2009

2009 is going out the same way it came in…like a kick in the crotch. I wanted to do a cool photo montage of the past year, but what should have been easy has turned into a Herculean task. So instead you get a generic recap… Moved to Washington Snowiest winter in WA in 15 years Saw the Space Needle Lost my health insurance Lost my job Start looking for job Watched the Mariners play baseball inside Will it ever stop raining Abe and Christy got engaged Went to El Paso to visit family Went to Denver to visit friends Got engaged Got to see the Blue Angles Ate some salmon that didn’t make me gag Still no job Tracy came to visit It stopped raining…driest summer in WA in 60 years Hottest summer on record in WA Got to sail on a Naval Destroyer My sister and niece came to visit and we… Drove Forks and… Saw Depeche Mode My mom and aunt came to visit Job…nope Jenn came to visit Got to play with Jenn’s fancy cameras Saw orcas in the wild Saw the Broncos play the Seahawks Got my own fancy camera Developed an iPhone addiction Went to Colorado for Jeff and Nicole’s wedding Eloped while we where there Met Elena in person It started raining again Got health insurance Still haven’t found a job Ran out of money Changed my last name Spent my first holidays away from family Found out Husband is deploying 3 months earlier Saw Avatar Drove to Oregon Saw where Goonies was filmed Had a warm sunny day at the beach in December Went to Tillamook and ate cheese and ice cream Still unemployed and living in Washington I am not sad to see the year end and am optimistic that next year will be better. But in the mean time I would just like to say that 2009 can suck it.

so much more than just a candy cane

One of my favorite things to find in my stocking Christmas morning were those huge candy cane sticks. It has been years since I had one...or thought about them for that matter. I came across them in the store the other day and all the childhood memories of running down the stairs on Christmas morning to see what Santa had brought flooded back. And because I needed to keep my sugar buzz going I would work on this thing the whole day. It was important to get it into just the right shape...you know just in case I had to shank a certain sister for getting too close to my new Barbie. MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Adventures in Tamale Making ~ Part II

And now I know why one gets a team together to make tamales. They are a pain is the ass to make…but so worth it. I ended up throwing the recipes out the window and winged it. I spent a good 10 hours in our tiny kitchen mixing, chopping, spreading, filling, and rolling and I got the technique down. I am glad that I don’t have to do this again until next year…the experience has left me feeling a little tired and stabby. We are now going to watch Christmas Vacation (a Christmas Eve tradition) and I am going to drink this... ...while Husband eats these. Oh…and I nailed Abeula Carmen’s sweet tamales. It's a Christmas Miracle!

PRESENTS!!!

I just received a box full of beautifully wrapped Christmas presents from my mom. As much as I would love to tear into them now I decided to let the anticipation build…which is hard for me. So instead I stacked them in a neat pile where I would have put the tree had I put one up. Husband and I decided against gifts this year but thanks to our parents we will still have something to look forward to Christmas morning. It took me a long time to learn to appreciate not knowing exactly what was under the tree. I like to know what is coming to me and always have to know the who, what, where, and when. You can ask Husband and Jenn about the months of planning and covert ops that go into surprising me with anything. It is like I have a sixth sense about when a present is brought into the house. I must then sniff it out and find out what it is. As a child I learned to peel the tape away from the wrapping paper so I could pull it back a bit to see what goodies were hiding underneath. My early attempts were sloppy. So sloppy that my mom could easily see that the presents had been tampered with. In fact there was one year that she had to completely rewrap all of my presents to throw me off on Christmas morning. But in time I got better at covering my tracks. I would say that between the ages of 6-13 I always knew exactly what I was getting. Now you may say that this takes all the fun out of Christmas...but for me half the fun was the thrill of the hunt. I recently posted this photo of us three kids sitting in front of the tree Christmas morning as my Facebook profile picture. You can see I have a present in my lap and an evil grin on my face. It is because I know that in that box is Dallas the palomino Barbie horse. And below this photo are a few of the comments made by my sister, brother, and mom. I can see that the wounds of my “detective work” are still a little fresh for my mom. P.S. I did get over the whole snooping thing...eventually

