(Posting this before it's too late!)

Happy birthday to my Dad!

I'm sorry I didn't get to see him today, but at least we got to talk on the phone for a little while and I will see him tomorrow night.

(Happy Birthday to Kerri Hicks, too.)

Remember the new camera I bought when Lauren was born? I bought the Sony because it was the only modern DSLR that would work with my old lenses from my Minolta. It's not the greatest camera in the world, but thousands of shots later I'm still pretty happy with it.

My biggest problem with this camera has been related to shooting portraits. Most of my pictures are of people (especialy Lauren, but not exclusively), which was certainly not the case when I bought my lenses in the 90's. I have three zoom lenses: one wide angle, and two telephoto; all three are Tamron zooms.

• The brightest and fastest is a ƒ2.7 @ 20mm to ƒ3.5 @ 40mm. I could live with the ƒ2.7, but 20mm is too wide for portrait work. ƒ3.5 @ 40mm was the best I could do with this one. However, the lens is in pretty good shape (not great, but pretty good), and it certainly wasn't designed for portrait work. If I'm going to sell any of my lenses, it'll be this one.

• At the other end of the spectrum, there's my gigantic bazooka of a lens. It's a ƒ5.6 that ranges from 200mm to 400mm. It's a beast, and is designed solely for outdoor wildlife shots in bright sunlight. It's not in great shape, either. I'll probably sell this one for less than $200. Useless for portraits.

• My workhorse lens, and the one I used for most everything this year, is a 28-200mm, ƒ3.8-ƒ5.6. Can't really use it indoors without a flash, but I have a big Minolta 3500xi which is bright enough to tan an albino. But that means that most of my pictures have to use the flash, and part of the "art" of photography is capturing the light as you see it, not what things look like in harsh glare of a small sun attached to your camera.

I made do. My primary subject is totally adorable, so this wasn't difficult. A great subject can make up for a lot of other "issues."

Still, I am and always have been interested in photography itself. All along I've known that a better lens, designed for portraits, would only make for better pictures. Having never taken any classes (nor really read any books), I didn't really know what "better" meant other than lower ƒ-stops (faster).

Earlier this year, John Gruber talked (on his site, and in Twitter) a lot about 50mm lenses. He linked to some articles written by pros. The lessons I pulled from them were that to learn better photography you should start with a 50mm (or thereabouts) lens, ƒ1.4 or ƒ1.7. No zooming, and preferably no flash. Learn to work with the most basic elements of photography first, then go back to your zooms and flashes.

Sony's 50mm lens is expensive, and we don't have the money for it. So I looked on eBay for something that would work. I found one, and made the ridiculously low bid of $26. A few days later, I'd won. Surprise!

With shipping it was only about $33, and a couple days later it was in my hands. But not on my camera. It was the wrong mount. I knew that Minolta lenses worked on the Sony, but I didn't know that Minolta had an older mount that was incompatible. Oops.

The seller was more than helpful. We talked things over, and I told him the story (the whole thing!) of the old camera, Mike and Shannon, Lauren, the smashing of the Nikon, the new camera, all of it. He pointed out that the lens I need is much more expensive than the one he sold me. (I knew that, which is why I was so surprised that he sold it to me for so little… but I was confused.)

He surprised me by giving me the lens I need in trade for his original lens. So I now have a 50mm Minolta AF ƒ1.7 lens, for $26 (plus two shipping fees).

"He" is V. John Paloulian and totally deserves a link. If you're in the market for some used camera equipment and want a very knowledgeable and friendly seller, please check out his goods first. (He didn't say, but I'm guessing that he runs some sort of a camera shop, based on his list of products.)

I've only had the lens for a day, so I don't have a lot to show for it yet. All the pictures I took yesterday of my new niece Lydia (and actually one of my Dad, which happens to be one of my favorite pictures ever) used that lens. I'm delighted with it so far, but I'm still learning. There's a huge difference in the field depth between ƒ4 and ƒ1.7, and some of those pictures of Lydia show that I'm still, uh, "experimenting."

Since hardly anyone from the East coast made it to their wedding, we put on a wedding receiption for Jed and Alycia this afternoon. Jed showed lots of slides. (Strangely, Eric didn't mock him all the way through it like he did me when I showed many of the same slides four months ago.) After the slide show, food. Lots and lots of food.

Corinne did most of the cooking (of course). I was frustrated when packing all the food into the Blazer because I was sure there was way too much. (There was more than we needed, but it wasn't "way too much" like has happened before.) The most popular item was, without any doubt, the seafood chowder-like soup. Others cooked also: Mandi, Mom, Dee... maybe Angi? Ellyn? I don't know. Corinne cooked a LOT. She and my Mom both did a lot of work in the planning and preparation for this party… and it really did go off beautifully.

(Brietta Harper will be happy to read...) Feeling inspired after the reception, I've finally uploaded a lot more photos from the trip out to BC in June for the wedding. About 140 more, in fact. I still have another 92 that need to be reviewed, cleaned up and tagged, but this made a huge dent in the pile.

