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Isn’t this cool? I took a picture of my daughter from when she was a tiny, teething toddler and I “morphed” it with a photo of her from last Halloween when she was dressed as Bell, from Beauty and the Beast.

I am always seeing the little slideshows of people’s faces changing. I think back to the old episodes of the Roseanne TV show when they would do it will all of the characters through the years. I’ve always wanted to do one for pictures of my daughter through the years. I’m just now testing out the Morpheus Photo-Morpher software you can get over at Zoombli, so I started by using only the two photos.

Let me say this: It was So much simpler than I thought it would be. You use focal points you set yourself to match up features on a face and then the software does absolutely everything else for you. I’m going to get back to my project in a minute here and try several photos all together.

I chose to save my file as an animated .gif, but you can save to Flash, AVI, and several other formats. You can put the file in your blog or on your website, even on YouTube or inside an e-mail file. It’s almost too easy. I actually started to over-think the process until I just stopped a followed the easy steps.

When was the last time you ran out of gas?

I think I have run out of gas in my car once before. I was in my early 20s and coming back from an event with a room mate. We knew we were close to the bottom of the tank, but there was this one gas station close to home that had prices that were just insanely lower than everywhere else. I lived in a mountain town at the time and unbelievably, we actually coasted into the gas station on fumes, if that.

Well, I ran out of gas tonight on the way to taking Gigi to her swimming lessons. When we left the house, it had been almost a week since I’d driven the car. We just got back into town from the funeral this afternoon. About halfway to the pool, I looked down at my gas gauge and saw I was on empty, but not below. So, I figured I would just pull into the next gas station we passed. A small, corner station missed my attentions until we had passed it, so I swung into a subdivision and turned around. While I was doing that, I could feel the car resisting and lurching.

I made it to the light at the intersection, but just missed the green arrow and was waiting for oncoming traffic to pass. Long story short: I ended up stuck in the turn lane.

Now, I was in a busy intersection of a smallish Tampa ‘burb; one actually known for its hometown feel. After ten minutes of angry, impatient people honking at my unoccupied car and me trying to wave them around from the side walk, someone finally stopped to help me. Keep in my mind that the whole time, my daughter was in a bathing suit and flip-flops.

Anyway, this very helpful man named Bob pulled over and waited with me for my mom, who had agreed to come with her gas can. I made that call to my mom on my uncharged cell phone. It actually went dead as I was talking to her. Bob tried to get the guy at the gas station right across the street to loan me a gas can, but the employee refused. Nice, huh? Right about as my mom was getting there, another guy had finally stopped with his buddy and then all three men pushed my car to the gas pump.

Lesson 1: just plain don’t ever let your car get all the way to the empty mark.

Lesson 2: there are some guys willing to stop a single mom and her small daughter without wanting anything at all in return.

Lesson 3: buy a car charger for your cell phone.

And now I am off to try and find my brain, which I apparently left in my suitcase somewhere.

I think I may officially feel old. One of my cousins, who was born when I was in college, is getting married. Isn’t he still in diapers? No, seriously, when did this much time pass? He is graduating from college with a degree in engineering this December and the wedding is going to be this coming spring.

He and I took some time this past weekend to have lunch and do a little light shopping. He mentioned that since his fiancé is planning elaborate gifts for her bridesmaids, he wanted to give some thought to Groomsmen Gifts. We didn’t have those for my wedding. I gave my bridesmaids gold anklets, but my ex did not give his guys anything. Well, he did indirectly give one of them a splinter, since he gave into my request that the entire wedding party go shoeless.

Since neither my cousin nor I had much of an idea about what exactly constitutes an awesome gift for one’s groomsmen, I have been online poking around today for ideas. I’ve been looking at some of the items the Executive Gift Shoppe suggests, like engraved flasks and personalized humidors. I like the idea of having the gifts personalized for sure. Now I want to give my cousin a call and offer my suggestions. Since I am a closet wedding planner, I absolutely love when I’m asked to help with things like this.

I’m back in town after 18-hour drives both to and from the funeral. All in all, the day itself could not have gone better. The weather was unseasonably cool and clear. The days before and after were nowhere near as sublimely perfect. All of the family made it and we were able to get together for a meal for my sister’s birthday (which was actually on the day of the funeral.) The children behaved and my grandmother looked beautiful.

The trip turned into a mini-vacation and I actually have an entire LIST of things to blog about now. So many people went out of their way to give my daughter the fullest West Virginia experience possible. I mean this in so many ways. Although my relatives are pretty typically suburban, I do have a couple of cousins who made a decision to go into agriculture at a college level and our weekend involved riding on tractors and petting cows and watching chicks hatch, among so much more.

So, I am back and busy trying to put out some fires. One of my other blogs is down. I do not personally host that one and the person who owns the hosting made a judgment call on one of my posts and has moved it for two weeks. Needless to say, that puts countless dollars many regular readers at loss.

So, let me go catch my breath so we can make it to my daughter’s swim lesson tonight and I will begin to try and catch you all up on life from Florida’s Suncoast.