The weather people spent several days predicting a snowmageddon for central Arkansas and Abby went into overdrive in anticipation of the gloriousness she was sure was coming. At one point she said, “I can’t wait. We’re going to wear mittens and have snowball fights and drink hot chocolate.” The snow finally began coming down Sunday afternoon and it was better than Christmas.
I finally got around to getting some pictures of Abby in her dancing togs.
Strobist: SB600 on floor fired through shoot-thru umbrella. SB600 in shoot-thru pointed down from above.
(Note: I know the vignette is too strong making the edges of the photo blend into the blog background, but I don’t feel like fixing it.)
With Abby and me both out of school, we’ve got time to fill. We went out to Two Rivers Park where Abby got her bike on. She rode top speed about two and half miles while I walked along before one of the pedals fell off. She opined that “All that fastness must have worn that pedal out.”
For years I have struggled with the heartbreak of an unwieldy billfold. I’ve traditionally gone with the trifold wallet designed to ride in the hip pocket. The problem, of course, is the things are too large. Sit down on it for just a few minutes and all you can think about is moving it out from under your butt. For the last four years I’ve owned a particularly thick billfold that’s uncomfortable even when slap empty. Throw a driver’s license, a few pictures of my kid, insurance cards, other miscellanea and, on rare occasions, a few money bills, and the leather devil became positively tome like. To make matters worse, I always feel compelled to put crap in my wallet that I don’t need to haul around all the time: gift cards, library cards, business cards and my hunter education card issued in 1985 by instructor Mike Bunn. In order to find some solace, I usually take the wallet from my hip pocket at the first chance. When I get in my truck I take it out and throw it in the little cubby hole under the stereo. When I had a job, I’d take it out and put it on my desk. Now that I’m a nontraditional college student, I put it in my backpack. It’s a wonder I’ve never lost a billfold.
For lo these many years I’ve kept my eye peeled for a solution to this vexation. Earlier this year I even auditioned a bifold wallet but found it too floppy for my tastes and I went back to the hellish, yet not floppy, trifold. I’ve considered using a money clip, but I hardly ever carry cash and money clips don’t do the job for the things I generally need to carry: receipts, a debit card, one credit card, driver’s license and the list of life goals I scribbled down in 1988.
This Christmas my wallet troubles vanished like a ghost. And, I’m not the least bit ashamed to say, my entire existence changed with it. While suffering through an excursion to Belk with Gina and Abby a couple of months ago, I came across this front-pocket wallet. It seemed miraculous, a cross between a wallet and a money clip, thin enough to not cause spinal injury. It fairly vibrated with promise. I showed it to Abby and told her I wanted her to get it for me for Christmas. When I got up Christmas morn to see what Santa had brought, I was showered with an embarrassment of gifts. The best Christmas giftwise I’ve ever experienced: a new camera, a fancy camera bag, a new lens, a great camera strap, a $100 gift card to Best Buy, new Saddlebred™ house shoes. Just writing out that list makes me feel bad. But, as I realized by Christmas afternoon, the best gift was this wallet. It’s got slots for a couple of cards, a magnetic money clip and a deep cleft in the center for receipts. Just look at it. It’s a marvel of sartorial engineering. For the last few days I’ve been annoying everyone I’ve come in contact with by whipping out this beauty and intoning words that would be fitting in a J. Peterman catalog:
“This stylish front-pocket wallet will free you from the tyranny of that hip-pocket scourge, the trifold. Place your most important cards and documents, and only your most important cards and documents, between the folds of its fine Corinthian leather and then slip it in your front pocket where it will reside unnoticed until you need to tip the valet at your exclusive men’s club. Your hindquarters will thank you from the bottom of your bottom.”
I’m free now. I’ve never felt so unfettered. If I die tomorrow, you be assured it was with a happy, contented heart.
(I do realize that this whole thing is Seinfeldian on a number of levels. Perhaps irritatingly so.)
I got a macro-focusing rail for Christmas and then I read on a photography blog about doing the Christmas-lights-bokeh thing. The two combined into a perfect storm of copycat macro photography of Christmas tree ornaments.
Not really. We had a great time on Christmas Eve with Nana and Gramps and Aunt Jodie.
Santa made a special visit to Branson over the weekend so Mimi and Papa could get their Christmas on with Abby and the big winner from Christmas Haul #1 is the Razor scooter. We found this great unused parking lot in Branson, but she crashed after just a few minutes and wanted to rest for awhile. When we got back to Little Rock she made me take her to a “tennis course” because that was the smoothest place she could think of to ride on.
Abby’s letter to Santa. She heard me say that my all-time favorite Christmas gift was my Evel Knievel action figure and stunt cycle and a week later put it on her Santa list. She didn’t seem terribly interested in mailing anything to the North Pole and petered out on the list making. Later she came back and added the ink stamps and the pizza grease stain.
Gina went out of town earlier this week for a four-day business trip. Right after she left Abby had one of her great ideas: “Let’s make gingerbread men as a surprise for Mom when she comes home.” I have no idea where she came up with this. We’ve never made gingerbread men at our house and we’ve never bought any that I can remember. But because I’m a great dad I told her it was a great idea. She said, “OK let’s go.” I told her we’d better wait until the day before Mom came home so the cookies would be fresh. Everyday thereafter when I’d pick her up from school she’d ask if we were going to make gingerbread men. She’d then sulk for an hour or so when I said “three more days, two more days,” etc. I found a recipe on the Internets and went and bought all the ingredients and when the day came Abby and I went to a local kitchen store and bought big, medium and small gingerbread man cookie cutters.
I hauled out my trusty twin SB-600s and two shoot-through umbrellas to capture what promised to be a magical father-daughter evening. Also I figured the gingerbread men would make good subjects to shoot with the beater macro lens I recently bought on eBay.
