Lego Contest

Malcolm is entering a Lego contest to build a police vehicle. He came up with this jet, which looks pretty cool. But we wanted to amp his entry photo. So I went down to the basement to our Lego room (yes, we have a room) and grabbed a jungle forest baseplate he built previously to use as a backdrop. I set up a grid on the dining room table and moved and rotated the forest section around as he snapped photos from the tripod. Then I Photoshopped together the lush acrylonitrile butadiene styrene greenery you see here.

(Click the photo to see the forest piece-by-piece.)

You can never go home...

...Because it no longer exists. I've been in Florida this week for a work conference, and spent an extra day afterwards with my Grandmama. Today we took a road trip to my old hometown on the east coast, Lighthouse Point, Fla. Sounds picturesque, no? The 1907 lighthouse on Hillsboro Inlet is still there, but it's about the only thing left standing from the good old days. My old house looks so tiny in its tiny yard, and everything about it is different, from the facade, down to the landscaping — not a single original tree remains. On the main strip through town, the Publix grocery is the only store that hasn't changed hands; everything else is now something else. We departed for lunch at a long-time seafood fixture on the Intracoastal Waterway in Deerfield Beach, Pal's Captain's Table, but it's been torn down, a chain link fence remains like a chalk outline showing its original perimeter. When we visited the Landmark, the building my grandfather built on Hillsboro Beach, they wouldn't let us in to look around or walk the beach. It's been painted a golden sand color (at least it's not pink) and converted to private condos. We drove back home to a wonderful dinner with my aunt and uncles. Despite how much everything else has changed, it was fun to look around, and besides, my family here are just as great as they ever were.

Albany's Many Moods

This is the view from my seventh floor office window in Albany, New York. We had beautiful clouds floating by one day, so I grabbed my small Canon camera and held it out the window, taking several versions of the same picture throughout the day. I will use this in a PowerPoint for work someday to show how differently photos can look — depending on the time of day you take the picture. You probably can't see it in this mini version, but the final night shot has the constellation Orion hovering over the Erastus Corning Tower, along with blurred car tail lights. Thanks to my buddy, Chuck, for teaching me how to make my first Flash movie.

The Little Engine That Could

Carter and Claire hanging out in the boys' room. This fruity dress Claire's got on is a little number Madeleine used to wear when she wasn't almost a teenager. Speaking of numbers, Carter got some great trains for Christmas ... one engine under the tree, and second engine for putting number two in the potty.

Snowy

We had a wonderful white Christmas this year. These were taken on December 31, but not until after Granddad and I shoveled another foot of snow out of the driveway. We had excellent clouds as the remains of the storm moved out.