A Harsh Mistress

Great eclipse experience tonight. The best and most complete eclipse of my life.

This is hand-held with my zoom.

Beautiful Girl

Sometimes Margot takes a picture that takes my breath away.

Back Court Madness

I've been away for far too long, my apologies.

My daughter is in basketball this winter -- the first game was a lot of fun. She's one of the guards this year.

These are her shoes.

Are you ready for some?

The boy began soccer a few weeks ago. He had his first game. Here he is breaking away from the pack. Looks like fun.

Full size here.

Ethan's gallery, which includes this and some other new soccer pictures is here.

Look into my eye

I have been wondering why I can't ever get a really sharp photo of dragon flies' eyes. This extreme closeup (200%) shows why -- they aren't faceted, they are pebbled!

If you don't stop...

... you'll break your neck. I have no idea how Grey Pelicans don't break their necks every time they dive. I'll put up some more later, but this sequence shows a Grey Pelican going in for a kill. It is impressive to watch them skim inches above the water only to rise up and plunge into the water for a catch.

They were pretty far off from the beach, so these aren't as impressively up close as I would have liked.

As always, full size here.

Bodie Island Lighthouse

It's pronounced "Body", which leads to all sorts of cool speculation about the origin. We stayed a few minutes from this lighthouse, which is my favorite of the Carolina lighthouses. I took it from the porch of the lighthouse keeper's cottage.

Full size here.

A Day at the Beach

... or an evening, really. Courtesy of my parents-in-law, we spent the week in a rented house on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. It was an absolutely great vacation.

The two small black spots in the sky on the right and left are not specks on the lens, they are both dragonflies, which filled the skies in the evenings. A look at the full-size of the picture will show that they are indeed insects.

Ready, set, bake!

Fun for a Sunday. This is a white hearth loaf that took me (with the rising cycles) all of Sunday. It starts with a sponge which is always fun because the risen size is always dramatic. The kids enjoyed looking at it, but weren't as blown away by the rising as I expected.

The full gallery, including a few pictures showing the various stages is here.

HereThere Be Dragons

I came home from work to find Beth taking pictures of this guy on the bushes in the yard. I couldn't resist trying one myself. Full-sized here.

Humming Past the Graveyard

So this guy comes and goes from my parents-in-law's feeder. I got two pretty good shots of him here.

Reds

Same feeder, different day. A red-bellied woodpecker talks to a red-winged blackbird. Full-sized here.

Silhouette

Margot looking very solemn from a party this afternoon. Full-size photo here.

Just before

This is just prior to the picture below. Original.

Back at the feeder

The grackle is the one with the iridescent head, the one flying is a red-winged blackbird. The great variety of blackbirds in Northern Illinois is awfully fun. Grackles fly in large packs and are very smart and efficient at emptying feeders. They also attract a lot of brown-headed cowbirds, which lay their eggs in the grackles nests, and the grackles raise the cowbird babies -- opportunism at its best.

If you look closely at the full-sized original, you can see the grackle has a seed in its mouth.

Mourning Meal

From my parents-in-law's feeder. I love my 30 year-old 200mm zoom and the rapid-fire shutter release!

The full-sized image is here.

Time for a quiz

No hints, can you guess what the item above is? Full sized version here.

St. Baldrick's

Most of you already know what St. Baldrick's is.

For those who need an introduction, every year I participate in a charity event which raises money for childhood cancerresearch. The event is called St. Baldrick's. Shavees, as we're called, volunteer to have our heads shaved for donations from nice people like you all.

From now until March 16th I raise money from everyone I can. And then on the event day I go into downtown Chicago to Fado's Irish Pub at a big, fantastically fun event and my donators can see me get my head shaved, can bid on auction items, and can have a few beers, free bar food and just hang out. We've had an enormous amount of fun the last few years.

The standard donation is $50, but I've been pleased to receivedonations as low as $1 and as high as $1,000. My largest donator gets the added benefit of taking the first swipe at my head with the shaver. Last year I exceeded my goal of $5,000! This year I'm increasing my goal to $7,500.

My employer, Motorola, matched contributions last year, so check with your employer for matching contributions.

For a little background, my cousin Nathan was diagnosed with Neuroblastoma on April 1, 2003. He is now 6 years old and still fighting. You can read about his fight at his website:

My page is located here, you can find a "Donate On-line" button which is secure and about as easy as buying a book from Amazon. It's fully tax deductable and instructions are on-line. You can also print a donation form and use the normal U.S. Post.

If you have any questions, please contact me

Go Bears!

