Sigh of Relief

I can breath a sigh of relief that last Saturday was the last of the very stressful events I had been planning for and performing over the last two weeks.  I really dread the weeks like those past few that I had because the stress is a little more than I like in my life.

So, Sunday, Diep, Megan and I went out to downtown Hanoi and just walked around for a while.  We left around 4:00pm so it was a great time to take some photos.  It was overall a relaxing time, though it was a little tough for Diep because she has been battling one sickness or annoyance (not me) after another since she got back from Saigon.  The good news is, it seems to have all passed as of today.  She will take it easy for the next couple of days, but she should be back to normal after that.

Having just said the stressful days are behind me, I can't forget that we are moving into our next operations cycle and that means I will be on the move again. As a matter of fact, I go to Laos in just a few days and I will be back in Vietnam just in time to meet Diep in Danang so we can celebrate her birthday together on May 20.  I know Mother's Day is somewhere in between, but that is for Megan to work out with Diep, not me.

Megan will be preparing for end of year tests that she has, so she won't be coming to Danang.  No big deal for her, I think she is like me and would rather be home doing her own thing anyway.

I will travel quite a bit throughout this operations cycle and then towards the end, I will be looking at getting back to the U.S.  Unfortunately, this is my home leave time back home and I don't have as much flexibility in traveling to other places besides my home of record.  I still have to give all of that a closer look so I will keep everyone posted.

My sister mentioned black and white photographs with colored highlights the other day and it got me interested in seeing whether I could figure out how to do it in Photoshop Elements.  It wasn't as hard as I thought.  It was a matter of selecting whatever it was that I wanted to keep color, then inversing the selection;  then turning the rest of the photo to black and white.  Once I did that, I re-inversed the selection and played with the contrast and hue to get what I wanted for the colored portion of the photo.  The blog title photo is what I came up with.  Not a bad first try, but I find myself wanting to experiment more now.