Rainy weekends can still be fun

Happy birthday Katarina! We had a great time getting to see the family this weekend at a birthday party for Katarina. The rain even held off for the party. I didn't let the rain stop me yesterday. I got out in between the down pours and got a couple of pictures. One of them was during the rain the other was of the salt marshes that are starting to change to their fall colors.

Signs of Fall

We went to our friends son's birthday party this weekend. Happy Birthday Peter! I noticed this tree that was starting to turn colors. A sign of another summer coming to an end.

My first published pictures

OK so it wasn't paid for and really isn't on paper... but it still is kind of cool. URI has published the URI UConn football game pictures that I took. The pictures can be seen on the URI Alumni website.

Have a great weekend!

Riverfest

Went out with Tony & Tio last weekend in boston. I got to take some pictures in the city before we went out. Also checked out Riverfest while in town. Here are some of the pictures that I took.

Being in town I recalled the days when I use to have to spend 2 1/2 hours commuting to work in the city each day and having to wake up at 5 am in the morning. Did that for 5 years. I don't miss riding the redline alone. Brandi Carlile at Riverfest 2006 Boston.Of all the photos I took that weekend the one of the girl walking the best with the Red Line in the background.

Self portraits

I started practicing portraits. Since most of my photography is landscapes I was a little apprehensive. This was my first scared attempt at a self portrait. You can actually see the scared crazy look in my eyes. My first picture was mostly out of frame. My second shot was out of focus. My third I moved. My fourth you are looking at. I guess I have to keep practicing. I have seen some great portraits on flickr. Actually most of them are almost too good. I wanted to share this with folks so that they know there are mere mortals out there too who are also trying to get a good self portrait. I even recruited our dog. Who reluctantly joined in as you can tell by his facial expression.

Update - I have replaced my horrible self portrait with a better one taken by my wife.

$600 = 1 Vacation Day

I spent an entire vacation day about 10 hours replacing a column that is at the entrance to the back door of our house. The column was rotted. When I hit the column with the car backing up just prior to going on vacation caused this job to become highest priority house repair that we needed to get done. We originally got estimates to replace the column at $600. A real carpenter likely could replace the column in 1/2 that time because he has real tools. Compared to my toy jig saw. He also knows what he is doing. The question is whether or not it is worth giving up 1 vacation day to save $600? If I could use the $400 dollars in labor to buy a lens the answer would be yes. But if we did that we would probably go broke given all the projects we have done on the weekends.

Thank god I have caulking skills because my lack of carpentry skills created some serious gaps in the finished column cap woodwork that needed to be filled. Overall my wife was impressed with the work unfortunately... As a result she now has the confidence in me to do even higher complexity home repair jobs :-( I'll post a picture once it stops raining.

URI UConn Game

A great way to end the summer is with your college friends at a college football game. The total number of friends that showed up for the event was small but those that did turn out had a blast!! Hank, Michael and I were the troopers that made it out on a Thursday night to see the game. Thanks to our wonderfull wives for being supportive of letting college friends get together occassionally to stay young at heart!

When I first got there I didn't even have a ticket. Hank got on the phone and hooked me and Michael up with Presidential Suite tickets. We got to sit and watch the game with the URI president. Before the game we tailgated at the URI alumni tent. Check out more of the pictures here.

We all had a great time at the game. I haven't laughed this hard since the last time I saw my college friends earlier this summer. The kind of laughing that hurts and you have to ask your friends to stop kidding around because you can't take it. There were a variety of topics that caused this level of fun. Including Michael's story about how he got back at one of his friend's with a practical joke. He put a newspaper add in the Hartford paper advertising free monkeys to whoever called his friends Cell phone.

We crashed back at Michael's house after the game. I hope the kids like the Rescue Heros!!!

Just to give Paul L, John K, and the other URI alumni that didn't make out to the game some added incentive to join us for the next event, here is the picture of us with the URI Cheerleaders. Were we that young looking in college??? Crazy!!