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friends

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30
Jul 11

Breakfast, and lunch and dinner, with guests

Our friends Brian and Elizabeth came down last night to spend the evening. They are picking up their daughter from her grandparents and decided to make a trip of it. We grilled steaks last night, had a big breakfast this morning and then they retrieved their eight-year-old who, apparently, was the star of the show over the last week. Seems a bunch of older kids fawned over her and you know how that can be.

She doesn’t let it go to her head, though.

Also, she’s getting very tall. And I’m resisting the urge to do that “LOOK HOW BIG YOUR GETTING!” thing that annoys every kid. “We should put a cinderblock on your head!” Cranium pressure, blunt trauma, concussions. Charming. “You’re growing like a weed!” You’re an undesirable and I want to spray you and pull you out by your roots. Would you really!?

So we took Taylor to the pool, Brian and Elizabeth thought that would give her a good reason for falling asleep on the car ride home.

Only two boys there had a football and Brian and I found ourselves in a pool-wide football game. Tackling was dunking the ball carrier. Sometimes there was rushing, sometimes there wasn’t. Other kids were in the way and the pool has a brick-lined side wall, but surprisingly no one was hurt.

Brian’s team won, but only by one score. I played great, thank you for asking. One bystander was actually a football coach, who told me later that if I weren’t too old, out of shape, slow and if there was such a thing as water football he might think of cutting me from his team. And we were far more tired than Taylor was. So we had dinner and sent them home. And after they left I was pretty much done.

Nice to see them, though. I have lunch with Brian regularly, still, but it has been months since we’ve had the chance to visit with the whole family. We’ve got to talk them into driving past all of their other options and meeting us in Montgomery for barbecue.

adventures / family / friends / iPhone / photo / weekend — Comments Off
4
Jun 11

Other photos

We’ve found our summer home:

Now someone just needs to tell the people that presently live there …

At any rate, this will be our view:

The Yankee, family friends John and Kate, my lovely in-laws Nancy and Bob and the irrepressible Wendy:

This is at the delicious Tutti’s Ristorante in Westport. The place is practically under an interstate and the building has the feel of an old mom-and-pop video rental store, but the food is sooooo delicious. We went there Thursday.

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3
Jun 11

New York, Day 2, Part 2

Friday is here, right here, where you are reading now. And this Friday will add more to what you read about on Wednesday, which is here. Really the whole week, as far as the blog is concerned has become about New York City. We’re spending the week with the in-laws and having a lovely time in Connecticut, but I went camera happy in the city.

Indeed, everything you’ve seen so far has been from my phone. I haven’t even uploaded pictures from my SLR. Which only reminds me how far behind I am in the photo gallery section of the site. I’ll catch up one day. Now, more of Wednesday!

A word on Theodore Roosevelt: I’ve read 2,170 pages on the man (Theodore Rex, The Rise and Wilderness Warrior) not counting the excellent 1912, which is about the campaign between Woodrow Wilson, William Taft, Roosevelt and Eugene Debs. You could say I know a little something about Roosevelt’s ideals of the “vigorous life.”

But I’d never realized the Klingons were his primary voting bloc:

That’s at the Metropolitan Museum, where I did not see a wax statue that looked like Robin Williams. But I did see a recreation of the Easter Island Head. And, yes, when The Yankee took my picture with it I gave it the bunny ears.

They have dinosaurs and other cool fossils at the museum of natural history. You have to pay to enter some of the special exhibits. As we had already paid once, we didn’t desire to do so again. But even in the sections for the cheap people, like me, they have some fine displays.

That’s some evil looking turtle ancestor, isn’t it? Both museums, the Met and the Museum of Natural History have some great displays. You could spend a day in each, maybe. We tried to do in two in afternoon.

No one likes going to museums with me. I want to read every sign.

Other stuff: How was your lunch yesterday? I only ask because this was our view:

We sent Wendy home today. Said she had a good time, but was ready to be home where things moved more slowly. We had waffles with John, who is a family friend that retired early to, he said, make waffles (and Photoshop jokes). His waffles were worth the wait. After seeing John we dropped Wendy off at the airport spent our afternoon around the house. My mother-in-law showed me her grandmother’s camera:

She let me take it apart. It has everything you need except the 2.5 x 4.25 film. The optics are still pretty good, but the aperture might need work. The camera was released in 1906 and was in production through 1937. She thinks, based on family history, that it is one of the earlier years. That camera may be 100 years old and it still makes the fabled Kodak sound.

Finally: this is a panorama I shot of Grand Central Station. I’ve been playing with this app for a while now and I think I’ve almost got it figured out. Give it a whirl.

adventures / Auburn / friends / iPhone / memories / photo / site / Thursday — Comments Off
2
Jun 11

New York, Day 1, Part 2

Hello, Thursday, I’d like you to recall Tuesday. We’re going to add a few more pictures from Tuesday in this space today, and then some more, tomorrow, to round out Wednesday.

