A little manual labor...

It's strange how being removed from a profession which requires manual labor, leaves one missing the doing of it.

After taking care of a few basic housekeeping errands this morning, I met my neighbor out front of our complex. she was looking over the rocks that were placed there for decorative purposes several years ago, and to her lament, they were uncomfortably close to the japanese maple she had planted there ten years ago, and were in danger of having the tree trunk grow into them, causing the trunk to weaken and possibly crack and break eventually.

From previous experience, we knew that these rocks weighed more than a thousand pounds each, and weren't going to be moved easily.

So I thought back to our days of youth, and the memories of moving these rocks in my early twenties was tempered by my more recent memories of aching muscles and aching joints.

The idea of moving thousand pound rocks isn't one to be taken lightly, but I can't help but feel humbled by our old neighbor, Mr Smith, who upon retirement, began landscaping his yard, creating the pond we used to skate upon in winter. The boulders which lined this pond, had to have weighed much more than a thousand pounds each, and I would dare to say that some of them had to have weighed on the order of several tons each. Yet he managed to move them by himself, using only hand tools and simple machines.

So I told her, "Get me a pry bar and some wooden blocks" which she did, and to her amazement, I managed to get the rock out of the ground, and moved into it's new hole, leaving a good clearance of 18 inches between the nearest corner of the rock and the trunk of the tree.

Looking back on it, we hardly spent a half hour doing the labor involved, yet we both felt like a major endeavor was accomplished today, and our level of self satisfaction is much higher than had we rented a "Mighty Mite' front loader to lift the rocks, like she was anticipating.

Nov. 4th.

Every four years, I get to reflect on the fact that I am asked, and in a way, it is my job, to give my say as to who shall run the day to day duties of the executive office of my country.

`If this sounds to you like I'm overstating the weight of this simple function, then you do not understand the fundamental principal of this form of government. The vote is one of the greatest revolutions in the course of human history since we rose up off of all fours and discovered fire.

Instead of passing the mantle of government over the masses through branches of a single family, we decide en-mass who we believe to be best qualified amongst all of us to accomplish this task for a period. And what makes this even more amazing, is that we put those people up for mandatory review after four years.

For all of its faults, there is no system I have ever seen, which comes close to accomplishing the dream of Democritus.  Even the ancient Romans, with their tradition of Cincinatus, never had a system as justly representative of the individuals in the nation as we have.

So, every four years, I take great pride in walking to my polling place, and marking my ballot. Today, I got to do that again, and nothing I have done this year has given me as much pride as this.

No matter what your politics, this is the one act of government we all share in common. The Vote is our sacred right. Practice it. Demand it. Never surrender it.

The Economy

There have been times in the past few weeks when the nightly news has seemed like a bad spy movie involving the collapse of the world economy while bad guys discuss world domination from exotic locations. As such, sometimes what we see happening on the news will seem disconnected from the everyday life we live.

This week, we got a very gentle reminder, that what we see on the news, isn't all that far away.

Here on California Avenue, we've been noticing a steady decline in the day-to-day foot traffic between the various cafe's and hair salons. Several of the restaurant owners have also mentioned a decline in patronage.

On the news lately, there has been talk about the governments proposal to buy up "Short Term" or "Commercial" Paper, or the ability of small businesses and banks to borrow relatively small amounts of money from each other for short periods of time. Things like this are quite literally the grease in the wheels of our economic engine.

Our Payroll at KSP, like that of so many other companies, is handled by an independent payroll management company, which is a company that is associated with, but independent from our bank. This company facilitates the transfer of funds from the company savings account, into the company payroll account and into the various direct deposit accounts of the individual employees.

We had a hicup.

The official story is that they had a trainee managing our account.

What seems far more likely to me, is a failure of  "short term paper".

Two days later, and after a lot of controlled panic in our office, the funds are moving.

Looking back now, I have had days in the past, where my money was managed not day by day, but hour by hour. I would write checks with the hope, simple hope, that a deposit will have cleared by two o'clock. My rent checks would be written with the faith that my landlord wouldn't cash them until the second tuesday of the month. Keeping my dishes in the air was an art-form. That was economy of faith, and it was primed for disaster.

As we learn to maintain the balancing act of weak economies, we become overconfident, and eventually we lose track of one or more of the "Flying Dishes" that comprise our finances.

Eventually, I was able to grow my financial profile to the point where I wasn't living hand to mouth anymore, and a day or two of economic uncertainty doesn't scare me. Those days are far behind me. But it does give me pause...

Guess where I was...

There aren't many places in the world that can make a 42 year old man feel like a nine year old boy again. But there is at least one.

I've been on the high desert of the Antelope Valley at dawn to shoot experimental space planes during test flights. I've been on the slopes of Tahoe for sunset more times than I can count. I've been on top of Half Dome, and I've traversed the desert southwest with my brother. I've done photoshoots with Starlets in Beverly Hills Mansions, and I've consulted for NASA, and Stanford, but there's always been one place that has seemed more distant and Magical than Shangrila. 

Well on thursday, I finally got to go there. I took advantage of an offer from one of my vendors to participate on a training at one of the worlds best sound studios, and since I'm not directly involved in the movie industry the chance to see "5858 Lucas Valley road" (Do a Google search) in person was too incredible an opportunity to pass up.

