Big Weekend of Transition and Celebration

What a huge weekend in store for the people in my life! Kayla has completed her degree at Butler and commencement ceremonies take place on Saturday. Her sister Tara is flying in from San Antonio today to help celebrate.

Kayla and her housemates have a party planned starting immediately after the Hinkle Fieldhouse graduation ceremony, and the parents of the graduates have used Facebook to help coordinate food, tables, supplies and other arrangements. The weather looks to be cooperating as well, with sunshine and temperatures in the middle 70s.

Then Mother’s Day on Sunday – the timing was perfect for Laura,  with both her girls here to take her to a nice dinner. Lots and lots in store with a wonderful future ahead for all of us.

Time for an update?

It most certainly is. I have been away from the blog for awhile but after stumbling across some of my old posts and enjoying what I read, I decided to come back and see how this feels.

30 Years! Our high school class of 1982 president sent a message recently asking for input on how we wanted to handle a reunion. My goodness – 30 years. As my mom and I agreed, the mind does not age but the body fools us when we look in the mirror and don’t see that person we knew from back then.

Milestones: Laura’s daughter Kayla is graduating from Butler University this month. I remember the feeling of having the world in front of me, having all options open to me – and it was overwhelming. Kayla has the smarts, contacts and experience to handle what’s in front of her and I’m looking forward to helping in any way I can.

New friends: Facebook is a huge time waster, but I have recently found a group of fellow diabetes insipidus buddies that makes my visits to Facebook leaving me feeling like that time spent is more productive. What a wealth of information! Connecting with those that have many of the same experiences has been comforting. It’s also a place where I can contribute my knowledge and hopefully help others gain some understanding.

Technology geek: Not a high-tech gadget, but combining wood with the glass and aluminum that makes up my iPhone has proven to be just the individual piece of flair I was looking for. I found JackBacks, “real wood iPhone accessories,” and ordered the Amber Bamboo wooden back. I like it. My goal was to get rid of the cover I was using, even though it was pretty minimal, to better show off the design of the phone while throwing some of my personality at it. I think I nailed it!

Finances: Always on my mind. I like to think I’m in a little better control and see some positives very soon. My hope is that I mellow out on the whole money thing but I don’t think I’m wired that way. Somebody, give me something else to worry about!

Health: I see my doctor at least four times per year and I’d like to cut that back to twice a year. To do that, I need to get back on the healthy side by exercising and eating properly. Sounds so easy, right!?

Family Photo Project Decisions

After scanning scanning and more scanning along with editing, cropping, tweaking, saving, optimizing, naming, organizing, naming again and again my mom and I have made some decisions about the final method of organization of our large library of photographs. Yay! (Honestly, we’re both obsessive about organization, so it was pretty pathetic watching the two of us trying to make some final decisions – but we did it!)

Our decisions were based on how our family would likely want to view the photos. We decided to use Google’s Picasa software on my computer, synced to a number of web albums in a new Google account named birdfamilypics. We’ll share the login to this account so we can administer the online photo albums.

Albums will be created based on where we lived followed by the year. For example, “Santa Ana 1970-72” is the name of an album. As a family, we’ve lived in 5 or 6 places so that limits the number of albums to a reasonable handful. All photos will be tagged with events like “birthday” or “graduation” allowing the viewer to pull in photos across the albums when they select a tag. Additional tags where it makes sense will be added.

Even further, Picasa has an exceptional facial recognition feature which in effect, allows you to create “people tags” and view all photos where “Marty” appears. So, if you want to view Marty’s birthdays, Picasa makes it simple by allowing the viewer to choose Marty, then the birthday tag.

We had labored on and on about the file naming structure and in the end that did not really matter since the combination of album, tag, and facial recognition makes the organization and retrieval of images very easy.

Now, will somebody please appreciate us for all the hard work we’ve done so far? 🙂

Making My Christmas Vacation Plans

As I prepare to take a rest from my normal day-to-day, I can’t help but anticipate the next few days. Tomorrow I’ll be stopping at my brother’s house in Odon for a visit with his family before heading to my parent’s place further south near Loogootee. Plans include doing nothing and enjoying it immensely.

When I tire of that, I’ll pick up a book, a magazine, converse with my mom and dad, watch TV, browse the internet, maybe answer some email. After that, I’ll take a walk with my mom, troubleshoot the household computer ills, drink some afternoon coffee and maybe go to town for some supplies. By far what I’m looking forward to the most is sharing stories behind the photo project my mom and I have embarked upon. We’re up to over 1,400 photos scanned from the family photo albums. Many memories and indeed many emotions have resulted from the resurfacing of these pictures. In that vein, here is a Christmas memory that is strong in my mind tonight.

I always wondered what happened after I went to bed on Christmas Eve.

Bird Children Christmas 1970

Christmas Dinner with Miki and Kevin

I enjoyed a holiday dinner with my sister Miki and her beau Kevin last night in Bloomington. It’s sad to say I have not spent much time with Miki over the past few years, although when we do get together it’s always very comfortable. She knows me as an older sister would. I tend to forget that and she’ll surprise me with an insight that could only be delivered by her – like “How did you know that about me? Oh, you’re my sister!” Miki and Kevin had a Christmas tree and decorations sprinkled tastefully about so they’re showing some good holiday spirit. Excellent to see Miki and have some good brother-sister time. Here’s a pic from the wayback machine:

Marty and Miki Fall 1979

More photos from Seattle vacation

I’m back at work but reminiscing about my recent trip to Seattle. Here are a few photos that make it worth remembering:

From 2008-Seattle-Visit

Trip to see my neices in Seattle

Yay! Just booked a trip to see my neices. This is what has become my yearly trek west in early December. I’m so glad it has become part of my year – these girls grow and change daily it seems! Naomi and Leah below.