Adventures in Tamale Making ~ Part I

Tamales. Every year around Christmas time Husband tells me about how back in El Paso they would all gather at his Abuela Carmen’s house to make tamales. In most Latino families making tamales at Christmas is tradition. It is to them what the Christmas cookie is to us white folk. And like the Christmas cookie there are several different types of tamales. Husband’s Abeula makes the traditional pork tamales and she makes a sweet one too. It is the sweet one that the entire family talks about. I have never tasted one of her sweet tamales but from what I hear it is the stuff of legend. Since Husband and I got hitched this year and don’t have any traditions of our own I decided that we should try to blend the traditions of our respective families. So on Christmas Eve we will have tamales and for Christmas dinner I will make lasagna which is my family tradition (as us Norwegians are known for our mad lasagna making skills). So…yeah…tamales. While I have eaten many I have never attempted to make one. They are a lot of work and I always figured that I would learn to make them from Husband’s family while visiting for Christmas. That isn’t going to happen this year so I am forging into tamale making on my own. And because I am overly ambitious when it comes to food I am attempting four different kinds; two savory and two sweet. I am feeling pretty confident about three of the four as I have recipes for those. It is the third, Abeula Carmen’s sweet tamales, which have me worried. Husband’s mom has asked for the recipe several times and has gotten ingredients, but not how much of each ingredient. Only Abeula Carmen knows that. She makes them like this…a pinch of this and a dash of that…mix it together…and voila the best tamales you have ever eaten. Easy right? So I am going to give the often imitated but never duplicated sweet tamales a go. I have a list of ingredients, no tamales making skills, and no idea what this sweet tamale is supposed to taste like…what could go wrong?

80 gazillion twinkle lights

Last week Jenn posted some very cool and very trippy images she had taken of her girls last year at Zoo Lights at the Denver Zoo. It reminded me that I had a bunch of images that I took last year at Zoo Lights that I never did anything with. So because there are no original ideas left in the world I decided to steal Jenn’s idea and post some of Zoo Lights images of my own. (Thanks Jenn W00T W00T) I had never been to Zoo Lights. It was something I talked about doing every year and then never got around to it. So last year I made sure to go because I didn’t know how long it would be until I was in Denver for Christmas again. The night Husband and I went was cold as hell…no surprise it being December in Colorado and all. I wanted to take photos but was not all that excited about taking my gloves off to do so. We walked around a bit looking at the lights and bitching about the cold. We then stopped to get a hot chocolate and were pleasantly surprised to find that for a few dollars more you could get some peppermint schnapps added. Yes please! Nothing like a few shots of liquor to take the chill out of the air. I had been snapping a few shots here and there. Pretty basic, nothing too exciting. Then I got this one of the dragon… …and decided to have a little fun with my camera. The rest of my images look a little something like this: Yeah for cold, twinkle lights, peppermint scnapps...oh and Jenn too...you know for the idea!

what a brat(wurst)

It is not the Christmas items that start making their appearance on store shelves in August, or the Christmas songs played everywhere you go the day after Thanksgiving that get me feeling all Christmas-y. The thing that really gives me a jumpstart into the ol’ Christmas spirit is the Georgetown Christmas Market. And this year I MISSED IT! It is something I had done with my family for the last 30 years. At first we started going for the overall Christmas experience; the outdoor European market, roasted chestnuts and hot apple cider, St Nicholas, and horse drawn wagon rides all set against the quaint backdrop of a historic mountain mining town. Sure all that stuff is nice…but in the end we went every year for the brats. I am not going to go so far as to say I am a brat connoisseur, but my family is from Wisconsin and brats seemed to be the only meat that made it on to the grill in the summer. I am not talking Johnsonville here…I am talking fresh sausage made by that old German guy who had a deli counter in back of the PDQ in Waukesha. That being said I think it is fair to say that the ones we get in Georgetown are hands down the best. The booth that sells the brats is run by a Catholic church out of Denver…and those Catholics know how to make a kickass brat. It does not get much better than a veal brat boiled in beer and onions, then tossed on the grill for a few seconds to give them a touch of color, served on a pumpernickel bun with sauerkraut and spicy brown mustard (insert drooling noise that Homer does here). Totally worth the 50 mile drive. After 20 years of asking we finally got them to tell us where they got the brats. Even though I could now go and buy the brats anytime I never did. Somehow it would take away from how special the Christmas market ones are. Having to wait all year makes them taste that much better. So if I seem a little bah humbug this year it is because I did not get my brat fix that kicks off the holiday season.

