I finally figured out the problems my blog was having and put the old theme back up. My host apparently decided to "protect" me by blocking some of my pictures with their firewall features. I guess they were trying to protect something but it just rendered my site pretty much broken. Once I turned off the new "features" it was all better.

I have been playing with Aperture this weekend. I think the latest version finally has everything I need to abandon my file centric photo management and use a tool. In fact it has 90% of what you need Photoshop for. I'm hoping it will be less of a pain to shoot photos and I will not have an excuse to pick up the camera more often. The one thing I am trying to decide on is what frame to put on my photos before I upload them. In order to avoid going into Photoshop I am using an Aperture plug in to generate the frames. I created a couple of simple options and am waffling on a favorite. Here is an example of each...do you have a preference? I like the one on the top but of course it might not work for images that are cropped tight. Maybe I will just use both. You can compare it to what i currently use a few posts below.

Not much else going on here. I am mostly being lazy during the summer heat. It's almost time to start training for the Tulsa Run but right now it's enough to just run outside in the 90 degree heat...I'm very anxious to have some nice cool evenings.

Ok, I hate professional sports.   I hate the way kids today seem to hold thugs and gang members up as heroes because they can throw a football or dunk a basketball.   Sure, there are good people playing professional sports..but...very few of the great ones are people I think should be heroes to today's youth. 

For me, the Olympics are different.    Once every 4 years, the worlds athletes come together in peace.   It's a chance to learn about the host nations culture and who they are as a people...which is a lesson that many Americans (myself included) desperately need.    Nations that hate each other compete with each other as equals and hopefully show us all that we are more the same than different.    As I sit glued to my TV every 2 years, I am always struck how these athletes are exactly the types of people that our children should respect.   They arrive to compete...usually unpaid...and almost always humble and free from the showboating so common to sports here in America.    They show their pride on their face and not in the way they talk down to their opponents.   Thanks to these amazing athletes, once every few years I am proud to be from America.

This summer is something new for me.   For once instead of spending my time in front of my computer...I have spent it outside.   I've done lots of yard work...sat on the patio (enjoying a new mister and lots of wine) and hung out at the pool quite a bit....something I haven't done in many years.    Hopefully that excuses my lack of updates lately...but well...probably not.

After waiting for 6 months...my new SLK is finally here.   It's so very therapeutic to finally be able to put down the top again.   Well, it would be if it wasn't over a hundred degrees this week.    I swear I saw my thermometer say 109 on the way home one day this week...but that's probably just the temperature of the highway.     The new car is very much the same and yet quite different from the old car.   The new color is amazing and I am glad I went with the blue.   The premium leather is as soft as I have felt in a car (or even a bag) and the caramel color is perfect.   There are subtle differences all over the car.   The buttons are now black, the electronics package is far superior and the car feels like a much better put together machine.     There are a few disappointments such as the removal of some features for putting down the top but I have fixed most of them by installing a new smarttop chip.   Now I can raise or lower the top from a distance or even when I am driving under 30 mph.   In addition to the pics you see here..I got out last weekend and took a few pics that you can look at here.   I plan to take some more when the weather is nicer.

I will try hard to update more often.  Catch ya all later.