Day 90

Sometimes, as you have your camera in hand, something comes over you and you get an inspiration that says "Wow, I've got to get that shot." Other times you are wandering through the house trying to figure out what you can photograph just so you can get you post in for the day. Guess which category this falls into.

Day 89

More ducks...this won't be the theme for the week but I just happened to stumble across these guys by the Orlando Science Center this afternoon.

Day 88

I had to stop on my way home tonight to take care of a little emergency. While I was off my normal route and since I had my faithful backup camera with me, I stopped by a small lake in Orlando where I saw a couple of ducks running around. They were actually pretty tame and allowed me to get a lot closer than I thought they would.

Bonus Pic--Oh oh, I think I ate a football

The more I looked at this the funnier looking this bird got to me. He was a fat little guy. Thanks to Moe for telling me how to get my bonus pics first. THANKS!

Day 87

Back to the lake tonight. As I said, I like shooting there. I got this shot in while talking to some drunk guy that felt like he had to tell me his story.

Day 86 bonus picture

It seems kind of odd that if you are coming here, you will actually see the bonus picture first so it will look like it should be the main picture and the main picture will seem like the bonus pic. Does that make sense? This is one of the birds that I talked about in the post that you probably haven't read yet. I call this one "Serenity Near the Power Plant". This bird was doing really well catching dinner.

Day 86

I went down to the lake this evening to see what I could find. I really like it there. There always seems to be something to photograph. I played around for a long time with some pictures of a couple of birds but Reba liked this one so what do ya' do? I was experimenting with trying to keep the sunset background but lighting the foreground so it didn't end up being a sillouette. Anyway, here it is.

Day 85 Lazy day

I pretty much goofed off all day today, making up for all of the things I got accomplished yesterday. Oh well. I watched Florida beat Villanove tonight to advance to the final four and then had to run around looking for something to take a picture of. In my travels, I noticed an old board game but didn't think too much about it. A few minutes later, I ran across this version of the same game. It makes you think about how far technology has come that a game that used to fit in a box will now fit in an envelope.

Day 84, Yard Day

Today was work in the yard day. It is always my favorite thing to do. A little mowing, trimming, weed eating... always fun. We have an area in the yard with a couple of oak trees and assorted flowers. Occasionally it needs to be cleared a little since the oak trees make all kinds of little oaks. Before I could take the hedge trimmer in to clear, I had to promise Reba that I would be careful and not cut down any of her flowers. Tonight's picture is of a flower that didn't make it. It is now living in a vase in the kitchen.

Day 83

This picture is in keeping with my black and white candid portrait series. This is our cookie jar. She has been our cookie jar for a long time now. Almost 17 years of her life has been dedicated to holding our goodies. 17 years without 1 complaint about the hours, the wages or the working conditions. Always smiling. Maybe we could all learn a little from her.
Thanks little cookie jar!

Day 82

I went to the lake tonight to see if I could get a good sunset shot since it had been a little rainy and there were still enough clouds to make things interesting. When I got to the park, something else got my attention. In the water was something that looked like a dead bird. Near this bird had been strewn several yellow roses at the water's edge. I have no idea if the two are related. Seems like a pretty unlikely coincidence.

Day 81

The sofa arrived today. Of course the idiots said they were not supposed to bring it in so they just dropped it off on the porch. I didn't know any better but Reba had a little talk with the company when she got home. Today's picture is of a thing (I'm really not sure what you would call it), that Reebs has hanging on the back porch. Have a good day and I'll see you later.

Day 80

During the past few years, I have coached a little baseball, watched a lot of baseball and bought some baseball hats just to have them. Now I have a pretty good sized collection stacked on my closet shelf. (Not to mention another bunch in a big storage bin in the closet and I don't know how many stored in the garage). Tonight's picture is just a small part of one of the stacks. It seems as we get closer to baseball season, there seem to be more pictures related to it.
We are giving the furniture people another chance to deliver the sofa tomorrow. I took the day off to sofa sit again. Hopefully it will actually be on the truck this time. Keep your fingers crossed for me. See ya later.

Day 79

All right! I'm caught up. Not much to say about tonight's pic. I've been working on a series of black and white candid shots (kind of like the bride below) and I'm tired. It's a picture and it was taken today so it counts.

