I win...

High Museum...

Guess which exhibit we went to see today at the High Museum...


That's right, the Salvador Dali exhibit. It was a spontaneous trip. Jaime swears I didn't tell her beforehand that we were going, but I'm pretty sure I let her know well in advance...as we were getting in the car to run a couple of errands.

We dragged Tess along too. We mainly got her to agree to it by telling her we were going to ride the train downtown. On the train:


Doing Tess' hair on the train cause there wasn't time before. I woke up at the crack of 9:45 when Jaime was bringing Tess into the bed as she was running out the door for choir practice. Then Tess and I got a little too caught up watching cartoons to bother with combing our hair. So, Jaime stepped up on the train. I at least got her dressed. It's funny how she always picks her "I love my daddy" shirt when I help her get dressed.


At the museum, she made sure everyone (in Atlanta) knew she didn't want to be there. I guess it might have had something to do with it being her naptime. Luckily, the museum does have a childrens area, so Tess got to do a little painting. We let the museum keep her masterpiece. No charge. We like to support our local museums.



Finally leaving. She's happy again because we're heading back to the train:

Baby Cheeses...

Not too long ago, we went to see a nativity festival held at our church. When we got there, Tess was wiped out. Luckily for my back, she stayed asleep the entire time we were walking around looking at the nativities.



Luckily for everyone else, Tess woke up when we sat down to listen to the music by a couple of choral groups. Jaime got to sit and enjoy most of it, but Tess and I had to go out into the hall so Tess could finish her solo. She really got into the Christmas spirit and was singing a very moving rendition of the Itsy Bitsy Spider when I dragged her out into the hall.

They had tons of different nativities from all over the world. We only took a couple of pictures, including this one. It was taken after we were leaving. The decision to leave was made when Tess and I came back in to the concert, and her solo started right back up again.


One nativity even had live fish as part of the display, but I didn't get a picture of it. We did at least get one of the best nativity there:



Oh, and you get double points if you got the reference from this post's title.

That's my girl...

Ever since Tess was born, all I've heard from everyone is: "oh Jaime's hair is so pretty. I sure hope she gets Jaime's hair. Have you seen how nice Jaime's hair looks today? I sure do hope Tess gets her hair..." Blah blah blah. I don't get it:



One thing we have started to notice is how much Tess will rival me for most amazing bedhead. I woke up the other day with a flock of sea gulls double faux hawk thing going on. This morning Tess woke up with this rat's nest. She wasn't cooperating when we wanted a picture. "no, daddy. I'm having a bad hair day." What a girl!


She has some good bedhead, but still hasn't reached my level. When she wakes up with bed eyelashes, I will be one proud dad!

5 Moves in 5 Years...

We are reunited! Over Thanksgiving break, we met up in Raleigh and then we all drove down here to Atlanta. It's been interesting. Jaime said she realized she was back in the south when we stopped for gas in one of the Carolinas, and she overheard some lady trying to trade some meat for gasoline! Then the next day after making it to Atlanta, Tess told me, "No, Daddy. I not move a Georgia." That initial rejection seems to have worn off.


Jaime let me know this is our fifth move in five years. So even though we aren't particularly close to any family (my parents are now about 5 hours from us), we hope this one sticks for a while.

Previously, I had been updating our header image every now and again when big events happened. So I've done that in honor of our big move to Atlanta:



I've also included some of our previous headers. This was done around the time we moved to Philadelphia and Tessa's blessing:


And this is our first one with the mountains in Provo and ultrasound of Tess:


We were really sad to leave our family behind in Philly, but every thing about this move and job has been mind bogglingly amazing. We love you the Raines family! and you too Kellie.

My new favorite artist...

I thought Jaime might take over the blogging for me while I'm settling into life in Atlanta, but alas...

Here's what's new:
--I live in Atlanta
--Jaime and Tess don't
--Tess is 2 now (I have all the pictures, so Jaime definitely won't be showing you that.)

That's it. But here's my new favorite artist:


I love it! It really captures my essence.

espanich...

Me: Te amo, Tessa.
Tessa: Ti elmo, Daddy.

Our TV debut on Jimmy Fallon...

We abandoned Tess with her aunts yesterday so we could go to NYC and try to get standby tickets to Jimmy Fallon. And it worked! At the end of the show, Jimmy and his chef guest passed out treats to the audience. See if you can find us in the crowd. We're in the clips that show the chef.



Jimmy gave me a cupcake! We're basically BFFs 4eva 4life now.

