The Laughlins

So I have had to come to terms with my picture "problem" right now. I just checked this morning and I have over 1,300 pictures that I have kept SINCE our trip North in February. I took over 1,500, but I went through them all, did enhancements, and threw out the ones that I didn't like, which took FOREVER. Then I always have the ordeal of deciding how to narrow them further by only choosing the "extra cool" or in some way illustrative photos to show all of you faithful blog-checkers what we have actually been doing and to give you an idea of what it was like. I know many of you are eagerly anticipating Egypt pictures now (which are close to the end of the 1,300 pictures), and I am feeling desperately behind, as uploading pictures two at a time on Blogger (at about a minute an upload) will take about 1,000 minutes...that's 16 hours, 40 minutes, 10 seconds, and 56 nanoseconds...not to mention the time of actually writing what we did in the post as well. And let us not forget those special videos that are thrown in there every once in a while, which can take an insane amount of time to upload. Finally, and very unfortunately, my less than three-month-old camera developed a "speck" internally on one of the lens elements. It is nothing that I can get to, and it has shown up on all of my pictures in the last month, so I have had to change how I shoot pictures for now, so that I can crop the black dot out of the shots, which doesn't always work (as you'll soon see), and which exponentially increases the editing time required for the photos. I might be sending my camera to Canon in the U.S. soon - I'll keep you updated. WHEW!!! How is that for photo depression?!

So I need a new option. I am open to suggestions, and I have killed my perfectionist side, so I don't intend to "catch up" in my regular pattern of blogging. Mark suggests the following: "If you weren't here to experience these things...then sucks for you!" (sarcasm) I am assuming that most of you would would string Mark up by his ear lobes if I actually took this suggestion seriously, so I am thinking of other options. In the meantime, I think that I am going to skip to Egypt (for the sake of interest and time), and then back-track at some point for all of the stuff in between. I do intend to finish the roadtrip north posts as well :) I am going to email my faithful friend and computer guru (Nate Murray), for some efficient picture-uploading strategies, because that alone would help a lot in catching up. Thanks for listening to me rant...I'll do something productive now...like work on those pictures!!