This will probably be the most difficult post I've ever had to write on this particular blog. When I looked over the list of prompts for P.J.'s 20 days of Chill writing challenge, I thought this post might be tough to write about. The events of the last week make this post very difficult to write about, but not like you might think. And actually, this post will be very therapeutic for me.
He came into our lives in mid February, 2005. We had been dog-less for about 6 months after our dog Rocky had passed away at the age of 17. I was kind of getting used to the idea of not having a dog under foot and when my wife called me up and said that I needed to go look at a dog, I decided to humor her.
She had called me up because she knew I'd look at the dog and say no and that would be the end of it. She knew herself too well to be able to be rational about things like that. So I went down to the dog grooming place where this two month old puppy was. They put him on the counter, he looked up into my eyes and then put his paws up on my chest and that was it. I brought him home, put him on my daughter's bed, which woke her up and said "Happy 16th birthday."
He was named Jack for no other reason than we all liked the name. It was far better than my wife's suggestion of Quentin. Jack has been a member of our family ever since. He'd greet my wife's dad at the door, because he knew Grandpa always brought treats for him. He liked my lap the best sitting in it for hours while we watched a movie or a sporting event on TV, but he liked the foot of my wife's side of the bed at night. He'd look at you and then sit, as if to say, "Look, I'm being a good boy. Will you give me a treat?" And he was a very good dog.
Last week, age and illness caught up with him. He got sick just about the time Christmas break rolled around and a couple of days after Christmas we had to take him into the vet because he just wasn't rebounding like he'd done in the past when he was ill. After a night in the hospital, it was clear we had to make the toughest decision anyone who has ever loved a furry friend will ever had to make.
Jack was surrounded by love as he crossed over the Rainbow Bridge on December 30th last week. He is missed by all who knew him.
Life wouldn't be the same without dogs.
When I saw the prompt for this month's Photo Blogging challenge, I thought it might be difficult, but then I remembered that Easter was right at the beginning of the month and I knew we'd be with family, plus I also hosted a geocaching event at the beginning of the month, so then it actually became even tougher as I ended up with quite an assortment of photos for the theme.
That being stated, I decided to go a little bit different route with this month's theme. And so without further ado, I give you my five photos for the theme Friends and Family.
1. Handprints in cement
I think these handprints are from when I was about eight or nine years old. Mine is the one on the right. Sometime during that period, my dad poured some concrete at our house in Santa Ana, CA where we grew up and had all three of us put our hands in the wet cement. When they finally moved out of that house about 15 years ago or so, my dad pried up that piece of cement and brought it with them to their new house where it now sits on an island in the front yard. It's definitely a reminder of when we were a lot younger and smaller and it's fun to look at. You can see I really relished squishing my hands into the cement, whereas my sisters were much more dainty in their approach to the gooey stuff. Boys will be boys I guess.
2. The Calendar
I'd say close to 20 years ago, my two sisters and I decided to start a family tradition by giving my parents a photo calendar. The past 6 years or so, I've coordinated the effort, collected the photos from various people and put the entire thing together on my computer. It's worked out rather well and my parents cherish this gift each year and it proudly hangs on their refrigerator in the kitchen. The first year, my dad wanted to actually use it to write calendar reminders in it, but my mom put the kibosh on that very quickly. They also don't throw them away and my mom says she goes out in the garage where they are stored and looks through them from time to time. She gets to see her grandkids grow up every time she does that.
When we started this endeavor, it was a lot easier because there was only three sources that the photos came from since the kids were small and the adults, my sisters and me were the ones who took the photos. Now, with four of the grandchildren on their own, we have to really on photos from seven different sources. That just means we have to start the process earlier each year. Before, I used to send the "all call" for photos sometime just before Thanksgiving and I'd have the photos soon afterwards and it would be a done deal. This year, we were slightly late getting the calendar to my parents, but they did get it before New Year's Day, so it's all good. April of this year was my niece's and her husband's month, so they're featured on that page.
3. University of Notre Dame
Some of you might not be aware of this, but I was born in South Bend, Indiana, home of Notre Dame. This all came about, because my grandfather taught at Notre Dame back in the early 1930s. Because of this, my dad and two of his brothers also went to Notre Dame. Some of my cousins went to Notre Dame and I also had a cousin who was a priest who taught at Notre Dame. This cousin also married my parents and married my sister and her husband. Notre Dame is a family affair with us and although I didn't attend there, mainly because it was out of my price range when it came my turn to attend college, I follow the college quite closely, especially for football.
Growing up in Southern California, that was sometimes very tough to do, mainly because many of my friends in junior high and high school were USC fans. My best friend attended USC and during the 70s and early 80s, it was tough being a Notre Dame fan when they played each other because usually USC came out on top. Yes, I was there in 1974 when Notre Dame was ahead 24-7 at halftime and I watched Anthony Davis run back the second half kick off directly toward the Notre Dame section at the closed end of the Colosseum in Los Angeles, which started an avalanche of points, eventually leading to a 55-24 loss to USC. That was just ugly.
