Joyous. Wonderful. Long, long, busy, busy day, Late, late, late.
Yesterday we saw tons if really cool old cars. More to follow – after sleep. Much, much sleep. 
Category Archives: Family
Wedding, Wedding, Wedding
Filed under Family, Photography, Travel
A Good Time Was Had By All
As I mentioned, yesterday was my mother’s 80th birthday. She’s had some recent medical issues (thus my current extended and unplanned trip to Vermont) so we had to celebrate at the facility where she’s receiving treatment, but celebrate we did!
The facility was fantastic in helping us get the party arranged and letting us decorate a conference room.
My brother had a laptop and monitor set up to display a slideshow of family pictures, and a small DVD player let us show the 8mm family movies that we’ve transferred.
Two of my brothers were there, as well as The Long-Suffering Wife and my brother’s wife. One of my nieces was there with her kids and husband, one of Mom’s grandchildren was there from California, and several of Mom’s friends from town came. In addition, one of my brothers had come in from Texas for several days last week (even though he couldn’t stay for the party) as did one of my sisters from California (ditto).
Mom had her hair and makeup done and got duded up to make sure that everyone knew who the Birthday Girl was. We also brought in her dog, Lucy, who was very well behaved and sat on Mom’s lap through the whole affair. (For the record, Mom really was having a good time – she wasn’t nearly as horrified as this picture makes her look!)
Putting all of that high-tech equipment to good use, we usually had at least three Skype or FaceTime connections going so relatives across the country could say hello. We talked to our two daughters in California, my niece’s kids at the beach in California, and got a phone call from Mom’s brother in South Dakota.
Finally, my NASA Social experience came in handy as I was able to post pictures and events as they happened (more or less) on Twitter and FaceBook. This in turn got a dozen or so of Mom’s nieces from all over the country sending in stories to share and birthday greetings.
My brother, Mark (on the left), and I gave Mom a tremendously touching and personal birthday present. For nearly forty years we’ve kept Mom confused about which of us likes apple pie and which of us likes cherry. (Our family has more than a few running practical jokes going.) Basically, no matter what Mom thinks is correct, we’ll claim it’s the opposite. Sometimes we’ll switch several times during an event like Thanksgiving.
For her 80th, we told her which is truly our favorite. I like apple, Mark likes cherry. (Really, really!) It’s easy to remember, because “A” comes before “C” and Paul was born before Mark, so “Apple” = “Paul” and “Cherry” = “Mark.” Simple! (Or is it the other way around, because “M” comes before “P“, so “Apple” = “Mark” and “Cherry” = “Paul?”)
If Mom seems to be groping for the appropriate word here, it’s “bullshit!”
Of course there was cake, and candles to be blown out. The coolest part of the whole day was when we sang “Happy Birthday” and Mom sang along. She may have problems speaking right now, but her singing is pretty darn good! Then we had candles to be blown out, perhaps with a bit more technological help.
Even the little kids did a great job of making sure that Nana was smiling and enjoying herself. This is Rose and Bella, two of my niece’s daughters, doing either the Disney Princess or the Alien Monster look (could go either way) with Nana.
Mark was nice enough to take a picture which finally captured my true inner self. (Don’t say you weren’t warned.)
We’re sure than Mom slept really well last night, but she was in good spirits this morning, having apparently survived the ordeal. If nothing else, the day proved that she’s still got that “Mom look” and eye roll down pat. (But she’s grinning while she does it.)
Love you, Mom!
Filed under Family, Photography, Travel
Happy 80th Birthday, Mom!
One of the key reasons that I’m in Vermont for a couple of weeks is my mother’s 80th birthday, which is today. Many of my siblings (I’m one of eight kids) and their families will be there, others will be joining us by Skype or FaceTime, and we’ve invited many of Mom’s friends from church and the local area. It should be fun.
It seems Mom is always smiling, except when she’s (justifiably) yelling at one of us troublemaking kids. We’ll do our best to keep her smiling a lot tonight.
Filed under Family, Photography
You Don’t Know What You’ve Got ‘Til It’s Gone
That’s true on many levels for this trip, particularly on the big, critical, life-changing level and on the tiny, trivial, get-over-it level.
I’m the one dealing the most personally with the latter. Where I’m staying at the moment, not only do I not have wi-fi, or any kind of internet access at all, I also do not have any access to television. (I guess I do have limited access through my phone, but it’s not 4G, or even 3G, so it’s slooooooooooooow.)
That’s supposed to be called “camping.”
Contributing factors are context and background. When you’re off on a camping trip, mentally you know that you’re not going to have internet or television. That’s usually one of the reasons that you’re going in the first place. So while the absence of such things might be an inconvenience or a major change in your routine, it’s expected, even anticipated.