Day 78

After a long day it was nice to retire to our motel on Saturday night. The motel was called the Rivers Edge Motel (or something close to that). It was not exactly the Marriott (or even Motel 6 for that matter) but it had a bed and a fridge and a TV. What else could you ask for? It has 13 rooms, 1 through 12 and 14. Superstitious? It is also on the Caloosahatchee River. The Caloosahatchee goes into the Gulf southwest of Ft. Myers and meets up with the Lake Okeechobee allowing travel through the Okeechobee waterway system. It was very calm on Sunday morning and I was able to get this shot of a sailboat which had anchored for the night just a ways down the river past the drawbridge.

Day 77

I'm finally getting caught up on my posts. It was a long weekend and it took me a while to get things together. On Saturday, we went to a wedding reception for Reba's cousin Theresa and her new husband Dave. It was one whale of a party with lots to eat and drink, music and a lot of relatives. I tried very hard to get a candid photo of the bride and groom but there was so much going on it was tough to get them together when I had the camera. So, Saturday's picture is of the bride. She was actually looking at Dave at the time but he was a little too far away to fit into this picture.

Day 76 Happy St. Patrick's Day

I guess you could expect that with a name like mine, the picture today would have something to do with SPD. I wanted to do something a little more elaborate but I ended up sitting around all day waiting for a sofa to be delivered before I found out that it had been left off of the truck. We will be gone for a day this weekend so I will be a little late posting this weekend. Have a great St. Patty's Day . See ya later.

Day 75

Another day done!. Since the boy is home for spring break, I decided to take a day off tomorrow so we could go play golf or something. Unfortunately, our new sofa gets delivered so that may get screwed up. I don't understand why the delivery people can't get any closer than "sometime between 9:00 am and 5:00 pm. Hopefully it will be an early delivery. Still beats working I guess. Matt had the idea for this subject as I was getting close to running out of time for my picture today. I think I have had enough of the black and white for a few days, so back to a little color.

Day 74

Keeping with the b&w theme but without as much grain and with a touch of color. This is Reba's hand (I'm sure that wasn't too hard to guess). Gotta go cause I have a bunch of stuff to do. I'll be back tomorrow.

Day 73 Happy Birthday Moe

Happy BD 2U
Happy BD 2U
Happy BD
Dear Moesy
Happy BD 2U

Tonight's picture of the day is my first self portrait in keeping with the b&w and really grainy theme that I've had going for the last couple of days. In addition, tonight is bonus pic night. The BP is in honor of Moe's birthday. Another photo of her son Conor. Cute ain't he?

Day 72

It's getting late so I'm going to keep this short. My theme for however long I keep doing it is grainy b&w's. This is another. Actually, this was not done by adding grain specifically but by oversharpening the crap out of it and bumping up the contrast. Have a great day and I'll see you tomorrow.

Day 71 Happy Birthday Bob!

Today we celebrated Reba's Dad's birthday. It isn't officially until tomorrow but tomorrow would have been harder to get people together. Today's picture is of my brother in law Mike. He mentioned earlier in the day that he liked black and white so I decided to see what this would look like.

Day 70 Opening Day

Today was opening day at the local little league. While Matt was growing up, we spent many an opening day at Vann Park. I used to hate opening day ceremonies, mostly because of the parade through Deltona that we had to endure and the floatmaking that took up several days. But it was all worth it once the games started. Today'a picture is one of a couple of the little guys. This is "coach pitch" for the 6 and 7 year olds. It can be a lot of fun to watch one of these games. Everyone should take a day or so and go out and support your local youth leagues, whether it be baseball, soccer or football. It may be what keeps them off the streets in a few years.

Day 69 March Madness is here

The inspiration for this came while getting ready to watch Florida play Arkansas in the SEC tournament tonight. As you can tell, this ball is well worn. It represents countless hours of bouncing on the driveway where the hoop was for many years at our house. Between Matt going away to school and Hurricane Charlie taking out the post and backboard a couple of years ago the old ball just doesn't get much use any more but there are still many memories of the sounds of the games.

Day 68

I went to the ballpark tonight to try to get some baseball pictures. Apparently the local little league is starting a little late this year and opening day isn't until Saturday. I hurried home to regroup and came up with this. I don't love it but it is a picture anyway. See you tomorrow.