I was also there in 1988 with our entire family to watch #1 Notre Dame battle #2 USC. Both teams were exceptionally good that year and my dad and I surmised that the winner of this game would become the national champion that year. My dad took no chances that year as he was decked out in full Irish regalia, including his blue and gold Notre Dame tam-o-shanter. That's when I finally realized that my dad was one of "those" people. Those crazy alumni you always see. I'd never seen him like that before, but he really wanted a win that day. I don't believe he'd seen Notre Dame win in Los Angeles since 1966 when the Irish shellacked the Trojans 51-0 enroute to a national championship that year as well. Anyway, to make a long story short, Notre Dame came out on top that year and our family went home very happy. I haven't been back to see a Notre Dame/USC game in Los Angeles since that game. I want that memory to last forever. It was very satisfying.
4. Father of the Bride
About a year and a half ago, I was up visiting my daughter. I'm an early riser and my daughter isn't so I'd usually get up early, find some local geocaches and then hang out with her later in the day. This particular day, my daughter's boyfriend asked me if he could tag along and go geocaching with me. Sure, why not? But I had a suspicion that he had ulterior motives, after all he'd been dating my daughter for four years at the time and we were pretty sure they were serious about settling down.
Eventually that day he asked for our blessing to marry my daughter. I don't think my daughter could have picked a finer young man to spend the rest of her life and my wife and I were both thrilled that he was going to be joining the family. As you can see, all of this will be coming to fruition in the middle of July up in the Bay Area. I will fully admit that I will probably be very emotional about this and will probably be the one crying as we walk down the aisle. But I know if I start to cry, so will she and it will just be a mess, so I will restrain myself and think of happy things. Maybe I'll even crack a joke as we walk down the aisle. I think part of me is sad, after all, I loved her first, but most of me is very happy. He makes her happy and I like that. I'm looking forward to when I can call him my son-in-law.
5. Geocaching friends
Most of these photos have been about family, so I knew this last one had to be about friends. Another part of geocaching that I don't always talk about is the number of friendships that have developed for me over the years since I started this crazy game. Outside of my wife, I can say most assuredly, that most of my best friends are fellow geocachers.
This is Craig who I've known for three years, possibly more. I don't think I can pinpoint the exact time I met Craig, as it's more of a gradual thing as opposed to a specific day. Either way, Craig is a very good friend of mine and although this isn't the best photo of him, the only other one I had was of his backside carrying a tire while we were cleaning up a trailhead last weekend during a Geocaching earth day weekend event. I'm sure he's probably glad that I didn't post that one.
Craig is the friend that I helped last summer hike the John Muir Trail. He needed a ride to get up to the starting point in Yosemite Valley and I readily jumped at that opportunity. In fact, I credit Craig with helping me get into better shape. When he decided to do this hike, I was invited to come along. I knew I wasn't in any kind of physical shape to do that kind of hike, but over the past year, I've lost weight, gotten into biking more and am just more physically fit. If he'd been doing this trek this year, I probably would have gone on the hike. As it is, there was a time in the last couple of years when I thought my hiking and backpacking days were behind me, but I don't think that anymore and I thank Craig for being that inspiration. This year, he and I have another road trip planned for June just because we like to geocache and it's fun to go out on the road and explore new territory.
And that about does it for this month's photo blogging challenge. I hope you have enjoyed this month's selection. It's not my usual type of shots, but I wanted to do something a little bit different this time around. To see other people's interpretation of this month's theme, stop by P.J.'s blog and click on the links at the bottom of that page.
Dear friends,
I posted this back in May 2012. I still think it's appropriate today and so I'm repeating it for today. I doubt it will make a difference, but I'll feel better after posting it, so that's what counts right now.
I have many friends, due to the social media giant Facebook, plus other sites.
In fact, any site where there's a discussion board, you can learn about people that share similar interests. I've also been able to connect with a lot of long lost friends because of these social networks.
One thing I've found through the years is that people like to spout off on discussion boards about their political leanings. This, in my opinion, is a bad thing. Mainly because most of the time, all those political discussions do is cause arguments to start. And although a good flame war can be very entertaining from time to time, it's not something that I relish, nor something that I seek out.
I like you as a friend. I liked you when we were in school together. We talked about a lot of different things, but we really didn't talk about religion or politics. Those were the things we were told as kids that we shouldn't talk about. Hmmmm. Maybe our parents were right.
I would prefer to maintain these friendships in the coming years. Talking politics makes that more difficult. Social media has brought many of us closer together and helped us reconnect with our past friendships that we let drift apart over the years. I would really love it if I didn't know the political affiliations of my friends. I just want to be friends with them. Now, that might make me appear to be like an ostrich with its head buried in the sand. At the moment, that's OK with me.
So here's my plea to all of my friends and I fully expect to be flamed for this, but I'm going to say it anyway. Please keep your politics to yourself. Think about what you're posting. There's too much vitriol out there to add to it. Your position on almost any political or religious subject is not going to convince anyone on the other side to change their position on the given subject. All it's going to do is cause an argument where everyone will believe they're right and the other person is wrong.