This place is a perfect example of synergy of design between landscape and housing.  The buildings are all beautiful and perfectly placed, with either Victorian influence as in the Main Residence (Which they didn't let us get near.)  or invocative of Frank Loydd Wright , as in the Restaurant/Health club/Gift Shop. Every building is placed in such a way as to not dominate the landscape so that as you drive up the main road, you wouldn't even notice that the structures, which are all quite substantial, are even there unless you knew to look for them.  And in an effort to keep them all as discreet as possible, almost all the parking for guests and "Visitors" is all underground. 

My visit to this place was arranged as part of a Studio Sound training seminar. So the whole of the day was spent in the largest, and most well respected sound recording studio in the country. (If not the world) I got to listen to the different results of various microphones used with different instruments and vocalists, and they taught us all how microphone placement is just as important as any tricks of studio mixing that you can do. As a matter of fact, thoughtful microphone placement can usually result in less TIME spent in post production.

All of that made me think about lighting. The arguments and techniques for both are all very similar. Both fields are concerned with proximity and shape, reflections and spill, color and tonal range. (That was a shocker for me. Thinking of sound as having color....)

I could go on for days about technical stuff, so I'll spare you.  Let's just say that I have no interest in disturbing the man from Modesto who built the place and just wants to raise his family in peace and quiet, I also have no bones to pick with him as a lot of his fans seem to have these days. He has built what is probably one of the most beautiful motion picture production facilities in the world, and I am very grateful for the opportunity to see the place and to take advantage of the learning experience it offered me.

Thank you George.

A nice reminder of home.

This week I got a nice little respite from "California cuisine"

Some friends of mine introduced me to a restaurant in Redwood city which was founded by a couple who moved here from Portland ME.  And like me, they were missing the little touches of home. Such as authentic New England seafood.

Now, I know what you're saying. New England is as well known for it's cooking as England is. But when you're far away from home, you even begin to miss the less attractive points of home.

So since California restaurants do New England Fish and Chips like they do New York Style Deli's. (Victorian chairs, lace doilies, fresh cut flowers, and creme' sauce on sandwiches made with Sourdough gourmet rolls.)

When we walked into this place, I was greeted with the vision of ordinary pine benches and picnic tables, tin buckets full of oyster crackers. (Imported from Vermont by the way) and bottles of vinegar and mustard. Along with the prerequisite lobster buoys and fishing nets stuck to the wall.

There were maps of the Maine coastline on the walls as well as bottles of Moxie on the counter.

Moxie! They serve Moxie! I'm sold! This place has me head over heals in love!

None of my cohorts had ever heard of the stuff before, so after a brief history lecture on carbonated beverages in Pre-Coca Cola America, they ordered some bottles for themselves and asked me the well versed question, "You enjoy drinking cough syrup?"

Evidently, the couple who run this restaurant have seafood flown in daily, and it tastes spot on perfect to the seafood we used to get at Point Judith, Misquamicut,  Portsmouth, Plymouth, or any other place along the seaboard which had a fishing pier and breakwater. And all this without the stench of diesel fuel to go along with it.

A dinner their ran about $20 a plate, but it was worth it to me. And I even took a bottle of Moxie to go.

Old Port Lobster Shack

Tony 

July 12th, 2008

I do believe, that in Palo Alto at least, Friday, July 10th 2008, shall forever more be known as iPhone day.

The lines at the Apple store have been a steady fixture since Wednesday night, and have been showing no sign of letup. Even with all of the talk about email not working properly, and the AT+T network not keeping up with the rate of activation people have been cueing up to get there iPhones. 

I won't deny it, I even tried to get one on friday night by going to the AT+T store instead of the Apple store, thinking that the crowds would all be at the Apple store. 

However, one glance around the inside of that store, and the look of harried exhaustion on the faces of the employees told me what had happened. Sure enough, they had run out of iPhones by mid -afternoon, and were suggesting to people that they return on Sunday when they might have more. (All of the units that they expected to receive on Saturday were probably spoken for already. They were evasive on that subject. )

In the above picture, you'll see what the line looked like at 8:30 p.m. on Saturday night! That's a full thirty Six hours after they started selling the phones. The line started inside the store and extended out and around the back of the building. The expectations here are that the lines will continue through Sunday evening. When was the last time you saw grown people behaving like this for something they want for themselves and not their children that wasn't either an essential commodity like food or gasoline, or an illegal substance?

All I can say is that I am very VERY happy that I own stock. Long live Saint Steve.

Uncomfortable reminders...

We got an Uncomfortable wake-up call this week. One of my co-workers, at 39 years old, had a mild stroke while in the break room. Needless to say,  we're all a little shaken up by this.

Now, due to the marvels of modern medicine, he's no longer doomed to a life as a quivering vegetable, and will most likely recover fully. (blood thinners...the forgotten miracle of modern technology.) 

I just got back from visiting him at the hospital, (Kaiser Permanente,  how is it that they can  make managed care look like a run down trailer park?) and he's already walking around and cracking jokes with not even an unexplained twitch of a stammer.

But something keeps tugging at my memories, drudging up long burried worries and attacks of panic from my sophmore year in High School, when a classmate keeled over and died in the middle of Spanish class. 

Sometimes, life doesn't just give you a gentle reminder that you are mortal. It kicks you hard, and usually in very painful places, to remind you.

We're all taking a giant, collective "Phew!" because he's going to be OK. 

