Techie Mommy

1 month milestone.... w00t! Went out with the girls to run some errands today, and ended up eating and playing at McDonald's. Y, who is usually brave at these things surprised me by chickening out of going up the slide. X loved it though (and she used to be so scared of climbing up these maze like tubes). Y was happy enough eating her french fries, cheering her "ate" and taking photos from mommy's phone. I forgot to bring my camera with us, so today's photo of the day is brought to you by the iPhone.

I have this picture in my head that I've been trying to take. I've seen other pictures of it but they don't really explain their setup or their equipment, so all I can do is experiment. For all I know, I may not even have the right equipment for it. Anyways, this morning, with the light coating of snow flurries that were on the car, I thought I may have the opportunity. I think it's close to what I want, but it's not quite there. I wanted a photo that would show the individual snowflakes in detail. Not all of it, but at least some of it (at least 1!). However, this is the closest that I got to what I wanted. The others were really just either a chunk of ice, or a blob of white :) Maybe next time, it will be better. Meanwhile, I also got one of those rare moments where my 3 angels posed together for a photo. Y is even smiling! X is not in her best smile, and Z has his deer in a headlights look -- but this photo is preciously rare :)

9pm and the girls are fed, bathed and are in their night clothes. I wonder if I can get them to sleep at 10pm, but then their dad will be sad as he'll miss seeing his girls.

Heard back from Nanay's doctor about the polyps that were removed, they were benign! Thanks for the prayers.

Looking forward to San Francisco next week except I'm going to be in and out so fast, I don't think I'm going to be able to enjoy the city.

Ending this week with some really good news. I am also proud of having made it this far into this project! It's been almost a month, with a few close calls including today. Got home pretty late because I hung out with team mates after work. By the time I had late dinner, and gave the girls a bath and into their PJs, it's 11:30pm and still no picture of the day! We were all already in the bedroom so I've been trying to improvise and find something interesting. I liked the patterns of this and actually liked the way the light made it look soft and glowy. This photo is in its original composition, no cropping whatsoever. I liked it as it is! :) I won't tell what it is though I'm sure it will be obvious.

Snotty woman on the train told me not to lean my laptop on her bag. I asked her if she wants to switch her bag with mine so I'm touching my bag instead of hers and she didn't want that because she was there first. Hrmpf! I moved. A whole hour is too long to sit with her.

My MBP has 240 GB of hard drive, and today, at the worst time - I was down to 50MB. I had to backup a lot of files on my external hard drives and delete a lot of my VMWare snapshots to free up some space. Adding to that, Entourage is acting up again! For 2 days, my colleagues can't see my calendar in Outlook so it's been difficult to schedule meetings to the point that I've been sending them screenshots of my calendar. And this afternoon, I noticed that my Entourage database, started rebuilding itself! It's already 12AM now the next day and I'm still about 5 days into 2010. *sigh* So for the photo of the day, sorry for this cliche keyboard shot. Hee.

My Entourage database started rebuilding itself... argh! There's a ghost in my machine.

My Entourage database started rebuilding itself.. ghost!

The weather has turned for the worse this week. From the rainy but warm(ish) days we had last week and the weekend that melted ALL the winter snow accumulation, we woke up to chilling temperatures and a light coating of snow. As such, its inside the house photography again, courtesy of my kids. I had a series of fun portraits with X and this one is my favorite. We are featuring her tattoo from Y's birthday party. That one was already almost gone, and we put a new one just before the shoot.

Thinks I dropped an SD card on the train... Shoot! :(

Working with HR to figure out how not to lose my FSA money. It's good for 2-3 iPads!

Busy with work today and had back to back meetings on the calendar. However, all pending work is done so I didn't have to bring any work home with me. Was hoping to catch the 5:40pm train, but got caught up with conversation with my team mates. As such, I find myself actually having time to take photos at the train station instead of running JUST to catch the train in time. I took a couple of pictures of the new Chicago Farmers market, inside and out - but chose these for the photo of the day. The good news is, I finally had time to upload and blog about 6 days worth of photos.

After 3 nights of partying (hee), it was back to work and back to the grind. Also meant back to finding subjects for this project. I have 4 days photo backlog and Y goes to school/day care next week while I am out of town. Yaiks! That means I have this week left to make sure she gets into a good habit of sleeping early. So, for today's photo, I turn to the residents of our aquarium. We used to have a salt water tank, which crashed. Nowadays, the tank holds fresh water fish and biggest of which is this one.

