BilikFamily.com

Photos - Although we had four of the girls' good friends come over this afternoon, I still squeezed in some time this afternoon to edit this album of pictures while sitting at the kitchen island. The pictures mainly consist of shots from the girls' first day of school, Claire's birthday party, Michelle and Claire tinkering with the newly refurbished clarinet, and Abigail's Friday night sleepover. While it is a much faster machine, overall I didn't save much time with the newer laptop because I had to install much of the same software I'd gotten used to on the last one. I'll skip the details therein. Hope you like the sepia tone thumbnail at the right. I wanted to learn how to do them manually and luckily I found this explanation.

Looking over this album, I still think a secondary "bounce" flash was one of the best things I did to improve indoor photos. It really helps illuminate the room to keep indoor photos from looking so dark and gloomy. I have the camera setup to use its built in flash to illuminate the faces but the more powerful external flash is pointed up at 90° or 75° to bring in more diffuse light from the ceiling down toward the subjects. When I look at older photos, the difference is "like night and day".

Sal's - Tonight when we got back from a neighborhood playground, we decided to try "Sal's Pizza — Straight from Boston's North End" since they are only about two miles away. Actually I know nothing about food at Boston's North End, but thought it'd be nice to give them a try. I enjoyed the pizza, but in a different way than Chicago pizza. There's something unique about the flavor of most Chicago restaurant pizzas. Still, this pizza was different from most of the generic me-too pizzas I've ordered in southern NH, and more affordable than we'd heard! They only have one very large size (19 inches), but with a decent sized family, that's a good thing! Even after giving everyone their fill, we still have plenty of leftovers.