So, whatcha get for Xmas?

Well, Christmas has come and gone … and so has New Years. It was a hectic time with a wedding thrown into the early Xmas week to make things a little more tight time-wise. Some quick thoughts:

Stocking Stuffers
Jody and Ed’s wedding was wonderful
My wife’s smiles at her gifts
My new lens
“A Wonderful Life”

Coal
Chase Bank made me very angry while I was shopping.
Crazy drivers (3 lane changes, turning right from left hand lane, PUT DOWN THE DAMN CELL PHONE!)
Bush’s complete ineptitude regarding homeland spying.
2 days to finish shopping, clean the house, buy food for Xmas day brunch, put up the tree, wrap all of the gifts…

But overall, it was a good Xmas. Most things came in on time, and I think everyone was happy with their gifts – and there was little to no inter-family acrimony. Shari was extremely pleased with the gifts she received (two new lenses, some jewelry and some photography books). Blair got mostly cash because he only thought of computer games for his list, and he has enough of those. And me? Well, I was set up pretty nicely, too.

My biggest gift was the one that I received on my birthday – a new Nikon VR 80-400mm lens. One word: sweet. Two words: really sweet. I’ve been loving the glass on this lens, not to mention the vibration reduction aspect and the extra 100mm of zoom (about a 80% increase over my 300mm). You can see a few samples of the shots I’ve taken with it:

I also got a new watch (sports version instead of my formal watch), a couple of books, video games and some new gloves. I also finally got a Palm Treo 650 – Lord knows that I’ve needed something like this to keep my butt organized, and I love it. But a couple of my favorite gifts were The Complete Farside Collection, the Complete Calvin & Hobbes Collection. Both are VERY cool – and huge (I couldn’t figure out what the 50# in presents were…). So, I had a nice Christmas – but I think I’ve reached that adult stage (finally). I actually had more fun watching everyone else open their gifts. Although I think I might borrow my wife’s lenses soon… =-)

More fun for your Afternoon

• Pimp my Nutcracker – Sweet. (via FuriousBall)
• Lightbox JS – pretty cool script
• Agile Partners weblog » iPhoto-like image resizing using Javascript
• Khmerang.com – CSS-Technique: Worn Type