One Dad's Life

Wordless Wednesday - It's a Baby!

Robin, that is. 

Boy where did the week go?  Wordless Wednesday already and I don't have anything done around here.

Spotted this baby Robin out in the yard this very morning when I let the dog out. (That's right, I let the dogs out! Hoo! Hoo!)

Moments after snapping this shot with a 200mm telephoto lens, my dog startled the little darling and it flew into the side of a Little Tikes house.  OUCH!

Nikon D60, 55-200mm.  Click for a larger version.

Graduation!

Last night, my first born, my baby, my Rebecca graduated from 8th grade!  How in the world did this happen so fast?  Non-the-less, we are so proud of her!  I'll share more on Monday, but I wanted to share at least one picture with you today.  Click on the picture for a bigger version.

Way to go, Rebecca!

Wordless Wednesday - Still Life

This is a "still life-ish" type shot from our kitchen counter.  The other day, I was casually strolling through our kitchen and liked the way this scented oil container was lit up by one of our under-cabinet lights.  This one smells like grapefruit, by the way.  And yes, our kitchen is just exactly this cool looking.  Be envious.

Nikon D60 dSLR, 18-55mm, f3.5-5.6 kit lens, no flash, hand-held.  Click for a larger view with less jaggies!

Wordless Wednesday - Birthday Dinner

A couple of weeks ago, it was my amazing and beautiful wife's birthday.  The trick was that she was performing in a show during the past couple of weeks, making celebrating the birthday ... difficult.

So, one week ago Sunday, I prepared her favorite meal, to be ready when she got home from a matinee performance.  Here's the pic of our highly colorful dining room and dinner! Click on the picture for a bigger version.

Fun details in the picture (note all the color!):

• Plates and bowls are all different patterns, with the same color scheme
• Salad with cheese and garlic croutons.
• Two different color place-mats (new that day from Pier One)
• Fresh Red Roses (well, already a few days old.  I gave those to her ON her birthday)
• The "I Love You Mommy" handmade poster on the server.
• Coral Walls - real plaster.  Coral, not "pink".
• Asparagus
• Cool wood window blinds (courtesy of my parents)
• Cool wood old time windows with wavy glass (original!)
• Cool wood floor (courtesy of my grandparents, who built the house!)
• Cheese encrusted marinated and grilled flank steak.
• Horseradish sauce. Spicy!
• Christmas Tree candles left over from Christmas. Last time used, they started dripping really bad. Lit by the eight year old pyro.
• Wine!
• Hand-blown iridescent glass vase from the glass blower in Silver Dollar City.
• Silk flower napkin rings
• Neat-o accent lighting
• Beautiful wife and daughters! (patiently waiting for me to stop taking stupid pictures of the table)

Is it OK to Kill a Fly?

Yesterday, for some DUMB reason, I mentioned to someone how odd it was that we really didn't get many flies in our house, considering how we almost always have doors and windows open. (And no, this doesn't mean we live in a barn!) 

Naturally, you can fill in the blank about what happened next.  We returned home, got the kidlets in bed, and Dianne settled into bed playing Zelda - Spirit Tracks on her DS and I played a bit of Animal Crossing on the Wii.   Oh, and THE FLY made it's appearance.

Naturally.

At first, I only heard the fly.  It was loud.  It buzzed.  It sounded like a cell phone on "vibrate" laying on a piece of plywood.   I could hear the buzzing circling the room, but couldn't actually find the fly.  I thought this was odd, as a fly with THAT kind of buzz just about had to be the size of a VW bug.  Finally, I did spot the beast, and it WAS huge...just under the size of a VW bug.

I thought perhaps I should swat the fly.

Then I thought that MAYBE a fly that was almost the size of a VW bug and apparently had some kind of cloaking system, may not take getting swatted as a favorable thing.  So, it was time to think.

What is it about flies that make us think we have to swat them?  I mean, really, what have they done to us? 

Also, why is it that Greenpeace will spend millions protecting whales, and not a cent on preventing the hundreds of thousands of senseless fly killings every year?  As far as I know, there aren't any miniature Greenpeace air vessels that swoop in out of nowhere and put themselves between me and my fly prey.  Greenpeace only wants to save animals they find cute, I think.

Maybe this fly killing "sport" should end. What do people do with the flies they kill? Nothing. No one assembles millions of tiny fly exoskeletons to make a jacket or even a stole, do they?

No.

Are people preparing delicate and delicious meals from the fly?

NO.

