highs and lows

Today was to be a day of rest. I got up and had breakfast, cleaned up a bit in the kitchen (amazingly, after running one big dishwasher load last night before bed, we had very little left to clean), and spent some time internetting. Sierra played model for me as I toyed with the camera some more, finally venturing away from the automatic settings and getting a feel for settings like shutter speed, ISO, and aperture size and what they do to pictures. It's amazing and so gratifying when you spend 20 minutes playing with something, and all of a sudden it goes from feeling WAY-over-your-head to "hey, I kinda get this!" Sierra seemed somewhat annoyed by all the picture taking, but oh well. She's pretty and makes a pretty subject. =P

This afternoon I chatted on aim with an old friend who's in the marines and has been stationed in Japan for the past few years. He said that in February he'll be going to Afghanistan for 9 months, to help train the Afghan national army. I didn't really know how to respond at first... do you say "oh, cool" or "that sucks" or what? He's been in a position that's seemed pretty safe the past few years, and it's scary to think of him being in a more dangerous situation. And so I guess you just hope that he does ok and nothing bad happens. He seemed to be in good enough spirits about it... not happy to go, but ok with it. It was good to talk to him, though. It'd been kind of a while.

On a lighter note... I brought out my box of Christmas decorations today. Unfortunately there's not a whole lot I can put out quite yet-- most of them are tree ornaments (need to get a tree) and I have a couple strings of lights but they're the wrong voltage to work here. I'll also have to figure out how to hang up our stockings, since I'm nervous about nailing anything into the wooden mantle, and the wall around it is pretty much solid rock. Hmmm but maybe these sticky hooks I got a while back might work... I'm sure I'll figure something out. ; )