Sharon got a really awesome camera for Christmas, so I've been playing with that a lot. A Canon Rebel XSi. We have been talking about buying a DSLR for about three years and last year we were going to spend all the Christmas money from family on one - but life intervened. This year we made good, it was really the one big gift we got and it is something for both of us. Sharon does a lot of scrapbooking so she takes lots of photos, and well I like shooting them! Although the 16G SD card was definitely overkill - I almost fell over when I saw how many photos it can hold. After playing with it for a few days now I can see why my buddy Richard loves his Rebel so much, it is a fantastic camera, with tonnes of shortcut controls all over the body. I'm working through the for Dummies book for this model, Richard recommended that one to me, it is really thorough.
I've also been back at my stamps. I cleaned up my office and as soon as my desk was clear I was able to pull out an album and start working. I've cleaned up a few stock pages of Chilean stamps that came from Andrew's dad's collection and two pages of state stamps from India (I love the older and odder material). Now I'm working on India (national) and my oldest has been helping me.
I had a bunch of stamps like the one in the picture to sort, I asked her what the difference was - so she stared at them for a while correctly identified that some said postage and some had & revenue on them. Once we sorted those into two piles I told her the one with just postage has two possible watermarks, or thinnings on the paper in a specific design that shows up when the stamp is wet. So we laid them out to see if they had one star or many stars. I think that's the first time she's used watermark fluid - so exciting to share my hobby with her. Once they were sorted we mounted the one I was missing and put the rest into my trader stock. Then we went off to play picto-chat together on our Nintendo DSs (I'm not sure why they like that especially when they like to sit next to each other and chat??? But it was a chance to hang out with her which I appreciated.)Today we have a bit of a party. I have to get back at my school work soon too - I have a deadline of the 6th for an outline of my project proposal. I think it will take me a few months to put together - will I ever get used to feeling inadequate to the task? I feel like there is so much work at the front of the PhD that I'm not able to adequately devote myself to research until I've locking in on what I'm doing? I would like to take a few months just to do exploratory research and then draft my proposal. But that is not the programme.
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