Turn your back on your little Bears fan and look what happens!

Defensive Wizardry

Here's Margot boxing this poor kid out under the boards. In fact she really does play pretty tenacious defense. She doesn't ever look up for the ball, but she's a good defender.

By Request

Okay Jim, you ask, I deliver. Blue tongues, complete with matching Christmas-themed pajamas.

Luna

Margot's new telescope is utterly fantastic. We are having a ton of fun with it, having looked at Saturn and Titan a few nights ago. I tried a photograph through the eyepiece (hand held) last night. The result is better than I expected. You can click on the image to see the full-sized image.

Adler

The family went down to the Adler Planetarium today. Lots of fun. Outside, as an intriguing haze hung over the city, I got a good shot of Beth and the kids. We bought a yearly pass, so we plan to go back for the regular shows, the Friday telescope time, and hopefully for the other fun stuff they do.

:%s/Et/Nat/g

So on my last blog, astute readers will have noted that I wrote "Ethan" when I should have written "Nathan". In my defense I submit that they are of similar age, one is my son and one is my cousin, they have similar names and we even wanted to name Ethan "Nathan" at one point. I also submit this composite photograph...

More from MSKCC

I have never seen the HESS vehicles before. Every year the company issues a toy for Christmas, and in the New York City area at least it is very big. Ethan had a few at the hospital from various years (and got *two* more toward the end of his stay) and I'm not exaggerating when I say 90% of the hospital staff had some memory of collecting them, their brothers or sons collecting them or perhaps just remembred neighborhood boys being excited every year as HESS advertised the new vehicle. They are indeed very, very cool. I believe Nathan has the 2001, 2004, and 2006 models now.

Visting Nathan

I spent the week visiting Nathan and Luke in the hospital. It was really super to see Nathan and to spend some time talking with Luke and giving him a break from time to time. One of the things Nathan and I did while Luke was out of the hospital was build a crayon forest. Here is the forest, and you can see Nathan through the trees!

Get out the vote

I voted for the Bad Astronomer; really I did, and you should, too. I mean if you really hate squids.

what a coincidence

pyxl, it's funny, I actually took that photograph from the time when Ethan was starring for The Little Rascals.

Or that?!?

And the boy turned 5 today. Here he is with his own blue tongue.

What on Earth is that?

Margot had soccer goalie-camp today. The boy and I sat and watched it. After a bit he and I wandered over to the snack counter and I bought him some candy. When the camp was done, Margot wanted a Blue Raspberry candy ring. It did this to her tongue -- she was most excited.

Boy at Run

Ethan and I went out to a local Nature Preserve. It was a great time. We saw birds, frogs, snail shells, pond scum, large flowers and tall grass. He threw rocks, apples, nuts, dirt. He broke sticks and ran and ran and ran. We talked about all sorts of stuff as we walked into a out of deep woods, long, sunny praries and such. We travelled over a mile or two and he never flagged. In the end we had to run back to the car since he could hear pirates coming to get us.

A blossom by any other name...

... would taste as sweet?

On the advice of a friend, and because we planted pumpkins this year, I plucked some pumpkin blossoms and fried them last night.

They were very good. Now let me disclaim at this point that they were bathed in milk and eggs and dredged in crackers and fried in butter, so I suppose it was inevitable that I'd like them.

So I guess fried pumpkin blossoms do indeed have my endorsement, another mild culinary surprise for me. A darned tasty one, to be sure.

well and truly hurled

I have recently begun playing vintage baseball. This is a league that plays baseball by the rules established inteh 19th century (1858 for our league to be exact). the picture above is an amalgam from a set of pictures taken by my friend Kyle who came to the last game. Click on the photo for the larger version.

Fun stuff, and more pictures and links will follow.

'tis the prettiest little parlour...

Today I took a vacation day and we all went down to the Museum of Science and Industry. It is a fabulous, and huge museum. I grew up in the DC area, so I know fabulous, huge museums when I see them. The main exhibits right now are Leonardo Da Vinci, and Frogs. We missed Leonardo but we caught the frogs. Oh boy are they a treat. There were big ones (the guy above is the American Bull Frog -- click the picture for a full-screen view of his pretty face; and the African Bull Frog which was even bigger and looked exactly, exactly, exactly like Jabba the Hutt. IN fact I invite you to go here and then you too can believe that George Lucus had inspiration), little ones (tiny yellow guys the size of your fingernails), bright ones, camouflaged ones that look exactly like moss, and one that was a pretty pale yellow which is considered the most poisonous creature in the world -- touching its skin can kill a person.