Day 67

Tonight is fresh fruit night. And, tonight is bonus pic night again. I had a couple to chose from. Reba liked one better and I liked the other one. Decided to go with both.

Day 66

I'm not going to write a book on this one. I just had an idea and thought I would see how it turned out.

Day 65 300 to go!

Tonight's picture was inspired by a contest on a photo site. The contest is titled black and white and red, kind of like the old joke.The answer to what is black and white and red all over?
A newspaper of course.
A blushing nun.
A sunburned zebra.
A chocolate sundae with ketchup.
Penguins in a woodchipper.
Any ideas?

Day 64

Assuming I didn't know better and someone said we were going to look at homes at a place called "Marina Isle" on the St. Johns River, I would think we were headed to a very exclusive and expensive area. Not so. Marina Isle is a small marina outside of Sanford Florida. At first glance, you may think that it is closed up and abandoned except for a few trailers and a handful of fishermen on the banks of the river. It is however a fully operational marina, restaurant, boat ramp and bait and tackle shop. The dock in the picture barely looks stable enough to walk on. I was amused when I saw a sign that says there is a $1.00 fee for fishing from it. I think I'll pass.

I am including a bonus picture 'cause I like the color. This is one of the buildings in the marina complex.

Day 63

Today did not get to be a fun day of running around taking pictures. Instead, we went to the craft store and got a bunch of mats. I just had some pictures printed and wanted to get them moumted before something happened to them. I did learn a long time ago that it is a lot cheaper (and I am a cheap s.o.b.) to buy the mats and cut them myself. So I spent the afternoon measuring a cutting. It really isn't that bad once you get the hang of it. Tonight's picture is what I still need to straighten up before I call it a night. By the way, I know that 11 - 8 is not 3 1/2.

Day 62 How it Started

This is how my hobby got off the ground. Not counting a few instamatics, a Brownie Starflash, and a liitle camera that looked like a miniature SLR, this was my first real camera. Now, even the the age of digital, the Minolta X700 still has a following of faithful users who are not quite ready to give up on film. Me? I'm one of the traitors who defected. I've sold all of my other manual focus film cameras (all were Minolta by the way) and my duplicated lenses, but I can't give this one up. It doesn't get out much anymore but it is still loaded with slide film and ready to go if called upon.

Day 61

This may seem like an odd combination of objects. Actually it is, and that will be my point of tonight's picture. This is a key and an integrated circuit chip. A key opens locks of various varieties. An integrated circuit ship makes electronic things like televisions and computers work. With that said, why do we need IC chips in keys? An age old question. (Well actually only a few years old question.) I don't have the intent or ability to answer the question of why we "need" it but I think I do have some insight into why we have it. First of all, those of you who were fortunate enough to be around in the '60's will remember the space program when it was in its prime. After we got to the moon, it seems that interest in this sort of stuff diminished somewhat. What was left were thousands of engineers with no jobs. Now I have no animosity toward engineers. In fact I have a great deal of respect for them. However, if you give an engineer a job making napkins, he'll find a way to put a microprocessor in them. (How many of you have seen the trash cans at fast food restaurants that open automatically and thank you for putting your garbage in?) Bless their hearts, they have put electronics in so many things that worked just fine without them. To name a few, refrigerators, stoves, dishwashers, lamps, clocks, chairs, books, glasses, coffee pots, lawnmowers, watches, picture frames, hats(I have one that plays the North Carolina fight song), shoes, baseballs, cat litter boxes (really), and... keys. Which brings me back to tonioght's photo. The inspiration for this came to me as I was giving a co-worker a ride home from work tonight. His car had to be left in the parking lot. There was nothing wrong with the vehicle. The chip in the otherwise perfectly good key quit working. Go figure.

Day 60

It's time to meet cat #5, the last of the bunch. Last but not least, we have Max. He is officially Matt's cat. Max was a feral kitten who was found wandering around the yard of a friend of Reba's and we ended up with another cat. As do all the others, Max has his quirks. Sometimes it's hard to tell what he is. His back feet stick out like a rabbit's, he comes when he's called like a dog and he sits at the window and chirps like a bird.