While waiting to see if we could get the standby tickets, we passed the rest of the day at the Met. I found some new favorite works of art. This one is pretty great:


But this is my new favorite:



Guess which Katy Perry song we were singing when we saw this one:


This was probably Jaime's favorite. I think she stared at it for a good 7 and a half minutes. Pervert.


The last time I was at the Met (years ago), I didn't get to see any of the ancient stuff. So, even though we killed our feet walking around the whole museum, it was worth it:


Here is Jaime on the roof garden:


This work was up on the roof garden. Very cool.

Flugtag...

3 days after my birthday, Kellie finally gave me permission to celebrate. So we went to flugtag to see all the human powered flying machines. Most of which fly about as well as a large rock.

Here's the record flight, so you can see what the goal is:


And here is an ad showing what usually happens:


We took a shuttle over to Camden from Independence Hall to see this, which wasn't the best idea. Here's what our ride over in the shuttle looked like. There were so many people:


Shane and Ashton came down after us and actually got to the place before us. Then it took forever to find them amongst the 85000 people there. Tess was very happy to have found them, but she was a bit wiped out.


Nothing a little Red Bull can't fix! Having her first one ever:


Because we were so late getting there, we never had a good view of the barge where the flying machines take off. So after it ended and people cleared out, we went down to the riverfront to see things up close. This is the crew pulling some of the last remains of a craft out of the water:


Us with Philly behind us. Notice Tess still won't give up her Red Bull:




Instead of taking the shuttle back to Independence Hall, we decided to walk back over the Ben Franklin Bridge.


It was a long walk, and we stopped every now and then to take more pictures. Some crazy ladies on the bridge:


Standing on the bridge looking at nasty New Jersey on the left and Philly on the right.



PS-we didn't really let Tess drink the Red Bull. We told her she would have to wait til she was at least 3 before she could have that strong of a drink.

Kellie's Birthday in Philly...

To celebrate Kellie's birthday (which incidentally is mine too, but I'm not allowed to celebrate it until Kellie gives permission), Miriam and Shane took us all down to Philadelphia to eat at Max Brenner. It was pretty much amazing. Dessert for dinner is always a good thing!

Afterwards, we walked around the city a little and went down to see the Love statue. Aaaawwww. Love. Blah blah blah.


Twin powers unite! Kellie claims I made her pose like this, but she's obviously the one having the most fun with it. She's so weird.


Here she is again.





And one last shot of the group walking back to our car. We all piled in to our station wagon. There were 7 of us, and we still could have fit one more person! Miriam and Ashton rode in the very back where the seats face backwards. Luckily they both only way 70 pounds which is the suggested weight limit.

More catching up to do...

At the end of August, many of Jaime's family came to visit us. So we unceremoniously threw all of Kellie's stuff to curb to make room for everyone, and left a note on the locked door telling her to come back in a few days. Our apartment isn't very large.

It was pretty cramped, but it was a good visit...despite our nosey neighbor threateningly asking all these brown people what they were doing snooping around our garage.

We also took everyone downtown to see Independence Hall. The first picture is of everyone eating Philly Cheesesteaks. A must.




We had gotten tickets when we arrived to go through Independence Hall. Waiting to get in, Tess had fun and entertained Grandma:





After the tour, we took a family picture. I tried to combine it with another one so that you could see the whole statue and the bell tower behind everyone. But they were taken at different exposures. So it looks good small, but not the best large.


However, the original of the family is great:


Finally, here is our little family and then Jaime with the Liberty Bell.

How I waste my time lately...

I have a pretty obsessive personality and go from hobby to hobby fairly quickly. Here is my latest obsession. Equirectangular panoramas and stereographic projections. These are 360 degrees by 180 degrees panoramas which can be warped into a small looking planet. I think they're really interesting especially because you get to see so much all at once.

To give you an idea of how it is done, here's how it starts. I don't have a very good camera, so I have to rotate 360 degrees around one spot taking 60 to 80 pictures to get the whole panorama. The below image shows those images all together. You might want to click on it to see it bigger. This small, it is hard to look at:


I put those images into a nice little program I have, and it stitches them together to create the Equirectangular Panorama. So then it more or less turns into this:

After the program has combined the images, I have to go in and make some corrections in Photoshop--usually to erase my gut, which you can see a few times in the first image! I was lazy with the above image and only corrected a few parts of it. So there are lots of spots where the stitching doesn't match up, but you get the idea.

Finally, using the same program, I can then turn the 360 degree panorama into a small planet (Stereographic Projection):


I'm also putting up two more that I did a few weeks ago.
Commodore Barry Bridge:


Swarthmore Train Station:


If you want to see more of my little planets, head over to Flickr.

And that is how I waste my time.