I will hopefully get one or two more usable pictures to post.

We saw an amazing model of Seattle and Chicago and the rail system in between, the coal mine (complete with a train ride into the belly of a mine), the fairy house, the idea factory for kids, the old-time main street (and old-fashioned ice cream parlour (because I am a good father my son knew to ask if this was the same kind of parlour from Mary Howitt's The Spider and the Fly (as in, "'Will you walk into my parlour?' said the Spider to the Fly?"). I assured him that it was not.)), the outside of u-505 the submarine the US captured in WWII, the Deere Tractor and Combine, and other and sundry exhibits, all of which were great.

A super day.

cricket

It's been years, but after cleaning the basement a bit and finding the board, I'm back and loving it! Awaiting the next get-together with Sally, so we can hang one up and re-live the old times.

Give me that old time religion

The religion of baseball of course. I have joined the Elk Grove Bucks of the Vintage Baseball League. The rules are those of the year 1858, no gloves, you can catch the ball on a bounce for an out, and you wear long, woolen uniforms in deepest summer. I believe I will be a scout (outfielder) for the team.

At the funeral of my Grand Aunt

My Aunt Marguerite was 98 years old when she died just a few months ago. She was widowed 64 years after her husband was shot down (the author of this article is my uncle, Marguerite's son) over the Pacific by Saburo Sakai during WWII.

The service at Arlington National Cemetery was beautiful, and was for her, and her husband. Here are the soldiers of the U.S. Army Honor Guard folding the flag at the site of the interment, just outside of Jackson Circle.

Right back at ya!

And finally, I have no idea what kind of bird this is, but they were really active and interesting. I recommend Brookfield Zoo. I am ambivalent about zoos in general, I love seeing the animals, but I can't get it out of my head that for the higher animals this is a cruel life.

Here's looking at you...

The African animals were all inside since the day was so cool.

I like the desultory look here.

My kids watching the dolphins from below. I love these tanks that you can see from inside.

Went to the zoo. This is the first in a set I'll be uploading. Peacocks and peahens roam freely around Brookfield zoo. This one looks offended.

Down by the river

More forest preserve pictures. I thought this fallen tree had a neat look. I need to go back and work on the water reflections.

With all due respect to Korsakov

This guy has bored a hole in my house, so he's going to die soon. In the mean time, he was milling about near the tulips in the front. So I spent a long time trying to get a good shot. This is the best, his wings are partially frozen, he's somewhat in focus, and the background is even complimentary. I took about 30 photographs to get it.

Pogo!

Margot is learning the art of the pogo stick. The hair is so especially fun in this shot -- a lot like the Heat Miser!

My parents were in town this weekend and we had a great time. The kids were especially thrilled to spend some time with their more remote grandparents.

Black Bird

Wow, I've been busy with work and trying to ensure I can still have a paycheck coming in, so I've not been updating the site.

I found this bird in a forest preserve near the house. The full-sized version makes it clearer that he was calling out when I got the shot. Unfortunately I got him flying away, but not quite clearly enough. I love the Red Winged Blackbirds of the Midwest.

Spring has sprung!

Beautiful day today, and it's going ot be nice for the next few days. Last weekend we were at my parents-in-law's house. I was out at the car getting something from the car when I heard a strange hissing sound. Looking around I saw a hot-air baloon rising above the house next door. The kids came out and enjoyed the view.

Bracketology

Loving the tournament. As it happends, I have a lot of time on my hands these days, and so I was able to keep up on the day's events pretty well. I don't hold out a lot of hope, but vicariously I am a big Illini fan this year.

Go Big Ten!

Water Babies

You can see a full-sized version of this photograph here.

My children at the swimming pool, before lessons. I was playing with the high speed setting on my camera, I think this one is 1600. I love the grain, it was a proof of concept that B&W photography would produce a pleasant noise, like film grain -- not that the character of the grain is the same, but that the noise can be a pleasent kind of noise.

I also love the joy that is obvious from their running with abandon.

Her Parlour...

...was my family room.

You can see her in full-size here.

She was found by my children on the family room carpet. She was about the diameter of a quarter, so big for a spider in your home, but not huge.

I took her outside on the front sidewalk and got a nice shot of her. If you look closely you can see at least six eyes.

How many eyes does a spider have?

msd

Bug One

You can see the complete and full-sized version of this photo here.

This guy built a paper nest in the half-built shed this summer. I heard him before I saw him and he was nice and complacent. My lens was about an inch from his face when I took the shot.