July 4Th

Happy Fourth every one.
The Fourth has always been, and still remains one of my favorite holidays.
Remember, what this day means. It means that we "Doff our caps to no one" We celebrate the idea, that the highest position that one can attain in this land, is not that of congressman, or Supreme Court Justice, nor even that of President.
On that day, 232 years ago, we proclaimed, that the highest office in this land, is that of "Citizen" And in one fell swoop, we turned on the head, thousands of years of human history where kings, emperors, pharoes, and myriads of other titles were cast aside as being public servants. How odd, that we chose to compete for the lowest office in this land.

The Orange skies have gone away for the time being. We'll wait and see what becomes of the new fires that started overnight. But for now at least, the skies are somewhat clear and the color of blue has returned.
I'm on my way to Walnut Creek this ofternoon for a cookout. Sharing some barbeque and spirits with friends out there. I'll have more to talk about tomorow as I am still a little groggy this morning. I just wanted to make note of The Fourth.

Orange Skies

OK,

I've been wanting to say something about this, but to be quite honest, this subject has been affecting me more strongly than I realised.  I don't know if I'd go so far as to describe this as depression, but it has definitely put me down in the dumps. 

As you have probably already learned from the news, the northern part of California has erupted with quite literally THOUSANDS of wildfires recently. Check it out for yourself HERE. The numbers are astounding when you see them.

What this map doesn't tell you, is the affect all of this smoke has had way down here.

You've all heard about California Sunsets, and for you East-Coasters, that part of the California mythology is pretty much true, and the wildfires have caused the colors of the setting sun to be even more spectacular.

But what has me so bummed, is the daytime sky. For the past week, to ten days, it's been distinctly ORANGE. 

For the first day or two, it was a novelty, and actually a little exciting. The novelty of it honestly got the blood pumping and made every one perk up and go "Wow!"

But after a few days, we started to miss the comforting color of blue. The sensation of being under the orange haze made us all a little miserable, and more than a little wistful. 

There are so many stalwart functions of our life that seem to never move, that when they inevitably do get shoved aside, if even for a short while, we are caused to feel unnerved to the point of depression and fear. Yes, there is a tinge of fear in people here. No matter how unfounded this emotion is, because the fires really are very very far away, and pose no direct threat to us here in Palo Alto, they have affected something that is resolute and fixxed in our lives. Every time we look up to the skies, all conversation stops and the mood changes. 

Yesterday, for a short while, the winds shifted and an offshore breeze brought in cold ocean air that displaced the smoke saturated air from the northern part of the state, and returned our beloved blue to us, if only for a few hours. But then, slowly, the orange returned and stole our blue happiness from us. And even the sight of a spectacular California sunset could not replace the joy that was visited on us by a few hours of a reminder of what a sky is supposed to look like.

I've tried taking a few pictures of the sky, but nothing I've been able to capture communicates the subtle change in the color of the sky without seeming either exagerated or inconsequential.

Technically, the color of the daytime sky is supposed to be 5500K. The other day, I took a color-meter outside, pointed it at the sky and got a reading of 4500K! (G.E. Softwhite light bulbs typically are 3700K, and halogen lights are typically between 4700K and 4400K.)

When painters attempt to create a photorealistic painting, they take great pains to study how light reflects off of various surfaces and how the color of that reflected light might affect the color of nearby surfaces. They will study such small elements endlessly, taking notes and doing test drawings and color tests endlessly until they feel that they've addressed every conceivable detail, no matter how small, because if they don't, a viewer will someday look at that painting and say that something is wrong. The viewer may not be able to identify what it was exactly that made them feel that something was wrong, or out of place. But some subtle cue set off their senses and sets the mind to be alert that their is something amiss. 

There is something amiss in the California sky.

See, this is the exact reason why I need to do this blog!

I've let myself go far too long between posts merely because I thought that there wasn't anything interesting going on in my life.

And that flies directly in the face of everything I've always said to my friends...there is ALWAYS something interesting going on in your lives, if only you learn to recognize it when it happens to you.

Like the night-time walks I've been taking up Stanford Ave to "The Dish" which is a local euphemism for an open space preserve owned and maintained by the University to keep stray radio noise from interfering with their Radio Astronomy dish.

The preserve itself is closed at sundown, but the walk up Stanford Ave is a stunner in of itself. 

The sidewalks along the avenue don't stay stuck to the edge of the street like they would in a normal cityscape, but rather they wander in and out of the woods near the road, taking me into wooded darkness into a cacophany of tree frogs crying out at near ear-splitting volume, and further into pine strewn lands with the subtle chirp of crickets. 

Meanwhile, distantly through the trees, flickering light will filter through the forest from the Arts and Crafts style architecture of the staff Housing. 

The street is not well lit, and so I rely on moonlight and stars to guide my footsteps, but I will confess that on more than one occasion, I needed to use the illuminated display of my iPod to light up the the walkway so that I did not wander off the path and into the drainage gully. 

The walks through the neighborhoods surrounding the University are also just as fascinating. But the descriptions of those areas will have to wait for another day, as I'll need something wonderful to describe on another day.

In the meantime, enjoy a segment of a short video I made for Steve from our trip together in April.

Happy Anniversary.

Well, it's that time of year again, our big "Anniversary Sale" at work. So I'm stocking up on Odwalla Juice, and power bars to get me through the days, as well as saying goodbye to my hearing for the next couple of days as the crowds descend upon us and I'll be faced with the undying din of hundreds of people shouting to be heard over the other hundreds of shouting people.

 We'll also have a full house of Manufacturer reps to help with questions.

So to anticipate, we've been trying to get a little Rest and Relaxation here at "Shuchat Arms" Last weekend we had our first summer barbeque for the season. A tradition I'm proud to say that I started after my fire. 

