Picture Post, Sunday, July 9, 2006

I'm still trying to scan my old slides as I can fit a few in. Here are some that I have always liked.

Pic #1: You're probably sick of Florida pictures by now, but hey, I've lived here almost ten years. I've taken a LOT of pictures in ten years. This is the walkway to our favorite beach to go to and sit on the beach as opposed to sitting above the beach on a convenient bench without getting sand in our shoes. When we want to get sandy and go home with that crispy, salty, wind tunnel lookin' hair, we go to this beach just south of Sebastian Inlet in Indian River County. About a 30 minute drive for us to get here, but it's worth it. It's usually quiet and the beach is pretty wide here. Anyhoo, I like this photo because when I look at it, I get that feeling I have when walking on it for real. We LUUUV the beach. (Though we probably don't really go enough any more to justify that statement.)

Pic #2: This was taken in November of 1983. I had gone with Lovely Fiance (now Lovely Wife these almost 22 years) and her fambly to Tennessee for Thanksgiving. We were on the way back and I was driving. I had my camera handy and as we were entering Birmingham Alabama, the sky and the lights of the lamps and such inspired me to hold the camera in front of me, paparazzi style, and take this through the windshield. The colors and everything came out close to perfect. I even like the blurriness, the crookedness, and the light streaks from the too-slow shutter speed. (Ah, the days of trying for perfection with slow slide film. Sigh.)

Pic #3: Taken one evening close to sunset, way out in the country of northeastern Louisiana. Near a town called Farmerville. Lovely Fiance's Grandmother and Grandfather lived nearby. I thought the little guy was so cute.

Pic #4: Taken the same evening as the horse picture above. I liked the golden hour look the late day sun shone on this sign. Plus, if I'm not mistaken, this was, at the time, the only country road sign in the whole state of Louisiana that didn't have bullet holes in it.

Pic #5: This was a silhouette I took of the stern of the battleship USS Alabama, in Mobile, Alabama. It almost looks like a night shot. The flag and the bright reflections of the sun on the water make this picture for me. This would have been summer 1983.

Pic #6: This one was taken a few years ago here locally in Turkey Creek Sanctuary in Palm Bay, Florida. It's really interesting. If you click and make it larger, look at the not-yet-opened flowers in the puff ball on the right. The unopened ones look like a neat arrangement of colored stars or something. They would eventually open to look like the puff ball on the left. I just like the color and the other-worldliness of the unopened blooms.

I'll try to give y'all a break and write something tomorrow. My vacation is over. I've enjoyed all the photography, sleeping late, etc. I feel recharged a bit.

Am I Killin' Y'all?

Is it just too much with all the photos and photo talk? I hope not. I'm not fishing for comments here, but if you read this blog regularly, let me know ok? I can 'talk' more if I've gone overboard with the photos.

Did someone say photos? Here's a few more. I'm looking into the various photo sites but haven't found the right one for me yet.

Here we go again...

Pic #1: Surprise is the subject of this one. I had gone to a park a few miles south of our home and took a few photos. I haven't posted any here from that day yet, but after leaving this park, I drove down the road further, looking for interesting things. I got near the end of the road and pulled into someone's driveway to turn around. While switching from Drive to Reverse I looked up and saw this. I had seen the flag, but the carved palm tree, I hadn't noticed until I was right in front of it. Being the intrepid type, I risked life and limb and got out of the car and took this photo. I was not shot at for trespassing. Cool. Growing up in Louisiana can scar a guy.

Pic #2: Symmetry, color, and texture. But what the heck IS this? The side of an old rusty train bridge. One thing I hate about the limitations of space, I can't show you the whole series of photos. I took a bunch of shots around this bridge, thinking, isn't it a danger being so old and rusty? Shouldn't they tear it down to protect the public? Then about 4 minutes later, a train came zooming across this thing. I was about a hundred yards away by then. I'm glad. This thing must be sturdy, but it sure looks rickety.

Pic #3: Colors, and interesting shapes. This patriotic boat owner would be welcome in my home any time. There were flags all over it. This arrangement just caught my eye for some reason, so I went for it. It is a total liberation not to have to worry about film!

Pic #4: Texture. From the same train bridge as the purple one above. See why I thought this thing was rickety?

