Volume 14 – A New Hope
46 – Back to Basics
Taco Tuesday rolled around this week and the subject of neglecting our favorite Mexican restaurant came up. Realizing that it had been entirely too long since we had gone there, we hopped in the car and went to dinner. Our first visit to the place is lost in the sands of time, but we have been going there for well over twenty years. The menu hasn’t changed very much except for the numbers that follow the description of the various offerings, and those offerings have remained remarkably consistent over the years. $2.00 Margarita Mondays are long gone, but the margaritas themselves have maintained their status as the best house margarita we have ever found. They gave us the recipe years ago but somehow they still taste a bit better at the source.
45 – Things Change
Seven or eight years ago, we removed all the grass from the front yard to reduce water consumption and maintenance. We replaced it with rock, bark and a central circle of ground cover that we populated with ground-hugging Lantana. The plants quickly spread to cover the circle and eventually became a mass of purple flowers ten feet across and three feet high. Quite pretty, but… (there’s always a but). Our local climate has a limited growing season that is only about 11½ months long, and keeping the purple beast trimmed became tedious. This week’s image is of the last bloom just before it was bagged and followed its thousands of siblings into history. The area will now be covered with a platform for seasonal decorations that will need no trimming.
44 – Trunk or Treat
For the third year, we made our way up to the High Desert on Hallowe’en and participated in Pastor Dan’s Trunk or Treat event in the church’s parking lot. The area is semi-rural with most areas lacking sidewalks and streetlights. Offering a safe, welcoming spot for trick-or-treating is a bit of outreach that has become a huge hit with the local community. The first year saw hundreds of people showing up and 10k pieces of donated candy quickly ran out, triggering frantic trips to the local stores. The hundreds have grown to thousands as the word of a safe, welcoming environment (with food trucks!) to celebrate the holiday has spread. Well over 100k pieces of candy were distributed to wave after wave of smiling folks of all ages enjoying a night of fun.
43 – Bugle Babe
So much ice in our lives. Sunday was another day that found this native Southern Californian sitting in the cold. This week it was for Jackie’s debut in Freestyle 5. Advanced for her age, she is always the youngest in her competitions, usually by a lot. This one was no exception. She placed sixth in a field of eight, but being at least five years younger than the rest of the group takes a bit of the sting out of that. Regardless of placement, she did a fantastic job of mastering the longer routine and her showmanship as she acted out the Boogie-Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B was really fun to watch. I have no idea what the future holds for Jackie as a competitive ice skater, but the way she attacks skating is the way she attacks everything. Jackie succeeds. It’s what she does.
42 – Goooooooaaaaaal!
The hockey season continues and there is a new challenge. Not on the ice, other than following the previously mentioned increased skill and speed of the players, but with the guy behind the camera. Matthew’s personal photographer has been growing more interested in the games and finds himself following the action and sometimes not noticing when the most important player gets rotated into play. Fortunately, this hasn’t as yet caused any major gaps in capturing the good bits. This week was especially distracting with a lot of action, scoring and penalties. In addition to his duties as a defenseman, Matthew managed to join in on the offensive efforts and make this goal as I was following his general participation at the far end of the ice. A happy half-second!
41 – Jurassic Cake
Lots of stuff happened in week 41. A lot of progress on the front yard. Ceiling fans were added to the gazebo in the back. The cactus flowers and their attendant swarm of bees came and went. The win by Matthew’s team on Sunday was fun, as was the spontaneous “family day” at the local shooting range where two of the grandkids were introduced to proper handling and safety and where we found that the remarkably concentrated groups of holes in Matthew’s targets show that video game skills seem to cross over to the real world. With all that, the milestone I chose for this week’s photo was the fourth birthday of grandchild number seven. Kai’s Auntie went out of her way to provide a cake with an active volcano to make the family dinoholic’s day even more special.
40 – His Fault
This last week has been a rough one for photography. The weather has moderated here and whenever the death-heat starts fading, the outdoor projects that have been piling up start the competition for my attention. This week’s main spare-time killer was phase two of the front yard revival with another literal ton of decking dropped in our driveway. This week’s milestones were the completion of the subframe and half of the span across the front of the house done and looking pretty darned good. This week’s photo of the CL4P-TP robot on my desk is actually from a couple of years ago. “Claptrap” is a prominent character in the Borderlands game franchise and thus can be blamed for Borderlands 4 eating all my non-project free time. It’s officially his fault.
