I just got home from my parents' house where we celebrated my birthday. It isn't really my birthday until Thursday, but I didn't have to work today and my big sister is here through the weekend so we did it now instead! I know what you're thinking... "I've heard her talk about a brother before, but never a sister, who is this person?"
Well... technically Gail isn't really my big sister, but she's a part of the family and that's how we refer to each other. When she was in college (I was little, maybe 5 or 6?) she went to the same church as my family. Our church had a program then for college kids that didn't have family in the immediate area. They would get "adopted" for the year by a family from church. Someone with whom to do silly family things, come over for dinner, make cookies, go hiking, whatever. For most of the people it was just for the year, but Gail truly became part of our family and has been ever since.
So! That's who my big sister is.
Had wonderful birthday celebrations today. Wonderful dinner (my dad's pizza, Yum!) and cake (chocolate of course) and then an evening of talking, having fun, and playing games. OK, just game. We played Trivial Pursuit and it took so long for someone to win that we only played that and then called it a night.
And of course I got presents, what kind of a birthday would it be without presents? Got some CD's, a plastic thing for the floor under Dolce's cage, a Target gift card, and a new CD carrier thing. All great presents.
I spent some time playing with my camera with my dad too. He just got a digital camera a little while ago and we have a tendency to play with our cameras and compare results and tricks and such. I was trying out a new trick I just found in a photography magazine a few days ago. It's for when you're trying to take a macro shot in low light. If you don't use your flash it ends up being blurry, but if you use your flash everything is washed out and the shadows are all hard. Here's the trick: take a tissue and put a layer (or two) in front of your flash (not the light sensor though!) and then take the picture like normal. It softens the look of the whole thing without the blurriness of a jumpy hand with a long exposure. I'll post a before and after over in the photoblog in a little bit (gotta edit the pictures first!)
And now I'm home hanging out with the birdies. Such excitement I know, but it's been a great day!
Edit: The flash experiment pictures are now up in the Photoblog here.