View from the Mall

The Wasp - haunted Ruins

Goofing off with the phone camera at the San Diego airport at 5:15 a.m.

Sunset on the Pacific

I did not stay to watch the sun set last night, but tonight I did. It would have been so much better with my family; it made me miss them even more, because they would have enjoyed it so much.

My feet in the Pacific Ocean for the first time

Sent on the new Sprint Network from my Samsung Galaxy S®4.

Del Mar - Powerhouse Park

Sent on the new Sprint Network from my Samsung Galaxy S®4.

Del Mar Beach

I was going to walk over to those cliffs, but after walking for about half a mile I got to this point and realized the high tide had foiled my plans.

Sent on the new Sprint Network from my Samsung Galaxy S®4.

Pretty glads, and tomato anticipation

Black walnut ink house portrait

8 x 11.25 inches, finished today on my lunch break.  This one was commissioned by a lady in Nashville.

Carcassonne

Playing on my birthday. One of my birthday wishes was for someone to beat me at a game I like (not too difficult, really.) Erin obliged.

Moon/dying tree

A few games

I got to play some games last weekend.  I met up with Travis and a few other guys and played a new card game (new to me, anyway) called Fairy Tale.  It took me 1 ½ games to catch on to the rules, but once I finally understood how to read the cards the game seemed fun and pretty simple.  If I ever come across an inexpensive copy I wouldn’t mind picking it up.

Then we played Magic: The Gathering, which I have hardly ever played, and with which I am only slightly familiar.  I did very well for much of the game because I started with some good cards, and then, since I was a newcomer, no one was bothering to attack me.  But after a while, the two other players remaining in the game realized I had grown into a threat, and wiped me out.  I think Magic is a fun game, but I can’t see myself ever getting into it in any way that’s nearly as serious as the game’s enthusiasts.  Too much money, too much time.  That being said, I’ve considered getting a starter pack just to play with family and friends, but hesitated because I already have games I want to play but don’t have time for.

After I got home, my daughter wanted to play Magic Labyrinth, which is a good game.  I enjoy the puzzle-y, movement forecast-y element.  The next day, at my father-in-law’s, we played it again next to the pool.

Metal detecting finds

The above photo is an artistically presented image of the garbage I find.  I find it rather attractive.

Anyway, when I go metal detecting, I lug around a little plastic carry-all tub with my digging tools and rags.  Anything I find gets tossed into the tub, too.  I try to put the interesting stuff on one side, the coins in one spot, and the garbage wherever it will fit.

I don't clean out my tub after every trip.  Instead I kind of save it up. I have done very little metal detecting over the past year, but finally after last week it was time to clean it out; it was just too full to keep using it.

All together I had about $5.85 in coins.  There were a few other slightly interesting bits:

I think the corroded cap gun and one or two of the cars came from the yard of the house my dad lived in when he was little; we hunted there about a year ago. The spoon is silver clad.  The lock at top was mainly interesting to me because the little lock mechanisms sticking out the side looked neat, but you can't really see them in this photo.  Right beneath the nose of the cap gun is a small-caliber bullet I found someplace.

One coin I found was an 1896 Indian head penny, but it is so corroded that it's hard to tell what it is.

This is aluminum to recycle:

And here is the rest of the garbage:

That's a lot of garbage. Oh, well, better in the landfill than in the ground at the park or the school.  Even though the amount of junk I dig up is large, I always think it's surprising how high the ratio is of coins to junk.  At least, as long as I'm hunting in a decent spot.  There have been plenty of places where I just keep finding junk and more junk and then give up.

Mark's garden report

It is time for the garden report.

The new rain barrel is not yet installed.  It is in its spot, propped up an nice blocks, but I need to reconfigure the downspout to drain to the barrel.  I also need to re-fasten the spigot.

I planted three tomato plants.  One of them spent a couple of weeks looking yellow and sickly, but it has turned green again, and started growing.  I suspect it must have had root damage.  All three are looking good now.  Only one of them is a cherry tomato plant, and it is the only one to have any (small) fruit on it.  I rate my odds of having a ripe cherry tomato by July 4 at about 25%.  My odds of having a large, ripe tomato by that date are about .01%.

