beating the heat

Realizing that the 8am-ish sunlight could be really nice for photographing, I brought along my camera and 50mm lens to the park with Donovan and I this morning. It's been warm lately, and while normally we have to bring a light jacket for these early outings, today it already seemed to be in the 70's by the time we left... which was nice for the morning, but foreboe of a hot day today. I did get some good pictures, and I went through and managed to edit one batch of them today, but the decision to try out RAW format again means much larger files, which means Lightroom running a bit slowly (our computer's fault, mainly) and so I still have lots more to go through but here's a peek at a few of them so far:

(More on flickr) I've been having a bit of trouble with white balance. Just for fun I followed a tip I remember reading once to I switch the camera setting from Auto to Cloudy which should help make the pictures warmer, but they all still came out pretty cool (blue-ish) except for some that were taken out in the sun. So then I've been adjusting it in lightroom, and I'll get it where it seems to look right but then later I look back and compare one picture to another and it'll look "off" (like the 3rd pic above, I love his facial expression but the pic suddenly looks kinda yellow). Ah well, practice, practice.

While at the playground a man came up and started talking to D and I over the fence. He said he had a daughter about D's age, and so at first I wondered if he was just being nice, striking up a conversation as fellow parents often do. Then it became clear he was trying to hit on me, complimenting me on maintaining my figure when so many other moms don't and then asking if he could give me his number even though we'd established that I was married. On the one hand it felt nice to be noticed, but it also was kinda creepy. He said he did maintenance work in that neighborhood on Tuesday mornings, so I might make a point to avoid the park on Tuesdays for a while. That's trash and recycling pick up day anyway, so if we stay home D can watch for the trucks to come down the street.

Once we got back I put D down for his nap, and then closed the house down as much as I could (kept the bedroom shades closed, closed all windows, etc). This did manage to keep the house cool enough the rest of the day-- I think it stayed below 80F inside, while outside it got to at least 95F, I think. D kept insisting on going outside to play, I don't know why. Julia had offered to have us over to play in the lagoon in the afternoon, but then I realized going anywhere meant 1) walking in the heat, or 2) getting in the car which had been baking all day. So I pulled out the small inflatable pool I bought recently, this time setting out front on the grass where it'd be easier to dump the water back out, but being out there made D just want to take off towards the Brazilian family's house. So back inside we went, and D played fairly happily the rest of the afternoon. I kinda feel bad for Zach's parents, who came out here with hopes of escaping the heat in Texas (where temps have been regularly above 100F). It's still a good 10+ degrees cooler here, but when you don't have air conditioning that doesn't always mean a whole lot. They're up in San Francisco till tomorrow, but I heard the city's just as warm as down here. Oh well. Hopefully it still cools off before they leave.

D was in a great mood today, was being so funny at times with his toys. It's incredible how he immitates and catches on so quickly now. When Zach got home he at one point was being silly and having one of D's stuffed animals play with one of his other toys, and about 15 minutes later D went over and repeated exactly what Zach had been doing. He also was playing with a cell phone my dad brought him as a gift, having me hold it to my ear and pretend to talk, then taking it himself and holding his own conversation. It's so funny listening to his gibberish, and ten hearing him continue to say new words all the time (duckie and strawberry are new as of the past couple days), though he still will say them once or twice and then not again. I figure he's building up an arsenal of vocabulary and one of these days it's just gonna come spilling forth and he's gonna be talking up a storm.