It’s Week 4 of the Stay-At-Home Dad Experiment. Yesterday we hit a library in West Little Rock. Today, with the sun out and temperatures much more reasonable, we made it to a couple of parks.
I was experimenting with the 70-300mm lens that I got a bargain on in Circuit City’s liquidation sale in Little Rock. It seems to work decently for portraits and I got a few bird shots a the parks. I think I’ll post a few of those over on Flickr.
I loves me some Waylon Jennings.
When I was about 13 years old my dad bought a brand new, brown Chevy four-wheel drive pickup that came complete with a cassette player. Cassette decks didn’t come standard in vehicles in 1983 (at least not in Chevy pickups) and, as I recall, I was instrumental in convincing Dad to have the cassette player added.
In order to have something to play in it, he bought a cassette of the Waylon album “It’s Only Rock And Roll.” I don’t know why he picked that particular record. I don’t remember him particularly being a music fan, though my parents did have a bunch of LPs and I remember some Johnny Cash 8-tracks getting some play at our house. I had a few LPs and some cassettes, but they were mostly top-40 type stuff. I have fond memories of owning the J. Geils Band’s “Freeze Frame.” My favorite song was “Piss on the Wall”, for obvious reasons. I also had the Kool and the Gang cassette with “Celebration” on it.
We had one of those ice storms today where it was cold enough for the rain to freeze on power lines and BBQ grills and decorative aluminum eagles but not cold enough to freeze on the streets. Icicles make good subjects for shallow-depth-of-field experimentation. Black and white just captures the moment so nicely.
Ice storms in general are hell on stay-at-home dads. Cold rain means staying inside, which means keeping Abby entertained is quite a bit harder. With the holidays over and everyone back at work and out-of-town guests back at home, our options for staying occupied narrowed considerably. We worked on our numbers and letters and she miraculously took a nap.
I’m having a little fun with the iPhone Gina handed down to me when she started her new job and got a company issued cellphone. I’ve been going wild today downloading applications from the App Store. I got one that geotags photos and uploads them to Facebook and one dealing with weather and one that gives sunrises and sunsets times. And I got one that lets me post to the blog right from the phone. I’m using that one right now. I shot the photo this afternoon with the phone at our neighborhood park.
Gina started breaking down the Christmas tree this evening and I protested, saying we hadn’t shot our annual family Christmas portrait. I use “annual” loosely here. So I got all my pitchure takin’ junk out. In hindsight, it would have been better to think of this earlier in the season. I would have shaved and worn a decent shirt and we would have combed Abby’s hair.
We had us a whole mess of Christmas this year. First, we moved to another city a couple of weeks before the big day. Then for the big day loaded up and went to Branson to see Mimi and PawPaw. That’s where I gave Abby the jack-in-the-box that has apparently been giving her nightmares ever since.
With a contingent of family in town for the Christmas thing, we went to the Flying Fish in the Little Rock River Market district for some lunch. It’s a chain but it has pretty good catfish. I had what the menu calls the catfish poor boy loaf. It was just your regular po’ boy sandwich. I don’t know what the loaf part is all about. I’m a fan of catfish and central Arkansas is loaded with catfish places.
We got a late start, what with the moving and all, but we finally put up our Christmas tree. I don’t know what the deal is, but Little Rock has a dearth of your tradition Christmas tree lots. And by dearth, I mean none. We finally ended up at Cantrell Gardens where word was the trees were grossly overpriced. But one of the advantages of waiting until three days before Christmas is that you can get a $60 tree for half price. And a $20 tree stand for half price, too. Sweet.
Our tree is only five feet tall, much shorter than what we usually get, but this year it seems like we have enough ornaments to properly cover the tree.
I set used the Strobist’s recommendation on how to light a living room for these types of family events but I think I put the flashes in the wrong places. (It worked a lot better for Thanksgiving dinner.) Plus I had the camera on the focus mode where it chooses what to focus on. I thought that would make it easier for Gina to get some shots of me and Abby. The camera invariably focused on the tree and not on the people. I need to get this right before Christmas Day.
Day 5 of the Atay-At-Home-Dad Experiment dawned bright and warm. Hallelujah! After another round with the cable company, Abby and I set out to see the other end of the Little Rock River Trail. The pedestrian bridge over the Murray Lock and Dam is the centerpiece of this part of the trail.
We got to the top in time to watch a barge lock through to the upstream side of the dam. Abby nearly had a tiny heart attack when the big horn blew to signal the opening of the lock, but later when we had made it back to the truck she said, “I was brave when the boat made that loud noise.”
Day 3 of the Stay-At-Home-Dad Experiment dawned gray and dreary, just like days 1 and 2 but not as cold. Abby and I got up about 10 and ate grapes and apples for breakfast. We’d been cooped up inside all the day before, so we were itching to get out of the house. We hit the bank and then Panera Bread for lunch where I had the asiago roast beef sandwich and Abby had baked potato soup. Her jacket had most of the soup until I took over the spooning duties.