When you’re in a normal, household environment you have routines and things you’re comfortable with. “Comfort actions,” the equivalent of “comfort food.” These routines seem trivial – until they’re involuntarily absent.
This can happen if you have a power outage, for example. But when something like that happens you’re probably still at home, so you have access to other resources there. Books, magazines, working in the garden, schmoozing with the neighbors, going out to a movie someplace where they still have power. Whatever.
Now imagine that this involuntary removal of your “comfort actions” IS happening when you’re still in a household environment, even one you’re accustomed to, but a place where you have limited alternative resources. (As you might have guessed from some of the pictures over the last few days, I’m staying at my Mom’s house.) On top of that, add in that you’re there alone.
Big, empty house. Alone. Stressful circumstances. Those “comfort actions” would really come in handy.
After a long day, to relax at home everyone has their own routine. In our case it generally involves something on the internet (writing, surfing, social media) while having the ballgame or some other television program on as background noise. Or maybe there’s a show we want to watch and we put away the laptops and iPads. Or we can just watch a DVD or movie.
Without any of that, it’s jarring.
I can’t even go to the “how did they survive this pre-television and pre-internet” argument. I actually remember those days, and we did just fine because we didn’t miss what didn’t even exist yet. Our “comfort actions” in that time were completely different than they are now.
Dealing with the here-and-now, it’s a real pain in the ass soldering through the absence of those integral parts of our lives while in a setting that should by rights include them, and the almost total lack of any substitutes.
As Joni Mitchell said.
Naturally, we all adjust. I’m finding things to do on my computer that don’t involve internet access. I have a decent-sized chunk of my music collection on my laptop, so there’s plenty of music to listen to. I started finding treasure troves of family photos, all originals from the film days, so I went out and got a scanner. That should keep me entertained for a few nights.
But I still wish I had the Angels game on the television in the background.
Filed under Computers, Entertainment, Family, Paul
Third Best Sunset From Mom’s House
Every place can have great sunsets, but some have them more often than others. Tahiti and Hawaii, for example.
But I’m not in Tahiti or Hawaii, so some of the best I’ve seen are from my Mom’s house in Vermont. She has a great view of
Last night was pretty good, but right off the top of my head I still wouldn’t rate it any better than the third best I’ve seen from that location. If that isn’t damning it with faint praise, I don’t know what is.
I’ll save the really good ones for some future post, mainly because I’m on the road here, those photos are on my system at home, and these photos are right there in the camera!
For the record, after only getting two hours of restless sleep on the plane Wednesday night and then being up to almost midnight on Thursday, I did NOT get up at 5:00 AM to look for a correspondingly stunning sunrise. Well, that, plus the fact that it was raining pretty well at the time.
I might still be a bit punchy & jet lagged. A bit.
Filed under Family, Photography, Travel, Weather
Curve Ball (And Trouble Therewith)
Too many crises, not enough neurons.
This will serve as a little “heads up” that things may get a bit squirrely around these parts over the next two or three weeks. I’ll be making a trip back to Vermont next Thursday, and as much as I love Vermont, the reasons for the trip are considerably less than delightful. One of those things we all have to deal with sooner or later, usually several times in our lives, but it’s never pleasant and it’s never something anyone’s really prepared for.
Anyway, time might be in very short supply and schedules might be changing and updating and tumbling sort of like those chaotic moons of Pluto. If given the chance I may slap together some “generic” draft blog posts with photos or whatever that I can post with a minimal amount of internet connectivity (parts of Vermont are not a bastion of high-speed access) and time. If something here seems out of context, sort of like the way the original “Serenity” episodes were shown, you’ll know that it’s one of those days.
In short, the next few weeks might be a bit short on space stuff and long articles and deep thoughts and long on “Oooh, look at this pretty picture!”
Like tonight, when I was thinking I had done everything I absolutely had to get done and I was this close to collapsing into bed – only to remember my site… So tonight you get to admire this picture of the North American XB-70 Valkyrie from the National Museum of the United States Air Force in Dayton, Ohio.
Filed under Family, Flying, Photography, Travel
Butter Bucket Brigade
I don’t just write my own blog here, I also read other blogs that interest me. One of my favorites is Musings From A Tangled Mind by Wendy Kowal. The subject matter is sometimes serious, sometimes lighthearted, and occasionally hilarious.
Yesterday there was a post there which discussed her mother’s use of “butter buckets” (my term) for storage of things other than the butter they originally contained. It rang true to me, since my family was also one where everything got re-used and re-purposed as possible. It also was hilarious because that apple didn’t fall too far from the tree.