Yesterday, a couple of friends of mine and I decided to take a hike along the Pacific Crest Trail west of Wrightwood, CA. Those of you who know me well, know that this wasn't just a planned hike, but also a geocaching excursion. We do this all the time.
We started our hike, heading up to the first geocache. There were some high clouds in the sky, but they weren't really blocking the sun much so it was a warm day, perfect hiking/geocaching weather.
The first cache took the most time, mostly because we didn't find it right away and so resorted to the hint which threw us off of our game. At one point, I spotted a rattlesnake in a rock crevasse near the cache. I wasn't quite sure what I was looking at, at the time, but once it moved and rattled, I made a hasty retreat. Eventually we spotted the cache and moved on down the trail. I took the first shot from that cache spot.
As the day went on, we found a variety of caches, stopped for a quick bite to eat and to allow one of my friend's dog to rest her feet in the shade. The sun had heated up the trail and it was rather hot for her out there. At the next to last cache, we ended up soaking her feet quite extensively, then started back down the road that paralleled the Pacific Crest Trail. By taking the road back, we shaved about a mile and a half off of our return hike, still getting a nice 5.34 mile hike in.
There was a cache alongside the road and by this time, we could tell it would be better to rest the dog here. Her owner stayed with her while my other friend and I hiked the rest of the way along the road to retrieve the car. By the time we got back to the pullout, our friend had found the last cache.
In reality, this wasn't planned to be our last cache, but it worked out that way, because sometimes things happen. When we go geocaching, our unwritten rule is, whoever retrieves the cache needs to replace it. We do this because that person knows where it was exactly hidden. I've been in a group where another person re-hid the cache and we accidentally lost it because he put it where he thought I'd found it and ended up dropping it down a hole where it was non-retrievable.
As our friend returned the cache, he decided to place a rock on top of the cache to keep it in place and to add an additional layer of camouflage to the hide. Had he not done that, I wouldn't be writing this story and we would have gotten a couple of more cache finds before we called it a day.
The rattlesnake, lying nearby, took exception to my friend placing that rock there, and bit my friend on the hand. The snake had been there all along, but for whatever reason, didn't make its presence known when he retrieved the cache, nor did it rattle when he replaced the cache. It just bit him when he tried to place the rock and then rattled. Biting and then rattling, I think, is fairly typical of baby rattlers, which this one was. The photo is not the rattler in question, just another rattlesnake that I've encountered while out geocaching.
Our first order of business was calming our friend down and then getting him to a local hospital. We decided to take him to Loma Linda, which was the closest and also the best equipped hospital in the area to handle snake bites. Coincidentally, my other friend with us had been bitten by a rattlesnake a couple of years ago. I mentioned it, in this post from my other blog.
Needless to say, we got him down off the mountain and at the hospital in 45 minutes without having to drive recklessly in the process. And it is amazing how many people you get to bypass at the emergency room door by say those two magical words, rattlesnake bite. We got pushed to the front of the line very quickly, they took his vitals and got us into the emergency room right away. As of this writing, he's still in the hospital, undergoing treatment but appears to be improving.
What this leads to is a public service announcement. Snakes are out there and they are common. I overheard a nurse in the ER say the hospital is getting between 1 to 2 snakebites victims per week. And I have to say we're fairly careful, yet one of us still got bit yesterday. Things happen, so be prepared, be calm should it happen and seek medical attention right away.
Well, once again an entire month has passed and I haven't written anything about anything and yet I have a wealth of material to write all sorts of pieces. It's a good thing P.J. puts out his monthly challenge, otherwise I wouldn't be posting anything here.
The month of June has closed and last month's challenge was vehicles. In reality, I wasn't sure if I'd see 5 different kinds of vehicles over the course of the month, but I figured I'd give this a go. Many times, I'll not even think about the theme and then when it comes time to put the post together, the photos just jump out at me. That's pretty much what happened this month. Dictionary.com identifies the word vehicle as
"any means in or by which someone travels or something is carried or conveyed; a means of conveyance or transport: a motor vehicle; space vehicles."
I decided to take this literally, which means you're going to see some traditional kinds of vehicles and some non-traditional vehicles as well. So, without further ado, here's my contribution to the theme of vehicle.
1. Train show
Nearing the end of the school year, I was approached by one of my students who gave me some tickets to a model train show which was held at the Ontario Convention Center, just south of our school. Model train owners take their vehicles very seriously as they strive to make realistic layouts in which to run their trains around. This engine was being run on a modular layout, which means each module had to conform to certain standards so they would all connect together to form one large layout.
2. In flight
I will be the first one to admit, that I just got plain lucky on this shot. There are times when I want to believe that I'm a great photographer, but I know my craft and skill pale in comparison to many other photographers I've seen on Flicker and elsewhere. The wings of the bee are the vehicle in this shot and I've been hoping ever since I took this shot several years ago, to replicate it. I have had varying degrees of success over the years and I finally was able to get this bee hovering near the flowers.
The trick is your depth of field and a fast shutter speed. You need a fairly large depth of field to make sure everything stays in focus and you also need a fast shutter speed to slow down the beating of the bee's wings. I felt, with this shot, that focus was more important and so the wings are just a blur, but I got the bee hovering near the flowers, so I'll count that as a victory.
