Rather than posting separate blog postings about everything that has happened between June 10th and June 20th, I figured I’d roll everything up into a single posting.

Vacation

On June 10th, Lisa and I left for vacation. We stopped in Alexandria, Virginia to stay over with her uncle who should be living in Tennessee by now. We had an awesome time there as I’ve never been to his place. He also gave us a night time tour of Washington DC. Earlier in the night, I purchased a brand new Kodak V610 Dual Lens digital camera (see my comments on this below). The next morning, we headed south to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. What an awesome time we had there. Sunday night we went to Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville at Broadway at the Beach. This is the second time we’ve visited one; we went to Ocho Rios/Dunns River and walked through the Orlando one on our honeymoon. On Monday evening, Tropical Storm Alberto sent the first rain ban into our area. So to get away from the storm, we went to Dolly Parton’s Dixie Stampede. The show was unbelievable. If you’ve never been there before, you’ll have to go. I’m not a Dolly Parton or country music fan, but, that didn’t matter because there was neither country music or Dolly in the show. On Tuesday, the weather was fare and allowed us to spend another decent day at the beach. In the evening, the second rain ban came in so we headed to her father’s house which is about 10 miles south of Wilmington, North Carolina. We toured Wilmington which seems to be a pretty cool place to visit. We say the USS North Carolina and a few interesting shops down there. On Wednesday morning, the storm rolled in so we headed to the Tanger Outlets. Once the sun came out, we headed back to the beach and then to an Italian buffet in south beach. On Thursday, we spent the entire day on the beach and in the ocean. Thursday night, we went to a crab house and then for a stroll on the beach. Friday morning we packed up and left. Besides hitting traffic due to construction in 2 spots, we would have made it back in decent time. However, we strolled in at about 1am and fell asleep around 3am. Which leads me into…

Related Photo Albums:

6/10/2006 - Washington DC
6/11/2006 - Trip to Myrtle Beach
6/11/2006 - Day 1 at Myrtle Beach
6/12/2006 - Day 2 at Myrtle Beach
6/13/2006 - Day 3 at Myrtle Beach
6/11/2006 - Day 4 at Myrtle Beach
6/12/2006 - Day 5 at Myrtle Beach
6/13/2006 - Left Myrtle Beach at 11am

Landscaping/Driveway

The next morning we woke up around 7am to help out in the yard. Earlier in the week when we were on vacation, Coyote Concrete did an awesome job by getting our driveway together. Then our landscapers had nearly all of the fill spread and our plants in the front installed. Now back to Saturday. On Saturday we spread the topsoil, planted the shrubs in the back, transplanted a maple tree in the back, and spread the seed, lime, fertilizer, and SeedAide. On the following Tuesday, a nice rain storm decided to come through dumping almost an inch of rain in about 20 minutes. So, all of our dirt around the edges sunk in or washed away. If it wasn’t for the storms this upcoming weekend, we’d be able to have it filled and replanted by Monday.

Related Photo Albums:

 Cell Phone Pictures While We Were Gone
 6/17/2006 - Our Yard, Landscaping, and Driveway

Digital Camera

When we visited Lisa’s uncle’s house in Alexandria, he took us up to a local Best Buy so I can get the Kodak V610 dual lens camera. We went up there because the Best Buy stores in Eastern Pennsylvania didn’t have it yet. On a scale of 1 to 10, I’d rate the camera a 9. It would definitely get a 10 if it was easier to figure out the picture taking at night time. Night time photos aren’t bad if you have a tripod. Otherwise, they can be blurry because you need to be extremely steady. I’m sure there are other ways to take nighttime photos, but I haven’t found any ways yet. I figured out almost everything else. The camera has lots of features such as an indicator (green, yellow, red) to tell you if the photo will come out, dual lens to take normal or panoramic photos, 22 scene modes including beach, fireworks, motion, etc, a balancing mechanism that will rotate the picture on the 2.8” LCD screen as you turn the camera, 10x total optical and digital zoom (check out some of the photos at different zooms to see what I mean), and more. I can literally go on and on about the camera. The suggested retail price of $449 is a bit high, but is well worth it for this camera. If anyone has figured out nighttime photos with the camera, be sure to ping me with the tips and tricks.