I was picking some asparagus in May, but I stopped before June ever got here, and now the asparagus patch has turned into what looks like a little enchanted woodland.  I’d like to spend more time weeding around it and then put down some mulch, but it’s obviously not struggling, so I’m not too worried.  My goal now is to keep the weeds there under control, let the asparagus run wild for the rest of the summer, and have even larger plants to harvest from next year.

I’m happy that my glad bulbs survived the unusually harsh winter.  I think some of them died, but most are growing and looking good.  The garden spot where they are growing is very weedy and overgrown, but there isn’t much I can do about that without damaging the gladioluses, so I think I’ll wait until late fall and dig the whole area up. Then I can turn over the weeds, separate the glad corms and cormels, and replant them (I hope with some mulch) next year.

I have sown seeds for purple coneflower and Shasta daisies.  I grew daisies when we first bought the house, but they failed to return the second year for some reason. I hope these do better.

Back in March (I think) I had a few potatoes on our kitchen counter, and they had started to sprout.  I covered them in a pot in our yard, and they grew until last weekend when I noticed that the leaves were turning yellow.  It was getting hot and the weather had been dry, so I decided it was time to dig them up. I ended up with enough to go with dinner last night.  I sliced and boiled them with onion, then oiled and baked them with rosemary until they had turned a little brown.  We had them as a side with fajitas, and they were quite good.

Spiderwort, bee balm, coreopsis, and daylilies are all blooming. They look nice.

There is a little blackberry sprig coming up in our yard, ten feet from the main plant.  I think I’ll give it to Helga.  She said she wanted some again, and the blackberry bush originally came from her.

I have some green onion and basil started from seed in a whisky barrel planter with some lavender.  They came from last year’s seeds, but they had been refrigerated, which I think is a good way to store seeds, and now they are growing.  They are all pretty scrawny, however.  It might be because I have not kept the soil in the barrel moist enough.

The kale I grew last year is growing again after dying back.  I did not know it was perennial.  It’s pretty scrawny, though, and is already starting to bolt.  That whole area is covered in a layer of leaves I piled there last fall, and that annoying ground ivy is growing over that, so that whole area looks sort of rotten.  It’s in the back of this area that I sowed the coneflower and daisy seeds. I might rake up the rest of that spot and put in more sunflowers, which I have started in a couple of other spaces.

I guess that’s all I feel is worth mentioning.

Jumping in

Father's Day

I have been posting few photos and even fewer sentences to this blog.

I had a very nice Father’s Day. I was told on Saturday that I had to sleep in on Sunday, so I did as instructed.  This gave the girls time to fix me a breakfast in bed (peanut butter and jelly toast, a sunny-side up fried egg, and chocolate soy milk mixed with La Croix sparkling water.) 

They gave me clay sculptures they had fashioned, which were cute and which I may put on my desk at work. 

I told them that what I wanted to do most was play board games, and let them pick which games.  We ended up playing two games of Clue: The Great Museum Caper.  I was the thief in the second game, and got caught before I even stole the second painting.  Then we played Sorry!, which is not a game I hold in any esteem, but which involves such a barrage of character-building misfortune and eye-poking that I manage to feel somewhat engaged.

Then we met up with some other family members, including a couple other dads, for dessert.  The late afternoon was spent chatting and swimming, then I did a little gardening at home.

Buddy

Potatoes

A couple of months ago I had a few potatoes that were shriveling and sprouting on the kitchen counter, so I buried them in a pot. Today I figured it was time to unearth the resulting growth, since the leaves were yellowing and summer heat is setting in. This is what I got.

Archery lesson

Floyds Fork

Wading at Simons birthday 

Spiderwort and asiatic lilies

Watermelon with teeth

I carved this at the request of my daughters' art teacher as a centerpiece for the school art show.

Farmer vs. Businessman

My family visited some friends over the weekend, and their 8-year-old son was eager to rope someone into playing a board game he had created.  I did not play (he did not specifically invite me), but I watched with interest.  He had obviously spent a fair amount of time putting it together.

