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.

Tess vs the Volcano

We have no idea what started this or why she thinks there is a volcano in our neighbor's yard.

Trying not to be so lazy about blogging...

We've had a pretty fun last month or so with family. And so there are some things to write about, but I've been too lazy to do it. On the 23rd of August (Tuesday), we drove down to Raleigh to see my sister. I actually only stayed an hour and left Jaime and Tess there so I could drive down to Atlanta for a job interview the next day. Then after my interview, I drove right back up to Raleigh, and got to spend most of Thursday with Erin and her boys.

Here are some of the highlights from the trip:

Marbles Museum
Erin and her boys really enjoy this museum, so we thought it would be a fun day activity. Jaime's cousin Chelsea and her two kids also met us there. I think everyone had a great time.

Tess hiding inside a safe:


Tess definitely loved the place. Her favorite area was the Splash Zone, and she had to be dragged kicking and screaming from it.


Not too sure about her cousin's driving:


So she found her own ride:





I love this picture. Jaime and Chelsea wanted to get a picture together with their kids, and then my nephew (striped shirt) decided to jump in as well!


Members of the Alley clan:


Driving through South Carolina
I'd never been to South Carolina before. In one of the Carolinas I saw this huge water tower that instead of having the boring old bulb on top, had a giant peach. It was neat, except it would have made more sense to me in Georgia.

That one time I got a job not scrubbing toilets
While my nephew was jumping into pictures, I was on the phone listening to a voice mail message from the people I interviewed with telling me they were really impressed. So then I had Jaime listen to the message, and her face deleted it. I've been scrubbing toilets to put food on our table and been completely stressed out for the last 20 months with my crummy job situation, and finally someone shows some interest in hiring me for a job I would love and HER FACE DELETED IT! Luckily, the lady that called, also sent me an email and I was able to reach her. And...they gave me the job! I'm sure most anyone that reads this blog already knew, but we'll be moving to Atlanta in the near future where I'll be teaching at the Art Institute of Atlanta.

Our Big Fat Greek Anniversary...OR...5 Years and Goin the Distance...

We spent a week trying to figure out what we wanted to do for our anniversary, and finally just decided to do a couple things that ended up being Greek themed. First, we went down to Fairmount Park in downtown Philadelphia to walk around the Water Works. Some of the buildings are Greek in their architectural style and fit in nicely with the Museum of Art in the background:



We got down there around 7 and had a dinner appointment at 8, so we just wandered around and watched the sunset.


Hard to believe it has been 5 years. Look at these skinny babies:


And now we're fat and old...well at least one of us.


After a nice walk with the sun setting, we went to Zorba's (I may have just made that name up) for some Greek food. Don't tell our vegetarian sisters, but I ate a lamb. Unbeknownst to me, the restaurant was BYOB, so we were stuck drinking water.


I decided to try and take one last scenic shot before leaving the park, and asked Jaime to stay out of the picture. So this is what happened:


Once dinner ended, it was only 9pm and my sister was babysitting all night (thanks Kellie!), so we decided to really turn up the romance. We went back to the Museum of Art for their open air cinema where they were playing one of the best chick flicks of all time. It ranks up there with Braveheart. ROCKY!!! It was a strange anniversary date, but it was really fun watching it on the same steps that he runs up in the movie. And being with a bunch of Philadelphians cheering every time there was any sort of Philly reference added to the fun. It was a Rocky marathon (I-III), but we didn't have it in us to go the distance. We just watched the first. This was our view, taken with my phone's camera:


And somebody else took this picture and posted it on Flickr. Roll your mouse over this image to see where we were sitting. You can't miss Jaime's hair and long legs, even in a blurry silhouette:



Since I didn't take this picture, I should give credit to rollingroadshow. I think this is the group that actually put on the movie.

Does Tessa love YOU?

Did you hear that Josh's twin sister Kellie is living with us now? No? Well, Josh's twin sister Kellie is living with us now. There are lots of perks to this situation for us, not least among them being that she has a fancy MacBook Pro laptop that she lets us look at sometimes. I won't lie, it's pretty dreamy. As much as I love and appreciate my five-year-old Dell clunker - which has been a loyal companion throughout almost our entire marriage, consistently gets a better wifi connection than Josh's newer computer, and even survived falling from the roof of a moving vehicle that time last winter when I forgot it was up there on my way to Miriam's house (Yes. Yes, I did that.) - Kellie's laptop is undeniably a sexier piece of technology. Part of me feels like a cheating dirtbag for saying so, but there it is.

Tessa is particularly fascinated by the camera function on Kellie's laptop. Here she is a few days ago having a chat with Kellie while I am in the background writing something for the family email newsletter. (You may notice that I don't actually have my laptop on my lap. This is because the screen doesn't hold itself up anymore and now has to be propped up by the arm of the couch. I really need to jerry-rig it with duct tape or some other equally classy solution. "Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without," as Grandma would say!)

Anyway, if Tessa doesn't mention your name here, I wouldn't worry about it too much. She probably still loves you. Just not as much as Uncle Shane. :)

Is this even the same kid...

For some reason I think it is hilarious putting grown up glasses on Tess. These are my glasses, and I have about the weakest prescription possible, so no one needs to worry about the fact that I some times duct tape these to Tessa's face for days just for entertainment. I maintain she had that lazy eye before I started this.

Since the girl was a few months old, I've let her try on my glasses. That's right. "Let" her--not force her. She loves it...which is obvious from this picture of her at 3 months:



And here's one from just this last weekend:



She's just the cutest lil nerd that ever was.