Tammy and I renewed our wedding vows on the day before Easter Sunday. We left the next day for a 2nd honeymoon in Jamaica. The whole experience was fantastic. It was great to have so many of our friends and family in one place again - the last time we had a similar experience was almost 20 years ago at our wedding. Special thanks to Deb and Chris, who traveled from Michigan to be with us. We took lots of photos, which are posted on our web site (you can email me for a link if you want it). This leads into another train of thought regarding the permanence of photos.

My friend Rick is leaving the company he's worked at for many years. He worked at Noritsu, which is probably not familiar to most people. It's one of a handful of companies that make the one-hour photo-finishing machines found in drugstores, malls, etc. He's leaving with a golden parachute option due to the company's downsizing, which is due in large part to fewer prints being made. Here's an excerpt from a letter he wrote to his fellow employees and cc'd to me:

"For any of you that may have benefited from my help, I ask only one thing
in return. Tell everyone you meet, everyone, everywhere, to make as many
prints as they can.
Remember that it's not the advent of digital photography that gave us
trouble, it's the mistaken belief that nobody has to make prints anymore.
They will figure it out, hopefully before they unknowingly erase all of
last year's pictures from their camera or cell phone or their hard drive
crashes. Listen- it's not any particular picture you take today that
matters so much, rather it's the photo you find in a box ten years from
now that will make your eyes flood with tears. Only prints can do that,
not unreadable CD-ROM's or floppy disks or flash cards that don't fit
anything anymore."

How true. Good luck, Rick, as you start the new chapter of your life "down East."

Seven days to the wedding. I'm getting excited. I asked my wife to marry me almost 20 years ago. On Sunday before Valentine's Day this year I asked her to get re-married. This time, we're even having a honeymoon! I haven't told her where we are going, but I think she will enjoy it. It's fun watching her and our friends try to guess.

I've been learning how to make movies on our computer. I've compiled a tolerable 20-minute video comprising the first 10 years of our marriage, plus the first year of having our daughter. Now that I've done it, I know how to do it a lot better. I wonder if Steven Spielberg has the same experience with his movies.

Speaking of movies, my friend Scotte and his daughter Kayla have some great movie reviews (and other stuff) on their website / blog:

http://homepage.mac.com/hodelas/

Today was a beautiful day, but we were full of sadness, still missing Hope, our dog of 15 years who died almost two weeks ago. I think it was because we worked in the yard most of the day, and she would have enjoyed being outside with us very much. Also, we planted an azalea bush that one of my daughter's pre-school teachers gave us in her memory. I used to bring Hope when I dropped off Sara at pre-school, so the teachers knew her, and they knew how much we all cared for her. Today I kept looking at the worn spot on the carpet between where her doggy bed and her dishes were. It used to be very beaten down, and it was usually covered with kernels of spilled dog food. It seems to be recovering, like grass does after people stop walking on it. I can't imagine that so many years of life can just vanish, and leave such a faint trace.