Are people using the crushed fly carcass to somehow advance medicine?

Again, NO. 

So, fly killing is senseless.   The best I can figure out, people kill flies because they find them annoying.  That's not a good enough reason, in my book.  If it was, the world would not have any infomercial spokespeople.  That's right, I've connected fly killing to infomercials.  I've also written an entire post about a fly.  It's my blog.

I'm letting the fly live.

I Remember When...

• Gas broke that $1.00 barrier and all the signs needed to be changed from the two digit signs.
• Darth Vader was evil personified in the universe and not a voice for your GPS.
• Marathon Bars still existed.  I waited until my braces were off to get one again...only to find they had stopped making them.
• Cell phones were the size of a briefcase and only in James Bond movies.
• India and China were nearly fictitious places on a globe...not somewhere I actually visit and have friends!
• Staying up to 1:00AM was crazy late...and not an early night to bed.
• I wanted to be a carpet layer.
• Work stopped when you left the office.
• Our TV had 5 channels, not hundreds.
• My daughter was entering Kindergarten, not High School!
• My dream car was a 1968 Camaro, not a 2010 Camaro. Note: I have yet to own ANY Camaro.
• we barbecued on our covered patio, with Jack Buck calling the game through a small radio propped up on the window sill. Magic!
• The weekend meant "down" time.
• I was terrified of honey bees.
• I had the first Dr. Pepper (that I remember) from my Grandma Mueller.  Love 'em to this day.

Semi-Wordless Wednesday - My Violinists!

My daughters are both taking violin lessons.  If you have been reading this blog for any time, you know that my family is into music and performing arts BIG TIME.  So, it's natural that our daughters would be taking some kind of musical lessons.  I think their are two very universal instruments, that are used in just about every style of western music: the piano, and the violin.   I personally took piano, but for my oldest daughter, violin was more appealing.  She's been taking a few years, now.

Rachel, the youngest, couldn't wait to start taking violin lessons, either, and has been taking since September.

Last night was their spring recital, and naturally I was there to take pictures...oh, and to listen, of course.

I took probably 50 or 60 pictures, all under kind of tricky situations to get any really good shots: under horrid and dim green fluorescent lighting, kids blocked by music stands, and the need to take the shots using a telephoto lens, which really compresses the image.

All pictures where taken hand-held, used Auto-white balance in the camera, then Auto-white balanced AGAIN in GIMP, which sometimes made a very slight adjustment.  I also used GIMP to reduce the saturation a bit.  The combination of these steps made for some unique looking portraits, I think!

Nikon D60, no flash, 55-200mm telephoto zoom lens.  Some pictures can be enlarged by clicking on them.

This is Rachel, sitting in her seat after playing the first time in the recital.

Rachel, on the left, performing!

Rebecca performing, shot between the stands and audience! Cropped to square format.  I like the bow action on this one.

Rebecca performing.

Our Windows Will Never Be the Same!

A week ago, my youngest daughter, Rachel, spent the night at a friends house.  They apparently had a great time messing up someone else's house!  One of the things they did was draw all over this large bathroom mirror with Crayola Glass Crayons.   Admittedly, it actually looked pretty good.  In fact, it LOOKS like marker, the lines and colors are so bright.

I had a feeling that Crayola Glass Crayons were in our future, and THIS weekend, it came true when I bought a set for Rachel.   We limited her to drawing on our storm door and HER mirror in her room.  I'm not certain that the storm door will ever be the same, again!

Last night, though, the artwork SIGNIFICANTLY spread out.  Dianne was helping Rebecca with a project for school and I was helping a neighbor with some physics studying.  Rachel was loose with the crayons.  She decided that she wanted to "write nice things" on our car windows.  We agreed...but were nervous about it.

It was late evening and I didn't get pictures of the artwork right away.  This was a mistake as we had a heavy dew last night, and most of the writing is one big smear, now.  I've tried to enhance it a bit in the photos below.  The first couple of pictures look good, as that side of the car was protected a bit from the dew.

I fared pretty good, actually, on my car:

And even with:

But where I really hit the jackpot was in my back window, where I got poetry!  (This one was pretty demolished by the dew, so I will translate after the photo)

The poem is title "I Love Dad"

I love Dad, yes I do

I love Dad, don't you?

He is nice

He is best

I love Dad, don't you?

Oh yes, Oh yes I do!

Pretty awesome, right?

Unfortunately, my wife didn't get EXACTLY the same treatment.