Pic #5: I had just finished my shots of yesterday's post's blue heron. Turned and took about 5 steps and I see this guy to my right. He was doing that whole fishing-bird-tai-chi-slow-motion thing here. They walk slowly, aim, and spear 'em a fish. I don't remember seeing one of these guys before. I love that his reflection is there too.

Later, dudes and dudettes.

267

The number of photos I took yesterday morning. Before noon.

In November 1987 Lovely Wife, Number One Daughter, Myself, Sis In Law, Mother and Father In Law went to Honolulu for a few days. My Father in Law was burning his frequent flyer miles, and I worked for Delta Airlines at the time and we basically flew for free.

The five or so days we were there, I took 7 rolls of 36 exposure slide film. Tally: roughly 250 photos covering the whole time we were there.

This new Nikon I bought cost more than any camera I've ever bought, by a long shot.

In years past, I was fairly stingy with my film. I never had enough money to just burn through rolls of film like the photographers at National Geographic do. Actually, they don't buy their film so they can just burn that stuff up. Not that I was poor, but with kids, you ALWAYS have something more important to spend money on. Film and developing are luxuries so I was always careful to try to make every shot count.

But with this digital camera, the cost is mostly up front. I have a 2GB memory card in it and taking jpegs at the largest, finest setting, I can get about 580 photos on that one memory card.

I was up early in the morning, so I grabbed the camera and set off. Would just park the car and wander. From about 8:30 to 11:30.

I got home and downloaded them onto the computer and saw that I had taken 267 photos yesterday morning. I was stunned. But boy, I had some fun too. I was in the zone and just flowed along. I think I got some keepers too. The care with each shot is there like with film, but now I have the ability to freely press the button. Try bracketing the exposures. Same shot, different focus point. All kinds of stuff I wouldn't try in the past.

The biggest advantage of the way I used to do things is that I'm really good at getting the right exposure FOR ME. I do document things like birthdays and such, but when I'm just doing it for me, I don't try to please anyone else. I go for the colors, exposure, composition, etc., that please just me. If someone else likes them, great, but this is just personal fun for me. Like playing guitar. I don't try to please others with it, but if that happens anyway, bonus.

What do I look for when wandering with no specific subject? Beautiful scene. Interesting shapes. Unique creatures. Surprises. Colors. Faces, though I didn't encounter many people on my excursions. Textures. Symmetry. Humor. Strange juxtapositions. Sad/creepy. And of course, light, light, light.

Pic #1: This one falls under the category of unique creatures. A great blue heron. Stretching. I've seen people, cats, and dogs stretch, but this is the first time I've ever seen a bird stretch.

Pic #2: I would file this under interesting shapes. At first glance you go, "What IS that?", but then you see it's table umbrellas and a channel marker for the waterway.

Pic #3: I would file this under symmetry. Maybe also good color. This is under US1 in Melbourne, right next to a big marina.

Pic #4: I'm thinkin' interesting juxtaposition. What say you?

Pic #5: Color, definitely color.

Pic #6: Like most men, I'm easily distracted by shiny objects.

Toodles.

Cheeze Whiz There Big Guy!

You Mean You're Posting More Pictures?!

I'm afraid so. This is my vacation, remember? I don't really have adequate cash flow for a trip right now, so I'm jus' chillin' wit my Home Girl (Lovely Wife) as much as possible.

Getting out and taking photos is my vacation this year. I reckon all y'all will just have to deal with it.

Plus coming up with clever posts might be too much like work right now, so as long as Blogger will let me upload a few pics, that's what you're gonna get.

Today's themes: Birds and interesting colors. I've encountered both quite a bit this week. Again, these are not cropped or manipulated. Straight out of the camera, except for resizing them for upload to Blogger.

Picture #1: I went down to this area specifically to take pictures of this old pier that hasn't been repaired from the hurricanes of 2004. The vulture (or maybe buzzard, I'm not sure but this guy WAS waiting for something to die) was one of many in this area on Monday. Not exactly sure why he was there, but he added interest to the broken down pier.

A couple of white ibis. The things are all over the place, and they are so exotic looking that even after living here nine years, I still stop and stare. They are pretty skittish and won't let you approach very close. They show up in our front yard after it rains, looking for worms and bugs.

You just don't know what you'll see just hanging around on the side of the road down here.

