P.S.

I also put together a slide show from the photos (not video) that I took when we were on our bird-watching adventure yesterday. The photos are, of course, much more clear than the video is. (And there is more mood music written by Jeri)

(be sure to check the Phase 2 video below)

Phase 2

I love my kids.

I finally put out the call, asking if Ned could stop by after work today and help carry some of the scrapbooks upstairs so that I could start doing a major clean up of the living room.

Bless his heart, he showed up and moved all the remaining scrapbooks upstairs (I had been moving them a few at a time during the previous week), as well as helping Walt to carry a bookcase upstairs to help house some of them. I still have a ton of stuff left in the living room, but with all the scrapbooks upstairs, I now can see what is left to do and can start being a bit ruthless, tossing out stuff.

I've now come up with a hair-brained scheme. It's going to probably be a multi-year project, but I'm going to start scanning all the photos in all the books and move the photos to disks so that I can (it hurts to even SAY this) throw out the photos and the books and make copies of all the photos for each of the kids, so we can ALL have copies of all of the photos.

As I said, it will take forEVer to do, but if I really do it and work at it regularly, I will gradually begin to make a dent in all this crap around here and feel like I'm actually doing something constructive.

Fledgeling Birdwatcher

I've always loved watching birds, especially the larger birds you see around here--egrets, hawks, and, if you go to a nearby lake, pelicans.

There are several bird sanctuaries and some wetlands in this area and I've always been intrigued with the idea of going on a bird walk, so when I saw the notice that there was going to be a free tour of the local wetlands, it sounded like fun. It was to be a 2 hour tour and I was especially pleased when it said that "most of it would be by car." I figured a 2 hour driving tour I could handle!

I learned a bit about birdwatching. I learned that (a) you need high-powered binoculars. The little pair that Walt has doesn't do it, and a measly 12x zoom on a camera definitely doesn't do it. (b) you spend an awful lot of time looking at nothing, or at each other, waiting for our feathered friends to do a quick fly-by. (c) birdwatchers are just as excited about the little tiny birds off in a distance as by the big red-tailed whatever-it-was that we saw. and (d) I probably don't want to become a professional bird-watcher.

However, that said, I really enjoyed myself, even though I couldn't see the birds all that well and the photos weren't all that great. But next time I go bird watching it will probably be at the local zoo.

Slingshot Goes Home

When I looked at the clock this morning and saw that it was 5:30 a.m. and realized that there had been no cold wet nose in my arm pit in the previous hour, it went a long way to offset any sadness I might have had about turning Slingshot over to his new owner.

Hs performed well on his last day, everyone was amazed at how outgoing he was, and he hopped into his new car without hesitation. My boy done good--and I got to get some sleep, finally!

Now on to whatever our next adventure is going to be...

The Last Day

Well, I've complained about him, but in the end, I kind of melted and have a soft spot in my heart for Slingshot. Other than puppies, he's the first foster dog we've had for more than week and I've grown very fond of him.

BUT, he's too young and too big and he needs his own family, so I am thrilled that he is going to his permanent home tomorrow at 2 p.m. He will be moving to Concord with a family that has 2 sons, who I think will be absolutely perfect for him.

He still tends to be a bit skittish at times, but he'll get better as time passes. I tried taking a video of his last day here; he was a bit suspicious about having the camera aimed at him, but in the end, I'm happy with this final memory of a very sweet dog who, I hope, is very, very happy in his new home.

Pleasing My fans

"awera," a guy from Spain who has seen some of my stuff on YouTube and Flickr wrote to ask if I could take some pictures for him of places he remembered from when he lived here four years ago.

So this is a video for "awera," going around the neighborhood where he lived and the school he attended. I tried to keep the narration a bit interesting for people who have no interest in seeing suburb streets and schools, but this is mainly for "awera."

How to Kill a Fat Lady

Lemme tell you, the easy way to find out just how out of shape you are, even though you know you are horrendously out of shape, is to try to move a collection of scrapbooks from downstairs to upstairs. I decided to make a video out of the process and was so winded after moving just two books that I had to sit down and rest.

