I can't buy a printer to save my life

So I'm in the market for a new printer, because my 5 year old Lexmark 5700 just doesn't cut it anymore, and there are purportedly a lot of photo-quality printers out there for well under $1,000. I'm doing a lot of photography, and getting prints made is a pain. It's worth it for film, but it's a real pain for digital, because you either have to use an on-line service, or go to a minilab, or whatever. So I've done my research, and I know there are two printers I'm really interested in - the Epson 2200, and the Olympus P-400. The former is a 7 color inkjet printer, and the latter is dye sublimation. So today, while Katherine was napping, I burned a CD with about 10 choice pictures from my photographic past, ones that I thought would really test printer resolution on contract, color saturation, and so forth, and headed out. Do you know that there does not appear to be any place where you can test these printers side by side, let alone even print out one of your own pictures on them? If I was only looking at one type - ink jet, for example, I could probably suck it up and buy the Epson, but inkjet and dye sub are two completely different print mechanisms, and I have to compare them side by side. And there is no way to do it. I am totally stuck. I have no idea what to do. I cannot believe that you cannot test out a $500 to $700 printer before you buy it.

Words, words, words

Katherine has been slowly making progress in learning how to say certain words. I told you already about how she has learned to swear, but she has other words that she has learned as well. One of the first she learned was, "hot". Now, whenever we eat, and we blow on her food, she says, "HOT". Her next word was not simply no, but, "no-no-no-no-no". And she shakes her head back and forth and smiles when she says it. Her latest is, "UH-OH". She says this all the time. And I mean, all the time. It's very, very cute when she drops something and says, "UH-OH". But less cut when she purposely drops something and says it, or just starts saying it because she can. Still, it just goes to show you what language you use the most often, in some way, I guess. She has also learned to say, "Hi", "Ma-ma", and a few others. She understands a lot more than she can say, however. If you say, "where did you put Lovie?", for example, she'll often go find it, even if it's in another room. She sort of gets nose, mouth, ear and so forth, but we've been working on those. Kara asked her where her other sock was, and she ran from the kitchen into the living room and found it under the couch. That's pretty impressive. She also grunts quite a bit. Kara, when she gets frustrated, will go, "urrrgggg". Neither of us really noticed it - we tuned it out, until Katherine started doing it. She'll be trying to, I don't know, get at the household chemicals or something, and have trouble, and go, "urrrgggg". It's also very cute.

She still doesn't really say Daddy very much, but I don't care, because she hugs me and gives me kisses, and that's enough for me to know she loves me.

The times, they are a changing'

And so they did, last night. I am holding out hope that this has the effect of making Katherine's wake up time an hour later, or 7AM. 6AM is pretty brutal for me. Kara seems to be able to deal with it, but she's an early riser and I am definately not. I seem to recall that when we moved the clocks back, it moved her bedtime, but not by an hour, but she's been gradually creeping earlier and earlier. I got up with her this morning, at 7:15 AM (with the time change), and it was pretty bad, but I need to put in my morning time when I can, because poor Kara gets it every morning, especially when I'm traveling.

Speaking of which, I'm in town all week, which feels like a vacation, even though it's not, because I still have to work.