It was her birthday last week, so there was naturally a birthday theme on the artwork.  Some quotes are:

"Happy Birthday Mom!" (with 44th squeezed in there, even).  Then:

"You are pretty"   Also quite nice.  Then comes the somewhat questionable part:

"You are young looking for your age!"  (Emphasis added by me)

Of course, Rachel was seeing this as a compliment, but it does have kind of a zinger in there, doesn't it?

Summer Schedule

I am having the most difficult time adjusting to my summer schedule this year.   It seems to be true throughout my family, too.  For example, the gardening - well it just isn't happening.  We have some of our usual hanging plants out, and put in some early spring annuals.  Dianne also cleaned up and planted two of our front flower beds and I cleaned out one of our flower beds in the back.  The one that has these Bleeding Hearts in it.  Beyond that, still not cleared out from winter.  We need to get this done, AND order a dump truck full of mulch.  AND distribute the mulch.  Dianne has exclusively done this the last several years...probably as long as my work situation changed significantly.  I'd sure like to be able to work out there, though.

I've done a pretty good job on the lawn, so far.  I've taken care of some spot broad leaf issues, and planted grass in a couple of bare patches. Of course, God really messed with me last week, by having 5 days of rain spanning my normal mowing schedule, thus causing my tall fescue grass to grow to such a height that I was in danger of losing my 40 lb dog in the stuff...all in 10 days.  In the good old days, when I worked 5 minutes from home, and had actual 8 hour days (not counting lunch - which I ate at home) I mowed this lawn twice a week until summer.  That is just not possible with the MUCH longer commute these days (made worse by two areas of road construction on my route).  Also, either one of the kids or Dianne and I have regular events every single week night.  Wow.

So now, I have to add into this mix the daily morning watering.  Even when it rains, some of it must be done, as the hanging plants (mostly ferns) need daily water and are sheltered too much from the rain.

Work, it seems, is also increasingly crazy.  My day is packed with meetings and group things that I really must attend.  I'm good at declining or not showing up for meetings I'm not NEEDED at, but this past week, I've so far had about 3 TOTAL hours that I was not at a meeting, or preparing for one.   Unfortunately, meetings have action items and I still have my "regular" deadlines.  This means that in order to make those demands, I work at home. At night.   There are also the overseas teleconferences, too.  Last week, I had four!  Since they are working opposite hours of us here...  I can't really complain, though, as frustrating as it often is.  It's a good job, in a time when good jobs are hard to find, and its about as secure as a job can be.  It still drives me nuts, though!

The trouble is, I don't see change coming anytime soon.  In fact, it's guaranteed to get worse over the next four months.  Worse.  I have out of country visitors coming in two weeks.  It will be my responsibility to get them around and give them a tour of St. Louis and surrounding areas for about six weeks.  This is actually quite fun, but DOES delay lots of "must get done" items to the point were there will either be trouble or even less sleep.

The only "flexibility" is to cut things out I want to do.  Oh, and to continually disappoint people that expect me to dedicate 100% of my time to their pet list of what exactly I should be doing.  I have no sympathy for people that have such a list for me, actually.  Too bad! 

I do force myself to take some downtime...I have yet to abandon my Friday night Mario Kart Wii  fun (10:30 or 11:00 PM to ???? online. JOIN ME!!)  I've been struggling to get just a few minutes of guitar practice in each day, but otherwise, I end up just feeling MORE stressed and guilty for not getting things done I need to get done.  I am executing on time management by who I think I can handle being mad at me each day!  I should write a book.  It's got to be just as good as One Minute Manager or some others.  You see, all these other books make an assumption you actually have a number of tasks and an amount of flexible time that will all work out somehow.   As in the show "Clean House", I'm here to tell you that there are cases of having just too many tasks and not enough time.  Too bad I can't just put a bunch of those tasks in a yard sale!

Still, it's got to be so much better than my ancestors who I'm sure worked just as long hours - maybe didn't have as many kid activities as we do today - but at the end of the day, they didn't have Mario Kart!

So there is that!

Wordless Wednesday - April Showers

One of the flowers I look forward to every year is the Clematis that we have growing on the side of our house.  Their big, colorful blooms really spice things up on our frame home!

A few days ago, during our 5-day rain storm (April Showers!), I quickly snapped these pictures.

All taken with a Nikon D60, 18-55mm, f3.5-5.6 kit lens, hand held, no flash. Click on the pictures for larger, more detailed versions.

Also, Happy Birthday to my beautiful and talented wife, Dianne, today!