I had the wrong lens on when I encountered this guy. He was spooking easily, so I just used the lens I had on the camera.

I was fascinated by the vibrant green of this grass, but as I was pointing the camera around I came across the cup. Both colors are so 'neon' that this image of grass and garbage works for me.

I did not transgress, but the yellow stood out so starkly in the evening sun.



Until tomorrow, folks...

Aaaaand, They're Off!

The Space Shuttle was finally able to get outa here yesterday afternoon.

Lovely Wife and I went over to 'the beachside' to the barrier island off the shore here, to a city just north of the Melbourne Causeway with the spiffy name of Indialantic. They have a nice new beach park over there called Futch Park. Actually it is Howard E. Futch Memorial Park at Paradise Beach but that's a bit much for this ol' Louisiana public school educated boy to get his mouth around. Or my fingers in this case. As slow as my drawl is, I can probably type it faster than I can say it.

But I digress.

Anyway, here are some pics from the park and the shuttle launch. These are straight out of the camera, except I made them smaller for uploading.

Picture #1: Gratuitous scene (in living color!) depicting how pretty the day was.

Picture #2: A wide angle shot for perspective, but you can see the flame of the shuttle's engines dead center, just above the horizon.

Picture #3: Shuttle's movin' on up.

Picture #4: Shuttle's way up above the clouds now.

Picture #5: This one I obviously modified. I took one of my telephoto shots, blew it up as big as possible yet holding a little detail, of the solid boosters releasing from the shuttle. You'll have to click and enlarge this one to make any sense of it.

This was such fun. We just left the house about 1:45pm and then drove up A1A and were able to park in Futch Park's lot, though it was full and we invented a new parking place. Stood there on the wooden ramp down to the beach from about 2:15pm until the launch at 2:38pm.

Everyone on the beach was cheering, clapping, and yelling for them to make it. It was cool to see so many people out to cheer the guys along.

By the time we got back to our car and turned on the radio, the shuttle was over Europe already. They played the commander advising NASA that they were in their preliminary orbit. Jeesh. Took us longer to get to our car than for them to cross the Atlantic Ocean.

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I then grilled a bunch of stuff and we ate ourselves into paralysis.

Good times, good times.

Tuesday, July 4, 2006

May God greatly bless all the American service men and women, wherever they may be today, for their service to this country. God bless all of our veteran service men and women.

Happy Birthday America! 230 years old. Where DOES the time go? (pinching his cheek and giving it a good shake)

And you don't look a day over 200.

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On Monday evening, Lovely Wife and I went and took care of a few errands. Some stuff for our church, fresh can of propane for the grill and the charring of animal flesh to take place today, etc.

Then we went for a drive so that I could play with my camera and take a few pics. We went south on US1 and slowly drove back north whenever we saw potential photo ops. I've been reading and rereading the user manual for the Nikon D70s. It has a mind boggling array of options. After much trial and error around the homestead, I think I have dialed in the settings that will allow me to take photos as close to a rich, saturated slide film as I can. I'm blown away with the results, which I now share some of with you and will for the next few days.

In the hour or so we were out taking pictures, I came across two American flags. Here's number one, taken at Fisherman's Landing, a park on the Indian River Lagoon here in Brevard County. This is about 10 miles south of where we live.


This one is in a neighborhood that is directly on the mainland side of the Indian River Lagoon. The people who live closest to the water live in homes directly behind me. I'm standing in the road here to get this shot. I've put these trees on the blog before, but the flag was a really nice touch. The lady and her kids who live in the home that this is their river access passed by and turned into their driveway as I was standing there (before I got in the road). She was barely creeping in her white Honda mini van, and gave me the evil eye. How dare someone driving a Camry from the last century pull off the side of the road to take pictures in OUR neighborhood! We moved way out here to get away from rif raf like you! You couldn't afford to live in our garage. Well, she didn't actually say all of that, but she looked it. I feel like a real artist now. I've suffered for my art. (Mama, that soccer mom's lookin' at me all mean like)



This is the pavilion that the little flag above was mounted on. When we first moved here, and I had an hour for lunch at work, I came and sat right here on many, many days, to eat. Just thought I would share. This is such a nice, peaceful place. I sure as heck couldn't have this kind of view for lunch anywhere else I've ever lived. Over the couple of years I ate lunch here, I saw dozens of dolphins frolicking in the water right there by the pier.



