flat line

had a great weekend trip up to el cap with the girl and her kin. a much-needed escape from the concrete, metal, exhaust, and noise of this sprawling metropolis. just the first in a month of escapes really, as i'll be heading back north in a few days and again in a few days and a week.

snapped a few photos on our camping trip and really like a few of them. still dreaming of buying a nikon d7000 of my very own, but we'll see how the budget goes. had to buy four new tires for the car after wearing the old set down to the wire and getting a flat en route to el cap. that was fun, especially changing a driver's side tire on the shoulder of the 101. luckily, traffic had slowed to a crawl and i had plenty of space to operate. only took about 15 minutes to swap out the spare, and the chp officer who happened along toward the end of the process seemed fairly impressed. the hardest part was getting the damn jack out of its berth in the trunk. and getting to the sears auto center before the spare started sagging as well. maybe the weight of all the crap we lugged up with us. so much for roughing it, i guess. anyway, that set my savings account back quite a bit. about six months worth of the cash i've been slowly setting aside for emergencies/vacations. sigh.

speaking of vacations, i'm just about up to two weeks of time off and haven't any ideas of how to use it. maybe a trip outside of the state, see a bit of the country. we'll see. it's the money side of things that's making me hesitant. and constantly scanning groupon and travelzoo and other deal brokers.