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.