3. 30s era Packard
I love old cars. If I had an unlimited supply of funds, I think I'd own several different cars from various time periods. But I'd own them so I could drive them around. Nothing's more depressing, I think, than to know that people own classic cars like this and then they just keep them housed in warehouses or in their garages for only themselves or a few select friends to enjoy.
I think half the enjoyment of vehicles like this is the stares you can get as you drive around town in a car like this. I know I'm very guilty of doing that exact same thing. I've pulled out my camera from time to time to take photos and I've had people actually slow down so I could get a good shot of their car.
A couple of years ago, when my son and I were camping in Zion National Park, there was a group of car aficionados who belonged to a Franklin car club. They would drive their cars around to promote the club and to enjoy their cars and for others to enjoy them as well. That particular year, they were doing a circle tour of southern Utah and northern Arizona.
I spotted this 30s era Packard in the parking lot at out local community center when I went to vote in early June. I didn't have my camera with me when I went to vote, so I voted, went home, then came back and it was fortunately still there.
4. Abandoned truck
In early June, I helped a friend with his trek on the John Muir Trail. I'm not in shape to hike 211 miles in 14 days, but I was willing to help him shuttle his truck up to the exit point for the hike and then take him around to the starting point in Yosemite National Park.
After we dropped off his truck at Whitney Portal which is at the base of Mt. Whitney, we then worked our way up the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada, camping near Mammoth Lakes, CA and Lee Vining, before camping the last night in Tuolumne Meadows, in Yosemite.
One of the days was devoted to geocaching and sightseeing. One of the places I'd never been before was Bodie, CA, which is the official historic ghost town of California. It's located out in the middle of nowhere off of Highway 395, close to the California/Nevada state line. The ghost town is kept in "arrested decay" meaning they don't let things get too bad that they collapse.
As I look at this shot, you can't help but wonder what kinds of stories this old truck could tell. It's not conveying anything today, cargo-wise, but it probably helped someone out in the town of Bodie many years ago.
5. Friendship
The vehicle for this shot is the Internet. This is my friend Steve on the left and that grizzled old fart on the right is me. Steve and I met in the fall of 1984 when I started teaching at Cucamonga Middle School, so we've now known each other for 30 years.
About 14 years ago, Steve left the school and moved to Visalia, California to pursue teaching at the community college level. Had this happened 100 years ago, the friendship would have probably ended. Postal service might have conveyed some letters back and forth, but we probably would never have seen each other again.
Because of instant communication now available to us, friendships like this can continue on. Through my travels around the state, mostly while camping, I've been through or near Visalia enough times that we've been able to see each other several times. I can count four times for sure: once when my son and I were camping in Sequoia National Park, once when I was taking my daughter up to school in Stockton, CA, once when my wife and I were coming home from Stockton after visiting my daughter and this weekend after I finished helping my son move into his new place in Merced, California.
Steve and I have maintained our friendship via email, and will continue to do so in the future. I spent an hour and a half with him and his lovely wife Joan Monday afternoon having lunch while we caught up on what all of our kids were doing. It might have been longer, except that Steve had a class to teach at his school, but I'm sure there will be other opportunities for us to get together again in the future.
And that's my addition to P.J.'s photo blogging theme of vehicles this month. Please stop by his blog page and see how others interpreted the theme vehicles.
This post will probably ramble, so if you want to stop reading now, that's OK with me. Sometimes, I can't even read other people's rambles. The title of this blog is A Photo a day. The actual URL reads a photoortwoaday because aphotoaday was already taken on Blogger. Not like that really matters because I had high hopes when I first started and then life got in the way.
For example, it's been 16 days since my one and only post for this year. I could make excuses and say I've been busy playing with my new lens and that would be partially true. But I'm not sure it's that honest. True, I have been doing a lot of different things but one of them has been playing computer games. Yeah, I've set up our old computer in the back bedroom and all three of us (the boys of the family) have been using the computer to play various games.
So I've gotten lazy if we want to be perfectly honest and I need to get away from that. I've actually been timing myself on the "gaming" computer and trying to limit myself to an hour at a time. That doesn't always work, but it's a start in the right direction. Some might say a better start would be to not play games at all. Yeah, well there's that, but I find computer games entertaining and relaxing.
But to get back to my photo a day project. Three years ago, I started a photo project called 365. The purpose was to get people to go out and try and take a photo every single day for an entire year. Well, I succeeded in that endeavor and continued on for a second straight year. 730 days later, I posted my first "filler" shot, a shot not taken on that particular date.
I started a third year on January 1st, 2013, but it eventually ran out of steam sometime in May of that year. I couldn't keep up a pace of a photo a day, nor did I want to at that point, so I quit. I had personal reasons for starting the project in 2011 and those reasons didn't exist anymore, so it was time to let go of the 365 Project. But, in case you haven't been paying close attention, I've decided to start up the 365 project again.
