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Catching up

And, now, the regular attempt to add more pictures that were somehow neglected over the course of the last week.

Studying. I’m doing it.

Lots of it.

This is the tree at the main entrance of St. John the Divine in New York, where we saw the Winter Solstice concert.

One of the nicer things about winter is that The Yankee sometimes wear scarves and I can take this picture.

I’m violating my food photography rule here, I know, but this is Pepe’s. This is serious. If you’re in Connecticut, or in Yonkers or anywhere in New England, really, you have to visit Pepe’s. This is one of the better pizza pies you’ve ever eaten.

Family photos are fun. These are my great-grandparents. That’s their youngest grandchild, which would put this picture in the early 1980s. They both look great here. She always looked great, though. And he was the very definition of a Southern gentleman and perhaps one of the finer men I’ve ever had the pleasure to know. We all miss him very much.

I don’t know that I’d ever seen the picture before. I took this on Christmas Eve at my aunt and uncle’s house, so this is a picture of a picture, and almost shooting from the hip, as it were.

Now I feel like I’m re-living my childhood. Punch and cookies, the staple food at my grandparents’ home.

Want the recipe? This is a delicious punch … but do cut back on the sugar.

iPhone / photo / weekend — Comments Off
25
Dec 10

Musical dream, realized – White Christmas

Just like the ones I used to know.

This is my third White Christmas in the South. Probably I’ve had one or two in the north, but most of that would be leftover snow, if I had to guess. They are infrequent enough here to be worth remembering, though.

For the record: Christmas as a 1-year-old, a 13-year-old and, now, at 34.

You want animals in snow? We’ve got animals in snow.

This was the perfect White Christmas. Pretty in the yard, dry on the road. The snow itself was a very white rain, really. As wet as possible, it melts if you look at it hard. For all of those readers not from the southeast, that’s normal here.

I go to Waffle House for a late bite on Christmas night. Mostly just to satisfy my curiosity about who goes to Waffle House on Christmas night. Besides me, I mean.

After several years of field study I can confidently observe this isn’t the regular Waffle House crowd. So where is the regular Waffle House crowd?

This particular store was packed after everyone got tired of crinkly paper, leftovers and family. People were waiting for seats when I arrived. That’s a condition usually reserved for after that other holy event in the South — high school football.

Fine Christmas all around, just dandy. Hope yours was even better!

iPhone / photo / Tuesday — 1 Comment
21
Dec 10

Can you spare a battery?

A suburb of northern Atlanta. Don’t tell anyone I took this picture.

They love the alphabet at the Atlanta airport. I’ve yet to learn why these are named this way.

Back home, tonight. Flew in late in the evening. Found the car’s battery did not have sufficient juice to start the drive home. The parking deck people aren’t prepared to deal with this. Apparently it hadn’t dawned on anyone this can happen.

The MARTA police are no help. The taxi drivers want to charge you. There is no decency at this time of night it seems.

But I remembered that we’ve already paid for this service. So I call AAA, and the car-jumping-van shows up 45 minutes after they said he would. He waved his parking deck ticket at me and said if this ran more than 15 minutes I was on the hook for it.

“Let’s hustle then.”

So he breaks out a tester. He has his trainee connect it. The battery, all of four months old, is found wanting. This is The Yankee’s car, so I am unimpressed with the quality of the cell. This is the battery we installed the night we moved — and you want to talk nightmare, spend some time in a dark parking lot futzing around with a battery installation while you’ve got boxes to pick up and transport — so I’m less than pleased.

He finally connects the jumper cables, while my brain is running this 15 minute clock, and we succeed in putting power to automobile. He asks me to turn the ignition off so he can complete his test. He completes his test. I’m ready to be done with this.

The car will not crank. He jumps it again. I thank them, wish them well and leave. I drive home with no incident. I parked in the garage, backwards, for the inevitable battery replacement.

