in two hours, i will be at the airport picking up my wife who was gone way too long. eight days would have been unbearable except for not really having a break since she left.

days 7 and 8 were all about finishing up everything. saturday was spent mostly doing the baseboards in the hallway, the stairs, and in the two rooms. i chickened out and decided to not do the master bedroom. the stairs wound up being a lot of work because we had the carpet ripped up and replaced with hardwood, so it required some hole pluggin’, some sandin’, and a couple of coats of paint. while not a professional job by any means, it does look way better than it did. i also wound up repainting the corner of the baby’s room. i was going to try to sponge from light to dark, since we wanted the corner to be part of a night scene. but the sponging just didn’t look right, so i repainted over everything and tried something different. hopefully it’ll get the thumbs up!

today was my last day to get everything done. unfortunately, last night i opened a can of ceiling paint and tried to touch up the ceiling on the baby’s room. this morning, it was pretty apparent that it was not the same ceiling paint that was actually on the ceiling. so in addition to another coat on the baseboards, hanging the shelves in the den, and finishing all the painting in the baby’s room, i wound up painting the ceiling, as well. (it turns out i missed a small spot, too, so i’ll have to do the touch up this week).  the shelves look nice, but i’ll need some extra screws to secure the boards. they have a slight warp to them, but between a few screws and the weight of the books, i think we’ll be fine.

there was a lot of cleanup to do. i basically threw everything away, and there was a lot of paper, tape, brushes, and empty paint cans to toss out. oh, and clothes:

here are some final shots:

the plan for tonight was to work on the corner of the baby’s room, and to start doing some of the trim.

and thats when it all went horribly, horribly wrong…

i did my due dilligence, and taped off the top of the baseboards and slid some paper between the bottom of the baseboard and the carpet. i popped the top off the “ultra white” paint and went at it. a few minutes in, i thought “huh, i wonder if the ultra white has a bit of a blue tint to it to make it look more white…you know, like how the camera adds blue to cool a warm light.” about halfway around the room, i looked back to where i started, and figured something was wrong. i went back and checked the label on the top of the can (which should have been my first sign…there was a label) and where i looked quickly and saw a bunch of 0’s, there were actually pigment numbers right below. 1/2 of the baseboards were now the same light blue as the baby’s room. awesome.

i went ahead and started taping off the other room and the stairs while the ultra white = blue paint dried. fortunately, that gave me a head start for saturday. i went ahead and did some of the baseboards in the baby’s room, then went back and did a coat or real white paint in the den.

dinner was uneventful, just some soup. oh, and about a bottle of wine. yay!

overall, still a better day than the boys at affliction had…

day 5 was relatively uneventful. dinner was a frozen pizza and 2 drumsticks (the iced cream, not the poultry). another coat of stain on the shelves, and the third and final coat of paint on the baby’s room. i started to paint the dark corner to go along with the theme last night, too. these will probably be the last pictures i put up until it’s done, just so the wife is surprised when she comes home!

day 4 was a realtively easy one. i got home and mowed the lawn, which wasn’t too bad. i do need to de-weed at some point, but that point was not last night! then i did another coat of stain on the shelves, which are starting to look nice but that gel was clumping up in a few spots, so may need to do some cleanup work. then i did another coat of paint on the walls of the baby’s room. the second coat really helped, it looks nice. i’ll still do a third coat, though, just to be sure its all covered, and probably start the dark blue segment, as well.

dinner: so i learned nothing from day 3, and had the same dinner of 2 x Hungry Man Friend Chicken dinners. why? i have no answer.

on my way home last night, i stopped and picked up a couple of ceiling fans because the electricians came on wednesday morning. while i was there, i also picked up some disposable gloves since my first task when i got home was putting another coat of that gel stain on the shelves. sometimes i actually show some intelligence…

next up was taping off the baby’s room. that took a bit longer than expected, but i know in the end it will be totally worth it, even though i still will be painting the baseboards and such (from the last time i painted and didn’t tape…). once the taping was done, i did the first coat of the entire room, rolling most of it, and using a brush in the corners and along the edges. the color looks really nice on the walls, much more like the paint sample than the drop of paint they put on the can which looked almost white.

