how is it july already?

thus begins our tv-free month. we talked about cancelling cable for the summer since nothing's on, which spiraled into the idea of just ditching tv for the month of july. last night scott helped a friend move and i went swimsuit shopping, but we got in an episode of the closer and one everybody loves raymond before turning it off. i'm excited for us. i don't think we've ever done a tv-free month - scott did a sports-free month a few years ago - so it'll be a learning/growing experience for sure. one of our goals for the summer was to start reading the bible more together, so i think this will help us get in the swing of things. plus we have yard work, sunshine to enjoy, a pool to go to, plenty of fun things to do in denver ... and two vacations this month. (we also need to figure out how to limit internet for the month too, since it would make no sense to turn off the tv but still be camped in front of our computers all month ... maybe just e-mail at home and that's it? tbd.)

the weekend with my parents was really fun! we finally drove the length of guanella pass, which was beautiful, went to the botanic gardens, took in a free jazz concert at city park, grilled out and enjoyed our new patio set, and played a few rounds of boggle and scrabble (i won them all, of course). i took plenty of great photos, which are currently sitting on my laptop at home (with the bluegrass fest pics) waiting for me to sift through them and get them posted. maybe i'll do that at work tomorrow since no one will be in the office ...

speaking of photos, my dad brought his dslr out and let me play with it a bit. i've been wanting a dslr for a while, but have never used one before, so he explained some of the iso and aperture settings to me - fascinating stuff, let me tell you. since things often make more sense to me if i can either write them down or see them in writing, i went over to check out the pioneer woman's photography blog to see what she had to say. lo and behold, there's an entire section dedicating to dumbing down cool manual settings. as i was looking at my dad's camera this weekend, i had sudden realization that my point-and-shoot camera has some of those very same manual settings! since i do not have $800 stashed away to drop on a dslr at the moment, my plan is to see what i fun things i can do with my current camera while saving my spare pennies and trying to soften scott up to the idea of buying me a super nice camera. obviously there are limitations to my point-and-shoot, such as not being able to switch lenses, but i can at least teach myself the basics in the meantime. i think i do need to upgrade my memory card, though, since i'm still using the 256mb card the camera came with. oh 2004.