Originally, I didn't upload them because I wanted to make a nice book of photos for their wedding present. We haven't had the money for that kind of thing, so the photos just sat on my drive. Better to share them, so there they are.

I took another big "roll" today. Hopefully I'll find motivation to upload them soon. Believe it or not, there are even pictures of Lauren in there! (No, really!!)

Update: Here they are.

My brother and his wife are out here visiting for a couple of weeks. Haven't seen him (or really even spoken with him) since the wedding back in June (which I'm surprised to discover I wrote NOTHING about, so I can't link to it!), so it's great to see both of them. They're staying at Mom's and Dad's house, but yesterday morning they came over for a few hours and had lunch, and then we all went to Gary's and Ellyn's house last night for dinner.

The biggest thing for me was Lauren meeting Jed... but in the end seemed to be much more impressed with Alycia than with him. Alycia can make a "clicking" sound with her mouth that makes Lauren smile every time.

Had a great time at the Schlag's last night. In attendance: Jed and Alycia, Mom and Dad, Corinne, Lauren and Myself, Ben and Mandi, Stan and Windy (Ben's parents, up for two weeks from Houston), Carrie, Mark and Tory (friends of Ellyn), and of course our hosts Katie, Tom, Gary and Ellyn. Food was good, conversation and "play" was even better.

Unfortunately, Lauren has a cold so Corinne took her home early. After a long conversation with Stan and Dad, I went downstairs (their basement is set up a bit like a 50's diner) and had another good chat about some fairly lofty subjects (spiritual life vs. religion, evolution, etc.). Then we made up for it by playing "spin the quarter" for at least 45 minutes.

Later, Dad drove me home.

My father's father (Arthur Dilingham, Sr.) has a beautiful birth date: 7 • 27 • 27. It's symmetrical and palindromic, and also happens to mean that this summer marked the end of his eightieth lap 'round the sun.

Saturday his wife, his children, his children's children, his children's children's children, and a very (very, very) small percentage of his friends and extended family from around the world gathered in his honor to tell him just two things: "Happy Birthday," and "We Love You."

The party was held at Goddard Park in Warwick, RI, at the old Carousel Building.

There was a very cool tribute video assembled by my cousin Tiffany and her husband Josh (with, I think, the aid of the rest of the NH contingent of Dillinghams and their kin). It included pictures and/or video of most of the family, and a stirring, deeply emotional, recorded message from Barry Van Heerden in South Africa. (I've heard Grampa sing Barry's praise many times over the years, but I had no idea that he looked at Grampa as a father and mentor.)

Corinne shed a few tears when she saw Shane's picture in the video. Tif had written to me in advance to make sure it was ok. (Of course it was! Including and remembering him is always better than the alternative.)

They even included at least one picture of Lauren in there. That was cool, especially as Gramma and Grampa have both treated Lauren as their latest great granddaughter.

There was also an open mic on the stage, where we were all supposed to tell stories. Unfortunately, though some of us inherited some of Grampa's storytelling talents, none of us will eve be The Master Storyteller that he is. So, most of the stories were told by him! Three times he (literally) lept onto the stage to tell another story, and then hopped back off it again to retake his seat. (Eighty years old, hoppping onto and off of a two-foot-high stage! He's spry.)

He told the Bert and I classic, "I am Gagnon, Champion Moose Caller" story, but (more importantly) he also told some of the TRUE funny stories from his life, including the one about the skunk in the ventilation system at his school in Dighton, MA. I think his school principal probably went to his grave wondering who did that.

I have tons of stories I could have told, but couldn't think of the best ones until after we left so I never took the stage. Had I remembered, I certainly would have recounted the trip to Florida with him, Jed, Dad and myself (I wasn't ten, yet), to move Aunt Marrion. The highlights of that drive to FL included:

• Arthur Fiedler's Greatest Hits (Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B!)
• the brain teaser about the man with three sons
• the brain teaser about the egg-laying chickens
• Dad and Grampa acting like it was hot the moment we crossed the state line
• Aunt Marrion freaking out when Jed and I happened to be in the vicinity of Grampa's wallet
• feeding the seagulls on the beach

Everybody picks on Dillinghams for being... well, Dillinghams. Smart, knowing it (all of it), easily brought to tears, always having an opinion, and "talking until we think of something to say." Though Gramma had as much of a hand in forming us as did Grampa, there's no doubting the source of those particular characteristics. :-)

But, as much as we tease him and each other for those things — endlessly — we love him for them, too. We're a big family (wink, wink), and he’s been the patriarch for as long as most (any!) of us have been alive. (So it's not that we think he's perfect, or pretend that he is. It's that hearing him speak yesterday, and hearing everyone else speak about him, it's clear that he inspires us to aspire to perfection, and we're all better for it.)

Happy Birthday, Grampa. I love you, we all love you.