Favorite things: The Bathrobe

This is my bathrobe. It is just a plain old white terrycloth robe…and I LOVE IT! I was talking to my mom this morning about Christmas gift ideas and she tells me about this bathrobe she was thinking about getting me. She was going on about how soft it was when I cut her short and asked why she thought I would want a new bathrobe. She replied “well Melinda take a look at the one you have”. Sigh. This is not the first time I have had this conversation about “The Bathrobe”. It was a Christmas gift from my mother. Other than my frequent requests for a pony, I usually ask for practical gifts. Other than socks and underwear I cannot think of a gift more practical than a bathrobe. So in 1992 I got a white terrycloth bathrobe for Christmas…and it was PERFECT. I have worn it everyday since for the last 17 years. I am not well versed in the lifespan of a bathrobe, but for what I am told mine is way past its prime and it is time for a new one. About six years ago my ex-husband went so far as to by me this bathrobe from Hammacher Schlemmer. I will say it was a very nice bathrobe…I mean it should be as it costs $120. I treated it the way I treated most things I did not think I needed. I shunned it. I had a perfectly good robe why did I need a new one that weighed 45lbs? That was one thing I had no problem letting him keep when we got divorced. Now granted my bathrobe has seen better days. There is a hole in the back of the neck where it hangs… While the right pocket is fine… The left one not so much. It is worn in a few spots. And maybe it has become a bit thin. Like I said; I love it. 17 years is not so old when you really think about it. Maybe once it hits 20 I will think about getting a new one…but I doubt it.

squeezed

For the most part Husband is very easy to live with. He is clean, manages to get his clothes into the hamper, puts the toilet seat down, and doesn’t snore too much. There is only one thing that he does that really bugs the crap out of me. Husband is a middle of the tube tooth paste squeezer. For the past year I have tried to break him of this but to no avail. In the grand scheme of things this is a small issue…but it drives me crazy. Like want to stab his face off crazy. I know that when I walk into our bathroom tonight to brush my teeth there is going to be a big ol’ dent in the middle of tube with the tooth paste squished to either side. Chances are that Husband will already be snuggled into bed so I will have to make a big show of squeezing the tooth paste back towards the tip of the tube…you know just to show him for the millionth time how it is done. He will then give me one of his ‘Dios mio woman you are LOCO’ looks. This one implies ‘give it up because no matter how many times you do that I am always going to squeeze the tooth paste from the middle’.

under da sea

More like things from the sea in an aquarium. Husband and I went to the Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium a few weeks ago. It was the first time I had been to a zoo that did not have giraffes, lions, hippos, zebras, and rhinos. There was also a serious lack of monkeys…I mean come on who doesn’t love monkeys? They do however have some pretty cool aquariums including a large shark tank. I am just getting around to editing what I shot and am rather fond of these jellyfish and anemone.

thnxgving

The meal has been eaten and the leftovers are stored away. I am sitting here with a glass of wine watching the Broncos play the Giants. It has been a nice relaxing day of cooking and watching football. Just me and Husband. This is my first Thanksgiving spent away from family. It has me feeling a little sad and a little guilty. Now that all three of us kids live out of state my mom was alone today. When I spoke to her today she told she is okay and I should not feel guilty…but I can’t help it. We were also invited to Husband’s brother house with the rest of his family. We so wanted to go but flights from Seattle to Dallas were ridiculously expensive. Again the guilty feeling creeps in. I have grown so used to having a house full of people and I am really missing that this year. It felt weird to cook the traditional Thanksgiving dinner for just the two of us. I guess it would have been even weirder not to. I made our favorite things and did it the way my mom would. If I can’t be with her at least I can carry on her traditions. Tomorrow we will cook up the leftovers with a Mexican twist to carry on Husband’s family traditions. It has been a trying year for Husband and I. We have a lot to be thankful for. You know…a roof over our heads, food in our bellies, clothes on our backs, and all that jazz. Mostly I am thankful that we have had each other to lean on these last 12 months. Our relationship has been one of the only things that we have not had to worry about. It is good to know that even if we have nothing else that we will always have each other. It makes all the crap that life throws at us a little more bearable. Okay…I am done being sentimental and am going to go have some pie. Mmmmmmmmm pie!

