Brendon Grandon

Malcolm's best Christmas present this year has been his friend Brendon coming to stay with us in New York for a few days. Brendon used to live on the next street over and he and Malcolm used to run together all the time, until his family moved to Georgia in February. Malcolm and Carter were scheming today about how we could put another bed in their room so Brendon could just move in. It's not such a bad idea — he doesn't complain about what's for dinner and has much better manners than our own kids. But I'm sure his family would miss him. It has been an extended weekend of sledding, Clue, guerrilla-style Nerf missile fights, and lots of network Game Boy.

Frosty

Overnight we got a few inches of that wet, heavy snow that sticks like crazy and makes everything beautiful. This was the view out the back door when I was leaving for work this morning. On my drive in I saw a dozen more pictures I wanted to take. Today a friend at work was talking to me about maybe moving to Florida to get out of the cold. I said, "why?"

Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark

Tuesday was the first of Madeleine's two concerts this week, and I have to say, for a bunch of sevvies, the middle school orchestra sounded great. Amazingly better than they did in grade 4. Malcolm took the center shot with the dramatic tilt — not bad, junior! By the last photo, Madeleine realized she was being stalked with a long lens, and she gave me "the look." Hey, it's not my fault none of the other dads brought their tripods.

Musical Malcolm

Monday night Malcolm had a concert ... he performed in choir chimes, played clarinet in the band, and sang in the chorus. He's quite the Renaissance man. (Click on the big chorus picture and see if you can spot him.)

Cold Camp Prep

Next month is the Klondike Derby where the Scouts do a cold weather sled competition; thankfully only the older boys spend the night. Saturday morning Malcolm had a dress rehearsal, and it was snot-freezing cold. He practiced hauling gear, making survival shelters, ice rescues, fire building and cooking. We found this interesting stick cabin somebody had put up in the woods. Did I mention it was cold? It snowed like crazy this weekend as you can see.

Slippery Money in Vegas

I'm in Las Vegas this week putting on a training conference. You've heard how money can slip through peoples' fingers when they come here, but I saw it for real tonight. In our hotel a girl had a dollar bill tied to a piece of fishing line. She would toss it out into the walkway and wait for somebody to try to pick it up. As any poor sucker tried to pick it up she'd yank it away. I don't know if she was making an anti-gambling statement, or if this was a sociology experiment, but it was funny to watch.

Shoot the Moon

The night after Thanksgiving we had a beautiful full moon. I keep forgetting to return the Andrews' 300mm lens, so I pulled it out and about blinded myself. The moon is brighter than you think. It's just about impossible to include the moon in a picture of something else and not have it look like a tiny, featureless white dot — there's always trickery involved. So next time you see a poster of a giant moon rising over a cityscape, know that it's been faked. Click the picture for a detailed version. I'm an Apollo junkie and can't wait to see the new Ron Howard documentary.

The Hogwarts Owl Visits

Today Malcolm turned 11. When he was within earshot I made a loud banging, scratching noise on the front door. When I had Malcolm's attention I looked out the window in surprise and told him there was a large owl on the porch with a note in its beak. I think I had him going for a split second there. If you don't know Harry Potter, you have no idea what I'm talking about. Malcolm had his choice of meals today: he wanted a cheese omelet for lunch, then pot roast and mash for dinner. Also pictured are guests at his party after the homemade chocolate-on-chocolate mother-in-law cake.

Happy Thanksgiving

From us to you.

Five Mile Hike

Saturday last week Malcolm and I went on his first Boy Scout hike at Plotterkill, a nature preserve in our county, about 15 miles from home. Its name comes from the Dutch settlers' description of its cliffs and flaking shale ledge waterfalls: platte means flat, and kill means stream. The temperature was in the middle 30s when we arrived, but the terrain is steep, so once we set out we got warmed up. There are several falls there and the most impressive one we saw was around 60 feet. The Scouts cooked a hot lunch, which was as impressive as the falls when you're outside for five hours at this temperature. We came home tired but we had a great time.

Candy Times Two

The night before Halloween was our annual church Trunk or Treat, where people decorate their cars and the kids come around the parking lot begging candy. If you think about it, hitting people up for candy car to car is a much more efficient way to rack up the kilocalories than going house to house. Somehow that didn't stop our kids from going out the next night, too. Joanie's excellent homemade panda and tiger costumes (from the days when she had time to make costumes) have been amortized into service again for our littlest tikes.

Name In Lights

Hotel room boredom sets in. This was done over 30 seconds in the dark using a tripod, a small flashlight, and a confined flash burst at the very end to identify the artiste.

Pacific Coast

I am in Long Beach, California this week and it's been great to spend a couple nights around the water. I was expecting the coast to be at sea level like in Florida, so when I saw the terrain and the guard rails to keep you topside I was pretty surprised. We went to do some sunset shooting on the cliffs, but the sun disappeared before sundown because of all the smoke in the air from the San Diego fires an hour south.

She Walks!

Claire had a little surprise in store for us on Canadian Thanksgiving, a.k.a. Columbus Day. She's been practicing her balance by standing in place for a couple weeks, but she got her confidence up and is now taking steps. When she walks she does this funny thing with her hands: her left hand is up but stays tucked close to her body, and her right hand shakes back and forth violently. Sort of an Eddie Van Halen solo. She's still a little wobbly, but we're counting it. We celebrated with turkey and potatoes!