Last night was so much fun and Sunday was spent cleaning up, and resting. Today is also the day we open Y's presents! Y says "Thank you for the presents!" and yes, I have video to prove it... Ha ha!

3rd party in row! This weekend is Y's long awaited birthday party. We normally schedule her birthday party around this time in January because the 2nd is too close to the holidays and who knows who can come ?! Instead, we keep that day to celebrate Y's and my brother's birthday with family instead. While I've been researching and preparing for this party for a while - I wasn't really able to spend time to execute any of the plans until last weekend! With all work slowing down, and the long weekend over MLK, twas the perfect time to finish all the preparations, and invitations. Apparently, Blue is no longer very popular so the party stores don't carry her as a theme anymore. I had to order theme related stuff online, drive over a couple of neighboring cities to find a Target with the cake in stock and had to manually do the rest. There's also the small matter of Y flip flopping between being excited about her party, and NOT wanting a party at all (

X was awesome in swimming class today!

Kids (if 27 yr olds can still be called kids) thrown out of the train @ Oak Park. I thought that only happens on special event days.

Tonight is my company's holiday party! Went with all my team mates, and since I live far far west in the suburbs, I had to go in my work clothes :( I was told this is the same place we had the holiday party last year, which I missed because I was on maternity leave. The place was huge! It had a lot of different chandeliers, that I actually think are for sale (I took a photo of one of them). The main entertainment of the night is CRUX Capacitor, our very own rock band! They were awesome!

Q4 over... projects all launched... Time to party! Went bowling at 10pin after work with all the team members working on the account. It was a fun night! I think I played 5 games, and should have stopped at 3. I had a great game, and I had the worst.game.ever! I should have stopped while I was ahead! :) Even though we were having fun, I had to find my photo of the day. This drink became a topic of conversation because we didn't know what it was. Since it was laser bowling, the drink "glowed". I just had to take it's picture.

Bowled the worst.game.ever! :(

20 days into the year, and three grown ups in the household has already been sick. I was trying to find things to photograph in the house while blogging about myself so I figured this is a good subject. Both nanay and hubby had to go to urgent/convenient care this week - and both got prescription medicines. They say you always need to group things in threes and I had one too from my sore throat/lost voice from the beginning of the year so that completes my subjects. The good news is, nanay is finally better and hubby is on preventative medication. The kids have nothing (cross fingers), and hopefully continue to do so because we have Y's birthday party on Saturday! I've been noticing that on most days (good days), I post 2 photos. Hopefully one that is a commentary on what my day is like, and another that is more artistic or photography related. I think I will continue in that mode. At the end of 365 days, I might have 500 pictures! Today's artistic picture is

I've been trying to find bugs in the house to photograph lately and I just can't find one. Tonight, while I was in the basement with the girls, they screamed "Spider! Mommy!". So yeah, apparently, there are a couple of house spiders in the basement - but they're really too small, thin, and pale to take pictures of. But, beggars can't be choosers - so, I grabbed my gear, dropped a comforter on the floor and tried to get to it's level. The tripod was too high, so I have to do this hand held. There isn't a lot of light, so, with a macro lens and hand held, I had to up the ISO to make it manageable. This bug photography again is not simple, its not like, you can grab them and pose them your way so you can get a clear view of its eye. For the most part, they crawl away, and show me their ass. I found another one in the ceiling, and that was too high up that again, the tripod is useless. Anyways, after a couple of tries, and a lot of discarded pho

Trying to decide if I should take a Friday redeye (11pm-ish) flight from SFO-ORD or sleep in and fly home Saturday. I don't want to sleep at the airport.

Today's project365 is dedicated to my parents who celebrated their 36th wedding anniversary last week, on January 13. Today was the first day since then that we are all available to go out for dinner and celebrate. This is a combo celebration as tomorrow is also my papa's unofficial 58th birthday. Now, this birthday is a subject of debate in the household. We celebrate it because for the longest time, papa knew his birthday to be in January. Then about 20 years ago (?) when I was in highschool, as part of his passport application, he had to get a certified copy of his birth certificate from the National Statistics Office - and lo and behold, his birthdate is in March! Since then, he has used these two dates to get out of celebrating his birthdays. In January, he'll say his birthday is not until March; and in March, he'll say that his birthday is over last January. To papa - the source of my "smartass"-ness. Happy Birthday!

