Love this Animoto thing

Our good friend Eleanor has expanded her creative skills to the world of multimedia design. Always the life of the party and the Queen of the iPod in her nocturnal persona - DJ El -  she has turned us on to, and is perfecting herself, the very cool on-line picture editing tool called Animoto. You basically send them a bunch of pictures, pick out a soundtrack, and they put together a well-choreographed slide show. It's a little more complicated than that, but not much.

Eleanor has become a pro at documenting the previous night's festivities, which is sometimes handy, sometimes regrettable when things get blurry. For better or worse, Eleanor's Animoto's are a great way to see the whole story unfold. Even when she is in the middle of the action, she can somehow produce a lucid retrospective of even the wildest of  "what the f*** happened last night?" type of affairs.

Obviously overwhelmed by a bewildering combination of creative inspiration and emotional distress about leaving the island for the summer to go back to her native Ireland (and thus probably not seeing us before our move) - and maybe having too much time on her hands -  Eleanor made a tear-jerking farewell montage Animoto for us, drawing up on the 'best of' of her party photo collection, as well as some other fun we've had with her and her family. Check it out here.

Thanks El!

Actually her best work may have been her first. She did an Animoto for my surprise birthday party back in January. And I prefer the sound track on this one a bit more!

Sailing on the good ship Atabeyra

We took advantage of a Monday holiday to 'go tourist' and a bunch of us chartered the Atabeyra sail boat for a day of fun on the high seas. Dave Douglas and his crew do a great job and really roll out the red carpet for residents. We sailed on the South Side and anchored right of a wreck that was grounded during the '08 hurricanes. The Atabeyra is the one on the right, by the way. As you can see, Kerry really flipped over the experience!