Thanks for your patience, and I’ll be posting updates this week from the last two months.

Last year I ended up using my rebate to get an 11-cup Cuisinart Food Processor. So this year, I’m thinking about getting a new digital camera, since my current Nikon camera is kind of messed up. So this past weekend, I finally bit the bullet, and picked up the Panasonic Lumix FP3 digital camera in black (which was the only color available.) I ended up going with the Panasonic for two reasons:
1) Manual lens cover. This was the only item I wasn’t willing to compromise on, since I seem to do quite a bit of activities in sub-zero weather. And this was how I screwed up the automatic lens cover on my Nikon (sub-zero temperatures in Chicago.) So the next camera had to have a manual lens cover. And this Panasonic model has a manual cover.
2) Price. For $99.95, you can’t shake a stick at the price. Especially for a camera with 14.1 megapixels, which is totally nuts in my opinion for the price.

So theoretically going forward, the pictures on this site should look a bit better then before, but I offer no guarantees, since I’m not a professional photographer.

But with that out of the way, I should be back to the usual posting schedule for this blog. And with gardening season right around the corner, you’ll start to see more gardening posts in the months ahead. Since I’ll need to get me tomato and pepper seedlings started in the next couple of weeks, so that they’ll be ready for transplanting around Mother’s Day weekend.

You’ve probably already read about some of my trials and tribulations, with regard to all the glass French Presses that I’ve owned and broken. So getting a stainless steel French Press is a HUGE upgrade in the “coffee making department.”

And you also know that I think that the Momofuku cookbook is total awesome for co-opting ideas. So it’s nice to finally own a copy of this book, instead of having to borrow it from the library all the time.

It turns out that WordPress 3.0.4 (which is the latest version) is too cutting edge of a release for all the plug-ins/widgets and theme that I use on this blog.  I’ve already had to reinstall WordPress at least nine times, since it keeps on crashing on me because of the plugins I use. So hopefully this weekend, I’ll be able to get WordPress running at 100% uptime.

I’ve already put in my order for a package upgrade. So hopefully I should be all done with the site upgrades over the next week. And then I can get back to business as usual with this blog.

Well needless to say, when my parents left for home on Tuesday morning, Misha went into hiding in the basement. My folks spent about an hour trying to find her, but Misha just didn’t want to be found. So they ended up having to leave her behind until they come back for Christmas. So basically I still have Misha for another week and a half, before my parents show back up to claim her.

So far its been a mixed bag with Misha, since she is still in her “man hater” mood, and keeps hissing at my all the time. A couple of times she let me play with her, but that has only happened twice. Most mornings I get to find out what “trouble making” she got into the night before. For some reason, one of her favorate things to do, is grab the toliet paper roll from the bathroom and chew it up in the middle of the room. But in general, she likes to chew almost anything (posters, speaker cables, clothing, etc.), which is very anoying. Personally I can’t wait until our time together is over with.

-AuSable