Ok. I'm breaking down here and putting a recent photo of Lovely Wife and Myself here. I took this of her on Sunday evening.



This may scare away both of my readers, but here goes. Lovely Wife took this of me on Monday. This is on the pier you can see on the left in the pavilion photo above. I'm not that scared of the sun, I did have on sun glasses. I'm just reenacting my wimpitude in the photo below this one from my childhood.



This was Big Brother, Big Sis, and Myself at Cypress Gardens in 1966. Compare me blocking the sun below, and in the photo above. Yeah, you've seen this photo on here before, but this made more sense than linking the other one.



God bless all of you, and have a great Fourth Of July!

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Addendum: Monday was an ABSOLUTELY stunningly beautiful day. Too bad they couldn't have tried to launch the Space Shuttle yesterday evening. It was the kind of day that makes you realize why so many people move to Florida.

A Little O' This And A Little O' That

This
We had thunderstorms all day Sunday. No shuttle launch. At least they scrubbed it way ahead of time so I didn't have to get out.

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That
I guess I never really believed it when people claimed that rainy days made their arthritis or whatever hurt.

I'm a believer now.

I was in agony with my back on Sunday. I mean, hard to get up out of a chair, straighten up and walk across the room kind of hurting.

I could have sat in my chair all afternoon and continued to ignore the urge to go and write a rough draft of a blog post.

But Lovely Wife came in and turned the TV to the movie Steel Magnolias. And there are few things in this world that can clear a room of the men-folk like the movie Steel Magnolias. Being from Louisiana makes it that much harder to watch (it was supposedly set there). Julia Roberts's southern accent in this movie is absolutely criminal.

The only good thing about Steel Magnolias is that Julia Roberts dies in it.

And maybe Olympia Dukakis. She's pretty cool in everything she's in.

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This
Before she started watching the movie, we had been flippin' channels and I noticed that the National Spelling Bee was on ESPN 2.

Huh?

I remember all the way back to the good ol' days when you could count on ESPN to show sports. National Spelling Bee? I mean, really, people!

Don't get me wrong, I think spelling bees are cool. I am a big fan of edumacation and learnin' and whatnot, and when I see twelve year old kids spelling ten dollar words I've never even heard spoken aloud before, I have hope for America.

But a spelling bee on a sports network? Yeah. Whatever.

I also LOVE to watch the Travel Channel. Especially any show with Samantha Brown. (Great Vacation Homes, Great Hotels, etc.) But in the past coupla years, they've shown poker tournaments on there.

I say again. Huh?

I understand that the show might be geographically located in Lost Wages (Los Vegas) Nevada, or some other town that people like to travel to, but all they show is the inside of the building where the guys are playing poker. They might as well be in some warehouse in Peoria for all the TV audience knows. What's THAT got to do with travel?

Nothing. Nothing at all.

Who wants to watch poker on the Travel Channel for goodness's sake?

And as far as I'm concerned, who wants to watch poker, period? Hey. Maybe they could make them play to a two minute play clock like those street chess players do. Quick move. Slap the clock! Other guy quick move. Slap the clock!

Yeah. But it's still poker, you know? Lame.

I'd watch chess WAY before I'd sit and watch poker on TV.

The world has turned upside down.

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That
Speaking of poker, I hate it when people wear sunglasses indoors. I might have gone to Louisiana public schools, but I DO understand that these guys are trying to keep the others from getting a read on what they're looking at, so many of them wear sun glasses.

But I think their Mamas didn't raise 'em right. I don't care why they feel they need to wear them.

People wearing sunglasses indoors are up to no good, I tell ya!

Unless of course they have a valid medical condition necessitating this. And a note from their doctor attesting to this fact must be on their person at all times. Subject to spot checks by me, of course.

Then it's ok.

But that many poker guys can't all have this same eye condition, therefore they annoy me.

I say they're shifty and up to something.

Picture Post, Sunday, July 2, 2006

I have posted some pictures over the weeks that were taken in the Palm Bay/Melbourne Florida area. Here are a few more. This is a pretty area and I like to get out and go to parks and such. These were all taken with my new camera.

