a little painting today

Not willing to sit around and play on the computer all day, I decided to paint my front door. It had been stained, but never varnished and it was looking scratched and faded from the harsh east sun. Since I had a lot of the paint left from the front porch, almost a light black color, I used it, and painted the whole inside door frame. I left the interior side of the door stained and I think if I put some varnish on it, it will look nice. But the painted door looks really nice and freshened up the entry. I decided since I had the paint and brushes out and the weather was beautiful, I'd go ahead and paint the back steps and side steps. They were a butterscotch color from a previous house color combination from a few years ago, and since they were in the back, they never got repainted. So, now it's done. I have to admit, I didn't sand as I should have, so I sure hope the paint won't chip off real soon. But I enjoyed doing it, getting outside and feeling like I was accomplishing something.

I talked to my kids. John called this morning, and I called Robert tonight. I wish we all visited more, but I know how busy they are. We all try to at least check in with each other once a week and sometimes an email joke forwarded during the week. I even got to talk to Sarah for a minute. Robert put the phone up to her ear, and then I could hear her squealing and punching the number buttons on the phone. She's 9 months old. It would sure be nice if he'd send pictures every now and then. He acknowledges they're taking them. They just somehow don't get loaded onto the computer from the camera he said. Sheridan was at John's this weekend, and they were laying low, just watching TV and hanging out. She enjoys that.

Still vacillating on the camera situation. I've read several different reviews, and it looks like the Dimage Z6 is still my choice. The only thing is I wish it had RAW capabilities. Don't ask me what that is exactly because my camera now doesn't have it, but the people who are really into photography and use the SLR digitals use it. Apparently the quality and clarity of the photo is much better when shot in RAW format and loses a fair amount of detail when it's in the JPEG format. But to get the RAW capability in a different camera would be giving up the fabulous zoom -- 12x on the Z6, and some other things that makes me think it's not a good trade-off. But if this were a perfect world, I would want to get acquainted with RAW. I can still convert them to TIFF, which is something I should have been doing all along since TIFF preserves the integrity of the pixels much better than JPG; but I just never did get in that habit. So, now it's just a matter of deciding if I want to -- well, not "want to" - if I SHOULD spend the money. I hate making decisions.