Bleary Christmas

I took Monday-Wednesday this week, and then the President added Friday onto Thursday as a parting gift, so I've just spent a week pretty much productivity-free. It has been wonderful. Back to the office tomorrow for a short work week.

Among other things I got several pairs of socks for Christmas and it has been my favorite gift so far. Today I'm on pair four from the six-pack of whites; I'm planning on going dark tomorrow. I can't get over how great it feels to wear new socks. I broke into my bag of Peppermint Patties today and these are coming up as another winner. After I accept the fact I'm not getting that monster $1,600 camera lens this year, I'm relatively easy to please.

Vocabu-Claire-y

Claire's getting to be a great talker, but at age 2 she still says some really funny things. Here's a dictionary to translate what she's saying.

Carter = Tahtoe
Malcolm = Bahgah (was Bah)
Madeleine = Nummy (my favorite)
Claire = Kay
Lollipop = pee pop
Fruit snack = foo-tack
Blanket = blay
Piggy bank = Pee pee peek
I Was So Mad (book title) = Sho My
Hop On Pop = Pop Pop Pop

UPDATE 12/28:
This weekend she got better at saying Blanket. It's now two words — Blay. Ket.
Also a favorite I forgot first time around. Flashlight = Bud Light

The Great Lie Begins

Happy "35th" birthday today, Joanie! (Now take a closer look at the picture of the cake.)

She had lunch with the girls, I made the mother-in-law cake, we took the big kids out to P.F. Chang's (my first time there — loved it), we showered her with presents, we played with her new Wii Fit.

Even with so many trips around the sun, she's still a hottie.

Forestation

Is the opposite of uncouth, couth? Is the opposite of deforestation, forestation? Well, that's what's happened in our house. The kids took over decorating the tree this year, and it is a wonderful precedent.

Brother Can You Spare An Electron?

Thursday night we got tangled up in the Great Northeast Ice Storm of '08. Treetops 15' and 20' feet in length snapped off in our backyard under the weight of all the ice. All over New York trees downed power lines, and we even saw a few telephone poles down.

Our electricity was out for 3 days and 2 nights, and it got incredibly cold in the house. Without power our two sump pumps could not run and we had 3 inches of water in the basement. We could see our breath distinctly when we went to bed the second night.

No more of this — it was too cold to stay home a third night. After a refugee dinner at one friends' we went home to gather some things in the dark to spend the night at anothers'. We came home to a lit-up house with the heat on. We all appreciate electricity a lot more now.

Taking It To The Mattresses

Carter has graduated to a twin bed so we have this shredded crib mattress from his intermediate kids bed that's on its way to the dumper. Joanie thought it would be a good idea to show Malcolm and Madeleine how to ride it down the stairs. We have a new indoor sport for the 2010 Winter Olympics.

My 20-year-old Nikon flash from eBay has this fun repeating feature ... I set it at 4 Hz, darkened the house and left the camera shutter open for four blinks to capture Malcolm's descent. Click the photo for a larger version, you can just make out the ghost of him wearing a gold shirt and red plaid jammy bottoms.

Out of the Blau

Last week we got a message that one of our best friends from Missouri, Herman (B.) would be passing through. So we invited him to make a special guest appearance for dinner! We haven't seen each other for 10 or 12 years or some crazy amount of time, but he's still just as fun as before. What a great time we had catching up.

Herman and Melissa were newly married around the same time as us, had their first kid just as we did, and they were even our next door neighbors for a while. I'd bring home from work an exotic-in-that-day Mac laptop to "configure it," but me and Herman would really be networking it with my home Mac so we could wage Bolo tank battles. Eat hot lead, Tank-Boy!!!

You could look at me and Herman and think we are different as night and day, but we had a great time. Even separated these long years, we talked about how much we both hate home repairs and rely on our wives to fix the house. Friends who know you like this don't come along every day.

Party Pooper

What do you do when you're a 13 year old girl and too cool for a house full of 11-12 year old boys running around? Camp out in the kitchen and make the best of it with a slice of pie and the TV guide.

Birthday Boys

Malcolm's second birthday cake came with a pack of boys for a party and sleepover. After pizza, cake and presents they played manhunt out in the freezing cold night, then came in for Legos, traditional bedtime cereal and Corner Gas until I made them go to bed at 2. I took the opportunity to whup a few of them in Wii tennis and bowling.

Cake 2

This was Malcolm's second birthday cake of the week, created for his friend party. Unfortunately while it baked we discovered the bottom element of the oven gave out, but hey, the top was done. The layers all sagged a little in the middle, but it was mostly cooked, and Joanie added extra homemade buttercream frosting in the center to prop things up — never a bad thing. Then the whole thing collapsed under its own weight. Drinking straws were added as a makeshift structural integrity field.

It actually was delicious, though not much to look at. Of course, for 11-12 old boys, they thought this was the coolest cake ever.

First Lights of the Night

When the sun goes down on downtown Albany, the building lights come up and make everything shiny.

Last Rays of the Day

Sunset on the Corning Tower, downtown Albany, Tuesday evening. Taken through my office window while paying strict attention to my third conference call in a row.

Black Friday

In honor of Black Friday, the biggest shopping day of the year, I post this picture of a guy I met at the Worldwide Photo Walk a couple of months ago. Let's analyze: both a D300 and D200 around his neck, 2 expensive lenses, 2 memory card holders, mongo tripod on strap peeking out behind his left hand, plus the giant backpack you can't see with additional lenses, a second small tripod, and other gadgets galore. There's maybe 7 or 8 grand hanging from him. Walking around downtown Albany at dusk.