more cupcakes...these ones are pink

Today felt like a good day to make cupcakes. I found a recipe for pink champagne cupcakes a while back and had been wanting to give it a go. It is a pretty straight forward recipe so I was not anticipating any issues. I ran out this morning to get the ingredients one of them of course being pink champagne. The store did not have the kind that I wanted so I buy a brand I am unfamiliar with. The recipe only called for 2 cups and I am hoping it is drinkable because I am going to end up to drinking the rest of it. Lucky for me the bottle decided that that would not be necessary. I have opened hundreds of champagne bottles with nary a problem. While in my possession this bottle took a five minute car ride and spent the next two hours sitting on the counter in the kitchen. So I’m a mixin’ and a beatin’ all the cupcake stuff together and I get to the ‘alternately add flour and champagne’ part. I turn and grab the champagne bottle, tear off the foil, and while grasping the neck of the bottle with my left hand I apply pressure to the cork with my right thumb. Now normally this is when the cork comes out with a loud pop and no geyser of bubbly goodness. But today I got that geyser of bubbly goodness…the one that sprays 80% of the kitchen and over the bar into the living room while I yell “SHIT SHIT SHIT!!!” and leaves me with just under the 2 cups needed to make these damn cupcakes. Sigh. So after a half hour of clean up I get on with the cupcake baking. They turned out pretty tasty and are a nice shade of pink. I hand colored the sparkly sugar on top…that was a pain in the ass.

blustery

I used to really like that word. It is a word that Winnie the Pooh would use if he were to write a weather report. Now it is a word I heard everyday from the King5 weatherman. In the true sense of the word most days are blustery up here. Wind and rain are big news this time of year. The blustery weather is wreaking havoc on old trees and old power lines. City crews are working around the clock to cut down the old trees and sure up the 65 year old poles that hold up the power lines. It is a good thing because a little gust of wind seems to send both toppling over onto houses. If a little bit of rain causes so much damage…I am terrified of what happens in the event of snow. The city has a small fleet of snow plows and they have been practicing plowing and snow removal. From what I saw on the news “practicing” equals driving around at night in the plow trucks. I am confident that all that practice will pay off when and if we get another storm like last year (wink wink). I am hoping we do get some snow though. While looking for something under the bed in spare bedroom I found my snow boots. They looked lonely and sad. Had we still been in Colorado I would have already had two big snowstorms to stomp around in. Who knows…maybe I will get to wear them.

sunny

With the vibrant colored fall leaves and the plethora of spring flowers one is tricked into thinking there are four seasons here. But it is exactly that...A TRICK! There are three beautiful months known as summer and nine long, dreary, wet months known as rain. And right on cue with the time change it appears that my Seasonal Affective Disorder has kicked in. WOOHOO! The last week or so I have been out of sorts and a little hard to be around. Stressed out, depressed, and short tempered is not a good mix. Lucky for me husband is very patient and is not yet to the point of wanting to smother me in my sleep. Last spring he bought me this little Swarovski Crystal bear as a little bit of sunshine on rainy days. A little bit on “sunshine” is exactly what I could use right now.

GOOSE!

I am not sure how we got on the topic... Husband: There is one animal that is the worst when it gets cornered. Me: Oh yeah... H: Yeah...I think it is the goose. M: A goose? H: Yeah. M: Geese are pretty mean...but I think you could take one down with a swift kick or something. Are you thinking of maybe a mongoose or a badger? H: No. Why are you laughing so hard? M: I am just picturing you getting attacked by a goose.