39 – Approach With Caution
It’s been a few months since a flower made it to the pages of the Picture-A-Week project. I like flowers. Mostly I like to photograph flowers. The planting, watering and other chores involved in cultivating and caring for them, not so much. The yard project has removed several trees, all the grass and most of the random shrubs. We have started decorating with artificials, some very hardy succulents and garden art beyond gnomes and flamingoes. The plan is to reimagine the yard into a place to relax that is as dust-, weed- and maintenance-free as possible. The flowers pictured this week are a succulent we encountered leaving breakfast on Sunday. We snuck a clipping because Kim thought they were pretty, and they reminded me of the Alien: Earth show.
38 – Life, the Universe, and Everything
We started Sunday morning off with a hockey game. We missed the first game of the season, so except for a scrimmage back in July, this was our first chance to see Matthew’s new team in action. The level of play has really changed since he started out and the games are getting to be more interesting. I’m not saying that watching the teams scramble after the puck like chickens going after a thrown handful of corn in the early days wasn’t interesting, but now it is fun to watch in a different way. There was one shocking development that left me with a deeper respect for the inner workings of the universe. Matthew’s jersey for the new team is the number 42. As I remember, that’s the answer to life, the universe and everything from the Hitchhiker’s Guide to Hockey.
37 – Phase One
While my main hobby has been photography for most of my life, my second favorite pastime is building things. Our back yard entertainment area is pretty solid right now, so we have turned our attention towards a front yard makeover. Our war against dirt, dust and weeds uses a double-barrel approach consisting of decking and rock. The first phase of the makeover extends our porch landing all the way down to the sidewalk eliminating the deteriorating pavers I put down a couple or three decades ago. The next step will extend 8 ft. out from the front of the house all the way across the yard. One thing I have noticed is that when you take a couple of months off from strenuous work, reacclimating to bending, squatting and lifting at my age is literally hell.
36 – Two is One, One is None
Be prepared. That’s what generations of scoutmasters have advised their troops. So I’ve been told, having never been a Boy Scout. My Dad, however, taught me well in the art of being prepared. Our house always had a “one more drawer” that contained stuff like screws, nuts & bolts, wire and maybe an extra light switch. I have carried on the habit of ordering at least one extra of almost any piece of incidental hardware and this weekend it paid off again. As family members were leaving our Birthday Brunch, I got a text showing our flag hanging upside-down from the bottom grommet. After years of service, the top carabiner picked that day to lose its fight with the wind. Good thing I had a spare! Another problem solved in a timely manner by the one more drawer.
35 – Prep Time
School, sporting events, work and all sorts of scheduling issues spread across the family conspired to move our August Birthday Brunch to the Saturday after Labor Day. The Front Yard Resurrection Initiative also took a hit as we prep for our first family gathering since before the summer death heat descended on our little corner of the ecosystem. The front yard project has had an impact on the back yard and the areas not yet tamed by decking and planned gardening needed to be cleared of invasive plant species (sounds better than “I pulled weeds all week”.) The outdoor furniture has been de-grimed, and Kim donned the gloves and applied three coats of teak oil to our patio tables. All-in-all, a productive week. Unless the actual goal was photography.
34 – Future-proofing
Last week I mentioned the 7,000+ images captured at the Summer Ice Show. What I didn’t mention was that when loading them onto the computer, I discovered an issue that had never come up before. When the 160GB main card filled up, the camera dutifully switched to the second slot. What it didn’t do was continue the naming sequence from the first card but started the sequence over on the second card, giving me 1200 or so images with the same name on card #2. Research on the photo forums and Sony support said this can’t happen except maybe, when it does. Whatever the cause, it won’t happen again. I have been meaning to pick up an extra card for a while, so I did just that and eliminated future auto-switching issues with a 3X dose of bigness.
33 – In the Spotlight
Donating your time for a good cause has hidden benefits. Standing on my not-so-young legs through two shows while I shot slightly over 7,000 photos was harder than it used to be, but it still felt good to do something worthwhile. The posters came out well and the parents will have access to photos of their skaters that weren’t taken through the glass on their phone. What the organizers probably don’t realize is that hidden behind my benevolence is a very selfish ulterior motive. Granting me access to a prime spot to photograph all the skaters also grants me access to photograph the most important skater in the show. I don’t usually do the same Picture-A-Week subject two weeks in a row, but Jackie’s performance earned every pixel of her consecutive page.