My father used coffee cans, butter buckets, baby food jars, and so on for storing all kinds of things in his workshop. (With eight kids, there were a LOT of baby food jars!) I remember him finding a design in Popular Mechanics or some similar magazine for a rotating rack that used baby food jars to store miscellaneous small nuts and bolts. He built it, with end pieces about the size of a bicycle wheel, and the horizontal spokes between them about two feet long. All of the spokes could swivel to stay upright, like the cars on a Ferris wheel do. Each spoke was a piece of wood about two inches wide and a half-inch thick, with about fifteen baby food jar lids nailed to the underside. The baby food jars containing the small parts would be pushed up and screwed into position, then the whole thing would rotate to bring different racks of jars into use. Sort of like a cross between a Ferris wheel and a vertically-oriented lazy Susan.
At least none of those baby food jars held anything that might be confused with baby food.
When I read Wendy’s article yesterday I immediately thought of how I do the same thing as her mother, but I do it more like my father did. I wanted to post a picture in my comment on her article, but I couldn’t. so I’ll put it here!
On the bathroom counter next to my sink are, from left to right: a red Solo cup (which is actually orange), a slot machine change cup from Paris Las Vegas (from our honeymoon fifteen years ago), two butter buckets exactly like those in the picture that Wendy used yesterday, and an orange Halloween candy collection bucket that was a Kids’ Meal giveaway at least fifteen years ago.
In those various containers are pens, notes, scissors, old toothbrushes (they’re great for cleaning things), car keys, small tools, parts for bathroom repairs, a flashlight, old MP3 players, loose change, old headphones, key chains, batteries… You get the picture.
My favorite item, no doubt because it’s the weirdest and most out of place, is the New Year’s Eve party horn sticking out of the Paris Las Vegas cup. You never can tell when you might need something in the bathroom to go phweeEEEEEETTTTTTTT to celebrate something or spook the dog.
Wait, that didn’t come out right…
(NOW do you see why Ronnie’s earned the title of “The Long-Suffering Wife”?)
Filed under Castle Willett, Curiosities, Family, Paul
Sunset, Yesterday Evening, June 26th
Tonight:
- It was totally clouded over (as predicted), so no fiery sunset, no Jupiter, no Venus, no moon.
- It was The Long-Suffering Wife’s birthday, so we were out at a truly wonderful Brazilian fusion restaurant in Tarzana. If you’re in the area, we can recommend it. The food was amazing, and the entertainment was rather eye-catching as well.
So here’s the sunset and conjunction pictures from yesterday. They were going to go up Friday night, but somehow we got infested with rainbows.
Unlike the previous “clear and a million” evenings, tonight we had the beginning of a monsoonal front moving up from Baja.
It wasn’t the absolute best sunset we’ve ever had, but it was pretty nice.
In that pink, cotton candy sky it was harder to see Venus and Jupiter, especially during dusk when the clouds were illuminated.
Venus wasn’t too hard. It’s the third brightest natural object in the sky, after all. (You do know what the first two would be, right?)
Jupiter was a little harder, and when it got darker it also got a bit cloudier. But finally it popped out into view.
Once it was almost fully dark and the clouds were still fairly thin, there they were. I hope this wasn’t the last we see of them here in LA before the conjunction on Tuesday.
The moon, of course, was lovely. With a relatively large (300 mm) telephoto lens, it’s bright enough so you can get by without a tripod and not get blurring by shooting all the way up at 1/4000 sec.
We’ll see if the clouds clear tomorrow.
Filed under Astronomy, Family, Photography, Space, Weather
Random Photo For June 24th
- Random number between 1999 and 2015 = 1999
- Random number between 1 and 12 = 6
- Random number between 1 and 31 (or 30 or 28 or 29) = 17
Sherman, today we’ve set the WayBack Machine about as far as we can go and still have digital photos. Given the pictures from that day, let’s use three instead of one. If nothing else, they prove that I have no shame.
From the picture set, I’m guessing that the pictures were actually taken by my son, who would have been fifteen at the time. We might have still been in the learning curve phase with digital cameras.
Yes, I was almost certainly using that tone of voice. In the last sixteen years I’ve tried to be more aware of when I start lecturing, and as a rule I think I do pretty well with keeping it locked up these days, but back in the day, a single dad with three teenagers, I might have occasionally had that face and used the “Dad voice.”
I just hadn’t realized now that, intentionally or not, I had been caught on camera doing it.
Finally, the picture I was looking for.
This was before I met The Long-Suffering Wife, so I’m thinking this “cookie bouquet” was from my mother for some reason. (It almost certainly wasn’t because I had been good.) I was probably taking the picture to email to my father to show to my mother and thank her for them.
Looking back almost sixteen years, my hair was much darker, I wore it longer, and I had those stupid glasses. Still had the same kind of pen (Parker Jotter) in my pocket, still looked like me.
Laser eye surgery was one of the best moves I ever made. I hated the way I looked in those glasses.
Filed under Family, Paul, Photography
We Love The Stars Too Fondly 