Wait, ...I just got the irony of that....

So last weekend all of the residents of Shuchat Arms gathered in the back yard while I fired up my Smoker to enjoy a little extended family camaraderie and smoked meat.

I'm still a little worn down from fighting off a pretty nasty virus from two weeks ago, but nothing was going to stop me from enjoying the sumptuous smells of the barbeque.

As I said, we started this shortly after my fire as a way of celebrating the fact of getting through tough times together, and we just liked the idea too much to stop, so we've been doing this about once a month as weather permits, and Memorial Day weekend is the perfect time for this, is it not?

Polly the dog seems to think so. Strange dog, but she was more interested in the vegetables than she was in the meats.

So the stress has been building, but I've been managing, and the sale is over now by the time I managed to finish this entry. But I thought it would be good to get this out to you anyhow.  It's amazing how little time I've had, I thought there was more than 14 hours in a day, but I seem to be missing the other 10 somewhere. Have I been sleeping more than eight hours at a stretch? Am I snoozing at my desk whenever I sit down to write a sentence or two for this blog? Am I waking up looking at a screen full of "ddddddddddd....." repeated ad infinitum because the author wasn't conscious and couldn't remove his finger from the keypad?

 During the sale, we had a bunch of new "Tech Reps" from Sony and Canon, and they all are pretty wet behind the ears. One of these kids is completely addicted to RedBull and can't stop talking long enough to listen to me when I tell him to not try to talk the Dean of Russian Literary Studies at Stanford into going to a Hip-Hop party with him. 

Pimple faced Twerp.

Kids these days, they never listen.....wait a minute, where have I heard that before?

On a final note, this is the only picture I dared take of the entourage that followed Condoleeza Rice when she was playing Bridge. For the record, all of the OTHER cars you can almost see here all sport Obama Stickers. You gotta love Irony.

Visitors in the neighborhood.

No way am I going to tempt fate by taking pictures of this. I've got two blacked out Chevy Suburbans, and a blacked out sedan parked next to my building right now, along with a couple of C.H.P.s scattered around the block. It would seem that the Secretary of State is next door playing bridge with an old friend.

Stanford Pow Wow

It's been a busy week at work, the manager and his girlfriend have both been out of work on vacation leaving us even more shorthanded at work than we have been. So the idea of strolling through the Stanford campus with my neighbors seemed like a nice idea the other day,  when they proposed a trip to go to the Annual Stanford PowWow.

It was a nice day for it, as one of the campus' many Eucalyptus groves was turned into a temporary fairground, complete with fried dough booths, homespun crafts,  and a central exhibit pavilion.

As near as I can figure, this particular PowWow began as a an extension of the Native American movement of the late sixties and early seventies by a small group of Stanford Students who wanted to promote better acceptance of fellow Native Americans by the rest of the Stanford Campus, and more importantly, to make Stanford appear more attractive to other Native Americans.

So over the years, it has grown into a full fledged institution in its own right. 

During the event we saw tribes from all across the country represented, and to my excitement, including one from the Wampanoag tribe!

She was probably as surprised and excited to meet some one from Massachussetts as I was.

Now as far as I can tell, this was not an effort to re create "Period Authenticity" That's probably not a phrase these folks would ever use. The costumes worn in the dances were fantastic and absolutely mesmerizing, but they weren't even close to looking like they belonged in any time other than the early Twenty First century.

One of my favorites was a young girl wearing a gold Lame' dress covered with "Jingle Bells" which almost looked like it was modeled after what some one would have remembered an authentic Native American Dress might have looked like if you had only ever seen one once, as you were being hustled through a natural history museum late one afternoon, just minutes before closing while recovering from a particularly bad case of Rheumatic Fever.

But she still looked GREAT!

The dance was a lot of fun to watch. There were a lot of outstanding costumes and some of the dancers looked like they LIVED for cardio workouts! I haven't seen that much Knee movements since my days of skiing moguls as a ski bum.

 They also had a great way of handling "Gate Crashers" who got into the mood and joined the dance, despite the fact that they looked about as Native as Woody Allen. They wouldn't stop people from joining in the dance, they would just call them up to the main podium to get a T-Shirt. The recipients would usually dance a few more turns, but they invariably felt the need to sit out the next dance. I guess it's not as much fun to dance this way when you're trying to hold onto a shirt at the same time.

NAB and Vacation!

Let's see, It's Tuesday morning here, which makes it six days since I returned from vacation, and this is the first real chance I've had to sit down and write. I meant to get some pictures up here right away, and also to post a quick description of the trip. It's amazing how much can pile up in such a short amount of time when you're gone. It's amazing how many small problems build up into potential large scale conflagrations. It's amazing how quickly I can get sucked back into the work mindset after such a great vacation with my big brother.
I guess it's no surprise then that the only way I could rationalize a vacation in my own mind was to couch it together with a work related function. Steve was right, I'm obsessed with work. 

 So let's recap, Two weeks ago, I flew to Las Vegas for the "National Association of Broadcasters" convention, or "NAB" for short.

You're probably wondering why a guy who works at a camera store goes to a broadcasting convention in Las Vegas? Some of you are probably thinking that I look for any excuse I can to go to Vegas to take advantage of the nightlife, and maybe play the tables and take in a "Show" or two.

Nothing could be further from the truth. I hate that town, Gambling bores me, the shows look like trash, and the clubs are full of Euro-trash wanna-bees. If I could avoid that place, and it's really an ugly awful place with a horrible sewage system. (That's one thing the travel brochures never tell you, is how bad it smells! Why do you think the Casinos spend millions on self-contained environments?)