Invites - check, Cake - check, Balloons - check, Giveaways - check. Ok now I can go back to work guilt-free!

Day 2 of prepping for Y's birthday. Today, I tried to find the cake I wanted and had to drive a couple of towns over to find a Super Target that carries the cake I want. Finally sent the evite last night and today is the day to actually make the cards. As my first major Cricut project, I am making Y's invite. Took me almost all night to do it, and by the end, I feel like I overdid it. I normally do my cards digitally - even though it takes a while to finalize the concept and the design, once you're done - all that's left to do is print them out. With the hand-made cards, the act of mass producing the card is tedious! Kudos to my friends who are really good at it! Not sure I am going to do this a lot in the future, hee. Need to find a way to mix the best of both worlds - digital and crafts. For my Project 365, I took a couple of photos of my crafting tools: my Cricut Expression and accessories, my Macbook Pro for all digital design and Sure Cut's a Lot (

Is crafting invitations...

I brought the camera out with me when we went to Costco today with the 105mm prime still attached to it. I forgot how good this lens really is and how spoiled we get by zoom lenses. You know what else I forgot? I forgot that Costco closes really early on weekends. I've been spoiled by all the late night hours during the holidays. So anyway, we get to Costco at 5:57, then we saw that it closes at 6pm. Luckily, the guy still let us in, and nanay still got all her shopping done. While waiting (at the cafeteria area), I've been taking a photo of X. She loves getting her picture taken and poses every time she sees me raise the camera. Today though, I told her NOT to look at me while I take a picture. It's so funny because she's still smiling her "fake" portrait smile even though she's not looking at me. There was a bit of window there though that she lost all that and was just staring naturally into space. That's when the photo below is taken.

Tonight is all about water droplets! With my old Nikkor 105mm f2.8 Micro lens, I experimented on doing some macro shots and boy, oh boy, this is not easy at all! I started with some static droplets using a dropper on different backgrounds - and I tried to find a way on how to position an object so it will reflect on the droplet. I wish I had some flowers at home, but alas! no fresh (or plastic) flowers. Threw away lots of photos, and this is probably the best one I got on this subject tonight. So after trying that, I moved on to doing high speed photos still on water droplets. I got a couple of decent ones where the droplet was in focus and has good colors reflecting on them. This is my favorite though.

Forgetting about work for the 3 day weekend and going into Party Planning mode

Tonight, I was going to try my hand at some macro photography. Snowflakes would have been cool except everything on the ground is now ice :) As usual, when I go down to the basement, X follows me around - so, out goes the macro project, and tonight became another model X night. I wanted to essentially take a photo of me thru her eyes, with a resulting image clear enough that you actually see me taking her picture. Focus was set on her eyes, and I know I needed a lot of light even though I am using a fast lens. I think I overcompensated with the ISO. What do you think?

As much of a geek as I am when it comes to electronics and gadgets, when it comes to cars? I just want it to work. I hate having to remember to get it an oil change, or remembering to get it serviced and washed from time to time. Essentially, it not high on my list of things that get TLC. So, a long time ago - I've decided that *I*... am a lease person. I love fun cars, I love driving them - I just hate taking care of them. Since then, I've had kids (3 since I got my current car), and obviously, this is no longer the case. My 2004 Audi A4's lease was up last year (2008) and at that time, I had the opportunity to trade it in, and get a family vehicle or lease a new one. Instead, because I didn't want to be bothered with all the End of Lease activities, I decided to just buy the car. After all, it was a 4 year car with barely any mileage. If you were a Facebook friend of mine, you most likely would have seen all my whinings when I had to get the brake pads and

is trying to decide whether or not to participate in RETRO week. After all, I totally ignored the bra meme.

