It is a monumental day in every kids life when they figure out how to tie their shoes. I remember I was in fours class when I learned. I can remember the room layout and the fact that I was sitting in the back of the room while the teacher read a story. I wasn’t paying attention to her story but rather tying, untying, and retying my shoes for what seemed like hours.
Maddy now knows how to do the same thing. And I bet she will remember it as I have.
Also, we got a new camera to replace the one in the previous post. It is a little point and shoot but has some features that most other cameras in this class can’t touch. The Canon A710 has all the great features of Canon cameras, but also has a 6X optical and optical image stabilization. I will begin posting pictures to my site shortly as we were in Indy last weekend for a 30/60 party. My dad turned 60 on January 15th. I turn 30 on Feb 8. We celebrated with a number of friends, food and beer. It was great. Maddy also got to go sledding and make snow angels. What fun.
Winter has hit Austin in a big way. Ice storms typically hit the area every 2 years. We had a pretty good storm mid December 2005, and just over one year later, we are blessed with the icy stuff again. It has been sleeting, with freezing rain and snow for the past 2 days. During the day it warms up to 34 and things start to melt, but as the temp drops at night, accumulation starts.
The city shut down today (Tuesday) from a wintery mix that has lasted 3 days. Sunday night and Monday night we had freezing rain, and today has brought snow flurries. Most schools and UT has also shut down for Wednesdays…wow a 5 day weekend…
That of course means Madison, Soco and I have tried to get out as much as possible to play in it. The dog had a hard time on the crunchy ice-grass spikes, but still had fun. Maddy made some snow balls and threw them at me. All was fun.
Here is a radar from midday Tuesday. It has looked the same for three days. Blue is snow, pink is sleet/freezing rain, and green is rain. We are the dot just above the pink bubble in the middle.
And here is Madison out in it. Everything in this picture (besides Maddy and Soco) is covered in a quarter inch of ice, with sleet and snow on top.
My luck with photography is slowly deteriorating. As you know my picture website crashed in November…without a good backup. So I am rebuilding it. Well, over New Years, my camera broke. Long live the FinePix S602Z. 
But all is not lost. I plan to get a little point and shoot to last me till I can get a nicer Digial SLR. Maybe the Canon Rebel XTi or a Nikon D80? Who knows, but I am ready to make the plung into higher quality photography.
Before 
After 
With CES in full swing, Gizmodo keeps posting this picture of Bill Gates…nice.