32 – Jackie Belle
Sunday morning was unseasonally cold for an August Day in Southern California. At least from my point of view while spending four hours standing on the ice at the local skating rink taking group photos for their annual summer show. Other than the inevitable challenges involved in herding the cats to get a group of toddlers to all look at the camera at the same time, it really was mostly fun. Donating my time to a cause that gets kids out being active is also an incentive. Between the group skits, there are solo performances by the more advanced skaters, and our darling Granddaughter was included this year. At nine, she’s five years younger than the rest of the solo performers. Her Tinker Bell spotlight routine was a joy to watch. Sort of magical, actually.
31 – Happy Birthdays
This week we were joined by most of the family and a couple of friends for the First Annual Family Birthday Cruise. Schedules prevented the whole family from joining, but the group that made it had a great time on the Ovation of the Seas. It is the largest ship ever assigned to the Port of Los Angeles and while not by any means the largest in Royal’s fleet, it is great for families with a wide range of venues for fun and games. From bumper cars to roller skating to simulated skydiving, there is some activity (or non-activity) for just about anyone. Our family dinner at Jamie’s Italian was exceptional and the rest of the food on the ship ranged from ok to quite good. The ship was great, but the best part of the trip was hanging out with some of the nicest people we know.
30 – Just a Big Chicken
A couple of years ago, we started driving up to the High Desert to attend Sunday service at our son’s church. As with any regularly visited area, you eventually poke around until you find the best route with the least traffic. Our path from the café where we have breakfast on the way to church follows a frontage road that parallels the freeway. It’s mostly empty field except for where it crosses the main streets. These areas have various businesses and one of them is a fenced in lot with yard decorations and fancy lamp posts. One item that has made me smile every time I pass it is featured in this week’s picture. The chicken is 7ft. tall and I so want to put it in front of our house. The two reasons I don’t are the $2,800 price tag and a desire to remain happily married.
29 Printed Panda.
Every time a 3-D printed novelty goes viral, I almost instantly get a link in my message app from someone in the family circle. The latest fad is an animated coaster that reacts when a beverage is placed on it. Part of my fascination with 3-D printing is the amount of effort that goes into these designs. I am learning the ropes of design, managing color swaps while printing and of course disassembling and reassembling the printer head when some random filament tragedy happens. What I want to learn most of all is to design cool stuff like this coaster. I bought and downloaded the model from a website and printed a couple for the grandkids. It was less than $3 but when I saw that it was purchased 7.7K times, I discovered a new reason to learn to make cool designs.
28 – Hello, Biscus!
it has been almost ten years since a bloom from our hibiscus tree graced the Picture-A-Week project. Unless it is a family memeber or pet, I try not to repeat a subject too often. The PAW project was originally started to replace our holiday newsletter by offering weekly vignettes of our lives to share with family and friends when we were living in Georgia and had a whole country separating us from the main family. When we moved back, I had grown too fond of the concept to give it up and it just kept going. The pretty bloom is this week’s image for a couple of reasons. First, it is one of my favorite flowers from a tree that has been around log enough to become family. Second, it was a very busy week and it’s the only picture I took. Need to get out more.
27 – Three for the Fourth
It was a busy week and the extra day off, while not absolutely needed, was much appreciated. Friday morning was spent enjoying a long leisurely breakfast with friends and was followed by coming back to the house and sitting around in our bar chatting. Shortly after noon I had an idea for a holiday-themed image. I would have dyed water with food coloring, but we didn’t have any, so I whipped up a Bloody Mary, a Classic Martini and Glacier Blue Martini for an impromptu photo shoot. I wasn’t looking to enter a contest, so using the phone seemed good enough. I ended up taking about a dozen shots with different backgrounds and perspectives but ended up liking the first one the best. It was still early afternoon, so we didn’t drink the props. (Wink, wink.)