I am in awe of people who can take ordinary objects and make them amazing. Unfortunately, I am not one of them. I'm sure the kids are going to feature prominently in this project so I'm trying to avoid using them unless I'm absolutely desperate. So, I've been reading about some projects I can line up, in case I run out of ideas. With the shorter days and the cold weather, I need to have something in my pocket to whip up when its 11pm and I STILL don't have a photograph. Who knew I'd have to use it this early? Tonight, I tried my hand at some light painting. This experiment is based on this DPS article . They made waaaay better images than I did. I will probably experiment some more with this. But for tonight... The Setup: A flashlight hanging by a string from the ceiling. Camera is pointing up towards the ceiling on a tripod low on the floor. I used a wide angle lens to get as much coverage as possible since my tripod doesn't go very low. 3

It's very rare that I don't bring food for lunch, but today is one of those days. Had a lunch meeting that ended early, so I was able to leave the office and and actually spend some time outside. I grabbed my camera in case there are photos to take. Being in the West loop doesn't really give one lots of options for lunch, specially if you want something quick to go. Today, the choice is Jewel. Between the office and Jewel, there's the train tracks, the doggy park, and the chocolate factory. Prime choices indeed :) Took some photos of all those but didn't find any I like. I think I need to work on some confidence with the camera. Oftentimes, I find myself embarassed (?) and uncomfortable taking pictures in public places like grocery stores, theatres or train stations. The grocery would have been a good place to take photos of fruits, flowers and other colorful things, but I hesitated. I did take this photo today while picking something for lunch. I al

Here's what my calendar looks like for tomorrow. Gah!

At the end of this project, when I go back and read these blogs, I wonder how many Sundays like today we'll have. It's our typical winter Sunday which means stay at home, watch TV, read books and play with the girls. For the second day in a row, mommy treated the girls to a bubble bath, but I've already done that photo yesterday. Normally I tell the girls not to splash, but today, I made them do some splashes for me. For today's blog, I am featuring one of my girls. This is Y, who just turned 3 last week. At three, she is a smart little girl who is more interested in blocks and video games than dolls. She can recite the alphabet, count to 30 in english, and up to 12 in spanish (thanks to Dora) and she loves singing nursery rhymes. She is super smart and have been glued to her Leapster 2 or the computer on sites like Nick Jr and/or Dress up Who.com. In the past few weeks, we have been weaning her off of pacifiers, drinking her milk in a bottle, and sleeping wi

Today is the first day of X's winter swimming class. I thought for sure I was going to regret doing this, but the weather cooperated and while it was cold outside, the sun was bright and shining so it wasn't too bad. I dreaded the water and clothed X and myself accordingly, but looks like we were the only one wearing shirts on top of our swimsuits today. Really need to buy X one of those bodysuits. I took my camera with me at the rec center, but was afraid someone will get mad at me for taking pictures of kids in swimsuits. So strike #1. After lunch, we attended a prayer service for a friend's mom who recently passed away. We went back to their house for a small get together. Since we left the kids at home with papa and mamu, we had to go back early to make sure the kids are ok and more importantly to see if Y or Z need diaper changes. While papa is really good at baby sitting, diaper changing is not in his repertoire :) After dinner, I had to give Z a bath coz m

Just came back from X's swimming class...

You would think with all the things that happened today, I have a lot of subjects/topics for today's photo. The day has been extremely busy. My nanay (mom) and papa had to be dropped at the hospital for surgery; both cars were dropped at the shop for some repair and we have a major launch happening next week that we are finishing at launch. And yet it was already 11pm and I still haven't taken a photo for this day's project. It would have been interesting to photograph the polyps that were removed from my mom's uterus, but all we had were x-rays. I did take some photo's at Firestone, but it would have been a mobile photo of tires and um, tires; and while it would have been funny, I could have taken a photo of me and all the computers around me that I had to use for work. So at 11:15pm, I had to take a break, go down to the basement and see what I can do with what I have. Not really much time to think and setup so I did what came first to my head - candlelig

Chicago is under Winter Storm warning from last night thru tomorrow noon. As such, we woke up to about 4-6 inches of snow and it was steadily falling all day. To avoid the commute, I worked from home today and was hoping that I would then have the opportunity to get out at lunch to shoot some snow scenes. It always amazes me how much light is invisible to the eye. By the time I found time to stop working and get out of the house, it was dark and there was no more natural light available. I would have been stuck with raising my ISO again or doing flash photography. Fortunately, I do have access to a tripod which allowed me to do some long exposure shots. I put on my coat, boots, grabbed the camera and the tripod and walked around the house to see what I can salvage from what should have been a pretty snow day opportunity. This is the view from my backyard. I liked this just because it is so drastically different from what the eye can actually see when I took the shot. I be

Just tried using Magic Jack on a conf call today and it was a big FAIL! MJ is batting 0/2 for me. Not sure where all the rave reviews are coming from?