This is either going to be a wonderful thing when it's all finished--or it's going to kill me to do it!

Ghosts?

Well, this is kind of my tribute to Halloween.

Not exactly, but sort of.

Since I don't do costumes or trick-or-treat (try answering the door with two big dogs trying to get to the little tikes!), I recorded a long monologue on my experience with death and the afterlife....and just to make the thing worth sitting through, I added a bit of a real ghost at the end. The background music for the last few seconds is the best part. Ned sent it to me this morning.

So does that intrigue you enough to sit through a 12 minute video?

Take Me Out to the Ballgame

Now that the World Series is over it seems an odd time to be posting a baseball video.

This is very, very short, taken at the first Giants game I went to after they moved into the new stadium. The stadium was on the way to becoming the "old stadium" before I made it to a game, but I was pleased to see how much fun it was to attend a baseball game again, and what an incredibly beautiful venue SBC Park is.

It also tickled me to see the post-game tradition, the music that was piped in over the loudspeaker. Not exactly what one would think of for a ball game. This is a very short clip, but you get the idea.

Dancing Pigs

This entry isn't really about dancing pigs, though I do talk a bit about the dancing pig statue in our local strip mall.

I hadn't done any live videotaping in a couple of days, so I took the camera with me when I went out on the morning errands on Saturday morning and that included going to the dancing pigs, which are outside Peet's Coffee, which is where I buy coffee beans.

I also include such fascinating tidbits as the price of roast beef (shocking) and sticker shock at our grocery tab. Unfortunately, I somehow didn't record, though I thought I was, the embarrassing moment when I spilled coffee on the floor of the supermarket and, like a little kid, acted nonchalant and pretended it had been someone else.

Pumpkin Carving

I was asked to be the photographer for my boss's pumpkin carving party, which turned out to be quite a fun event to photograph. One thing I really love is photographing little kids.

This was actually taken 2 years ago, but I really loved some of these photos....and it's timely.

Never the twain shall meet

Never the twain shall meet

Watch the video

We were at a beach in Santa Barbara and a young pelican decided to pay us a visit. He was very calm and cool and relaxed while one of the dogs in our group (not our dogs) was bound and determined he was going to get to that pelican.

Pete's Pond

It was 6 years ago when I was still learning my way around the Internet when I shared with Peggy the ultimate Internet experience. I would sit at my home in California on a morning and chat with someone I had never met who was sitting at her home in Australia in the evening and we would both be watching the activities in various parts of Africa during the afternoon there. We would use Instant Messaging to comment on what we were seeing, or to direct the other person to a different camera if something was happening there.

Africam, unfortunately, suffered from growing pains and financial problems and eventually it shut down, but now there is a great Africam through the National Geographic. Instead of the multi camera set up of the old Africam, now there is one camera which focuses on Pete's Pond, a watering hole frequented by all sorts of wildlife. Instead of broadcasting one photo every 30 seconds, this is now not only a movie, but with sound as well. Peggy, because of where she lives now and the constraints on her ability to download material, is no longer able to watch Africam, so I attempted to take some screen shots for her.

I got the idea the day I turned into Africam and instead of seeing a few birds or a gazelle or something, I saw a herd of elephants. This was the most exciting thing I'd seen in all the years that I'd been watching Africam, except for the one day that Peggy and I happened to find a lion eating a kill. I took some screen shots of the elephant herd to send to Peggy.

Then I decided to try taking some screen shots of the movies that I was seeing, knowing full well how awful the resolution would be. I sat here one afternoon and hit the jackpot--birds, ostrich, crocodile and zebra. It was the most I'd seen on Africam, so I put together a brief video, mostly to send to Peggy, but I decided to post it as well.

The quality is what you'd expect from a digital camera aimed at a computer screen, and yeah, you can find professionally made good quality videos on television every day, but there is something really exciting about feeling like you are there, seeing it live and...heck...I like it!

A Change of Pace

It's not that I was that enamored with Arthur's 85th birthday party, but it gave me a good opportunity to try out a new piece of software, PhotoStory, which I downloaded today. It is quite easy to learn (at least for this brief slide show).

