The trip really kicked off on day two with a visit to Sea World.
Gina’s cousin Ginger and her husband, Mike, drove over from Houston to hang with us for a few days. Ginger, Abby and Gina braved certain dousing to ride the whitewater raft ride.
For Spring Break we headed south to San Antonio. We arrived on St. Patrick’s Day and the downtown River Walk district was in a full-blown Irish frenzy. The water of the San Antonio River was even dyed green for the occasion.
… while wondering whatever happened to Blackie Sherrod, who inexplicably doesn’t rate a Wikipedia entry. Life’s been pretty dull since I started my part-time job back in November. But I need to clean out the ol’ notebook so here’s a collection of recent photos and the mind-numbing stories behind them. Up top we have the old post office in Scotland, Ark. A few weeks ago Gina, Abby and I toured lower Van Buren County, new territory for us. The tiny burg of Scotland looked pretty interesting. We’ll have to go back sometime. I was pretty disappointed to later observe a newer, shinier Scotland post office on the main highway.
Abby’s school celebrated the first 100 days of school with a party. Each student had to get a shirt and glue 100 items to it and wear it to school. It was a perfect opportunity to fire up the ghetto studio and get a few pics of Abby wearing her creation.
Abby had her first spelling test and, as you can see, she aced it. We hope this is a good omen.
Due to some technical camera issues, my photos of the various family Christmas events didn’t turn out very well. (I think my all-around lens has some focus issues.) However, when we went to my parents’ place in Kansas, I was able to get out on Christmas Night and shoot this star trails photo. The elder Daileys live out in the country well away from any serious city lights so the nights are quite dark. This barn sits less than a half-mile from my parents’ house. I tried this shot unsuccessfully once before. This time the idea was to take about 20 consecutive exposures of 4 minutes and combine them all in Photoshop. During the first exposure I used my little SB600 flash to pop some light on the barn. I set the pop at half-power, which turned out to be way too weak. I should’ve popped at full power two times, at least. And I should’ve popped on the little shed and tree directly in front of the camera. I had to bring the exposure on the barn way up in Photoshop to get it to show at all. I guess I’ll be going back to this spot with a more elaborate plan.
So it’s the Christmas season and we made our annual trek to Motley’s Christmas Tree Farm and Seasonal Extravaganza. Abby always wants to ride the cow train until she actually gets seated in one of the cows.
Another Thanksgiving has come and gone. This one was pretty much like the last several. We cooked the turkey per Alton Brown’s instructions and it turned out great again. I didn’t produce much in the way of great photos. The actual meal was a little fragmented because we didn’t get the food on the table until just before the Hogs started playing. We served buffet style and so didn’t load down the table with bowls and serving dishes filled with feastables, which would have made the pictures better.
The fall foliage in Arkansas was spectacular this year. My efforts to get a great fall shot were marked by ineptitude. This was the best I came up with. This is the canyon through which Cedar Creek flows on Petit Jean Mountain.