memories

adventures / family / memories / Monday / photo — Comments Off on And now, another installment of Storytime
20
Nov 17

And now, another installment of Storytime

The Yankee was out of town visiting with friends and family this weekend. It goes like this: her godparents have known her parents, individually for years. Her godfather and father grew up together. Her godmother and mother met in nursing school.

Now the two of them met at their friends’ wedding. They got married. Along came The Yankee and they became her godparents. The godparents had two daughters and The Yankee’s parents are their godparents. Now those young ladies are of course grown and have beautiful families of their own. They all got together this weekend.

The oldest of those kids was up for a story. So I found myself digging through, and passing along, photos last night.

Here are two now.

This first one is from the Cayman Islands. It was a graduation trip. We were off diving for a week and the locals helped us find a dolphin. He’d just turned up one day, they said, and was very social. They figured he might have been a part of a Central American dolphin venue, where customers likely interacted with him, but a hurricane had damaged where he lived and so he was back in the wild. But he enjoyed people. He didn’t like SCUBA divers, but he’d swim with you. And if you tried to out-swim him, he’d let you know who was boss.

But to swim with a dolphin, to pet and play with a dolphin in the wild, that was a terrific experience, just one small part of a great trip.

And here’s one of The Yankee and me:

It was one of our first family trips. My bunch went to Belize, where we did a lot of diving and horseback riding and exploring Mayan ruins. We didn’t see any dolphins this time, but I did get to catch a bunch of reef sharks by hand while SCUBA diving. (I’ll have to find those pictures.) That was another great trip. Even the snorkeling selfies were great.

Friday / friends / Instagram / memories / music / Twitter — Comments Off on Two social media stories
3
Nov 17

Two social media stories

I put something fun on Instagram, and something funny on Twitter, today. Check them out here:

I've been listening to these CDs of church signings we used to go to in Alabama. This big city guy recorded them. (And that's how they might see him, because this is a proper country church.) He had decent gear and used it fairly well.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

After a few years of trying, in 2005 he figured out that tiny, little no A/C church. His recording sounds like an amphitheater with a 450-member national choral arrangement in four part harmony. (Mind you, this is my phone recording a CD playback from my car stereo.) Then the guy included just about all of my favorite hymns from the book on his CD. It was worth every, I dunno, $5 he wanted for it. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

Track six is I'm Winging My Way Back Home, which has six syllables I sing better than anything else in the 750-plus song catalog.

I can't correctly sing any other part of the song right in this arrangement, but those few notes …

A post shared by Kenny Smith (@kennydsmith) on

And here’s my Twitter tale of the day:

And follow me on Twitter and Instagram.

memories / photo / television / video / Wednesday — Comments Off on Sometimes the best camera is the one you don’t have
1
Nov 17

Sometimes the best camera is the one you don’t have

These photos are just a reminder to me to carry and use my real camera more.

Oh sure, my phone is a fantastic piece of technology. It does many interesting and useful and cool things. Plus it is a phone! And has games! But if I had been carrying my DSLR when I left the building for a chilly lunchtime hour I wouldn’t have had to fake the depth of field here:

And I could have taken a proper macro. And the picture, despite my having to pull out the media card and plug it into a reader and plug that into the computer, would look better.

…

…

Excuse me. I got distracted. You see, being the first of the month, that means I had to create a new subdirectory on the site for these photos. And that reminded me that I needed to do the monthly cleaning of the desktop of my laptop. And that takes some time. There’s the unstacking, the reminiscing, the categorizing, filing and trashing. It takes a while.

What? You don’t clean your desktop regularly? Or are you saying monthly is too long to go in-between?

Yes, I always clean mine at the beginning of the month. And then, a few days from now, I’ll do the routine, monthly backing up of my phone. Unless I forget again, for something like the fourth time in a row.

I recently discovered the Chris Gethard show. And I was so glad to see Tig Notaro, who is absolutely brilliant, appear on this episode:

Here’s a cool backgrounder on that show:

And from there you can go down the rabbit hole at your leisure. But before you do … I was sitting on the sofa this evening, having one of those moments where the feeling is just right. This was that moment that you want to hang on to because the memory is the kind you’d like to retrieve from time to time, when you need to remember that you can find contentment in nothing.

The Yankee was doing something in the kitchen and listening to Pandora and Jay Farrar was singing and it reminded me of May 1, 1998.

I had to look it up, that was May 1, 1998. Tonight’s moment was a moment populated by the memory of one sentence, said as an aside, into a microphone 19-and-a-half years ago, to the day.

family / Friday / memories / photo — Comments Off on On the road – to home-ish
13
Oct 17

On the road – to home-ish

We are in Louisville for the weekend. This included a stop at one of the family stopping grounds. Up this path is one of the ancestral domiciles:

Looks pretty cool from down here, doesn’t it?

It’s a nice place. Quiet, secluded. I always liked visiting because if you woke up before everyone else the place has this perfect stillness to it, and some great window views.

And out the back:

And down the drive:

Anyway, Louisville this weekend, the Ironman. Big doings. I’ll have a lot of happy details for you on Monday. Until then, enjoy your weekend.

memories / photo / Southern / Thursday — Comments Off on It’s a Southern thing
12
Oct 17

It’s a Southern thing

I was at the IGA, which is smaller and less clean and more homely and more like home than the ridiculous Kroger — which is too large and not at all convenient and full of thoughtful staff members. You can get some things at the IGA that you can’t get at Kroger. Things from home. And sometimes that’s important. It is a few extra miles away, but for a few things, it is worth it. And I’d rather spend 15 more minutes in the car than 10 minutes in the Kroger.

This is a sophisticated mathematical formula, the IGA ratio. I’m honing in on the proper number, but it is at least 33 percent.

Anyway, I was talking with a lady in the checkout line and it turns out that she had just discovered the joys of Moon Pies. See? Things from home. I told her to pair it with an RC Cola. I hope she takes me up on it.

Sadly, grocery store checkout lines being what they are, I’ll probably never see that lady again, which is a shame. I’d like to know if she remembers that conversation at a place and time when she can get the delicious pride of Chattanooga, Tennessee and the tasty pride of Columbus, Georgia and pair them together. I’d like to know if she takes the advice of a stranger, who might have just put a little more southern in his tone when he talked about it. And I wonder what she might think of the experience.

It’s a Southern thing. Try it.

(RC Cola was owned by Snapple, but was acquired by Cadbury in 2000. So now the pride of Columbus, Georgia is now one small part of a UK portfolio. Cadbury’s parent company is Mondelez International, which is a multinational based in Chicago, which is closer to that particular IGA than Columbus, by about five hours.)

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