The premise: A 2-player game in which one side is a farmer and the other is a businessman. The business man has a car, the farmer drives a tractor.  You select your choice of weapon: bow and arrow, pistol, or musket.  You then fight one another was well as fighting goblins as you work your way up to fighting and defeating the Boss, thereby winning the game.

I gather that some of the inspiration comes from some video game or other that he and his classmates play, but I have no idea what.  Anyway, I thought it was pretty funny, and I was impressed. Hooray for 8-year-old gamers.

 

 

Plein air painting on lunch break

This is the result of several sessions of painting over at E. P. Sawyer Park during lunch. It is acrylic on panel, 10 x 16 inches.

Derby Day corn hole

I took this photo because I wanted it to go with photos from around 1974 of family playing horse shoes in the exact same spot.

Pool duck

It is like a pool toy that can't be touched.

Forbidden Front Porch

Speaking of games, some friends invited us over to dinner last weekend, and it was suggested we bring a few games. I grabbed Forbidden Island as one of the games, and after dinner my 9-year-old pulled it out to play with the other kids (our friends’ two sons, plus three of their neighbors).  I thought it unlikely to work out because I thought they would be too distracted and would prefer to run around. However, when I looked out onto the front porch a half-hour later, I was surprised to see all seven kids sitting beneath the porch light, crowded around the game.  They had somehow devised a 5-player game that involved the Diver giving piggy-back rides, but whatever, they were having a great time.

X-Wing Miniatures and Dominion

Lando and the rookie encountering an imperial entanglement in the asteroid field

The last wounded TIE bomber failing to shake the closing X-wing pilot

I met up with some friends for games today. First we played X-Wing. Aaron and Paul flew a TIE fighter and two TIE bombers; Paul 's son Connor and I flew an x-wing and Lando in the Falcon. It was a tough match. I, flying Lando, 'sploded but inflicted a lot of damage. Connor's rookie then mopped up for a Pyrrhic Rebel victory. Then we played Dominion, and it was my Worst. Game. Yet. Everyone starts the game with three victory points. I ended the game with three. Terrible. It was a very low scoring game, but still. I love the game, though.

"You Are Allowed to Eat A Burger For Breakfast If You've Been Up All Night Fighting Crime"

 I was visiting friends last weekend when I saw this piece of art hanging in their house.  I learned that their teenage daughter, Anna, created it--a combination of hand drawn work, photography, and digital manipulation.  Besides the obvious subject matter, it is also a depiction of her and her father.  Anna kindly forwarded the digital file to me to post on my blogs.  It's not the first time I've been impressed by her work.  I am envious of her creativity.

Lunch break walk

Things are turning green

Painting along Floyds Fork

16 X 20 inch acrylic painting on panel. I stood painting in the field for a few hours, and my neck is burned. I am glad I was wearing long sleeves and a hat. Bumble bees as big as golf balls kept swooping in to investigate, and a variety of spiders wanted to climb to my shoulders to chat with me, but I persevered.

Self portrait

Got a new phone. Still learning to use it. Here is a photo I accidentally took of myself as I tried to change a setting so I could snap a picture of the snow on my car.

Billy Joel: Live at the KFC Yum! Center

 Billy Joel: A Concert Review

An enthusiastic crowd of somewhere over 150 greeted Mr. Joel last night at the KFC Yum! Center.  Mr. Joel immediately gained bonus points for not saying what a horrid, crappy name "KFC Yum! Center" is, and instead complemented the venue based on size and neatness (or so I read into his comments.  I was seated approximately 1.3 miles away and 200 feet higher in elevation, so I may have missed some nuances.)

Speaking of venue and audience, I would also like to mention that all those people didn't smell that bad.  How do you cram that many people into a building, and not have a terrific stink problem?  I suppose that the ventilation system must be top-notch, but I think some credit must also go to Americans in general.  Americans are very good bathers.  This crowd was also very nicely dressed.