It's a little bit more loose fitting in that I won't be adhering to the photo taken on that date. I want my shots to be quality shots. I say that as I posted a photo of my spaghetti sauce cooking on the stove for today's shot, taken with an iPad and not my regular camera. Don't ask, it's just a long story. However, most of the shots I've taken and posted so far this year, I feel are quality shots, which is what I'm aiming for this year.
Every year I put together a calendar for my parents and my father-in-law. My parent's calendar is easier from a photographic standpoint because my two sisters get two thirds of the calendar and I get the other third, so finding enough family photos for four months is pretty easy. Finding family photos for an entire year is a little more difficult, especially when one person isn't highly represented.
Because my wife works longer hours than I do, she's harder to get into photos, so I've made a concentrated effort to get her into more photos. I've even started a series of photos entitled "Grow Old with Me." Each of these so far have just featured her hands. I'll probably include other shots in this series that feature more than just her hands, but for now, please enjoy these three from the series.
My favorite singer, John Denver, wrote a song to his wife Annie. I can't write music, but I can take photos. This series is Marsha's Song.
I have been challenged by my blogger friend P.J. to a post of randomness. 11 random thoughts about me, 11 questions from P.J. Then I'm supposed to challenge 11 other bloggers to do the same thing. That's the tough part, which won't get done, and you'll see why in the randomness below. I hope not to repeat any randomness that P.J. might have already stated, but that's the randomness I guess.
So here goes.
1. There are 58 National Parks in the United States. I have been to 24 of them. I will not list them all here as that would be tedious. At one time I had a goal of seeing them all. Whether that will happen all depends now upon how healthy I can stay over the next 20 to 30 years.
2. I think most people who read this blog don't realize that I am happily married. I post a lot of photos of my kids, but very few of my wife. I've been married for 26 years and they have been the most fulfilling years of my life. I would not be the person I am with her. Therefore, every photo in this blog will feature her.
3. I have had two concussions that I know of, but it could be more. Perhaps the dain bramage associated with concussions has knocked that out of my memory. First one was when I was 8 or so and I got run over by a neighbor while we were playing kickball in the street. I was knocked unconscious and lay there for a long time. I have no recollection of this incident outside of what my parents have told me about it. The second time was between 8th and 9th grade in a bicycle incident. Not saying I wouldn't have gotten a concussion had I been wearing a helmet, but I wish they had been mandatory back then, especially with all the evidence coming out recently over head injuries in sports.
4. I have broken my right pinkie finger twice and my left arm once, all between February 1972 and July 1972. Let's just say that the last part of my 8th grade year, I was always splinted up in some way. I broke and dislocated my pinkie playing basketball. Three days after the doctor took the splint off of my finger, I bumped into a friend of mine and broke the finger again in a different place. That splint lasted until the end of the school year. My left arm was broken in the above mentioned bicycle accident. As an aside, I am still very good friends with the girl who I bumped into when I rebroke my finger. She doesn't know about the incident, unless she figures it out by reading this. Also, when I hold my palm up on my right hand, my right pinkie doesn't meet with the other fingers. These are the only bones I've ever broken.
5. I have cool looking eyes. They are bluish gray with gold flecks in them. Looking at some photos of my youngest son, he has similar eyes.
6. I do not read very many blogs. In fact, I don't think I could tag 11 other bloggers to get them to repeat the process, so I won't be doing that part.
7. I used to do counted cross stitch. I entered several of them in the Los Angeles County Fair and one year, my design took home a first place ribbon. Our home is decorated with many of my designs, most from patterns that I used to buy. When people visit and see them for the first time, they always compliment my wife over her stitchery and she always has to refer them back to me. I don't do this anymore because it aggravates my carpal tunnel syndrome. My hands go to sleep in minutes after starting to stitch.
8. There has been a teacher in my family since 1896. I consider myself a fourth generation teacher. My dad was a teacher as were both of his parents. I have a newspaper clipping from 1896 that shows my great aunt as the teacher in a one room school house. There is a little doe-eyed kindergartener sitting in the front row - my grandmother. She was being taught by her oldest sister, who was basically a full generation older than she was. My daughter has continued on the tradition.
9. If I wanted to recreate my proposal to my wife, I couldn't. I proposed to her as we floated over Fantasyland in Disneyland on the skyway. That ride doesn't exist anymore. Why Fantasyland? It was too noisy on the Tomorrowland side, so I waited until we rode through the Matterhorn into Fantasyland where it was a little quieter and then popped the question.
10. My favorite painter is Pablo Picasso and my favorite photographer is Ansel Adams. I could look at paintings by Picasso or photographs by Adams for hours on end. When we go to the Los Angeles County of Art, I always head to the Picasso area first. After Adams died, I went to a showing of 100 of his photographs. He is a fine landscape photographer, but I don't think he could do portraits very well. In my opinion, they lacked something that the rest of his photographs had.
11. My favorite singer when I was in high school was John Denver. I saw him in concert twice, once at the Universal Amphitheater and once at the Inglewood Forum. The concert at the Forum was in the round and he was on a revolving stage, so he faced the entire audience at one time or another. He put on a very good show both times.
Well, those are my random thoughts about me. P.J. also posted 11 questions that I'm supposed to answer too, so here those are.