26 – Realization
Saturday was the combined birthday party for Matthew and Jackie. The release of the update to the Nintendo Switch was the big deal this year and its rarity was a bigger issue since they both wanted one. They had been saving up gift money to offset the cost, but when the pre-order window opened up, only one was able to be ordered before the allotted units were sold out. Being who they are, they accepted the reality of the situation and agreed to work out a way to share playtime on the single unit. Behind the scenes, their favorite (I’m assuming, but odds are good) grandparents watched the internet for possible availability on release day. Another was snagged before they sold out by 12:07 AM on June 5th. This is what a happy surprise looks like.
25 – A Step Up
We’ve seen dishes that are prepared at the table in fine dining venues. The chef takes all the pretty bits and whips it into a beautifully presented meal that you pay through the nose for. This week’s picture is of an ingredient that really isn’t well suited for a tableside show. It’s a Tri-Tip from a specialty meat market located in the High Desert near where our son lives. The somewhat unattractive greenish material isn’t from poor storage but is a fresh green chili salsa marinade. We bought it that way and just dropped it into the sous vide for a seven- or eight-hour bath that ended with a perfect medium-rare finish ready for a few moments of searing. Our local market has excellent beef, but this was a step up. Now we’re thinking of tapping the 401K to try Wagyu.
24 – Antediluvian
This was taken on Saturday an hour before the flood of family arrived for an early Father’s Day celebration. When they did arrive it was the usual cacophany of voices, laughter and grandkids darting to and fro. It was about 90° and cooking the burgers and dogs on the Blackstone was miserably hot. Add in the fatigue from weeding the yard, clearing the driveway of a few days’ worth of falling crap from the neighbor’s Jacaranda tree, pressure washing 1000 ft² of decking, swapping out the new rugs in the gazebos, and by the time I could take a deep breath and look over the large noisy crowd of humanity that I was somehow related to, the only thought in my head was, “Awesome!” Our family is amazing and worth any amount of pre-party prep.
23 – Back to School – Part 2
Continued from Week 22. By the time Tuesday rolled around, the 8 ft. beast had been designed, sourced and made ready for its debut. The body is 10” HVAC vent pipe and the nose cone was printed using a file for a model rocket resized to fit. The fins are foamcore and the portholes and school logo are from converted JPEG files I drew. The rocket nozzles were from a file for a novelty cup that I resized and modified a bit. The flames were printed using a transparent orange filament and a night light file that received some seriously time-consuming rework. They are lit by some cheap but remarkably bright LED penlights. The stand is all scraps from the garage with pillow stuffing serving as the smoke. All-in all, a rather satisfying project that wowed the masses.
22 – Back to School – Part 1
I remember when I was in school and later in every job, there were deadlines. What I love about hobbies and DIY projects is the lack of deadlines. This is true unless you have a daughter with an upcoming back-to-school night that “needs a rocket” for her space themed classroom decorations. I got the call on Thursday and the assignment was due five days later on Tuesday for the Wednesday event. Oh, and it had to make the other classrooms pale in comparison. This is not an unusual request from my favorite youngest daughter. Her creativity is only limited in scope by the tech available to her and yes, my tech is included. This is the first step in the project. It is one of three 3-D printed rocket nozzles for the centerpiece of her decorations. To be continued…
21 – Toy Boat
The best adventure in a week full of adventure was a motorcoach tour of the landscape surrounding Geiranger, Norway. Geiranger is a small town at the end of a series of fjords 65 miles removed from the open sea. Incredible terrain with scenery reminiscent of, well….nothing. Cold, beautiful and fascinating. Our transportation was a full-sized bus that no sane person would try to navigate the dozens of tight switchbacks that seemed to pop up every thirty feet or so. Sanity aside, our driver was up to the challenge, and we didn’t end our tour with an unplanned 1,000 ft. drop. The last stop was far up the side of the fjord about 2 miles from where the ship was docked. The view was breathtaking and to top off the tour, we were snowed upon. We liked Norway. A lot.
20 – Anchors Aweigh
After a 10½ hour flight and sleeping off some jet lag, we boarded the Celebrity Apex to start our vacation. We actually had this booked before finding out it was designated as the “President’s Cruise” for 2025. Every year, Celebrity picks a cruise to send some of the executive staff on as a customer engagement gesture. Special events, tours, entertainment and meet and greets are added to the usual schedule. Another nice little perk is the President’s Cruise swag that appears in the stateroom on occasion. A Celebrity-branded water bottle, beanie, scarf or fanny pack isn’t going to cement our loyalty to the line, but it is a nice gesture and was appreciated. The next week will be filled with all things Norwegian with a bit of Belgium thrown it. Cast off! Time to sail!