Mr. Joel played many crowd-pleasing favorites, and he played them just softly enough to allow me to hear the mellow, joyful voices of my wife and several thousand of our terraced seat-neighbors singing along with him.  The songs, in my opinion, got better as the night wore on.  Perhaps he was wearing me down? Or perhaps he was saving the best for last?

One of the evening's grand highlights was a belting performance of AC/DC's "Highway to Hell" by Chainsaw, one of the road crew, with Mr. Joel on guitar. It was very nice of Mr. Joel to pause his piano performance for an homage to rock and roll, a genre for which he seems to have some fondness, though seems hesitant to venture into himself.

Despite my disappointment with the mysterious absence from the playlist of the theme song to "Bosom Buddies," the Tom Hanks/Peter Scolari cultural watershed from a generation ago, the evening was a delight.

Carlton Winwood opened for Mr. Joel.  I may be mis-remembering the name. I did not recognize any of his songs, but from a great distance his shiny leather jacket and hat looked dashing.

 

St. Louis from the Arch

I took a lot of panaromic photos, and this might be the only one that came out the way I wanted.

Saturday Night Space Combat

Travis came over and we played a couple of games.  First off, we played a few games of Magic: The Gathering.  Travis had to teach me, and after a couple of games I started catching on.  I had been taught to play once, by Kelly, about 15 years ago, but I barely remembered it.  I still have cards that Kelly gave me, though.  I'm sure I'll have the chance to play Travis again.

Next, we played some X-Wing Miniatures.  Travis was called home before we could finish our 125-ish point game;  at that point, I had only lost one Obsidian Squadron TIE, but he had lost a decked-out HWK and had shields stripped from his B-wing and his X-wing piloted by Wedge Antilles, so it wasn't looking too good for him and his Rebels.  My initial maneuvering was good, but just as valuable were some lucky dice rolls on my part.

Photos from early February

It was a long, cold, relatively snowy winter.  We had fun...but I am glad that spring is here, despite my sudden increase in sneeziness.

Games last weekend

Last weekend I was invited to a gathering to play games. There were 14-16 people playing, so it was time for party games. First we played Ultimate Werewolf. I had played simpler versions of Werewolf, with just a plain deck of cards and only three basic roles (villagers, werewolves, and a seer.)  I've always enjoyed that, but it was even better with Ultimate Werewolf because of the additional roles.

We played a couple of games of that; in the second game, I was in the final group of four people before the remaining players correctly guessed I was a werewolf (cub) and killed me.  The last laugh was on them, though, because then the chupacabra ate them.

Next we played  Cards Against Humanity, which I have played before with some of the same group.  I enjoy the game--so far--but I don't know how long-lived my enjoyment would be, and I certainly wouldn't want to play it with everyone I know.  The highlight of the game, I think, was when someone drew the question card: "War, what is it good for?"  Some of the card responses that people had in their hands, and played, were: "Nothing," "Amputees," "A windmill full of corpses," "Land mines," and "Large corporations."  The lady who had the question card, and who had to pick her favorite answer, looked them over and said, "Jeez, what happened to the funny answers?"

Later in the evening, people started leaving, and a smaller group started to pick out a more "gamer-y" game, which I would have loved to stay for, but I did not think I would be able to stay awake for it.

Most of the people at the party were people I had never met, and the ones I had met I barely knew.  I was thinking about this:  I like games so much that I am even willing to play them with strangers, which is tough, because I consider myself pretty introverted.  But then I also started to wonder that maybe that is one of the reasons why I like games to begin with.  Maybe it gives a more definite framework to the social interaction, more of a script to follow. I dunno.

Acrylic landscape

Sycamores by Beargrass Creek - Mark Tabler- Acrylic on panel

Here's a small landscape I completed a few days ago.  It's 12 x 16 (I think! Now I have to measure it when I get the chance, to make sure.)  This is all acrylic, which is rare for me.  Most paintings I've done have been either all oil, or oil over an acrylic underpainting.  I want to work more with acrylics; I need to get used to the fast drying time and how they handle compared to oils, but the payoff will be faster work and easier plein-air transport, I think.