We just returned from our first cruise, a 7-day trip on Royal Caribbean’s Freedom of the Seas.
You can see the first batch of pictures by clicking the link below. More to come later.
Also included are photos from our visit to Universal Studios and the Wizarding World of Harry Potter.
Cary and I just returned from a week-long trip to Disney World. Now we need a vacation from our vacation.
It was a lot of fun, and the tropical storm that swept through only really interrupted us for about an hour or so.
If you’re ever planning a multiple-day trip to the Magic Kingdom and surrounding Disney parks, it pays (literally) to get the dining plan. Our dining plan was included in the cost of or stay at a Disney Resort, and the off-season prices were very low. Overall, we saved a minimum of $400 by not having to pay for any meals or parking while at the various parks.
A quick rundown of our vacation:
Sunday: Magic Kingdom
Monday: EPCOT
Tuesday: Animal Kingdom
Wednesday: Kennedy Space Center (the only place where we actually had to pay for a meal)
Thursday: Hollywood Studios
Friday: Magic Kingdom
All in all it was a great trip.
I’ll have pictures on my Flickr account soon. So far, I’ve only posted a few favorites from Animal Kingdom. You can view them here:
Flickr: Walt Disney World Gallery
I’m in the process of uploading all of the pictures I took at the Zoo this weekend. All 500+ of them.
But no one wants to browse through 500 pictures, so I’ve added some favorites here:
Still a few (dozen) more to upload. . .
I finally uploaded what should be the last of the pictures from our California trip.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/samsview/collections/72157623299521567/
I added pictures from the Legion of Honor Museum as well as more aquarium pictures and stuff from in and around San Fransisco, including shots from the Coit Tower.
I’m working on uploading all of the pictures from our California trip. I think this collection is only missing pictures from the last day, so this should be most of them.
Rutabaga, Potatoes, Turnip, Carrots and Onion:
A big hunk of meat:
Chopping vegetables and seasoning the beef. This would make a good back-cover photo if Cary were to write a cookbook:
Flouring the beef:
Tomato sauce with spices:
Into the crock pot:
And ready to cook:
And 8 or so hours later, it was done. If you don’t like the taste of nutritious vegetables like turnips and rutabagas, just cover them in tomato sauce and let them cook for 8 hours. All in all, a very tasty meal with very tender beef. Yum!
I’ve been using a Canon Digital Rebel EOS 300D since around 2004, and I’ve taken a few thousand pictures with it over the years.
I decided that it was time to get a new camera, but which one? That’s not the kind of purchase I take lightly. It took several months of research before finally settling on the model I wanted.
I had thought about upgrading from the EOS 300D to the newer Digital Rebel T1i (the 500D), but then I found out about the Pentax K-7 which was just released in July. Normally, this camera would be outside my price range, but because the company I work for has a business relationship with Pentax, I can get employee pricing for some of their cameras. That put the K-7 within my budget and allowed me to get a few accessories.
Saving several hundred dollars is nice.
Unfortunately, the K-7 is in high demand right now, so it’s technically back ordered. I have no idea when I’ll actually get the camera. I received one of the lenses and a battery grip a few days ago, but they’re not really useful without a camera body.
With the special pricing, I managed to get the following equipment for less than the retail price of the K-7:
I thought long and hard about which accessories to get with the camera, and I think I’ll make good use of all of the ones I got.
I really like the idea of a battery grip. The Pentax battery grip adds some extra bulk to the camera, but it enables the camera to run on AA batteries or an extra lithium-ion battery (in addition to the battery in the camera itself). The grip also has a duplicate shutter button so that you can easily snap pictures with the camera turned sideways. It’s a handy feature to have.
The 18-55 lens is often called the “kit lens”: it’s the standard lens that is usually included with a consumer-level DSLR camera. It’s versatile, but doesn’t provide any real telephoto capability.
Having the flexibility of multiple lenses will be great. An 18-55mm lens (which is the standard lens included with most consumer-level DSLR cameras) works great in most situations, but not for taking pictures of wildlife. The 55-300mm lens will give me the zoom I need. Zoom lenses tend to make hand-held shots more difficult, but the K-7′s built-in image stabilization should help.
I’m excited to try the K-7. The reviews have been really good so far.
I still need to pretty up the back side of the frame, but for the most part, it’s finished:
It’s a truce, albeit a temporary one.