But the reason you should watch this show is not for the show itself, but for the music. When I was a kid, some 50+ years ago, my father purchased an old 78 rpm record (well, at the time it was a new 78 rpm record) of The Sportsmen, a quartet that did the opening number and commercials for The Jack Benny Show. This record had four songs on it, one of which was their version of Happy Birthday. It kept us in stitches for years and Ned eventually converted it to an mp3 file so I am now able to share it with the rest of the world. Give it a listen.

Birthdays

The problem with going to birthday parties for people who have passed a certain age (whatever that age is), is that you're never sure if there will be one next year.

Last year we attended our friend Arthur's 84th birthday. He had recently had a fall and was looking frail, for the first time since I'd known him. I wondered if he would live to see his 85th. But there he was, looking like the old Arthur, holding court at his 85th birthday on Sunday.

He's always reminded me of a leprechaun, this Irish man from Boston, whom I have known for at least a couple of decades. We worked together at The Lamplighters (Gilbert & Sullivan theatre company in San Francisco). Walt worked with him on the tech crew for a long time.

Arthur and Jim found each other awhile back and have been together ever since. Jim is a retired physician who owns a house in town and a cattle ranch in the hills. We had never been to the ranch before, so it was fun to see it at the party. And fun to connect with old Lamplighters we rarely see any more.

Sing a song

We were away all day today and I was making a video, but don't have time to put it together, so I've gone to the vaults to pull this one out.

This is from about 3 years ago, when we were going to the wedding of one of the guys in our kids' band. The kids were all providing the music for the wedding.

In the photo at the right, Ned and his wife Marta rehearse their duet. Later on Jeri on sax and flute rehearses, both with Ned and Marta, but also with other people from the band.

This video was taken with a camera that only let me take brief clips before it stopped to write to the disk, so this is pretty choppy from clip to clip.

(this one is a QuickTime video. If you are unable to see it, you can probably watch it on YouTube)

Finally!!

Ashley and I have been working together to produce the 2006 SPCA Calendar, which is the year's fund-raising item. There has been a lot of frustration in how the whole thing was handled, but now that it's actually out, I'm very proud of how it all works. We done good.

I was asked yesterday to put together a slide show about the calendar to be used in web advertising, so I did. This shows all of the cover pages for the calendar, leaving off the actual pages themselves. Of course, since we aren't selling them outside of this area, this is not an advertising ploy for the web audience at large, but merely to post the video somewhere where it can be linked. But I'm happy with how all the page designs turned out. I think November is my favorite.

What Disability?

Haley came for a visit yesterday. Haley is the blind puppy (10 weeks old) that Ashley was going to have us take so that Sheila could "teacher her how to be a dog."

Instead, there is a ranch for disabled dogs which is going to take her, but before she flew to Montana, Ashley brought her over so I could see her.

What a cutie! Except that she walks with her front paws held at an unusual angle (to check for things in front of her), it's hard to believe that she's really blind.

She got along so well with the big dogs and once again, I was impressed with how Sheila seems to know intuitively who she can roughhouse with and who she can't. She was very gentle with this little puppy and I loved watching the two of them together.

This video is probably a bit longer than it should be, but I had already cut out about half of the material I'd taken, and I just really liked watching the puppy moving around. The very best parts of the video come toward the end where she hits "grass" and starts running across the grass with this great loping gambolng gait. So cute!

Special Places

This is my third video about the area in which I live. It's a good example of why people use scripts. When I ran it after I got home, I was amazed at how many times I used the word "town" in the space of a minute.

Still, this is a unique place worthy of a video. It shows the kind of weird things that go on around here.

Slingshot

Slingshot came to us on Saturday, the 22nd. He's part Lab and probably part Great Dane. He's not exactly the most exciting dog we've had (as this video shows), but he's a sweetheart, except that he apparently hates Walt, even now that he's been here nearly a week.

Still, in keeping with my desire to keep a video record of each of the dogs that we foster, this is my tribute to Slingshot.

May he find a home on Saturday. (He'd be the perfect dog for a lesbian couple, if there is one out there looking for a nice big dog!)