rubik's and the holidays.

I spent about 3 hours last night working on my Rubik's cube. It was really irritating. I solved it once. And then when I tried it again I just kept messing it up. By about 10:30 I was getting really frustrated and my hands were starting to get sore. I had to fight the urge to take it and whip it at the wall... [SERENITY NOW!]

I'm not sure why I started doing this - well, actually, I found the cube sitting on my nightstand a few nights ago and thought to myself that it would be kind of fun to be able to solve it.

This is how I chose to start my "staying at home" holidays this year. I have a list of things that I'd like to do this week - rubik's was on it but after last night I think it may get removed from my list.

If only I were feeling better though... I'm fighting through my second coughing fit of the night. The first one was at around 1am... it's currently 4am.

My head hurts from coughing too much. I'm tired. And no amount of water seems to help. I took a lozenge during the first one - that made things worse. So now I'm trying staying upright and drinking lots of water. Such a strange cold... I usually get a pretty bad cough when I get sick but I usually get sick first. This jumped right to the cough, no real sickness. It's making doing stuff kind of hard because I start coughing.

Also - it looks like it finally stopped snowing for the night. I don't remember it ever snowing this frequently. It seems like every afternoon big clouds roll in and it starts snowing. It's cold so the snow isn't melting just yet (we have over a foot now).


I realized last night as I took a few pictures that my hands are surprisingly steady when I take pictures. It's kind of crazy. The picture above was taken at 1/6 of a second. No tripod, just me standing on a street corner quickly snapping shots. Same with this one: (shot at 1/3 of a second, hand held)

I mean, they aren't completely clear but they're not terrible either. (And this is on a non-VR lens!) [These pictures aren't particularly interesting, just kind of me documenting the amount of snow we have.] Also, I've definitely noticed that Auto-ISO is off on my camera. It's so much better now that it's off!

I'll probably end up working on some more HDR shots tomorrow while I wait for my turkey to cook - yes, that's right, I'm cooking a turkey... on Christmas eve. I'm irritated that every year I never get to make turkey (for ANY of the holidays) and never have turkey leftovers or have bones to make turkey stock with. So I decided to cook a turkey. I'm going all out for this one: stuffing, turkey, cranberries, some sort of mashed potato, something green (salad or brocoli or both...) There'll be way too much food but it's okay. Let the holiday indulging begin.

so tired... need more sleep... I think the coughing has subsided for now... I'm going to try going back to sleep. Wish me luck.