This idea didn’t make any more sense when I initially thought of it, either.

We are very high up on the Empire State Building, here:

We met an Auburn man there, too. We had four War Eagle Moments in Manhattan over the last two days, in fact. All four of those stories have been added to that photo blog.

It doesn’t look that high in the picture, but of course this was as high a place as you could stand in the man-made world. And, of course, that’s higher than you should ever hold your phone through the railing for a picture of a shadow.

I have taken this picture before, but the one below is better. I love this stuff:

Like this. That’s great faux-deco.

And the NBC microphone, at Rockefeller Center, took that picture five years ago, too.

St. Patrick’s Cathedral, from high atop Rockefeller Center:

We were able to walk behind the pulpit in St. Pat’s for the first time ever. They had a copy of Pieta there, and the others visiting revered it with a reverence that could only be considered reverence.

I have seen Pieta, at Rome. (The original was by Michelangelo, and it was the only piece he ever signed.) St. Pat’s Pieta is a fine sculpture, but on a scale of one-to-10 Pietas, this is four Pietas at best. According to Wikipedia, the authority of everything Michelangelo, the St. Pat’s version isn’t even an “authorized replica.” This version was built in 1906 by William Ordway Partridge, an American who studied in Florence, Rome and Paris (where he was born).

We learned about this building while on the Circle Line tour on Tuesday:

It was the first skyscraper on the island. Actually, our guide said, they originally called it a cloudscraper, all three stories of it, but they renamed it so people wouldn’t think poorly of the weather. Marketing has deep roots. Behind it, I believe, is the New York Bank Department.

OK, this one needs a bit of background. Our friend Kelly takes pictures of her feet to prove she’s been places. (Ask her why.) Every so often, then, we take pictures of places our feet have been. Here The Yankee shows Kelly the Statue of Liberty. I suppose my picture of her taking a picture is the “making of” photograph. Wendy also took a picture of The Yankee taking a picture of her foot. I took a picture of Wendy taking a picture, which means I also shot the “making of the documentary.”

This was all on the Staten Island Ferry, which we rode over from Manhattan and back for an extra, late evening view of the statue. We rode to Staten Island on the Molinari, who was a congressman and borough president. We rode back on the John F. Kennedy. We passed the S.I. Newhouse, which was named after the historic publisher. I worked for one of his companies for more than four years and walked past some of his offices in Times Square on Tuesday. No getting away from the man. He died in 1979, his son runs the family empire today, at the age of 83. He’s worth billions.

How quiet do you think it is out there?

More from our two days in New York tomorrow.

adventures / friends / iPhone / photo / site / video / Wednesday — 1 Comment
1
Jun 11

New York, Day 2, Part 1

Remember: we’re doing a two-day tour of Manhattan over the course of four days on the blog. The first part of Day One was yesterday, and is found in the previous post. This is, as the title indicates, the first part of Day Two. Day One’s finale is tomorrow, and we’ll wrap up Day Two on Friday. Clear?

Every time we’re in Manhattan we stop to visit St. Patrick’s. Beautiful church. I tried to do a pan-around photo with a free app I downloaded, but I’m still trying to figure it out. I thought I’d nailed it, when looking in the phone, but on the monitor it was full of flaws. So here you go. Also, search around and you’ll find plenty of other mentions of this beautiful church elsewhere on this site.

We also hit The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which we visited only briefly. Just about the time I found the sections I’d like to see it was time to go. Next time, perhaps. Meanwhile, men in armor:

We walked by here at lunch time. I didn’t have the heart to tell all these New Yorkers that chickens don’t really chirp all that much.

Yesterday we checked off an item from Wendy’s list, which was to get a hot dog from a street vendor. Our friend who is from Brooklyn, says street vendors are for tourists. We needed to go here:

And I love everything about the place. I had the depression special, two dogs and a drink for under five bucks. I had the papaya juice, because that’s the name of the place and also because we had a little communication mix up. I was looking for the condiments and he wanted a drink order. But, as a general rule, you can always order the thing similar to the name of a restaurant.

Get the onions on the hot dog. Definitely.

We visited St. Thomas in Manhattan for a service that marks the Eve of the Ascension. St. Thomas is beautiful. And — perhaps an audiophile can discuss this at length — I believe there is such a thing as a perfect acoustic. If St. Thomas doesn’t have it you’d be hard-pressed to find somewhere with a better sound. This is a clip of a small men’s choir singing Bach. There were maybe a dozen men, but they filled their sound filled the entire church.

The picture was taken with the iPhone, the audio was recorded on the sly with a free app called Recorder. This was the first time I’d ever been in a church wearing shorts.

The Yankee got in trouble, though. She got caught trying to record a little of the singing and a priest pointed at her. Very sternly.

The second part of Day One will be here tomorrow. The rest of Day Two, including another museum, a moment of drama and more.