Ah, Thanksgiving

I'm still full. We had a big-time thanksgiving with all the fixins, after a quick visit to see Gram O. We also talked to lots of folks on both sides of the family. Katherine is still, um, adjusting to John's being here, but she's warming up, and will probably be handing him half-chewed pieces of food for the rest of his stay here.

Dave's Rock and Roll Photos

Country photos, actually. I treated the Nashville Star gig as a photo assignment, and hauled my camera along and tried to practice my low-light, no flash concert-type pictures. I had a bunch of problems, though, although I may have pulled it out in the end. The main problem was that there were not very many lights, and so even though I was using ISO 800 film, it was way too slow. The second problem was that I borrowed my Dad's 70-300mm lens, but it's a variable aperture lens, and it only got down to ƒ4 at 70mm, and ƒ5.6 at 300mm. I was watching the USA Networks photographers set up, and at one point they held up a white card under the lights, and I tried to spot-meter off it, but that was still too low. So I went up and talked to them. The guy I talked to was really nice. He didn't understand why I had a problem until I told him about the lens. He asked if I had a tripod, and of course I did not, so he mentioned that I might want to push the film.

Now the problem here was that at ƒ5.6, the fastest shutter speed I could get was still way, way below acceptable, like 1/8 of a second, and at that slow speed, the people I was photographing would blur. So I took the plunge, and changed the ISO rating of the film in the camera to 3200 - a two stop push. I was still getting between 1/20 and 1/60 of a second, but I didn't have a lot of options, so I just took all the pictures in that range and tried to keep the camera as steady as possible.

Because I uprated the film, I could not get it processed at Zeff's, so I took it to a pro lab over in Arlington. They seem really great there. They pushed processed the film one stop, and then stopped it, because it would not stand any more. When I got the negs back, they looked awfully washed out, but the woman at the desk told me that even the pros who shoot concert get negs back that look at that. I didn't have them printed there, though, I took them to Zeff's for that.

Anyway, the point of this story is that I get to pick them up tomorrow, and I'm excited about it.

Still Sick

Kara is still sick. Again the day went OK, although her sore throat is pretty bad. I left work early, because we had to take Dad to the airport, and I didn't want Kara to have to do it while she was sick. It sort of went downhill in the evening, with her temperature getting up near 100° even while she was taking Advil. The chills came back, and she generally felt rotten. Her stomach started bugging her again too, which was just the icing on the cake.

So this is pretty hard. She's really having a rough time of it, and really unhappy that this flu is dragging on. She just wants to be healthy and happy so that she can enjoy the snow and the holiday and the visit from her brother, who arrives tomorrow evening for Thanksgiving from California. I am also pretty burned out. In addition to trying to put hours in at work, I am just running the whole house at this point. Dinner, cleaning, laundry, dishes, you name it. Kara is helping when she can, but it's pretty hard given how she feels. By some miracle, neither Katherine or I seem to have picked up this bug, which is good, but I just hope it holds. We're trying to minimize contact, but particularly when I'm away, that's damn near impossible.

Relapse

Kara had a relapse today. She seemed OK in the morning, but really I was just trying to believe she was OK, since she had a good spell on Sunday. In actuality, she had a fever, and told me she didn't feel that well, but I didn't want to believe that.

Anyway, the day sortof went OK until the afternoon, and I could tell from a phone conversation or two that she was starting to feel worse. After dinner, she started to feel really bad, and we took her temperature, and it was 101°. Also, her stomach is better, but now her throat is sore. So we don't know if this is another flu, or a bizarre change in symptoms in the first one, but it's not a good thing in either case. We'll see what happens in the morning.

Health Update

OK, so Katherine fell on Saturday, and I forgot to tell you about it. She tripped on the carpet next to the front door, and fell into the door, and hit her head on the finial of the bottom door hinge. It looks just terrible today, but it actually wasn't that bad when it happened. I mean, she cried, but not as much as I would have expected, and I gave her some infant Tylenol pretty soon after for the headache I figured would set in. It was just a red spot Saturday, but it turned into a kindof scab like thing on Sunday, and today it's a much deeper red, but she's doing fine. She was just great on Sunday.

Kara was doing better on Sunday, but she was still infirm. Towards the evening, she put together about three hours where she really felt almost healthy, like normal except for a sore stomach and the effects of a weekend of Tylenol and Advil, but this too passed, and her stomach started to grind a bit again in the mid-evening. She woke up feeling not as good as yesterday afternoon, but healthy enough that I think I can squeak in a day of work.

Dave is tired and very fried. And after a weekend of caretaking, Dave has to go back to his real job.