since it’s wednesday morning now and the fans are done, i included a few shots of those, too.

dinner: hungry man fried chicken

the bad news:

the worse news:

i ate two of them for dinner.

i didn’t get as much done last night as i had planned, but i was able to do a few things. the first part was to put together the shelves for the den. a table saw would have been really, really handy, but i made do with a cooler and a circular saw. i cut the boards and the trip, and glued them together. of course, clamps would have been really handy, too, but i made do with some string:

i started the staining process last night, but will need to clean things up a bit tonight. the stain was this really weird gel (that is still on my hands…probably can’t be healthy) so a bunch of flying debris got stuck on the wood (we had a bad storm last night, and i was working in the garage with the door open, so lots of wind + dust + sticky gel = more work for me). despite my lack of the proper tools, i think they will turn out just fine.

i wanted to tape off the baby’s room so i could paint tonight, but only got as far as taking all the shelves and such off the walls and patching the holes.  that’s actually more than i thought i would do given my late start.

dinner: archer farms (i love target!) frozen Sicilian thin crust pizza. i ate the whole thing. i’m a big fatty.

day one of my bachelor week was relatively productive. we’re turning our guest room in to the den/tv room, and the old office in to the baby’s room. sunday was spent emptying out the new den, and moving all of the electronic gear from the old office closet to the new den closet. i put up two more shelves for additional storage, patched the holes in the wall, got the cable modem and phone reconnected, even running the phone wire underneath the carpet. i think all i have left to do is touch up the paint on the walls, hide the coaxial cable, and build/stain/hang the shelves. progress!

i did a maternity shoot for some friends over the weekend. it was technically my first of such shoots, although i’ve practiced on the wife and, well, a boxing glove.

i felt like i went in to it pretty well prepared. i did my research and talked with them before the shoot to get an idea of what they were looking for; i don’t get the sense that they were overly excited about the whole process of getting their picture taken, but rather they wanted to have a record of the pregnancy.

the day of the shoot came, and i had my list of shots with notes on how to light each shot. with my trusted wife/assistant by my side, we set up shop in their living room and efficiently organized the shots, strategically placing the wardrobe change and batching shots against the white seemless and the darker background.

i would say the biggest challenge was the size of the space, although really the space wasn’t much smaller than the basement i’m usually in. trying to do white seemless with 3 strobes and a reflector proved to be frustrating (2 strobes on the white seemless, one key light + reflector), although i only had to do minor cleanup on the background in post and the one umbrella’d key light and reflector proved to be enough to light the three of them. the shots against the darker background were a bit easier, although in hindsight i would have done a few different lighting placements.

at the end of the day, i think it turned out well. they were pleased with the proofs i sent them the next day, and i feel like i went in with a solid game plan and executed. extremely nervously, mind you, and there were a few moments where i thought i was close to freaking out, but having done the practice and research i was pretty close each time i set up the lights, and only had to do some minor adjustments which i could intelligently do without just guessing at what was wrong and keeping them sitting there while i did it.

here are a few shots:

i was doing some research for a few friends on nikon bodies and which ones require AF-S lenses for supporting autofocus, versus ones that can use any AF lens and autofocus.

Here are a few links:

http://www.bythom.com/currentdslr.htm

http://www.kenrockwell.com/nikon/compatibility-lens.htm

personally, i’d spend the extra cash to allow me to use any AF lens. my eyes are not what they used to be, and i would rather rely on the camera (and my 51 focus points!) to do the focusing for me with a wider variety of lenses. i love my $100 nikon 50mm f/1.8 lens, which is not AF-S. the 50mm af-s lens is a 1.4 and costs upwards of $400 (there is a non AF-S 50mm for around $300). looks like the sigma HSM equivalent is about the same price.