19 – Mother’s Day at the Café
These days you can find a thousand reasons to criticize the actions of all kinds of people. “Rednecks” have taken a big hit over the last few decades and honestly, I don’t see the why of it. A “redneck” is demeaned as lowly tradesman or maybe a trucker. How some see this as a negative baffles me. How do the ingredients for that Vanilla Latte with extra soy milk get downtown? Who takes care of your plumbing when you find out soy has a nasty effect on your digestion? Probably a “redneck”. Our favorite little café up in Oak Hills is located next to a truck stop in an area swarming with “rednecks”. We find them to be friendly, courteous and the “redneck” owners of the café gave out roses to all the mothers on Mother’s Day. Class act. We should all have redder necks.
18 – Dos de Mayo
As mentioned a few weeks ago, we have gotten back into the habit of socializing on a regular basis with the other two corners of our local social square. Last week. the wheel-o’-food landed on home-cooked, with Kim and I collaborating on a meal featuring a slow-smoked tri-tip that was a hit. This week’s choice was theirs and ended up being our favorite Mexican restaurant. The choice wasn’t related to Monday being Cinco de Mayo. Rather, it was because we have been going there for twenty-plus years and they have an excellent menu with consistent quality and, as mentioned before, the best house margaritas we’ve found. In honor of my recent resolution to eat better, this week’s photo overlooks the questionable liquid and focuses closely on the healthy fruit. MAHA!
17 – Emotion
Another cold Sunday morning. Oddly enough, it wasn’t cold only because we were in the Pasadena Ice Skating Center for Jackie’s competition, but it was actually only about 50° outside. Unusual for late April. Inside, our little Ice Princess had a good day. He technical program was very solid, and she claimed a well-deserved first place. Her showcase program was also excellent, but with a second-place finish. She is well past where 100% of her focus is on not falling and has entered the phase where she can work on refining her movements and insert emotion into the performance. She did just that in the second performance with a lot more grace and fluidity than we’ve seen to date. My impartial and bias-free Grandfatherly opinion is that she was robbed of first place.
16 – Eastermas Llama
Easter is a special season. The holiday is one of the celebrations that actually contributed to the creation of the word “holiday”. Over the years traditions evolved in different cultures and somehow, we now have an Easter Bunny to help celebrate the resurrection of Jesus. One popular origin story for the Bunny involves the appropriation of the spring festival celebrating the Germanic Pagan goddess of spring, Ostara, who held rabbits as sacred. The eggs (that I’m told rabbits do not lay) symbolize life and rebirth. As for our family, Easter gifting led to me coining the word “Eastermas” and we somehow have an Easter Llama as a decoration. We enjoy any reason to gather family together to laugh and eat well. I feel Jesus would approve, and chuckle..
15 – Real Art
Lately we have been getting back into the habit of going out to dinner on a more regular basis. Before the lockdowns, we regularly went to dinner with friends, but the practice never really started back up after all the hoopla died down. Part of the reason was the huge spike in pricing brought on by restaurants trying to recoup the losses from months of survival mode. Another factor was that we, as a family, are pretty darned good at food prep. Saturday found us at our second-favorite Mexican restaurant enjoying dinner and their house margaritas. They weren’t as tasty as the house margaritas from our favorite place, but they win the prize for the visuals. In a world where taping a banana to a wall is considered art, these qualify as masterpieces.
14 – Time To Go
When we moved into our house in 1977, there was an established 15′ palm tree in the back yard and another right next to the back wall of the garage. The garage palm left us early as it was in the way of a room addition, but the yard palm eventually reached about 70’. I always grumbled about the palm fronds after every windy day, but it was the seed pods that sealed its fate. 8’ long and fairly heavy, they fall pointy-end down and have decimated the corrugated roof on the new patio and even put a few dents in the metal-roofed gazebo. One nearly hit me while I was picking up fronds and that prompted a call to our favorite tree guy. Carlie and crew showed up at 8:00am on Tuesday and by 11:00am, I was thanking them as they drove off with a full trailer. No regrets.