1. What is your dream vacation spot and why?
One of the national parks I have not visited is Arches National Park in Utah. I would like to go there, spend an entire day sitting near Delicate Arch and watch the light play over it, all the while taking photos. I guess, in the long run, any place I haven't been to yet would be a dream vacation for me. I love to travel and going somewhere new would be incredibly fun for me.
2. Where did you come up with the name of your blog?
At the time, I was doing my 365 project, taking at least one photo every single day. So this is another part of it - A Photo a Day.
3. How do you define blogging success?
I think success is dependent on the blogger. What some people would consider success, others would consider failure. As long as I continue to write here, I consider that a success however.
4. What is your favorite type of "going out" entertainment?
Getting outdoors and hiking with someone, or geocaching with a friend is what I enjoy the most.
5. How many states have I lived in?
I was born in Indiana, lived there until I was 3 and a half, then my parents moved us out to California where I've lived ever since. Interestingly, it wasn't until I was in my 20s before I stopped thinking about Indiana as "back home."
6. What is my favorite holiday and why?
This may sound selfish, but I like President's day. It happens right around my birthday which usually means I get a three day weekend out of the deal. I kind of like that.
7. What your favorite number and why?
13 My favorite football team is the Miami Dolphins and my favorite football player is Dan Marino who wore 13 during his career. I also like the fact that most people view 13 as unlucky. That makes it good for me.
8. What would be your dream vehicle to own?
Pretty much anything from the 1950s would be really cool to own.
9. What is your favorite hobby?
Geocaching. Some would say it's an obsession of mine, but I enjoy participating in the silly game. It keeps me busy and out of trouble for the most part.
10. How do you try and keep your blog fresh?
My first blog was entitled Electronic Breadcrumbs and it was solely about geocaching. After awhile, you can only talk about geocaching for so long before you end up repeating yourself. I found I was doing that and started to write less and less on that blog. That's one of the reasons I started to write this blog. It's about anything I want it to be, which keeps it fresh. I don't think I'd write a specialty blog again.
11. Where do you do your best thinking?
When I'm out mowing the lawn. Mowing the lawn is pretty mind numbing, so I think about all sorts of things while I'm mowing the lawn. It keeps me occupied and seems to shorten the process of getting the grass cut.
Well, there you have it. That's probably way more than you ever needed to know about me. I'd love to hear your feedback, preferably here as opposed to on Facebook, but I'll take it either place.
It's that time of the month again when P.J.'s monthly blogging challenge comes around. This month's challenge was people. The hardest problem I had with this theme was narrowing it down to just 5 photos. Here's my take on the theme for this month.
1. Grocery Shopping
As most of you know, I enjoy street photography. That doesn't mean it comes easy to me. It just means that I enjoy it and when I come across a good opportunity, I'll take it. Street photography is easier when the area is busy. The likelihood of a bad encounter lowers, I think when there's more people around, but that doesn't mean it's not with some risks. I've never had anyone give me the evil eye, but then again, most of the time, I usually shoot from behind or the side. Here's one I took that I included in another blog entry a couple of days ago. I was walking from our auto mechanic's after dropping a car off to be serviced when I saw this guy riding his bicycle. It was clear that he was coming from the grocery store based upon the several items in his basket. Just something about him made me want to take his photo. It was a quick decision and this was one of only two shots I got of him.
2. Shoes
At my school, I run a photo club. We have weekly meetings where I will discuss a particular photographic technique, show them examples of what I'm trying to get across to them and then take them out on a photo walk on campus where they can practice the technique. As of this moment I have upwards of 35 students in the club, so they are a handful at times, but it's also enjoyable to watch them experiment. I don't have any set requirements on the type of gear they can use, so many of them are using tablets or their phones as their main camera. In my opinion, that's fine. The purpose of the club is to get them comfortable using their equipment, not limit it to just those who have full-fledged DSLR cameras. While out on a photo walk a couple of weeks ago, I noticed several kids standing in a group. Obviously, the variety of styles of their shoes is what struck me and I set this shot up. Back in the day, we had white Converses and Black Converses, either high top or low top with white shoelaces, and that was it. I like the new colors.
3. Family
Since this post comes one day after Thanksgiving, this entry wouldn't be complete without a photo of some members of my family. Veteran's Day weekend, I drove up to the Bay Area to visit with my daughter. My older son came along as well. I'm pretty much resigned to the fact that my daughter is a Northern California resident from now on. She has a job teaching fourth grade in Milpitas, California and I don't see her jumping ship to find a job closer to home down here. My son graduated this past June from college and has been looking for work over most of the summer. He has found employment just this week with a firm located in Whittier, CA, close to home, but still a bit of a commute. If this pans out into a long term type of employment, I can see where sometime in the future he'll move out into his own place, probably closer to his employment. My youngest son is soon to be attending college and getting his life choices in order. The nest is slowly emptying out. I took this photo of the two older ones while we were walking toward an amazing sandwich shop in Santa Clara. The visit up there that weekend was all too short, but she will be coming down here for Christmas, so I'll see her again shortly.