Now I must go make nice with the cat, who was beginning to think she’d been abandoned at Christmas. She doesn’t understand the holiday, but she knows the big green thing with the water in the bottom and the shiny things on the side isn’t a regular feature. She also knows what a suitcase means. And I know that the first night back home means a full night of getting stomped on.

adventures / family / iPhone / memories / Monday / photo — Comments Off
20
Dec 10

America runs on tennis shoes

“This is a good system,” The Yankee said.

We’ve been doing our mileage at the park near her childhood home. This is the park where, two years ago in nine feet of snow and a 17-degree atmosphere that we took our engagement pictures. It was the only day I’ve ever noticed that the wind chill was warmer than the actual temperature. Apparently strange things can happen in a nor’easter.

And it was too nine feet of snow.

There was a picture where we sat on a snow covered bench. We suffered for that particular piece of art. The photograph has never surfaced. I reminded her of all of this today.

Anyway, the system is the park and then down to the nearby Dunkin Donuts.

“On the other hand” I said, “we would go broke if we followed this system every day.”

How you know I don’t have a lot of Dunkin experience. I thought “Holiddays” cup was merely a typo. Apparently it is a code meant to entice a Pavlovian response to all the regular customers that they must run to the store for another coffee. I was unaware.

We spent much of last night working in Photoshop. Such is the chore for creating the modern gag gift. We have a friend who has a particularly morbid Facebook gimmick and we’re going to bring it to life. We printed the finished product today. I’m not saying it will win Present of the Year honors, but I will say I came up with this idea last Christmas.

The great thing is that we can recycle this gag every year.

We had prime rib and Kenny-Christmas tonight, since I won’t be here later this week. I got nice clothes, a cool book and a lot of fun stuff. The best gift was when my mother-in-law donated shoes to a nine-year-old boy for me. That’s the perfect age, really. Little boys are tough on sneakers.

I grew up in that time when sneaker prices were exploding to obscene levels. Simultaneously this was a period that your peers would judge you based on your footwear. Sure, they’d judge you for most everything, but shoes were important.

I never had good shoes. I had Walmart or Payless shoes. The imitations seldom fooled anyone, and they were less than durable. At the time, it mattered; maybe it still does. Perhaps that’s why I wear shoes today — the cheapest New Balance or reasonable loafers or boats I can find — until my feet finally reject them. Shoes, I feel, have to last. That’s probably the only way I can pay my mother back for all the shoes I ran through as a kid. (Once we bought shoes on a Friday and they were destroyed before school on Monday. I still feel pretty bad about that.)

So I hope that little boy gets a nice pair this Christmas. I hope they help make a great Christmas for him and that they mean something to him. I hope he takes care of them — as much as a nine-year-old can — because that’s a great gift.

My mother-in-law, in addition to her many other charms, is a wonderful shopper. She also buys me too many presents. I like this one most of all.

iPhone / photo / weekend — Comments Off
19
Dec 10

Catching up

These are all pictures from my iPhone from yesterday. There are still others on my camera. They may ultimately make it on to the site as well. But, for now:

The elevator doorways in Lord and Taylor. We would get briefly stuck in one of them on the way down. Oh, but it is a lovely thing to travel in. Those doors and that floor display are works of art. Speaking of …

One small piece of the art deco at Rockefeller Center.

The big tree. I wrote about it Friday, which offers video of the lights twinkling. It was donated by a New York City firefighter. More than five miles of wire and thousands of lights decorate the tree. No word on who gets the Swarovski topper at the end of the holiday season.

And here is the tree all a-glow, just above the ice rink.

“Look son, St. Patrick’s Cathedral. That’s one of the most famous churches in the world!”

The kid was unimpressed, but he’s the only one. It is amazing to see, no matter how many times you’ve been inside. (Also it is a great place to get your feet warm.)

Times Square. Needs more ads.

Moving the planet around now only takes the work of two determined men. This was the inflatable globe used in Paul Winter’s Solstice concert at St. John the Divine. Video of the very end of the show is also in Friday’s post.

I received presents in Auburn wrapping paper. Pretty fancy, no? I got two great books — Daniel Okrent’s Last Call and James McPherson’s Tried by War — and a very handsome globe. It will look great … as soon as I figure out if I’d rather admire it at home or at the office.