13 – Cherry Blossom Season
We have eliminated all the old messy trees on the property and replaced them with more manageable versions. The Crepe Myrtles in the front yard drop some stuff, but the front yard redesign will handle that. Our Blood Orange tree has gouged me for the last time and the fantastically tall palm in the back yard will disappear in the coming week. It’s not that we hate trees, but maintaining large foliage that dumps a truckload of crap in your yard holds no appeal for anyone trying to reduce ongoing maintenance. In seeming defiance of our plan, the kids gifted Kim with a Cherry sapling a while ago. This spring, the little thing surprised us with a beautiful bunch of blossoms. As with all trees, there will be maintenance. The photo-ops may be worth it.
12 – Hello, Spring!
On the first Sunday after the Vernal Equinox, we made the drive up the hill to church after a short hiatus due to Jackie’s skating competition and a rather nasty cold the week before. The weather on Sunday morning was an example of why the number of people fleeing the California dumpster fire is lower than one would expect. The sun was shining, the sky was clear and the temperature was very pleasant. As usual, we left a bit early to get gas and stop at our favorite High Desert café for breakfast. Also as usual, the place was packed and breakfast was great. On the way out to the car, Wonderful Wife commented on how pretty the mountains looked. Of course, that triggered photo mode in my brain. I included the sign and the incredibly blue sky, because…sky pretty.
11 – Winning
Sunday was a good day. The sun came up without hiding behind a gloomy layer of clouds and the only reminder of the inclement weather from the last few days was a lovely blanket of snow on the mountains. A beautiful day to drive to the High Desert for church. But we didn’t go. The scheduling conflict that kept us from heading up the hill to church wasn’t in the least bit onerous. Instead, we were witnesses to our minor miracle at the local ice-skating venue. Jackie had her first competition of the year and was performing a variation of her routine that she hadn’t been practicing for very long. Over the last couple of years, we have learned not to worry too much about such things. She absolutely nailed the performance and finished first. Winning is good!
10 – The Best is Yet To Come.
Back in late ‘73 or early ‘74, I expanded my lens arsenal for my Minolta SRT-102 with a Vivitar 75-260 F/4.5 zoom. With the original “kit” 50mm f/1.4, that gave me a total of two lenses. I wasn’t rolling in cash since I was saving up for our wedding, so a fast, fixed focal length telephoto wasn’t an option. It turned out to be an excellent zoom for that era and I think that’s where I developed my current fondness for the convenience of a zoom lens. Over the years, I have owned quite a few and not all were stellar. Happily, in the last decade or two computer-aided design and fancy glass have given zooms image quality that make them more than a convenient option. A good zoom is not cheap, but it is way less than two or three lenses covered by its range. I love a good bargain!
09 – Vegetable Beef Stoup
Though winter is not so gradually fading to spring, the days when a steaming bowl of soup sounds like a good idea for dinner are still with us. I am married to someone who not only loves soup, but has made it a lifelong mission to make soup great again. Whether it is Chicken Tortilla, Chicken Noodle, our House Chili (technically a soup?) or her family’s legacy Vegetable Beef stoup (stew + soup) pictured here, all of them are made to be the entire meal, rather than a course. We use a 16-quart (yeah, that’s 4 gallons) stock pot and 64oz deli containers to make a commercial-sized batch and freeze most of it for easy access to a nice hot meal that can be whipped up in a jiffy whenever the “what’s for dinner” question results in a shoulder shrug and a blank stare.
08 – And Smart Too!
Anybody who has followed the Picture-A-Week Project for a while is familiar with the fact that we are (justifiably, IMHO) proud of our Grandchildren. We are blessed to have three children that grew into successful, well-adjusted adults who have further blessed us with grandkids that are worthy of the overt, unbiased (maybe a little biased) pride we feel when we see what they have accomplished so far. For nearly six years we have seen the little beauty in this week’s image go from a shuffling toddler in rented skates to an amazingly talented figure skater competing and winning against skaters literally twice her age. She is sweet (with my eyes closed at the occasional moody moments) and, as we saw her being recognized as Student of the Month, really smart too.
