The biggest news is I touched it. I held it. I almost took some pictures with it. While in Salem we stopped in a Best Buy and they had the elusive Canon 5D II on display. I giggled like a school girl. It was awesome! They had a lens on there that I have and I could see a huge difference on the wide angle side of things. My 17mm lens truly would be Ultra-Wide now (as it’s labeled). I figured out how to turn on the 1080P HD Video Capture and it looked gorgeous on the screen. Sadly, I didn’t have any CF Cards with me to shoot some video for fun, and I never made it back to try it. Our romance was so short lived…..

In other news - Portland had the biggest storm in 40 years hit and pounded the state with snow. Everything closed. I spent the majority of my time there indoors with the Packs watching TV and being entertained by their cute little girl Ainsleigh. It was a nice vacation, just a little boring at times. The wedding at the Portland Temple went great though, the weather was very cooperative that one day and the pictures are turning out awesome. Congratulations to Andrea and Danny!

Coming home on the 24th turned out to go pretty smooth, despite all the cancelled flights from the previous days. I woke up at 3am to head to the airport and made it there by 4. I went inside to check my bag and after walking to Los Angeles I found the end of the line. Forget that! I remembered seeing a small huddled mass of freezing travelers outside at the quick-check-in and decided to give that line a try. It had just opened at 4 so the line was short - although it still took about 45 minutes. From there it was a quick 5 minutes through security (TSA was doing awesome!) and I actually had time to hang out at my gate for about 30 minutes before boarding. The flight was smooth and quick and I was home by 10am.

Christmas was fun, I got a nice pair of Black Diamond Liner Gloves to drive with, and 2 boxes of 9mm Ammo from my brother. Oh, and a ride on a zipline!

The big family present is a Cruise to the Western Caribbean in February. One of the stops is the Cruise Lines’ beach in Haiti and there is a loooong zip line there. My parents reserved all of us a ride! I’m so excited. With all the crappy weather we’ve been through this nice tropical oasis will be very nice. Very nice indeed!

And that brings me to today! Nothing exciting going on. That’s my update! I missed all my friends and I’m excited to hang out with them soon. Congrats to Ryan and Tamara on the discovery on their new daughter Sienna. And by discovery I mean they now know the baby is a girl; not that they just had a baby out of nowhere.

From there I ran allll the way to the Southwest Gates and boarded the plane with time to spare. And to top it off my duffel bag made it on the plane too! It was a good flight, and I landed in a snowy Portland.

On our way home Karee stopped at Deseret Book and I bought some presents; TAX FREE! It was odd, but nice. I’ll have to try and get more shopping taken care of!

That’s it for now, haven’t done much other than stay in the house. It snowed again last night, but the main worry is iced over roads, that seems to be all the rage in a NW winter.

I’ll be double checking in it again on Monday. My Uncle Steve passed away this week and my dad just asked me to be the one to Dedicate his Grave.

“Why me?”, I asked.

“Because Scott is giving a prayer, Kurt is giving a prayer…” dad replied.

“And what are you doing?” I asked back.

“Watching.”

And there you have it. I’m generally not scared of having to do things like this, and this case is no different it just came across as a bit of a surprise. And the first thing I did was make sure my little white handbook was around for checking on the correct way to do it.

Uncle Steve was my dads younger brother, probably 58 or 59 years old. I don’t even know what he did for work but he had a good career, a nice little house on the East Bench of Salt Lake not far from where he grew up. A cute wife and a few dogs finished up the family. No kids. I mainly saw him at the usual Family get-togethers and he was always fun for a conversation, so we weren’t that close. I will miss him though.

Smith’s is growing on me; I’m getting to know my co-workers and my legs are no longer ready to detach from my body after 8 hours of standing. My first night was murder on my legs, but now I’m good to go. I get about 30 hours a week and paid every Friday. I like getting paid every week. I also learned that after 6 months I’m eligible for benefits and are only required to work 25 hours/week to get them! That’s a total bonus as hopefully by then I’ll have worked up my photography enough to round off my income with that work while Smith’s pays for fun and insurance. Here’s to hoping!

Let’s see, what else? My friend Daniel Beck released his CD and did a release concert; it was amazing. His voice is sooo beautiful! Well done Dan!

I’ve gotten hooked on some games on my iPhone finally, and they’re pretty dang fun! I enjoy the Apple version of Texas Hold ‘Em poker, every few games I actually win. And yesterday I bought a game called Fieldrunners that’s violently awesome. Basically, you own a field and there is an ‘enemy’ relentlessly trying to cross your field. You can install tower guns, slow-down goop, missiles and a tazer tower to kill off the driving forces. They come in small people, big people, motorcycles, tanks, helicopters and I even got a robot once! If you let 20 enemy past you you get defeated. It’s actually pretty fun! So, if you have an iPod Touch or an iPhone I totally recommend it, and at $4.99 it’s not that big of a spend.

No, I wasn’t paid for that endorsement.

Canon released the 5D into the wild… and I am soooo envious! I want it I want it! However, I think my next major purchase will be a new lens. It’ll come in at less than half the price of the 5D (so $1200) but I’ll enjoy it almost as much. The 5D can come after that when it’s either a better deal used or just more easily gettable. Wow, my spellcheck didn’t try to correct that - gettable. It’s a word? Awesome! Learn something new every day.

Let’s see. I guess I’m heading off to Portland in a few more weeks, hard to believe it’s almost time to go! I’ll be gone the 18-24. Yep, Christmas Eve. But I’ll be home by like 10am so it’s no big deal. And, end scene.