davejenbarnes

The feeling was mutual. We didn’t want to cook dinner. With our new food envelope stocked with food cash, we had the decision of how to spend the food cash. Taco Bell was our choice for many reasons: cheap, fast, and we hadn’t had it in a year or so… It was like being on a date! I don’t know if it was because of the hot sauce or the rush of Mountain-Dew caffeine, but we ended up at the new Oshman’s on 183 just north of the new super-Target at 183 and Lakeline. I don’t remember ever being in an Oshman’s but it was like Academy on steroids, and not as versitile. Our goal was to price ‘blades for Dave since he’d pretty much rolled his last pair into the ground (broken ankle support)… He found his inline skates at Oshman’s for $28 with tax. That, of course, came out of the spending category of the budget and we even have some money left over!

We have put ourselves on a very strict money-diet, or budget, starting this month. We have been on a very loose budget more or less all four years we’ve been married, but this is the tightest we’ve run things. It is also the first time we are trying the cash envelopes for gasoline and groceries. The gas-money is divided evenly to fuel both cars and I’m hoping that this budget will only have to last for four weeks before the next month’s rations come in. I don’t see how it will stretch to cover five. The motivation behind the “tightening of the financial belt” is getting out of debt. ENTIRELY out of debt. We’re talking credit cards, cars, and student loans which add up to more than I thought they would. The good news is that we can own both cars and have one of the student loans paid off in full in twenty-four months. The bad news is that this means we will not be able to afford things such as movies and gifts for friends and relatives. Only the basics. There will be a lot of eating at home in the next two years for us, and home will have to stay an apartment for at least five more years (until we wipe out the student loans)… We’ll see. God may bless us in unexpected ways.

I’ve been toying with the idea of adding a background pattern for awhile… After much experimentation, I present to you the winner. The name background, afterall is something subtle. BACK, as in not important, away, not immediately in front of you and GROUND as in something you stand on, a foundation, place to grow from. It is a beautiful word and demands a beautiful pattern.

‘been scanning in more pictures for everybody to look at… I’ve been going through the scrapbook and photo box finding old photos that are web-worthy. I noticed in most of the older ones of me that I’ve always got my hair in a ponytail. Guess that was part of the motivation of cutting it short. I’ve tried my best a remembering approximate times of the pictures and putting them in reverse-chronological order, but I may have messed up a year or two along the way. The latest pictures of us, from TMEA, I appear to have bright orange hair… that’s what it looked like since I had just had color done and it didn’t have a chance to fade yet. It’s looking much tamer now, though!

David is preparing for another band perfomance this Saturday at Kealing MS. I’ll try to take more pictures as I now have a place to put my snapshots. His first pre-UIL performance went pretty good. U.I.L. is on March 10th.

We’re enjoying the rainy weather that’s blowing through right now. At least its warm. Rain, when driving, seems to enhance the music that is playing in a car. I noticed that Girl from Impanema sounded much better on my drive home than it has sounded in a long time. It didn’t even conflict with the ABBA that followed it! (I have mixed tastes in music)

I have downloaded “bootleg” copies of the directional buttons for the photo gallery and have been slowly updating the wedding album. The wedding album is slow work due to the hand-scanning and editing process to remove dust particles and make the necessary color adjustments. For the dust removal, I am using PhotoStudio in classic mode… I haven’t found anything better besides the Photoshop 7.0 demo which expired a long time ago on our computer. For color adjustments and corrections, I am using The GIMP but I wasn’t satisfied with its dust-removal abilities. I think that must be because it has so many variables and I haven’t experimented with each of them to see what they do to get the results I want. I’ve found that with the default setting, the noise reduction feature softens the image too much. For some reason, theh older version of PhotoStudio is doing an awesome job on dust/noise removal. Two hours and I got 9 pictures scanned, editted, and uploaded to the web… I gotta find a faster way. I leave you now to go sleep. bye

When was the last time you…

1. …went to the doctor?

May 4, 2003

2. …went to the dentist?

November 11, 2003

3. …filled your gas tank?

February 19, 2004

4. …got enough sleep?

last night

5. …backed up your computer?

never… yet

I don’t have any pictures of the snow that hit (we slept in this morning at the hotel) while we were in San Antonio, but Mark has pictures of the snow that hit his neighborhood in North Austin up on his blog…

TMEA was ccc…coooold this year. We didn’t see as many people as we had seen in years past, but we did get to see quite a few. So many friends from the past… it was good to see you all! I have posted some pictures of our experience this year. Alas, it is good to be home, although Austin is just as cold as San Antonio was… brrr…

Off I go to watch Dave play some MetalArms on the ‘cube. Laters…