4. Cool
As noted above, I enjoy street photography. I kind of wish I'd actually stopped and talked with this guy as I really liked his style and I think he would have made a nice addition to my 100 Stranger project. It seems like hats of this type are coming back into style again after an almost 50 hiatus away from men wearing stylish hats in public. President John F. Kennedy is supposedly to blame for the decline in men wearing hats as it was reported that he didn't like wearing hats. It appears as if that's just an urban legend. However, as I read that article, I think he looks very odd wearing that top hat. Although those photos show he wore a hat, most photos of the President show him without a hat. The hat was just in decline for some time and it's easy to blame a young man with immense power for its demise. President Eisenhower, Kennedy's predecessor very rarely wore hats during his administration. Either way, it's kind of nice to see hats making a comeback. Where it used to be difficult to find a hat outside of specialty millinery stores, now it's common to find them in everyday stores such as Target. I found this guy soaking up some rays in front of a restaurant earlier this week. I later saw him after he'd taken off his jacket. He didn't look as cool then. The combination of hat and jacket made the shot.
5. Farmer's Market
I drove into Pasadena on Tuesday to do some geocaching and to also go on a photo walk with a friend of mine. We walked around Pasadena's City Hall and several other places. Around the corner from her house was this small farmer's market lined up on the sidewalk. It wasn't a very large farmer's market, but it did have a lot of photo ops and we spent close to a half an hour then taking shots. I'd taken a shot similar to this one looking over some onions and potatoes, but it was all an endless line of browns leading off into the distance, so after walking down the entire length of the market, we walked back and I spotted this shot that had a little more color in it.
And that pretty much wraps up another month of the photo blogging challenge. Once again, here's a link to P.J.'s page where, if you scroll down to the bottom, you'll see a list of all the other bloggers who are participating in this month's challenge. Check them out as there's a lot of really nice shots in there.
I can remember growing up and reading all about the Jeffrey Pine tree on the top of Sentinel Dome in Yosemite National Park. The tree survived many lightning strikes during its lifetime. In the early days, there used to be a parking lot near the base of the dome and all people had to do was to get out of their car, hike up the side of the gently sloping dome to get to the pine tree.
Sometime in the 60s, the National Park Service wised up and removed the parking lot. The formed a small pullout parking lot alongside the road, turning a 200 yard hike into about a mile and a half hike. It reduced the number of visitors to the dome and probably added some years to the lifespan of the tree, but nothing could really save it from the ravages of the drought in 1978-79. Sometime during that time period, it died.
I think I hiked to the top of the dome three times in the 60s and 70s before it died. For whatever reason, I just fell in love with that tree and its surroundings. I think one of the reasons I did, was because every time I went up there, the lighting was perfect. Lots of clouds, yet blue sky poking out, the sun behind the clouds lent itself perfectly to the flat light needed to take good photos up there. As you can see from the shot I took in the summer of 2000, the lighting wasn't the best, although the clouds were still in place.
Another reason the tree was special, was because of its tenacity for survival. Jeffrey pine trees in a forest environment, usually will tower over 100 feet tall, but this one was about 15 feet at the most, stunted because of high winds and its exposure on the top of an 8000 foot dome. I don't believe the park service even knows how many times it was hit by lightning over the course of its lifetime. It had a very hard life, yet it endured. That made the tree special, in my opinion.
In the summer of 1975 I took one of the best shots I've ever taken of that tree. Later in the year, I processed the photo into a black and white image and used it as part of my final project for my photography class that I took in high school. I got an A on the assignment and the instructor really loved what I had done with that one shot. I've framed the tree in a vintage frame and it hangs on the wall in my bedroom. I love to wake up in the morning and look at the shot. It's like looking at photo of an old friend when they were in their prime of live.
After I found out the tree had died, I avoided going up there. In my heart, I knew it was dead, but I didn't want to see it, but in the summer of 2000, with my three kids in tow, we hiked out to Sentinel Dome and said goodbye to an old friend. I've since read that a couple of years ago, the tree finally fell. It was not much of a fall, being only 15 feet tall or so, but it was the final thing it did so many years after its death. Once I get back to Yosemite again, I will make another pilgrimage up to the dome to pay my respects to a friend long since gone. The view will be different, because the tree will be gone, but I will still take in the view and revel in the day. It doesn't get much better that standing on the top of a dome in Yosemite National Park.
In the past 6 days, I've hiked almost 10 miles total on three separate occasions. Well, hiking probably isn't a very good word, more like walking on level ground, but it's a start. I used to do a lot more hiking up into the hills and I've gotten away from that over the past year or so. This past week, I decided that I needed to get some more exercise back into my life and I've started to go out on walks again.
Having the stamina back is a good thing. Today was my longest walk, 4.6 miles on fairly level ground along a biking trail in Riverside - the Santa Ana River Trail. I went out fairly early, starting at 8:35, and had put in 2.05 miles in less than an hour. That doesn't sound like a very fast pace, but I was also geocaching at the time, so I did some stops to find the cache. I got my heart pumping and the sweat was flowing so I felt good about it.