Every so often, my colleagues and I get together after work to unwind and relieve some stress.  Q4 has always been a busy time for us, and this year is no exception.  With most of my teammates working over the holidays and a bunch of projects launching in the next few weeks -- we are due one of these sessions... and today is the day. Just two blocks from our office is Carnivale , an Authentic Nuevo Latino cuisine in Downtown Chicago.  Since one of us has been boycotting Jeff's Tap & Grill, this has been our go to hang out place after work.  Being the finicky eater that I am, I always order the same stuff - a frozen (lime) margarita and Pollo Estilo Billy . It is a spice rubbed chicken breast that comes with papas fritas (aka french fries, which I ALWAYS forget, and have to ask every time) and a citrus butter sauce (mmmmm!) Food, drinks and conversation with friends... a good way to end the work day!

We've been planning to take down the Christmas decor for a few days now, but due to one reason or another, it's still not done. Tonight, I got home to find the tree partially taken down. All the ornaments are out and only half of the lights are left on the right side. All the wreath on top of the fireplace mantle have been removed and I noticed one sock (Y's) is no longer on its hanger, but X and Z are still there. It's like someone decided to start taking things down and then was interrupted in the middle of things. Such is the life in our household. With three kids, it's really difficult to get something started and completed without any distractions and or pauses. Christmas is over, but I guess the decors will just have to wait. It will get taken down... eventually.

This afternoon, my hubby tells me that an EMS package  arrived.  He then asked me, "Are you going to wrap it or can I open it up?".  Turns out that it was my Christmas gift for him, ordered waaaay before Christmas, but obviously didn't make it here until today. I thought about wrapping it for a second, but hey - he already knows its his gift so might as well have him at it. My husband is a big sports fan.  His idea of a Christmas wish list is to send me a list of jerseys that he doesn't have yet.  Basketball jerseys, football throwbacks - you name it.  Half of the names on these jerseys, I don't recognize and when I buy my gifts, I always arm myself with my iPhone and my list, lest I get them wrong.  Christmas 2008, I believe I gave him a 2 NBA jerseys.  I gave him another one for our wedding anniversary and when I knew that my order will not make it in time for Christmas, I got him another one so he can open one up for Christmas day to add to the 9 more that he

Thinking about switching from Direct TV to Uverse Total home DVR. Anybody did this already?

What to talk about today? It's one of those days that makes it difficult for me to complete this project. It's cold outside, so it's tempting to just bunker down, bury oneself under the blankets and veg out. I finally am desperate enough for a massage that I'm trying Massage Envy today. I've been told good and bad stories about the place, but hey - my therapist from Nordstrom goes to one, so if it's good enough for her it's good enough for me! Lucky for me, there's one more slot left for the day, so I booked it and left immediately to try and make the 3:30pm appointment. It wasn't as bad as I feared - and it's actually pretty comparable to the last spa place I went to. And the price can't be beat. So, I think I'm going with the membership route ($49/month) and trying them out. For trying out today and signing up for membership, I get one more free massage this month, which I scheduled in two weeks. Yay! I'll stop now bef

We always start the year by celebrating two birthdays.  Y's and my brother's.  This year was no different, although - the celebration is a short one because my brother and his family drives back home to Philadelphia today. Nevertheless, we had ice cream cake, we sang happy birthday, we had presents and we had each other! Happy 3rd Birthday to you Y!  Happy 35th birthday to you, Marc. I can't find my #3 candle, and had to make do with what I had :)  The 3 sticks are for Y, and 3 and 5 makes 35!  Voila!

Happy New Year everyone! 2009 was a great year, and here's hoping that 2010 is better.  Health and Happiness to everyone... though prosperity would be nice too :) Since it's the 1st of the year, here's yet another opportunity to start a 365 day project.  I always try this out and never make it thru.  It's one of those things I want to do right, and not cheat :) Here's how it works (at least, how my rules work): Take a photo each day Blog about it You can choose to just post a photo or post a blog.  My goal is to do both, although - it does make it more complicated No cheating!  i.e. the photo needs to be taken THAT day, can't choose from old pictures The blog technically should be written THAT day, but since some days could be long, it could be a day or 2 late.  Again, this I leave at your discretion Keep it simple.  Keep it fun.  The above are my rules but you can modify it to suit your own. The goal is to tell something about your day in words or pictu