Hiking at Beals Point

Lately I’ve been looking to break my routine by finding different places to hike that are still close to home; and since Folsom Lake is nearby, I picked the most convenient access point, Beals Point, for my Thursday morning outing. I’ll admit I was disappointed after I got there, but it’s my own fault, really. I already knew Beals Point […]

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Montgomery and Green

When I was in San Francisco last week, one of the things I decided I had to see was a fairly nondescript intersection in North Beach. Maybe the reason was a little bit nutty — the TV show Monk (2002-2009). Of course, even though the series was set in San Francisco, very little of the actual filming took place there. […]

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Memory Monday, Week 41

July 3, 1979 — Chemult, Oregon All the way north to Vancouver, B.C., and back we had overnighted at various KOA campgrounds; but along Highway 97 in the middle of Oregon there were no such places to be found. Instead, we stopped at Corral Springs Campground in the Fremont-Winema National Forest. The spot could best be described as primitive; there […]

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Kindness of strangers

Thanks to this very nice man, who gave me a pair of his extra “eclipse glasses” so I could watch the special event for myself last Monday. This was the very first time in my life I had the chance to look directly at an eclipse — and it was awesome! Thank you, kind stranger. You made my day.

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Memory Monday, Week 40

July 1, 1979 — Port Angeles, Washington State. On our road trip to British Columbia the previous year, I’d slept inside the VW camper along with my parents; but this year, because I’d wished for a bit more privacy, my dad was good enough to bring along a small orange tent for me. Every evening he set it up at […]

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Memory Monday, Week 39

Six months ago, back in February, when I was still working my way through my dad’s old color slides for Memory Monday, I shared a bunch of images from the 1978 road trip I took with my mom and dad to British Columbia.  At the time I mentioned that although I hadn’t shot any photographs myself in 1978, I did have some […]

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Memory Monday, Week 38

Phoebe, ?-1992 Since I recently shared a video of our late pitbull Gabby, I thought today I’d go back further in time and introduce you to her predecessor. Phoebe was my first rescue dog and my first bully breed. She came unexpectedly into my life one afternoon in mid 1983; she and another young pitbull showed up in the front […]

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Gabby and her chair

I’ve been very slowly working at transferring my old Hi8 videotapes to DVD, and from there to my hard drive. I’ve been editing them with Windows Movie Maker and then uploading — with a little additional editing — to YouTube. Much of the footage is devoted to our three dogs, Buster, Gabby, and Pinkie. My final results are far from professional, but that’s okay. Most of the videos are at least 10 years old, and I’m just very happy that I’m finally able to watch them with more smiles than tears. As I wrote in the description of this video on YouTube, Gabby wasn’t allowed on the furniture inside the house, but once we moved this old chair to the back patio, she adopted it as her own. She loved that chair! One of her favorite things was to curl up in it during a spring storm and watch the rain fall. The music is Tucson Tease by John Deley and the 41 Players, courtesy of YouTube’s collection of ad-free tunes.

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