Month: April 2006

A Day In The Woods

This morning Donna and I went for an atypical walk in Hitchcock Woods. Instead of wandering semi aimlessly, we had a definite destination, the centrally located horse ring. Today was the last day of the 90th running of the Aiken Horse Show.

Our neighbor’s daughter competes and we thought it might be nice to see if she was going to be there. When we arrived at the ring we looked and looked, but didn’t see her. As we were leaving the area near where all the horses were, she came running up. When we asked when she was riding she shrugged and said later. Aaah, youth. She knew Mom would tell her when. Turns out it was much later than we had planned on staying, but what the heck we have some time. Unfortunately at the last minute they shuffled the schedule, delaying her start into the early afternoon and we didn’t have that much time. Plus we didn’t have the money nor the desire to eat from the “roach coach.”

I did get a chance to shoot a bunch pictures with the new camera, including a few using the panorama function.
Horse Ring
Clicking on the image will take you to a 40% reduction of the 4576 x 1220 original.

Seeing this is April you may see another one of the shots in the Hitchcock Woods 2006 gallery later this month. While you wait, check out March’s entry from about three weeks ago.

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 96

The Last Olympus D-40Z Picture

The Last Olympus D-40Z PictureNo I haven’t given up taking pictures, there on the left hand side of that photo you will see the LCD of my new camera, a Kodak V570, displaying the EasyShare System logo.

The couple of negatives I didn’t like about the camera, proprietary battery & no direct USB connection to the PC, were over ridden by the positives, seperate 23mm wide angle lens, very small (about 2/3rd the size of a deck of cards) , 2.5″ LCD and short shutter lag.

I have always loved the look of wide angle shots, so the separate 23mm lens was the big factor in the decision. The other lens is the typical 35-105 found in most point and shoot digital cameras. The big factor for my wife was the short shutter lag. It has always been a thorn in my side, but after Donna struggled mightily to take picture during the BMW Ultimate Drive last week, she said, “You’ve got to find a better camera.” This camera has about a 2/10 second shutter lag which feels positively instantaneous compared to the Olympus.

The rechargeable battery gets juiced up as long as the camera rests in the dock, but I’ll probably buy a second battery somewhere down the line, they’re only $20. The no direct USB connection to the PC will be solved by getting a SD card reader for the laptop to take along when traveling. The camera has 32MB internal storage, but I bought a 512MB SD card when I picked up the camera last night.

The Olympus had a panoramic mode where you could take several shots and then you knitted them together using the Olympus software on the PC. This Kodak has a panoramic mode where you take 3 shots and they get knitted together right in the camera. With the 23mm lens you can get a little more than a 180 degree picture. I experimented with it this morning when we were in the woods. I may go ahead and add a panorama gallery to the website.

March Was A Blur

Alternate titles considered for this entry were: “Ladies, Get A Mammogram” to “Donna Battles Breast Cancer” to “$@%&!”

February 28th Donna had her yearly female checkup.

March 1st the doctor’s office called and asked, “Can you come back in tomorrow we want to take another picture of the right breast.”

March 2nd were called into the OB/GYN’s office and told that Donna had a suspicious lump that needed to be removed.

March 7th Donna met with a surgeon to get a sonogram to help in locating the “suspicious” mass, so he would know where to aim the big fat needle to get a sample.

March 9th we spent the afternoon at the Women’s Health Center for her to have a needle biopsy.

March 14th we get the bad news from the surgeon, the mass is malignant.

March 15th Donna spends a couple aggravating hours at the hospital doing pre-surgery workup.

March 16th we spent nearly the whole day at the hospital where Donna has the lump removed. They also don’t like the looks of the sentient lymph node so the doctor removes 10 more for sampling.

March 17, 18 & 19 Donna spends in a pain pill induced fugue state.

March 20th we meet with the surgeon to remove a drain tube and he tells us that the first lymph node has some abnormal tissue that had not tested as cancer, but they weren’t sure what it was.

March 24th we meet again with the surgeon and learn that whatever was in the abnormal lymph node was left over from possibly some childhood infection and the rest of other nodes were clear.

March 28th we participate in the local BMW Susan Komen Ultimate Drive supporting breast cancer with a real purpose this time.

March 30th we meet with the oncologist where we got a cancer primer written on the tear off tissue used to protect an examining table.

This is just the outline. There were many little stories that I could have easily filled a blog post with, but held off because we have been waiting for the one appointment where we would get a definitive answer on what we are facing and develop a plan to effect a cure. Trouble is it seems like at each doctor’s visit we were presented with a new surprise. They are not totally through either, we have more tests this coming next two weeks to see if her body is up to the things the are going to throw at the disease.

The next few months will be very interesting around the Bogardus household. Because of Donna’s foresight to get a yearly mammogram, we have caught the it at an early stage, so that not only survival but preventing any return of the cancer is into the upper 90th percentile.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 96