To my wife I reiterate I'm not as bad about this camera stuff as you think. Be watching for my Christmas list. Happy shopping, everyone.

Into the Wild [Peachy-Lilac] Yonder

Nice colors and a increasingly familiar silhouette through the window at Baltimore airport last Friday.

Another Cherry Tree Falls; Geo. Washington Unavailable for Comment

This is a cherry tree stump on the perimeter of the FDR Memorial in Washington. I wouldn't have thought to take this without seeing another photographer (Lyndi) setting up here. This was taken basically in the dark, so I let the camera absorb light for 30 seconds.

Tripods — separating the men from the boys since 1827.

Lucky No. 7

Driving on Freeman's Bridge Road the other day, I looked over my shoulder and did a double-take. They're building a new Lowe's (there goes the neighborhood) and they had scraped the land clean ... except for this one house. There's something you don't see every day.

Alternate caption: City of Enoch minus one.

Cake 1

Malcolm's family party was tonight before his first Young Men's activity night — volleyball practice. Cake 1 is homemade chocolate with homemade frosting. We call this "mother-in-law cake." Dang good stuff.

Carter was as excited as Malcolm was about the presents. When Malcolm was opening a clothing present towards the beginning, Carter yelled, "Is this one the video game???!!!" Oops.

Malcolm Turns 12

Today is Malcolm's 12th birthday. It's a pretty momentous occasion, for him and for me. He's now officially in "Young Men" at church — sort of like an adult, only shorter. And he'll be in my class. He's turning out to be a great kid.

He's already got two different cake requests in for his family and friend parties this week; add pumpkin pie to the line-up and he'll be pretty much in heaven.

[Found numbers from the streets of DC.]

Transparent

This building stopped me as I was walking home after work to my hotel along Eye (that's what they call "I") Street in DC. I think this is Ernst & Young. I was checking out a group meeting in a conference room ... you can see a couple of them on the fourth floor on the far right side. Great building for people watching. I just noticed the sun shades on the top floors of the west side. Anyway, it was a nice building.

FDR Part 2

My favorite part of the FDR Memorial is a wall and series of columns featuring artwork in relief that is meant to be touched. Roosevelt was wheelchair-bound in later years, and the creators of the memorial planned this part in recognition of those with disabilities. You have to be taller than me to reach some of the Braille inscriptions, and there's an interesting history of criticism of the memorial.

FDR Memorial

My friend Dennis' wife Lyndi is into photography, so he invited me to go shooting with them next time I was in DC. Last night he took us and our tripods to the Franklin D. Roosevelt Memorial, someplace I've never even heard of. Where other Washington memorials are massive and commanding, the FDR is rambling and peaceful. Amongst the waterfalls and cherry trees, you walk through scenes symbolic of FDR's times during the Great Depression.

It's always a bonus to watch how another photographer works a scene. I got some new ideas about shooting things that are around the monuments, plus some advice on shooting in Raw format, which I tried. Thanks for a great evening out, Dennis and Lyndi!

End of the Line

What mysterious secrets does our protagonist carry with him under that cool exterior?

This is how my six-block commute home from work ends each night this week. Self portrait shot blind in the elevator mirror.

Chinatown, DC

I had a late night at the office yesterday and walked to Chinatown for dinner as a treat. Except it was darn cold out.

City Silhouette

Here's something from my window seat this morning. These shots are from northern New Jersey airspace looking eastward into New York City. Lower Manhattan is the peninsula on the left, and the big buildings in the center of the photo are Jersey City.

At 3 o'clock on the far right is the Statue of Liberty, with Ellis Island just to the left of that. I'm shooting directly into the sun so the Hudson River is glowing and everything is backlit. Looking at a map I estimate the top photo shows just under five miles' distance from left to right.

I've never been to the Statue of Liberty, but I had an idea where it is. I took a shot of the blob I thought was it with a telephoto lens then zoomed in on the camera LCD to verify — I hit it. I can now say I've seen the Statue of Liberty.

Death of a Laptop

I called home during a meeting break in Orlando last week and Joanie said her old Mac laptop started making strange clunking noises. Oh no, I say, it sounds like the hard drive is dying. I tell her over the phone how to use a FireWire cable to easily connect it to our other Mac, restart it in Target Disk mode (child's play: hold down the letter T), and back up her files. She got everything important backed up successfully — and just in time, it was to be the last restart of that hard drive. If we were a PC family, networking would not have been that easy, and she probably would have lost everything.

So after 5+ years having a laptop Joanie really wanted another, but I was encouraging her to branch out to the larger screen and keyboard and faster speed of an iMac. We went to Apple Store, she looked at both and couldn't decide at first, but then something clicked and she took the plunge.

Now I can't get her off the big screen. She's holed away in her office glued to the computer all the time. She was so excited to show me today how she can look at two windows at the same time — she was thrilled by this. It's almost like ... she's turning into me.

If she starts getting excited about cameras we'll know something needs to be done.

Creepy Malcolm

Malcolm was a vampire for Halloween. After returning from trick or treating he lurked around the house peering at his mother through his eyebrows. Joanie told him a few times to stop creeping her out, and went upstairs. Malcolm and I put our heads together and concluded she would really appreciate his creepy picture as her Mac desktop, and we made it happen. Alas, the fright was more than her little laptop could handle, her computer soon went on to the great docking station in the sky.

First Rays

More early morning shots from out in the country in Burnt Hills, NY.