Springfield Road Trip

Before my Missouri trip was done I took a day to visit family at home in Springfield, Mo., which also happens to be the best place to get cashew chicken in the USA — Yen Ching, I already miss you. Here am I dangerously close to Branson at Table Rock Lake; an eerie calm eye-of-the-storm shot of nieces and nephews Hannah, Ben, Nathan, Kimberlie & Amber just before we broke out the Wii; and out for ice cream in the neon city with Mom, Elmer, and those crazy newlyweds, sister Julie & Zach.

Meet Me In St. Louis

I've always appreciated the Gateway Arch from a distance. This week I'm in a hotel right next to it so finally got up close last night and was amazed. It's dizzying to stand underneath and look up. You think it's going to fall over. I thought if I banged on it I'd get a hollow drum sound, but the legs are reinforced with concrete halfway up its 630 foot height. As I walked away I kept looking over my shoulder thinking, "If it tipped over now, would it hit me? Yep...keep walking." I spent some quality time with the Arch, taking 80 pictures by setting my camera on benches and blindly pointing it upward at different angles. The Arch is not lit up at night, so many of these were 30 second exposures. I got 2 acceptable shots.

Easy Rider

I did one of the coolest things this week while on the road — everybody from work rented Segways and we took a tour of Baltimore harbor. When you activate the gyros the whole thing levels out, it's an unreal sensation like you just switched on your hovercar or lit your lightsaber. It only took a couple minutes to pick it up: lean forward to go straight, tilt back to slow down or go in reverse, ZTR turns with a rocker on the left handlebar. I almost lost balance a couple of times turning on cobblestones, but never wiped (though my boss pulled a spectacular four-point dismount). At one point I got my right wheel stuck on a level raised curb while my left wheel started following the sidewalk downhill ... the platform I was standing on started to tilt more and more as the gap widened. It was straight out of Dukes of Hazzard. I hopped off the curb just in time and kept it together. I'm ready for the Segway halfpipe. If I only had five grand.

Carter Turns 3

On Saturday, Carter had four friends over for his third birthday. We played the standard Grandon party games: musical pillows, pin the flag on the mailbox (from Blue's Clues) and Dino Toss (which is getting beat up from many years of beanbags). We learned that 3-year-olds aren't exactly into following the rules of games yet, but they had fun flagging the mailbox without the blindfold anyway. Add lunch (PBJ) and cake and you have the standing agenda for a Grandon birthday party. We just hope Madeleine's friends still like Dino Toss when she's 18.

Snooty

I may not be handy enough to do drywall or figure out plumbing, but if you need a hot-glue gunslinger, I'm down with that. Here's my fun project of the weekend, a lighting snoot made from plastic straws and Cheerios box cardboard. This little contraption fits over the rectangular part of the flash head to turn it into a spotlight. Instant drama!

The Monster Lives...

Over the last month I've been reading an excellent blog called Strobist, all about improving photos using minimal gear to get the flash off the camera. So this is the new portable lighting rig I've been gathering components for over the last couple weeks. Friday night bedtime I go to lock the front door and discovered an air mail package (Joanie was hiding it, I'm sure). The last part arrived from Hong Kong — cheap wireless strobe triggers. My family hadn't seen any of the other pieces yet, so when I pulled everything out of the closet at 10:00 p.m. and excitedly started putting together this gigantic thing they thought I went completely nuts. (Now they're concerned I might actually take it out in public and people will see it.)
While I'm still most fond of available light photography, I'm at a latitude where the ultimate thermonuclear source occasionally gets blocked. So now I've got this 8-foot lightstand with a 4-foot umbrella, complete with 1988 film-era Nikon SB-24 strobe ($40 eBay instead of $300 new). I can set it anywhere between "Sleepy Firefly" and "Nuke." The wireless is so cool: for Claire's evening birthday party I set up the bare flash on a side table to bounce off the dining room ceiling and walked around shooting in fantastic light without redeye or blinding anyone.

Claire's First Birthday

Claire turned one on Saturday and she had a small party. She looked a little confused when we sang Happy Birthday, but pleased. Madeleine made her a flower-shaped cake and used way too much food coloring ... her usual recipe. Current Claire milestones: she has 9 teeth, she loves to crawl and cruise but also stood up a couple times today without support, she just started climbing onto sofas but can't get down once she's up (same with stairs). She loves to groove to music by rocking back and forth, her favorite song is the Corner Gas (Canadian TV show) closing guitar theme. And she gets very excited to try new eats that aren't baby food. We'll see if her hands are less red from the frosting in the morning, we couldn't quite get it all out.

The Whole Fam Damily

The title is classic Grandpa Hugh. Here's an outtake from our session for the church directory.

First Day of School

Thursday was the first day of school! Finally, back to a regular schedule for everybody. Madeleine is in 7th grade, and Malcolm is starting 5th. So Malcolm gets on the bus Thursday morning, and through the windows we watch him go straight to the very back of the bus. There's nothing like being on top of the heap. It's a good thing the first week of school was only two days, these guys are worn out already and are so happy it's the weekend. Hey, we began this blog on the first day of school last year, so happy anniversary, faithful readers. Both of you.