I do this for a couple of reasons. With our camping trip coming up in 10 days, I wanted to build up some stamina for some of the hikes that I plan on doing with my kids. Last year I was totally outclassed by my son at Bryce Canyon. I expected to be. He was 16 years old and I'm just old. Still, I had stamina to do the same hikes he did, just at a slower pace. This year, with all three of the kids, I figure we'll do some hiking. Three years ago when my son and I were at Lassen there was so much snow in early July that many of the trails were still closed. I'm hoping with the below average snowfall this year that the trails will be open so we'll get in some good hikes.
The second reason for this is I want to lose some extra poundage I've put on over the past couple of years. This just makes sense from a health standpoint. I'm not done with all that I want to do in the course of my lifetime and I want to be able to enjoy these activities fully. I've seen a joke passed around the Internet recently that says, "I'm in shape. Round is a shape." I don't want to be that joke and so I walk and I hike.
And speaking of hiking - yeah, I know this will probably be a bad segue, but I wanted to do a shout out to an old high school friend of mine, Don Erickson. I met Don in 7th grade. We were in several classes together, throughout junior high and on to high school and we were both on the yearbook staff our senior year. I can remember Don being a very free spirit, one who would climb the school's flagpole on a whim. (Yeah, I remember that).
After high school, as most of us tend to do, we lost touch. I was very disappointed when he didn't come to our 10 year class reunion as he was one of the people that I wanted to find out how he been getting on. A couple of days ago, I discovered that he's walking across the United States to support Organ Donor Awareness. Right now he's somewhere in Pennsylvania. You can follow his progress on the Facebook page that he's set up to chart his progress. I've sent invites out to many of my friends from high school that I'm in touch with on Facebook, but I felt this might be a better way to reach a larger audience.
My thoughts and prayers are with you Don. Good luck and Godspeed.
Two days ago, on Wednesday July 11th, my wife officially has now put up with me for 25 years. To quote Lou Gehrig, I feel like I'm the luckiest man in the world. I can't imagine why anyone would want to put up with me for very long, let alone 25 years, so I guess I must be doing something right.
She is my best friend and I am very fortunate to have found her so many years ago. The ride has been fun, with many ups and a couple of downs, but it's not anywhere near the end. I'm enjoying it too much to ever get off. I only hope she can claim the same.
Our church held their 65th annual church fiesta this weekend. They always host it on Mother's Day weekend and it's the 2nd or 3rd largest event the city has each year. Many times in the past, we've been elsewhere, but in the past 10 years or so, we just enjoy the weekend, eating the great food, hanging out with friends and enjoying the live music played there.
My wife is in a jazz group called 11th Hour and two years ago they played at the fiesta to open up the Saturday that weekend. Small but appreciative crowds were on hand as is usually the case at noon on Saturday. The fiesta really gets hopping around dinner time both Friday and Saturday and it lasts all the way to 10PM both nights.
The past two years, I've played around with some long exposure settings on my camera. I really didn't know how to do it very well last year and was just getting 4 second exposures, mainly because I didn't know how to set my camera on the bulb setting. I fixed that over the past year, learning how to use my camera more and more in the manual setting.
This year, I got several shots that I'm quite pleased with. The second shot looks like a giant slinky about to tumble over a staircase. While, I'll never understand the fascination of spinning around and around in circles for five minutes and then throwing up (I exaggerate a little here), but the light trails on these things really lend themselves nicely to some interesting shots. There were no rollercoasters at the fiesta, so the thrill seekers had to be content with the spinning rides or the bumper cars.
Each year, our church makes a nice profit from the fiesta which helps funds the school there and other things throughout the year. Even in these tough economic times, it seems that people are willing to spend some money having a little fun in Claremont.
I have many friends, due to the social media giant Facebook, plus other sites. In fact, any site where there's a discussion board, you can learn about people that share similar interests. I've also been able to connect with a lot of long lost friends because of these social networks.
One thing I've found through the years is that people like to spout off on discussion boards about their political leanings. This, in my opinion, is a bad thing. Mainly because most of the time, all those political discussions do is cause arguments to start. And although a good flame war can be very entertaining from time to time, it's not something that I relish, nor something that I seek out.
So here's my plea to all of my friends and I fully expect to be flamed for this, but I'm going to say it anyway. Please keep your politics to yourself. Think about what you're posting. There's too much vitriol out there to add to it. Your position on almost any political or religious subject is not going to convince anyone on the other side to change their position on the given subject. All it's going to do is cause an argument where everyone will believe they're right and the other person is wrong.
I like you as a friend. I liked you when we were in school together. We talked about a lot of different things, but we really didn't talk about religion or politics. Those were the things we were told as kids that we shouldn't talk about. Hmmmm. Maybe our parents were right.
I would prefer to maintain these friendships in the coming years. Talking politics makes that more difficult. Social media has brought many of us closer together and helped us reconnect with our past friendships that we let drift apart over the years. I would really love it if I didn't know the political affiliations of my friends. I just want to be friends with them. Now, that might make me appear to be like an ostrich with its head buried in the sand. At the moment, that's OK with me.