07 – Glitter Bomb
On Sunday afternoon we had a family gathering to celebrate several events. One of them was Daisy’s third 20th birthday. The first two were local family and this one was sort of a sub-birthday to include her brother and his wife visiting from Phoenix. It was a nice gathering. One feature of the party was Daisy’s special birthday cake made by her Aunt Kassi. It was supposed to be the star of the main party, but the seasonal flu took Kassi out of the picture last week. What was special? If you look at the picture, you will see what looks like a cloud of tiny glitter particles bursting from the cake as the candle is blown out. It looks like that because it actually was a cloud of tiny glitter particles bursting from the cake as the candle is blown out.
06 – Hot Tub
Years ago when we discovered the Sous Vide method of water bath cooking, it changed the way we prepared many different meals. When used for meats, it took the “done” level of steaks and such from roll-of-the-dice to a predictable outcome. A couple of years ago, we found a new use for the technology preparing for our family gatherings. When serving a large group, getting everything cooked and ready to serve at the same time is a challenge. We started putting various foods in large deli containers or Ziploc bags to keep them at serving temperature in the Sous Vide bath until mealtime. Adding a standby AC power supply to the mix made transporting ready-to-serve Super Bowl pasta dishes 50 miles to the venue a breeze. Isn’t tech wonderful?
05 – Snow Bunny
Terrible week for photography. Work was very busy and the urge to seek some recuperative couch time after the final bell was pretty strong. The weekend was taken up with the restart of home projects stalled by a frenetic holiday season. Instead of capturing new photos, I spent a considerable amount of free time exploring the enhanced editing tools that came with the Topaz photo software that I recently updated. The new tools use AI processing, and I decided to try them out on my collection of photographic problem children…old, scanned prints and slides. The results ranged from pretty good to amazing. The best part was finding forgotten gems like this week’s 48-year-old image of an absolutely lovely young lady posing for her husband. (Me.)
04 – Focused
Rain and potential snow on the way to church up in the High Desert moved our Sunday morning plans to the local ice rink for Matthew’s hockey game. We went from cold and rainy to colder and dry to watch the teams battle it out on the field of ice. I didn’t just choose this week’s image for the obvious excitement of a high-speed vignette of an action-filled sport with our favorite hockey player as the subject, I chose it to showcase the autofocus, autoexposure and sensor tech that gives a modern camera the ability to capture images in ambient light where film cameras would need a flash and luck to even come close, if at all. The tracking was able to isolate Matthew in the scene and freeze the action as he flew by at full speed. Magical tech!
03 – Maho Again
Our trip on the Icon of the Seas was interrupted by a few pesky stops at some Caribbean islands. Ok. That’s not really how we felt, but for us the ship was the real destination. Since we had chosen an itinerary which stopped at St. Maarten, a trip to Maho beach was a given. Years ago, when I first saw a photo of the planes skimming the beach as they landed at Princess Juliana Airport, it became a bucket list destination. Unlike the 54-year wait for my Santorini photo-op, it was only about 5 years until we got there. Since Caribbean itineraries are somewhat limited, we have been back a few times and it never gets old. The Sunset Bar at the end of the beach keeps getting bigger as do the crowds, but the spectacle stays the same. Photo fun!
02 – Home Away From Home
Saturday afternoon was spent unpacking and making ourselves at home in our cabin on the Icon of the Seas. The long day of travel on Friday with a frustrating time getting from the airport to the hotel were swept away by the impression left on us by our first glimpse of the “worlds largest cruise ship”. We had seen all the pictures and trailer videos of the ship and read the reviews but the sheer scale of the ship just smacks you in the face when you see it in person. Not just big, but beautiful. The designers pulled out the stops and created a 250K ton, floating work of art. From the artsy, high-tech Pearl staircase on the promenade to the computerized elevator system, nothing failed to impress. A week isn’t time enough to see it all. It was fun trying though!
01 – Learning New Things
Resolutions. Almost everybody makes them at the beginning of the year with hopeful intent to persevere and make the thing resolved come true. A recent poll found that the lifespan of most resolutions is about 4 months. Silly poll. I have been losing weight for over 30 years based on a resolution. Kidding aside, I made a resolution back when I first learned of them to learn something new every day. I haven’t quite kept up the pace after the first year when I read our entire Encyclopedia Brittanica, but I have done pretty well. Over the years I have learned woodworking, photography, and even how to ride a unicycle. This year, I have resolved to learn to make useful things with the 3D printer. Behold the mini-bunny cookie cutter designed from scratch!