Snow Day

It is dumping in Colorado…DUMPING! So much snow that it has made the news up here. Seeing those reports and reading my friend’s statuses on Facebook really have me homesick. As most know I can take or leave snow in most cases but as I have mentioned here before I LOVE a huge snowstorm. Now some of you may be thinking that late October is too early for a blizzard but we are talking Colorado here. Anyone who has lived there most of their life kind of expect this type of storm this close to Halloween. We are a people who grew up planning our Halloween costumes around our snowsuits. I love the anticipation of it. You hear about it on the news a day or two ahead of the storm. The prediction of amounts are higher than usual…maybe 12”. But as the storm draws closer the amounts grow higher 16-20”. I would always find myself hoping for more. Once there was more than 10” of snow on the ground I would head to the store for supplies. The makings for hearty soups or chili, hot chocolate, and brownies. All the good stuff needed for a snow day at home. My favorite storm over the last 5 years happened in March 2004. March happens to be Colorado’s snowiest month. The storm hit on a Tuesday morning and by noon I closed the office and sent everyone home. An hour later I arrived home to a 4 foot drift in my driveway which you can see in the center of the picture below. My driveway was a little over 75 feet long and I had to shovel away all that snow before I was able to get the Xterra into the garage. Why not just plow right through it like you see in all the winter SUV commercials? I thought about it…but did not have enough space to get up enough speed to plow through 4 feet of heavy wet March snow. We got 36” of snow that day; all of which I had to shovel alone. I awoke the next morning to 24” of more snow. Back into the snow gear and back out to shovel. I missed 3 days of work and had my faithful companion Murphy by my side. The Murph loved the snow. She spent the hours I spent shoveling hopping through the snow and chasing snowballs thrown by the neighbor kids. Damn I miss that dog! So to my friends in Colorado I hope you are enjoying the snow day.

Elena

This sassy cowgirl is my friend Elena. I met her online as we share a mutual love for poking fun at Jenn...the same way she and Jenn love poking fun at me. It is a vicious circle really. It took a triple dog dare; but I finally got to meet her face to face last time I was in Denver. She is an amazing woman and an amazing writer. She has started a new blog. She also happens to be hilarious so if you are in the mood for something clever I think you should check her out.

big three four

Today is my birthday. Seeing as Husband does not bake and I am too much of a snob for store bought cake I made myself some cupcakes. Usually I bake a red velvet cake but this year was in the mood for something new and went with coconut. I used this recipe and they taste like Heaven exploded in your mouth. Okay so maybe not really but with the amount of butter and sugar in these babies they taste really really good. They may not be waistline friendly but it is my birthday and my diet can suck it.

more than yellow

I was reading my friend Rachel’s blog this morning and she mentions in one of her posts that autumn is one of her favorite seasons. She now lives in Colorado where fall looks mostly like this. In Colorado it is not so much fall colors as fall color. Yellow…and a whole lot of it. Now don’t get me wrong…I love the falls in Colorado. Seeing a grove of aspen trees turn gold against a backdrop of evergreens is a beautiful sight. Rachel was born and raised in Seattle and is used to a few more autumnal colors and after spending my first fall season in the Pacific Northwest I can understand why she longs for a little more. The colors up here are breath taking. You have your yellow but there are also reds, oranges, purples, and pink (yes pink). So I grabbed my camera and took a little walk around the neighborhood and snapped a few photos of the changing leaves. Rachel I know it is not the same as being here to see them yourself but I hope you enjoy the colors!