Listen up, cause I'm gonna learn y'all somethin'. Something that most residents of Palm Bay, Florida do not know. There is actually a body of water called Palm Bay that the city was named after. It is part of the Indian River Lagoon which is our section of the Intracostal Waterway. It is up against US1 in 'the river'. Locals call the Indian River Lagoon 'the river'.

And here you go. A picture of Palm Bay, the body of water. I took this Friday evening. I plan to go back here one morning. The way the bay is situated, I need to take photos with the morning light, not the evening light. But this one came out ok, if a bit boring. This is looking westward from a Castaway Point, which is one of the 'arms' of land sticking out to help form the bay.

This is from the same park as the one above, just on the other side of the park looking eastward out over the Indian River Lagoon. This is Castaway Point Park. This is a nice park, and has a nice tucked away feeling to it.

I took this standing a few steps from the spot I took the above photo. I just moved to my left a bit. I have always loved this tree; we came across it one day soon after moving here when we were first exploring the area. THAT is a tree with character. The old building in the distance was a restaurant, but was badly damaged in the hurricanes of the past two years, and hasn't been repaired.

This next one isn't anything special. I like it though because I've always been a 'wide angle' guy as opposed to a 'telephoto' guy. Well, the new camera came with a nice telephoto zoom in the kit and I like the way it gives the illusion of compressing the field of view. It doesn't really, but that's the way our minds perceive it. Anyway, it was a warm, breezy, GORGEOUS evening, and I envied this couple in the boat a little.

This is one more photo from the set I took on Thursday, June, 22. I have posted a couple from that evening out with Lovely Wife, but I wanted to add this one because I just loved the colors. Sitting and watching sunsets like this one(and all the others) is a great way to decompress.

And here I get a little more personal about myself. I was planning to do my quarterly cleaning of my chest of drawers and my desk this week. And today I realized that, hey, a photo of them would be a great way to let everyone see a bit of my personal world. This dude is a mess! Everything from Hotwheels at the top of the photo to medicine and reciepts. I realized this says a lot about me; that I let it get like this, clean it to perfection, and over a few months let it get back into this condition. It says something allright, I'm just not sure what.

That goes for my desk here too. Whatever I need to do, I clear off just enough to make room for that task. So it ends up like the chest of drawers, total mess, perfectly clean for a while, then the slow slide into hideousness.

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Space Shuttle Discovery
I went out yesterday and found a spot locally to watch and take photos of STS-121 (Space Shuttle Discovery) take off, but they scrubbed the mission.

I'll try again this evening. But I am NOT about to try to get near Kennedy Space Center for this launch. There was horrible traffic and few places to park here yesterday and we live 30-40 miles south of the Space Center!

The local radio said there was traffic jammed up for 20 miles on many of the main highways and roads near the Space Center yesterday. I'll just watch the speck zoom into the air from down here, thank you.

Yesterday Was A Strange Day

Yesterday morning was like an out-of-body experience. Quite strange feeling.

First. I'm on some new medication for something and when that happens I usually feel like you do when you have a fever; like nothing is real. Everything has that bright, hazy focus, dreamy kind of quality. If I move my head too fast, it feels as if my brain sloshes around in there.

Second. I got up plenty early but ended up running behind anyway. The stress of this adds to the dreamy-ness sensation.

Then when I'm on my way to work, going north on I-95, I'm in the slow lane and although I'm doing 75, I'm being passed as if I was driving in reverse. I-95 is NOT for the faint of heart.

I'm just getting across to the other side of the small overpass bridge over US192, which is also known as New Haven in Melbourne, Florida, when a pickup truck about 50 yards ahead of me in the fast lane has his right rear tire on his trailer he's pulling shred.

The tire shreds, tire chunks flying in all directions. A big chunk knocks the aluminum fender off the trailer where it kind of 'catches' in the air and floats a bit.

The fender of course is now in my lane.

Now here's where the mind and body are amazing things. Literally within a split second, I realize I can't move left, there are vehicles there. I can't slam on brakes to avoid the fender, there's a pickup truck close behind me, ready to drive right up my tail pipe. Instinct has me start to swerve right to miss the fender by using the shoulder, but I'm at the end of this bridge, there's still a guard rail. So, I just center the car directly at the bouncing fender and try to avoid it with my tires.

I go right over it, or so I thought, but a quick look in the rear view mirror and I don't see it either come out from under the car or go off the side of the road. I turn off the cd player and A/C and don't hear it dragging under the car.

