This and That

The weekend brought breezy and chilly weather that's here to stay for a few days.  The big maple near our pond and porch had at least three frogs living in it before the cold spell hit, but they have all disappeared now, as have the fish.  The colder weather is making it hard for me to wrap my mind around the idea that by Wednesday I'll be in Disney World, where the temperature is now eighty degrees.  I should be getting a pedicure so I'll be ready to wear sandals in sunny Orlando, but I'm discouraged by the raw wind up here in Maryland.

The big event of the weekend was that Ben and I upgraded our cell phones to iPhone 5 and the "family phone" to 4S, giving us three phones with global capability so we can use them when we travel to Italy and Switzerland in June.  It's always fun to get new phones but the purchase and transition process can be challenging.  In the past we've gone to our service provider, Verizon, but this time we went straight to the Apple store.  We were in and out within an hour, with new phones all set up to work right away, a big improvement on our past experiences.  And since we were sticking with Apple, our learning curve is proving to be slight, especially since clever Paul is so eager and able to help us when things get tricky.  (How does he know all these tricks when he doesn't even have his own phone?)

On Sunday we went for a walk around the nearby lake, where we tried out the iPhone's camera.  I'm curious to see if it will be "good enough" to be the sole camera on our June trip.

After a few regular shots we experimented with the panoramic photo function.  We taught Paul the trick about running around to the other side so you can capture your image twice in one photo.

Then things got a bit wild and before we knew it, Paul was losing his head!

Despite having a bad cold, Ben did a lot of chipping this weekend.  He's been cleaning out a messy area near the driveway, and having cut down a big tree is now shredding up the ton of underbrush, vines, and brambles that had lived under it.   If you look at the photo below and imagine trees and brush behind Ben so tall and thick that they blocked the view of the big trees in the distance, you'll realize how much work he has been doing.  I love being able to see to a vista now instead of my view stopped by a huge tangle of ugly trees and brush.

 Oops....looks like Ben got carried away and is shredding his arm!

 Just kidding. He's actually pushing the small brush into the chute.  But it sure looks scary, doesn't it?