Happy anniversary to us!

(Click on the little sound icon between "slide" and "more" to turn off the music)

Linda's birthday and another slide app

OK, I'm trying something new again. I'm going to give "Slide.com" a shot so that I can post pictures directly in my blog again (instead of links to Flickr). The same pictures will be available as sets on Flickr, so you can always go to Flickr to see all of my sets.

Last night, we went to Crimson C to celebrate Linda's 30th birthday with her. I haven't been out in a long time, and it was a lot of fun to see everyone! Although I felt a bit awkward, being the only pregnant woman in the bar (note, this is one of those trendy club type bars, not a "drink beer and play darts" bar where I think pregnant women are more prevalent). I actually stopped for a moment before I entered the bar and asked Chris, "Are pregnant women even allowed in?" Later in the night as I was dancing with Carrie and Kerstin, I mentioned that I felt like that scene in "Sweet Home Alabama" when Reese Witherspoon says, "You have a BABY! In a BAR!"

Anyway, we had a good time and I lasted a lot longer than I thought I would. Most of the Aussie crowd was there to help Linda ring in her 30s, and it was a fun place with good music. The last time I was at this particular location was when it was still Larry's Nightclub, which was shut down after too many incidents (fights, stabbings, etc.). Crimson C has DEFINITELY cleaned up the image.

Turns out we have a few other babies on the way in the group, so we'll be looking forward to meeting a little Smith and a little Donaldson soon after little Hill makes his or her appearance! And Chris has already stated that if our baby is a girl (which most of his friends seem to think it is), she is NOT allowed to date the Smith boy. But the Smiths shouldn't take that personally -- if we have a girl and Chris has anything to say about it, she will not be allowed to date ANYONE.

The more immediate threat, however, is from the Buffalo Bills. Yes, Broncos season starts tomorrow morning at 10am PST. Wheee! Here we go...

Oh yes, let me know what you think about the slideshow. I might replace the Flickr stuff at the top of my page with a slideshow as well if I like the way it works.

No more slideshows

I've been playing around with the Flickr site and various other slideshow add-ins and I haven't found anything that I like. I've decided to abandon slideshows entirely for now because they are either too gimmicky or too inflexible. I'm looking for something that is clean, simple, and streamlined.

Instead of slideshows, I will simply post new sets to my Flickr site. As they are posted, the six most recent images (yes, in backwards order) will appear in the strip of photos at the top of my blog. You can either click on the individual pictures or click on the link below them to go to the Flickr site.

I'd advise clicking on the link (rather than an individual picture), as it will take you to the photo sets page and you can chose how to view each set from there.

Bye-bye slideshows!

More pictures, not Flickr-happy

I still have a few photos from March that I haven't posted yet, so I'm posting them all together.

I am annoyed that Flickr automatically shows the most recent pictures first (in other words, backwards from the order in which they are taken). When I'm putting together a slideshow, I am generally trying to tell a story of sorts...in which the ORDER is quite significant. The Flickr slideshow equivalent in literature would be like printing a book with the last chapter first, and ordering it backwards from there.

There doesn't seem to be anything I can do about this other than putting all the pictures together in one set. This diminishes the value of sets, since I can't organize the pictures by event if I want them to show correctly on the slideshow in my blog (I have to lump them together by blog entry rather than by event). I tried using collections to fix the problem, but to no avail. Once I added my three correctly-ordered sets to a collection, they displayed backwards in the slideshow.

Any Flickr experts out there have another solution? For a relatively slick photo service, Flickr's slideshows leave a LOT to be desired (backwards ordering that can't be controlled easily, no display of image titles or description, etc.). I like Flickr in general, but since my primary goal is to make slideshows for my blog, I'm going to keep looking around for better alternatives. Any suggestions?

Anyway, back to the pictures. The following slide show contains pictures from the annual Corndog Day celebration at Tristan & Laura's, the Point B Gala at the Ibiza Dinner Club (with DMQ performing!), and Chris birthday dinner and celebration.

***Update: I have removed the slideshow from this post. Please use the photo strip at the top of my blog to access the pictures on the flickr site***

Emily and Brett get hitched

On March 3rd, we headed out to the OP (Olympic Peninsula) for Emily and Brett's wedding. Although they were legally married in December, they waited until March for the full ceremony and celebration so that Brett's family could travel from Australia to attend.

The wedding was held at C'est Si Bon in Port Angeles. It was a beautiful venue and the wedding was lovely. You know how you look at those wedding magazines and you see the glowing bride on the cover and wonder, "Does anyone really look that great?" Well, Emily did.

With Brett's Aussie influence, we expected an evening of wit and laughter -- and we weren't disappointed. Unfortunately we had to leave at 11:30 PM to catch the last ferry back to Seattle, but we had a great time and are so happy for them!

The pictures below start out with a few from Emily's "Hen's Night" (bachelorette party). Em's sister Allison arranged a fun get-together at her house, followed by dinner at Mona's Bistro and then two-steppin' with cowboys (and old men) at the Little Red Hen. Emily was decked to the nines in a cowgirl outfit (courtesy of Allison) and we all had a rip-roarin' good time!

My favorite Valentine

Valentine's Day was really nice this year. In addition to the beautiful jasmine that Chris brought to my office (yes, he actually brought them himself...but dropped them off at the receptionist instead of calling me to tell me he was there), he also cooked me a wonderful dinner. He asked his colleague Loren for a recipe (Loren is an amazing chef) and picked up all of the ingredients at Pike Place Market. He made a delicious dinner of butternut squash and spicy prawns over whole grain pasta. Yum!

I learned one interesting thing while watching Chris prepare dinner. I often complain that he doesn't listen to me, and not just the standard "I'm talking and he's not paying attention" scenario. He'll ask me a specific question and then stop listening before I've finished answering. And then he'll ask again. And again. But while watching him follow the recipe, I discovered something.

He was reading the recipe out loud and repeating it to himself while he followed it. I watched him read, very clearly, "Now add the shallots to the saucepan...add the shallots to the sauce pan...shallots, saucepan..." He then picked up the prawns and, very purposefully, added them to the saucepan. "Shallots...saucepan..."

...

"OH CRAP!"

And that's when I realized that it's not just me he doesn't listen to. He doesn't even listen to himself. I laughed for a long time over that.

He's my (ADHD) sweetheart.

A couple pics for this week

• Cowboy annoys us
• Friends & food
  
• We annoy Cowboy
• I'm a copy-coat
• Megastars think outside the bun

To Flickr or not to Flickr

I'm tired of manually editing the HTML to display my pictures, so I'm trying out the slideshow plug-in from Flickr. There are some limitations to it (captions are not displayed in the slideshow, the screen size cannot be altered...) but overall it seems like Flickr has the cleanest interface and most useful functionality. Instead of posting a new slideshow every time I have new pictures, I'll probably just upload a whole set of pictures every week or so. You can click on the individual pictures to find out the details of who/what/when/where/why. I'll also label the slideshow posts so that you can find all of the pictures easily.

What do you think? Is the lack of captions in the slideshow a deal-breaker? I'm looking at Photobucket too, so that might be another option.

To control the slideshow, mouse over the top of the screen. You'll see icons to pause, resume, fast-forward, reverse or change the speed (I'm too impatient for the 5 second delay, but I can't figure out how to change the default). Mouse over the bottom of the screen to view the entire set of pictures, where you can click on a thumbnail image to skip to that picture. If you want to see the title and description of a picture, click on it while it is displayed in the main screen.