It's strictly a place to do business, and a jump off point for trips to Zion National Park and the rest of Southern Utah.

Now the convention was a successful trip for me, mainly because I've been working hard these past few years to position the company to take advantage of the changes that have been going through the world of photography and video these last few years, and are still wreaking havoc in the industry. 

If I'm successful, our company will be well positioned to take advantage of a restructured market that will be screaming to refill a vacuum created by the retreat of filmmaking  in the Northern California Film and Broadcast market, in five years. 

Hopefully less, but you've got to plan ahead. I've made some solid contacts at the shows and have seen some of the 

trends that will be governing the changes that are now taking place in my business.

So I've got some new contacts and commitments from vendors in my pocket, so with successful show under my belt, I met up with Steve and we prepared to head out into the wilderness and beauty of Southern Utah.

Thursday Morning gave us a short delay as the rental agency didn't have our jeep ready on time, so Steve and I took what we call a "Short walk" up the strip to find something to eat, and take in the architecture of the Las Vegas Strip. Steve

 was struck by the scope of a new project called "City Towers" which looks like it was taken directly out of "The Jetsons" and is big enough to qualify as a small city in of itself. I was struck by the number of peddlers handing out business cards for strippers. That's the other thing I hate about Vegas, you're constantly being hassled for handouts by people who don't need any. 

After a short two hour walk to New York New York from Circus Circus, (All the while I'm looking for Las Vegas Las Vegas) and the rental car agency not only doesn't have our Jeep ready, but they have NO four wheel drive vehicles of any type at all! (Somebody stop me from screaming!) I reserved it two months ago! "You can TAKE the reservation,  you just can't FILL the reservation!" 

So we took our sedan, which started falling to pieces as soon as we got to the Virgin River Gorge, and made our way on our semi annual trip.

First stop? Zion!

I have to laugh, because when I was checking into the hotel a few days before, I was talking with another hotel guest who looked like he had just driven out from Compton, for a few days of gambling and roller coasters. He took a look at my bags and

 asked how long I was going to be in town for. I told him the truth, The bags were full of camping gear because as soon as my trade show was over, I was heading out of town to go to Zion. The look he shot me told me the whole story. He had no idea what Zion was, other than the underground city where Morpheus and Neo would party while hiding from the machines and the virtual reach of Agent Smith. So I explained in more detail, "It's part of the National Park system, it's considered one of the crown jewels of the country.

His response was priceless. "Is it in THIS country? So they got good rides and stuff?"  

That's where I gave up and wished him a good night. How do you explain a National Park to some one who's idea of fun is Mickey Mouse and Ronald McDonald?

The weather couldn't have been more perfect! It was in the low to mid

 seventies for the whole trip, with night time temps dropping to the low fourties. Th

e only thing that could have made it better was for a light night time rain for Steve. He was dearly missing the light patter of rain drops on the tent. That small factor for him would have been what the sight and smell of a campfire were to me. Just the right aesthetic touch to get us into the spirit of the trip.

 

From Zion we began a drive east, out to the park Steve had described to me in the past, but which I had never heard of before. Capitol Reef National Park. As Steve describes it, it's out in the middle of nowhere, with nothing around. "PERFECT!" 

Now, for the record, I thought that the drive from Zion to Capitol Reef was worth the whole of the trip just to experience. It was like an MTV Car  commercial! Sweeping panoramic vistas everywhere, mountain roads that never seem to ever reach a summit, and cold clear air that you can actually feel filling every bronchiole tube in your lungs!

As we got there late in the day, we didn't have a great deal of time to spend within the park borders proper, and had to find a place to spend the night. The campsites within the park were all full, and neither of us liked the thought of sleeping in 

a motel, so we asked the Ranger at the information desk if she had any suggestions. She told us about some "B.L.M." land east of the park we could use which was even further away from anything resembling a town than the campground in the park was. I was all up and eager for the idea, but Steven, having never heard of B.L.M. land before was somewhat skeptical, until he saw it.

Let's get it clear right now, Steve liked the idea of being far and away from civilization, but he just wasn't sure what Bureau of Land Management land meant. 

What it meant was, a campsite that looked more like something out of a John Ford western than anything either of us had ever experienced before. IT WAS FREAKIN GREAT!

That night camping by the river in the middle of NOWHERE in southern Utah had to have been the highlight of the whole trip for both of us! Nothing we have done together has ever

 come close to giving us the adrenaline rush that staying there that night gave us both, With the possible exception of a certain bridge crossing many years ago. 

Don't ask. We're still freaked by it.  

Our tent was nestled under the branches of an old oak tree, and just outside of the tent flap was a slow running gurgling river. And to our south, was a low rising hill, giving us a breathtaking spot from which to take in this panorama. All that was missing was the howl of Coyotes in the distance, because we had tumbleweeds already. Sorry Lynn, no roadrunners.

Sadly, we left this little spot in the middle of nowhere the next day. But I think we've both decided that the next time we go out there, this is going to be a MUST STOP SPOT on that trip. 

From here, we journeyed on to the Colorado river, and Natural Bridges. Steve wanted to camp in Monument valley, but for some reason we couldn't find the campground, and wound up having to travel all the way to Glenn Canyon Dam to spend the night. 

