Roger's Christmas Presents

I mentioned in a post about a month ago that I was working on a personal Christmas present for Roger but I couldn't say what it was because he would find out. Well, it's after Christmas and he knows what it is now, so I'll share it with you all. Since Roger has had many photographs published in the Walter Reed post newspaper, The Stripe, our stack of newspapers was getting quite large. And I started to think about what the heck we were going to do with all of them. He wanted to keep them for memories and proof of his published photos but there had to be a better way to store them. Not to mention every time he wanted to show someone his handy work, they would have to strum through pages of pages of newspapers to find only his photos. So I thought about it for a bit and decided he needed something he could just hand someone kind of like a model's portfolio. Then it struck me, duh, photographer's have portfolios also. So I did some research online for a few weeks then went to our favorite local photography store, Precision Camera to see if they had the supplies I would need. I wanted to also see the items in person before I had to order online. It would give me a better idea of what I wanted or needed to order. But of course, they had exactly what I needed and cheap. As soon as the semester ended, I organized the newspapers in date order and the Sunday before Roger flew home, I printed blank pages with the citation for each article one of Roger's photographs were used in. It took me all night. I didn't realize how many of his photographs were published. Especially since the Stripe doesn't have a photographer on staff at all, Roger's used as much as possible. I almost filled up the entire portfolio which has 24 pages, front and back, so 48 pages total. And some pages have several photos on a page. He had many photos published on the front page. I was quite impressed with his work. I took some pictures of the portfolio to give you an idea of what it looks like and I will post those tomorrow with all the other pictures from Roger's Christmas leave. There are only four pages left in the portfolio and I know it will fill up soon. Now that he's going back for at least another three months, I'm sure the newspaper staff will take full advantage of him. And many of his photos have been published in other periodicals and brochures, so those will go in there as soon as Roger gets a copy of them. Some of his pictures are being published in a USO brochure. I'll probably have to buy another portfolio. That's not a bad thing though.

So his other Christmas present, although he's estatic about it, is for both of us, but really for me. We normally have five remotes to control the TV, cable box, dvd/cd player, stereo receiver, etc. And it drove me crazy. So I got him one of those universal remotes. Not the simple, easy ones. This one is a bad, mamma jamma. Roger had to download software to the computer and program all our devices into it and program all the settings for each possible activity we would do. And no, I did not pay the price shown on that link above. I did my research and found it way cheaper. It controls up to 15 devices and can even control your lights and curtains if you have those wired too. Of course, we don't but it is so nice to push one button on one remote and all the devices you need to turn on and go to a certain setting do it. I definitely don't miss all those other remotes.