takin' pictures

The thing I wanted to be most when I was little was a Solid Gold Dancer. I could not think of any thing cooler. Those skin tight outfits, big hair, high heels and legwarmers…oooooh leg warmers. Dancing around with hunky bare chested guys was also a plus (a big one). But alas Solid Gold was cancelled and I had to choose a new dream. The first semester on my freshman year of high school I took the Photo I class. It seemed like a fun class that would not take much effort. So borrowed my mom’s Canon AE1 and I went about the class with that attitude and I did not do well. The teacher had a little chat with me at the end of the semester. She told me that she could tell that I half assed my way through the class and thought that I could do better. I took the class again the following semester. I opened my eyes and put a lot of thought and effort into the images I wanted to produce. I found that I loved photography…and I was good at it. For a better part of a decade I never went anywhere without my camera and I spent as much time in the dark room as I could. I had a good eye and there was not one thing I did not love about the process. Most of the money I made in my crappy part time job went to pay for film and paper. I knew this was what I wanted to do as a career. I worked hard and built a strong portfolio. The School of Visual Arts in New York City and the Institute of Art Chicago wanted me to come to their schools…and I wanted to go. But I got distracted. Now I can’t remember by exactly who or what but it caused me to put my camera down. I think I was somewhere in my mid-twenties when Jenn went back to school for photography. She would show me her work and would sit there thinking “I can do that. Why am I not doing that? I should start shooting again. I SHOULD GO TO SCHOOL!” Then I would find a 101 lame excuses of why I can’t or blah blah blah I suck. But I did pick up my camera again. I was traveling quite a bit at the time and was snap snap snapping away. I came home from one two week trip in the UK having shot 23 rolls of film. Again I got all caught up and put my camera down. Then everything went digital. I had a new excuse…I could not afford the camera I wanted. “I would totally get back into photography if only I could afford the camera I wanted”. I have had several point and shoot jobbies and would get a good image here and there, but that never stopped me from bitching about if only I had a better camera. If only… Jenn came out to visit in August and let me shoot with her Canon 20D. I started to fall in love again. I wanted one! Then out of the blue I get an email from Jenn that one of her friends is selling a barely used 20D with a lens for next to nothing. I get all excited and contact the friend and then sit back and wait to hear the camera is mine…ALL MINE BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!! The response I got was not the one I expected. Someone had beaten me to it by 10 minutes. 10 MINUTES!!! I was crushed. Husband was there when I found out I had missed out on the opportunity and saw how upset I was. He did his best to comfort me. Little did I know that he was hiding something up his sleeve. Turns out ol’ Husband was once again in cahoots with Jenn on a little Melinda sneak attack. About two weeks later while on the way home from the gym I get an urgent text from husband that FedEx is on the way to our house with our new phones and I was to rush home to sign for them. I pull into our neighborhood and see the FedEx man on his way out. I flag him down and as he hands me the box he asks if it’s anything fun. I tell him its new phones to which he respond he does not think so. I look down at the label and it is from Jenn. WTF?!?! I rush inside and call Husband to ask him what is in the box. He tells me to open it…and sitting inside is the 20D. Turns out that Husband was the one to buy it out from under me as an early birthday present. What a sweet, giving, loving Mr Sneaky Pants. He wanted me to have it in time for our trip to Colorado for a friends wedding. I am having a fun time getting used to the camera. It is so different from what I am used to. Are there nicer cameras out there…sure there are. But I am off to a good start. I am finding that I am a bit rusty (understatement) and am not sure what my point of view is yet. I took over 645 pictures last weekend of which I maybe like 20. I did manage to get one image that I think really captured the intimacy of the moment. I think I may be off to a good start.

Married? Married!

Elope Pronunciation: \i-ˈlōp\ Function: intransitive verb Inflected Form(s): eloped; elop·ing Etymology: Anglo-French aloper, esloper to abduct, run away Date: 1628 1 : to slip away 2 : to run away secretly with the intention of getting married Yeah...sooooooo...there you have it. Husband (aka Fiance, aka Boyfriend) and I got married last Friday, October 9th 2009 at the Jefferson County Courthouse in Golden, Colorado. There was no fan fare and we both wore jeans. There were maybe five people that knew what we were up to. In a way we wanted to have it be something that was between just the two if us, and the lady that took our money, and well Jenn cuz she was there too snapping photos, but really it was just a moment for me and him. I got myself a good man and a cool new last name with one of those little squiggle things above one of the n's. ©2009 Jenn LeBlanc Oh...and mark your calender for June 25th 2011 because we are going to have one hell of a party when Husband get back from doing things overseas that I am not allowed to talk about.

iPhone camerabag app

About a month ago Jenn sent me this link to a story by Melissa Lyttle, a photojournalist out of Florida. All the photos in the story were taken with her iPhone using the Helga filter in the Camerabag App. The Helga filter mimics the vignetting, blur, light leaks, and other distortions found in photos taken with the cheaply made Holga cameras. I loved the way the images Melissa used for the story looked and decided if and when I got an iPhone that this would be the first app I got. Well as it turns out Fiancé’s cell phone died this week which resulted in us combining our cell phone accounts and him getting a new BlackBerry and me a new iPhone. These images are nothing special and are a little out of focus (I know) but are just used to show how the image changes when the different filters in the Camerabag app are applied. Original: Helga: Lolo: Magazine: Mono: 1962: 1974: Cinema: Infared: Fisheye: I can see the possibilities to have a lot of fun with this. The only thing I am disappointed about is that there is supposed to be an “Instant” filter that takes Polaroid style photos that isn’t there. Between all the photography apps and the Canon 20D (more on this in a future post) Fiancé got me as an early birthday present I foresee a whole lot of picture taking. UPDATE: Turns out that Instant is there and I just had to go into the menu and turn it on. Not sure why it was the only one turned off but matters not. Here it is… Instant: Thank you to @jcpretro for pointing that out to me! Also found out you can layer the filters. Head is exploding with ideas.