Where the heck is this thing?

So, as quickly as I can pull over safely, I get on the shoulder of the interstate.

Now this has all taken place in a matter of seconds.

I get out of the car. Oh yeah, I drive a white 2002 Ford Taurus. Walk around to the front of the car, and the fender, now twisted into almost a corkscrew shape, is sticking straight out of the front of the car like Paul Bunyan stabbed it with a knife.

I hear hissing and see a few drops of green liquid. Great. Probably skewered the radiator.

I pull out the fender, put it in the trunk, get back in the car and call Lovely Wife, who had gone to work early. Let her know what's up so she'll be able to come get me if the car won't make it home.

To make a long story longer, I make it home ok. The temperature gauge doesn't rise one bit. But I have no A/C.

The car is already at the shop and hopefully it just poked something easy to fix so I can have my A/C.

Ok, I'm not THAT big of a wimp. I can live without A/C in a car, and have done so for years at a time, but this is the family car we go places in together. It's roomy and runs great and who wants to sweat when you're going out to eat, shop, or whatever?

I've never had anything quite like that happen to me. I'm blessed not to be hurt. An aluminum fender would definitely go through the windshield at that speed had it been a bit higher and that would have been scary and possibly painful, if not fatal.

Lovely Wife came home and got me, we took the car to the shop and she took me on to work.

Here's a photo of the culprit:



Work

We have been trying to test a circuit card to confirm it runs well with the new firmware updates. The problem is that the test procedure is a mess. Almost indecipherable. We've been working on it for days. That is pretty stressful too.

After the I-95 episode, I'm not looking forward to banging my head against the wall all day.

But yesterday, things fall magically into place. We finish testing, and now I've been given boss's blessing to take three days off next week.

We have Tuesday off for The Fourth Of July, and then we have next Friday off as our every-other-Friday-off, so next week I can burn a mere three vacation days yet get to be off for nine days straight. What a deal.

Plus the success at work yesterday leaves me with a nice feeling that everything is ok, and I can just be free for a week with no mental attachments to work.

So, as of the end of the workday yesterday, I'm on vacation until Monday, July 10th.

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Maybe I'll go try to watch the shuttle launch today. Actually I just have to walk out into my front yard to see it from afar, but I mean drive northward, closer to the space center.

We'll see. I'll post about it if I (or we) do.

Massachusetts Is Going TOO Far

First their state Legislature legalized homosexual marriage.

But this time, well, they are proving that they are just plain evil.

Here's a news article explaining it way better than I can.

I'm just so mad I could spit.


The news link won't last forever so I'll print part of it for you:

"Fluff" Flies In School Lunch Debate
By Scott Malone
Thu Jun 22, 6:41 AM ET

BOSTON (Reuters) - When it comes to food, Boston is best known for baked beans and clam chowder. But this week, state legislators have engaged in robust debate on Marshmallow Fluff -- a locally made, sugary spread.

State Sen. Jarrett Barrios started the tempest in a lunch box when he learned that his son's Cambridge grammar school cafeteria offered Fluff-and-peanut butter sandwiches daily.

In a nation where child obesity rates have...

Boston area public schools have long offered 'fluffernutter' sandwiches at lunchtime.

(Lovely Wife herself is a major source of income for the Fluff (marshmallow cream) industry. She was raised on fluffernutter, Fluff and peanut butter, sandwiches. They are still a major component of her daily intake of protein and sugar. She even turned my own Sainted Mother onto them. How bad could they be?)

Not only are they an institution up there in Taxachusetts, but the stuff is even made locally. They are helping their local economy with every fluffernutter they eat.

But a sinister plot is afoot wherein fluffernutter sandwiches might be banned from school lunches as unhealthy.

Yet again an American state's legislature moves against the clear will of the average citizen.

It would behoove each of us to keep track of pending local and state issues in our own areas.

If they'll take away a kid's fluffernutter sandwiches, could pixie sticks (my generation's Crack) be far behind?

Wake up Americans!!

You probably have some similar evil plot brewing in YOUR area. Be prepared to write your state legislators, before it's too late.

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Not sure if I spelled it right, but did you notice I used the word 'behoove' in a sentence up there? I'm rockin' and rollin' this mornin', I tell ya!