After that, we made our way back to Zion, where we spent the remaining days of our vacation. If you were to ask Steve, it was about at this point that he was able to get me to stop talking about work. Sunny afternoons spent lying in the lawn in front of the lodge on the valley floor, day hikes up to idyllic sanctuaries along the canyon walls, nighttime campfires over which we'd cook hot dogs and steak. The gleaming twinkle of the night sky.

I haven't seen Steve look this happy in years. The parks of Southern Utah really do seem to strike a chord with him, and give him a contentment like nothing else I've ever seen, and frankly, they do the same with me. I remember long ago thinking that deserts were places full of fear and terror for me. Stretches of land as far as the eye can see where the landscape sucks the water right from your bones, and burns out your eyes just out of spite.

Now, I go there and see millenia of history laid bare before my eyes by the erosion of sandstone cliffs, and wonderous vistas that drive the air in and out of my lungs and soul.

The lands of the Colorado Plateau are as beautiful as anything I have ever seen. Leaving our campsite on the Virgin river on Wednesday morning left us both feeling remorseful. Neither of us were quite ready to leave this behind, although in the back of my mind, I was picturing the stack of paperwork and phone messages piling up at work. 

Maybe that's why I was wanting to stay?

Back to the norm.

Well it didn't take long before two distinct pressures came into play and put a TV set back into my living room.

The first, was actually the most interesting. No sooner than I had mentioned at work that my TV set died, than people began approaching me and offering their "Old TV set" And that sparked me into thinking. When did the Television change from being a luxury item, into a surplus item? Like kitchen grease, the challenge in this day and age isn't "What can I do with this" but rather "How do I get rid of this" 

Televisions used to be a luxury item that people regarded as either a pestilence upon our lives, or a portal to the larger world community. Edward R. Murrow waxing poetic over the sight of the Golden Gate Bridge and the Atlantic coast on the same TV Monitor. And now we have reality TV Games where people plot against each other to be thrown off an island, and now we have surplus supplies of sets that have to be given away at any possible opportunity.

A long way from the days of the neighborhood kids rushing home from school to gather at a neighbors house to watch "Howdy Doody", shouting in a communal rush of pre-adolescent ecstasy "It's Howdy-Doody Time!"

The other reason was the sudden crashing sense of SILENCE in my apartment.

When you're a single guy living alone. the human noise provided by the television is a necessity to ones sanity. 

Can you believe that some one just said that about Television?

So I accepted a friends offer, and I once again have a noise box in my home. Ooh. Gotta go. Springers' on.

Small, yet still infuriating inconveniences.

This installment is going to be for Beths' enjoyment. This being a Tuesday, I've got the day off, and it's a beautiful, glorious sunshiny day. I've got the shades open, the windows and sliding glass doors agape with the fresh air hopefully replacing the stale winter air in my apartment.

So here I am, sitting at my desk, checking my stocks with a DVD of "High Noon" playing on my TV when I hear a high pitched squeal, followed by a sharp "POP" and the smell of ozone.

As you can probably imagine, the adrenaline rush sent me into a hightened state of alertness. My senses were all working on overtime as I was listening attentively for the soft gurgling sounds of combustion, the smell of charred plastic, and the dancing light of  yellow flame.

Fortunately none of these things came to be evidenced. except for a slight tinge of ozone and burnt solder. I think you can all forgive a little over-reaction on my part considering my recent history with home electronics in general, and Cathode Ray Tubes in specific.

So with the dulcet sounds of Gary Cooper silenced, and the scenes of "Hadleyville" darkened I came to realize that yet another modern convenience is stricken from my lifestyle for the time being.

So until I decide to make it otherwise, I am joining the likes of the "Gilmores" who held out so valiantly for so many years without a TV at all in their lives.

Beth once called me TV addicted. Well, this will be my chance to conquer that addiction. How long will I hold out? I have no idea at this time. We'll have to take this one day at a time. I won't miss broadcast TV but I will miss my DVD Collection.

The news has been horrible ever since they decided that it was more important to cover Princess Diana, and now Brittany, instead of discussing the politics of the day, the wars we fight, and the changes in the economy, so that's no great loss. I'm too much of a cheapskate to pay for Cable, and Satellite is worse. Maybe this is a good thing?

But I do find it ironic, I'm the manager of the video department at Keeble and Shuchat, and I don't think that television is a necessity in my life.... What will my customers think? This is like the E-Commerce CEO from the late 1990s who once told me "Never buy anything you care about on the internet." yet here he was, selling big ticket items on the internet. What does that tell you?

Maybe I should just get a cheap, used TV set, just so that I can have some professional credibility? Or is that already a cop-out?

I guess I'll just have to live with being a less than credible authority for the time being.

I can still sell the Pro and cinema cameras without feeling like a fraud.

So I'm off for a walk in the California Sunshine. 

Congratulations to Chris and Dave, and best of luck to Alex.

No News is Good

Tuesdays are my day off, and I enjoyed the fact that I had no activities planned for the day. It was a perfect spring day here. The ocean breeze has been keeping the air slightly chilled, leaving me with the feeling of comfort that you get when the air is slightly cooler than what would be called ideal, because the slightest activity then keeps you warm, and the suns rays are like an added bonus, raising my spirits and driving off the winter blues like a gentle soft bristled brush ,if memory serves, passing through my hair.  This would have been a perfect day for a hike through Palo Altos' "Foothill Park" a City Owned park for the residents of Palo Alto, that has some of the most beautiful vistas in the South Bay, and it sports its own lake. However, it's nine miles from my place to the park, and it would have taken all of the day to walk up to the park, and by that point I would have been to winded to enjoy it. Let alone walk back home. Days like this make me wish that I owned a car. That is of course until I look at the price of gas, and then I remember why I chose to live without one for a little while.....  

