Family Portrait

I'm waiting for a dinner that I don't expect I can screw up.  I'm getting too lazy to measure or follow directions exactly.  I thought I could just boil off the extra water, but instead the pot boiled over.  In the good news, the stove cap thingy, which is supposed to keep junk out of the burner worked great!  At least I won't have carbonized dinner leftover to dig out of my cook stove later this evening.

I got down into town this afternoon to surprise Joanna with a call on our first anniversary.  We talked about unimportant things until the little cash I had was about to run out.  This is the first time I've made it to one year with someone without breaking up.  I'll avoid any talk of her being "the one" for fear of jinxing the whole thing -- we'll see how Peru goes, first.  I hope we travel well together -- that's something I would want to do with a partner.

Those trips would be different than this trip, that's for sure.  I heard about a Swiss couple on bikes with a 3-and-a-half year old and an 18-month old.  They've been on the road for a year or so, pulling the kids in trailers.  Don't know if that's exactly fair to the kids -- they'll probably grow up hating anything on two wheels.  But I'm sure there's a medium ground in there somewhere between letting the child take over your life and letting your life take over the child.  I guess that's the point I keep trying to make to Joanna when she looks at my current lifestyle and asks why I'd ever want to become a parent.  Adding a child, or girlfriend for that matter, need not change things drastically.  I'm sure there's that middle ground I've been babbling about.

(After dinner)

Did a "family portrait" in honor of our anniversary: set the tripod up in one corner of the tent with me holding a picture of Joanna and Eva and opened the shutter.  Fill flash (-1.5 EV) on second shutter sync, 15 and 30 second exposures at f8.0.  We'll see...  I've got a feeling that the photo of Jo and Eva will be overexposed as it's too close to the flash.  Couldn't stop down any more as I was already at a 30 second exposure.

How appropriate that this shot is an experiement with some amount of guesswork and hopes of good results.

Going to try for morning light again.  Better sign off.