit, he prevailed upon me to bring over my ‘cello. I sat in with them for another hour or so until Grant begged off at 10:30pm, still needing to write a paper for the next day’s class. It was wonderful fun to play with that crew, and I hope to get to do it again soon!

The weekend before last, Kathy went to Virginia to visit her sister and brother-in-law there. (Hi Karen! Hi Jeff! Hi Kids!) Though she took Maggie with her, I had charge of the elder three while she was away. The kids and I had a conference beforehand, and decided that the one thing we should make a point of doing during our weekend was to go camping.

I researched nearby state parks, and came to the conclusion that Bastrop would be the ideal park for our adventure. Of course, I also displayed my usual procrastinatory planning, and didn’t get around to making reservations until Friday morning, with the result that Bastrop was all booked up. After much desperate last-minute calling, I secured reservations at Palmetto instead.

Now, my history with Boy Scouts was an on-again, off-again affair from which I took away more dislike for my fellow scouts than I did actual camping knowledge. (Ask me about the time I went camping in the Adirondacks for 3 days with no underwear. No, on second thought, don’t.) As a result, I was very happy when it turned out that my friend Kelly Hendrick, a former Eagle Scout, was interested in coming along. He got off work early on Friday, and we loaded up the car with canoe, kids, and gear, setting off about 5:00pm for our camping adventure.

We were checked in by a park employee with the single longest surname I’ve ever laid eyes on. Not only was it hyphenated, but it seemed an odd combination of nordic and slavic compound words that probably meant “son of him who was implicated but never convicted in the great government cheese scandal of ’83.” He was nice, though, and set us up with firewood and a map.

Thanks to Kelly’s presence and expertise, we had a fine time. Because the grocery store was out of normal-sized marshmallows, we roasted miniature ones until late in the evening. The kids managed to avoid poking each other with flaming sticks, and in spite of the temperature dropping to 35° or so during the night, we actually got some pretty good sleep.

In the morning, we went for a paddle around the lake in the canoe, which we had found at a garage sale last summer but were only now getting into the water for the first time, and took a short hike down to the river, finally wrapping up and heading home around noon. All in all, it was a fine trip with a minimum of mishap, and made missing the rest of the family a bit easier to bear.

Though home schooling Emily has been a wonderful experience in a lot of ways, it has become apparent that doing that on top of raising three other children age 5 or less requires superhuman abilities. Add that to the fact that Emily has been pining for more friends her age, and we finally made the decision to give Emily another crack at public school.

We assembled all of Emily’s shot records, TB tests, and other prerequisites, and scheduled her to begin today. I was awakened at 5:00am by a fussy Maggie, and was blearily, ruefully amused to see that Emily was already up, prowling around the house, getting herself ready for her much-anticipated first day. Two hours later, we said a quick prayer with her and sent her off.

This has been a particularly tough decision for Kathy, whose public school experience was much less positive than was my own. I’ve admired the devotion to home schooling and the energy she’s put into it, and now I find myself admiring even more the good judgement and humility she’s showing in realizing that ever SuperMom has her limits.