The Flu of 2008

For those of you connected with the Donatelli family, you're most likely reading my sister Beths' blogspot,  and you probably have read her latest article describing her bout with the great Flu Bug of 2008,  Well, guess what I've been doing for the last few days?!

I find it comforting in some ways, that although we're separated by 3000 miles, we find ways to intertwine our lives.

I think it started last week sometime, shortly after I cleaned out the battery station at work, an area with more dust bunnies than "Pig-Pens" easter basket. I started coughing and feeling run down almost immediately afterwards, and naturally attributed that feeling to inhaling a little too much dust that morning. Nothing that a nights sleep and a little hot tea wont cure, right?

Well I should have guessed that something was up when I found myself falling asleep during the trip to Monterey on Sunday. I just thought I was enjoying a day off in the Pacific Ocean sun. (Note, to those of you who aren't familiar with the coast of Northern California, that last line was a bit of an inside joke. The weatherman here call it a "Marine Layer" the rest of the world  calls it an "Overcast") Monday morning, I DRAGGED myself to work, and put in a full day, feeling like I'd been run over by a fleet of trucks. This was about the time I was starting to think that I might have something other than a severe dust allergy. So when I got home on Monday night, I posted a quick blog to tell every one about my trip to Monterey, and then took an afternoon nap. 

It's a good thing that I have Tuesdays off, because I woke up on Tuesday morning just in time to watch it turn into Tuesday afternoon....what happened to that afternoon nap on Monday?

Unlike Beth, I didn't seem to have a lot of nausea, I just didn't feel very hungry. so I made myself eat a little soup, and then fell asleep again, waking up sometime late Tuesday afternoon.

Sheesh! Cats don't sleep this much!

Wedsnesday morning, and I can't make myself go to work so I call in, and then sit down at my desk. Next thing I know, it's 2:00pm! I'm now starting to think seriously about bypassing the emergency room and just calling the C.D.C. and inquiring about domestic cases of African Sleeping Sickness! I have this horrendous cough that sounds like my lungs are trying desperately to emigrate to some foreign country.  This is nuts, I make myself some more soup, and I'm out like a light AGAIN!

Next thing I know, It's Thursday morning, and I feel good enough to go to work. no drowsiness, but a little bit of a cough. Guess what, Three people from work have called in sick. They've all got the same flu! Now for us, that sucks badly, because we're short staffed by three people as it is. And with a buisness our size, this can be a very scary situation indeed.

So for this whole week, we've been making due with only 25% of our needed staff!

All I can think of right now, is that I'm greatful that this thing doesn't come back for a relapse.

Monterey and Point Lobos,

This past weekend, two of my co-workers decided that I desperately needed to be subjected to a day of rock strewn ocean beaches, sun, sand, fresh air and wine tasting, along with some general relaxing. So kicking and screaming in general protest to such miserable torture, we grabbed some cameras from our Rental department and set our alarms for an early wake up so we could get to Monterey by breakfast time.
Well, yours truly slept right through his alarm, and woke up an hour late, so a mad dash of showering and dressing ensued as I tried to get my sorry but out the door. Since I don't currently own a car of any type, my co-workers had loaned me the use of their truck the night before so that i could meet them at their place since they live 20 minutes to the south of me. It was about the time that I was pulling into their driveway that I remembered that the memory cards which I had put on my desk in a neat stack the night before so that I wouldn't forget them in the morning as I was rushing out the door, were still sitting there patiently waiting to be placed in my pocket.... (DOH!)
I am so NOT a morning person.
No problem, I was able to borrow a small memory card from one of my co-workers and we made due.
We had a great time down there, shooting on the beach in the morning, a picnic lunch under the pines at mid-day, followed by a short round of wine-tasting downtown, and then dinner.
My body has no idea how to deal with this strange and obscure concept called "Relaxing" so I'm still trying to recover from this weekend. Not to worry, it's nothing that a few days of work can't cure.

Ahhhh......Normality.

Co-worker comedy

OK, I promised myself when I started this blog that I wouldn't talk about my co-workers, but this is too funny to pass up.
Our company runs a series of classes and workshops to teach photographic techniques and familiarize people with equipment they may otherwise never have the chance to use under a real world situation. We're now conducting approximately 20 classes a month, and all of these are co-ordinated by one woman. So as you can imagine, she has her hands full keeping all of those ducks in a row. A big part of her job is also to arrange and keep track of future classes. This only makes sense, right? The process of putting together these classes is such that sometimes we get commitments from instructors and equipment vendors long before they are able to co-ordinate schedules.
Now there has been some in-shop politics about how these classes get handled, but in the end it's no big deal. Mary has simply put together a series of binders which every one can easily refer to and see the instruction on how to ring up a class sale and collect the student data.
So, If one were to sign up a person for a Field workshop, all they would need to do would be to look up the class by date, and there would be a six digit number that they would simply type into the register, and they would be prompted to take their names, and relevant data, and guided through the steps to close the sale. The computer systems handles the Taxable or Non-Taxable status.
Well, we had a big row yesterday over this......It would seem that there was some question about how to ring up the classes which were labled, "Pending" because when the sales people tried to type in the word "Pending" which was clearly written in the spot where the six digit number would otherwise be, they found that they couldn't finish the sale...........

