Lonely at the table

Anonymous — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 22:11:17 -0800

How do I get my husband to the dinner table? I am married. I have children. I cook dinner almost every evening. I assumed the role as the one who prepares meals a long time ago. This is OK with me. My husband isn't interested in cooking.

He has a bad habit of not coming to the dinner table when I announce dinner is ready. It peeves me to no end. I don't expect him to snap-to when I ring the dinner bell so to speak, but if he could mosey in within five or so minutes that would be nice.

I've done everything from giving a ten minute warning to explaining in very sincere tones that it hurts my feelings when he delays coming to the table. I took the time to cook a meal; it would be nice if it were appreciated and consumed while still hot.

Lately I've tried to not let it bother me. I've had a "whatever" attitude and me and the kids start eating without him. When I announce dinner is on, he calls out: "I'll be there in a minute" or "I'm coming" up to five or so times if I ask him enough, which I don't usually do, especially lately.

I think it's basic common decency to go to the table when a meal is prepared for you. Am I wrong about this? Why should I have to beg the man to come to the table? When his mother or anyone else prepares a meal he has the courtesy to go to the table. I'm worried that is sends a harmful message to our young children: Daddy doesn't respect Mommy. He's respectful of me and the kids in all other areas.

I don't think he does it to be rude, but in my eyes it is rude. I would understand if he were in the middle of something important. I would understand if he wasn't hungry. Usually he is on the computer or watching the news and he still won't come for at least 10-15 minutes after dinner is on the table. I want him to join us. It's important to me. Sometimes I am so pissed that I could care less if he stayed out there with Chris Matthews until his dinner was stone cold. I feel like I'm becoming Marie Barone.

Any suggestions? What is going on here? Am I overreacting? What am I doing wrong? Should I let it go and just continue to eat without him?

Aperture or Lightroom? And do I let them manage my library?

phearlez — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 07:25:27 -0800

Aperture or Lightroom? And do I let them manage my library? It's been a year since it was addressed and both applications have come a long way. So... have opinions been changed? Critical features added? Achilles heels revealed? And regardless of which I pick, should I suck it up and let them manage my library or stick with my hierarchical self-managed structure? The Aperture v Lightroom question speaks for itself, I think. I've found Lightroom's quick crop system (ie, the recognition that it's more likely what you'll be doing than anything else and not making me press C first and return to accept it) pretty nice, but dislike the switching between viewing and altering mode. Aperture's stacks are nice and I LOVE having an add-on importer to push the set up to Flickr after I'm done. And quite frankly, Apple's collection of instructional videos is a big plus for me.

Are there other compelling issues I'm missing?

On both applications I am facing the referenced vs imported issue - All my photos - and there's more than a few - are currently organized like this:

/1998/1998_10_31-Halloween
[snip]
/2006/2006_09_25
/2006/2006_09_25/raw
[snip]
/2007/2007_11_05-HawkOnLine
/2007/2007_11_05-HawkOnLine/raw
/2007/2007_11_11-LyleAtBirchmere
/2007/2007_11_11-LyleAtBirchmere/raw

Using Aperture I don't need (hell, shouldn't) separate out my jpeg and raw images, but I'm finding keeping to using referenced to make life harder - at least when it comes to putting in the old stuff. The 10000 image limit for a project precludes just picking "2007" and pulling everything in. In this, it seems, I am not alone.

The prospect of picking shift-option-I about 2000 times is not appealing. Am I missing something? Should I butch up and just let Aperture import everything? Would Lightroom be notably better at this?

Help an unfrozen caveman photographer cope with tools that do more than just show everything in a directory!

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Lonely at the table

Aperture or Lightroom? And do I let them manage my library?