Pause for dramatic effect......


so now, we cannot put into the binders, any information at all regarding "Pending" classes.

Just in case you're curious...

OK, Let's not get overly excited here. Three posts in three days? This is no guaranty of future trends, I just thought I should get out of the gate with a few more things than a trip to Sacramento and some nutty birds.
I'm guessing some of you have noticed that picture at the top of the blog and are saying, "Wow, that's a nice piece of clip art Tony has. I wonder which image Library he clipped that out of?"
Well, you'd be wrong, the picture you're looking at up there is a panoramic stitch I made myself.... which shouldn't be that much of a surprise, since I do make my living doing this stuff after all.
What you're looking at is "Thousand Island Lake" and "Mount Banner" in the Sierra. This isn't even in a National Park Steve! this is just part of the Inyo national forest. This was taken during the second day of my hike, and is approximately 9800 feet above sea level. This is one of my favorite parts of the Sierra, and I guess you can see why. It's hard to get to, and I like it that way! Some things in life must be earned, and if you ask me, camping on the shores of this lake is one of them! Steve! Name the time! This is the place! But we'll need at least two weeks to do it right.
This was one of the few sets of pictures I had which survived my fire two years ago, and I've had to wait until now for the software to be good enough to allow me to stitch it together with the quality I wanted.
The master file is a 40MB psd file measuring 6318 pixels by 2219 pixels. (That's a picture which measures 35 inches x 12.3 inches for the non-photographers out there.) Stitched together from eight smaller images. In other words, It's BIG! But I reduced it to 600x211 pixels to conform to "bloggers" specs. I haven't made any prints of it yet for one reason....Framing it would be too costly.

Day Two...Nest Watch.

Well, I can't say that I'm surprised, but I am somewhat disheartened. When I came home for lunch today, I saw that the nest was abandoned, and the lone egg was missing. This was not unexpected. Between the neighborhood cats, the neighborhood Racoons, the flocks of blackbirds and other critters around here, a nest as easily visible and accessible as this one was is all too prone to being pilfered, and it turns out that that's exactly what happened. Momma and Poppa bird are still visible keeping an eye on the nest, and are probably dealing with the bird equivalent of Post Traumatic Stress disorder. They'll move on in a day or two probably, but these two won't be back here to nest.

Friends and new acquaintances

Well, it's the year 2008, I'm 41 years old, most of my family lives 3000 miles away, and I don't see my friends often enough to maintain a close circle of confidants, so it's starting to apear to me, that if I want to avoid the spiral of worsening seclusion that inevitably leads to being a cranky old man who scares away the neighborhood kids, I've got to start doing something different with myself. And while I don't believe for a moment that the internet can actually improve my life, maintaining a blog doesn't seem like all that bad an idea. 

I've been reading my sisters blog for years now, and have always looked forward to reading her latest installments. Even when she digresses off into religious bliss, her written excursions have given me an insight into the life of a sibling I would otherwise never see except for the all to few impromptu family reunions.

One of the things that has been holding me back from doing this until now has actually been the self impression I've had that my life is not all that interesting to an outside observer. Well, shouldn't that be for them to decide, and not me? I have always believed that the most amazing things in ones life, have always been rooted in the mundane. Globetrotting and adventurism are not the only things in our lives worthy of mention. And as any one who has ever spent any amount of time with me will attest to, I have always had a knack for finding inadvertant adventure in the simplest measures of my life.

Simply put, weird stuff happens to me.

But my blog shouldn't always be full of strange happenings.

Lets start off with this past weekend. On Sunday, I drove up to Sacramento to visit my friends David and Sarah, who have just returned from living in England for several years. David was studying at Cambridge, so he and his wife asked me to do them a small favor of holding onto some of their belongings while they were abroad. That was almost five years ago, and David finished his studies there, and Sarah went and got herself a job in Sacramento. 

Well, as many of you already know, I had a fire while they were gone, and lost some of their stuff. But not all of it. So on Sunday, I rented a MiniVan, loaded up what I had of their belongings and headed up to Sac. Well, the two of them went and brought back something beautiful from England with them...an 18 month old little girl, who is the worlds biggest FLIRT! I was instantly assigned the role of  furniture as she would use me a a backrest, footstool, armchair and all-around amusement piece. The bunch of us spent several hours playing "Ring Around The Rosie" to her complete delight. I'm not sure what gave her more giggles, playing the game, or getting grown ups to play the game with her.

Well, it was great fun seeing my friends again, and I am extremely greatful to have my friends back in my life, even if it is a three hour drive to see them.

And on a different note, this morning, I got another surprise as I walked out of my apartment to go to the corner coffeeshop.  For the past 16 years I have been trying to grow Redwood trees from seed. Some of you may know that this is a terribly difficult thing to do, as they are very fragile plants that are horribly sensitive to changes in soil chemistry. Well, I've been having some good success in the last couple of years, and have had more trouble with squirrels eating the shoots than I have had with the soil chemistry, and I now have a small forrest of redwood trees along with some herbs, growing in a set of window boxxes that are hanging off my communal balcony. 

This morning, I found that my little forest is more inviting than I had realized. A pair of Mourning  Doves have nested in one of them, and have already laid an egg. This would be quite amusing if it weren't for the fact that they make the most outrageous racket everytime I walk up and down my stairway. 

Anyhow, it looks like I've got an amateur nature study going on. So as things progress on the balcony, I'll keep you, my readers updated on the lifeplay going on outside my window.