Music, bbq and a birthday

I hope everyone had a good Christmas day. Mine was good. I got to see my grandchildren:









This is Angelique

This is Anthony

They came and visited for Christmas day. Anthony is 3 1/2 now and Angelique is 9 mos. Dang but their getting big quick. I made all the phone calls to family and that pretty much rounded out my Christmas day.

On Sunday I took fascat out to Buddy' Place in Austin for some music. Buddy's is one of those bars that is in plain sight but you don't notice it because it's in such a plain building. Brick painted an off white color with only a small sign advertising what is in the building. You get the feeling it's a hold over from when Austin wasn't such a big place and the bar has been there when 183/Burnet Rd was the outskirts of town. For a Sunday the regulars were out in force. I think it was because it was a memorial for Buddy Durnburger. Sorry, but I don't know who he was, perhaps the owner of Buddy's Place.

Roger Beck played with The Knights of Texas Swing. And of course fascat's boyfriend is one of the Knights, Paul Schlesinger:

That's Paul with the hat on. We really enjoyed the show. They had a buffet set out for the memorial for Buddy and they had some good BBQ. I don't think it's a regular offering so don't go expecting to be fed. They serve wine and beer only, and I'm pretty sure it's mostly domestic and a few Mexican import beers.

I must say that it was a very good holiday. I'm on call for New Year's Eve so no parties or drinking but I will stay up until midnight and celebrate it anyway.

Windmill pics today

Told you I was going out to take pictures of a windmill I saw last week. The sun wasn't out but that was okay. I just adjusted some of the settings and let it go. I did most all of the photos on manual settings today. I tried a few in Black and White and liked the results. Here's two of the photos I took:

Not Bad if I say so myself. You can see the rest of them at http://czardastx.smugmug.com/Landscapes/Windmills

Didn't do much else today other than load the photos to my smugmug account and cleaning up those galleries a little bit. I did fix a problem I was having with my desktop. It wasn't recording my programs correctly. I record 5 different shows from KOOP.ORG. Under the X in Texas; The Country, Swing and Rockabilly Jamboree; Country Roots; Graveside Service; Adventures in Sound. It turns out that my time zone was set wrong and that my sound card recording settings weren't set to the sound card for input. It's all fixed now. I'll find out Thursday when Rod does his show. I wonder if fascat will want to go to the studio again. I'd love to do a stickam broadcast of the show. I'll ask her and then post here if I do a broadcast.

Well, hope you enjoy the fruits of my labor from today.

No work and all play makes Paul a happy boy

No work for me today or tomorrow and the last three days of the week are a holiday for Christmas. No snow for us but I'm sure my brother that lives up north is snowed in. I think I'll enjoy our warm weather and get out to take some more pictures. I was on a delivery for our Brown Santa program to the central part of the county and saw an area that had some windmills in some pretty settings.

What is Brown Santa? It's the Sheriff's Office program to help make Christmas just a little better for children who would not otherwise have many (or any) gifts for Christmas morning. It's our non-profit charity associated with not only the Sheriff's Office, but with the county in general. This year my supervisor took over the Adopt a Family aspect of the program. We had a lot of people (employees an general public) donate for the Adopt a Family. I volunteered to deliver some of the gifts. It's nice to know that children are going to have a happier morning on Christmas day. So, because of the deliveries I came across a part of the county I haven't been to before and saw a couple of areas I'd like to photo.

The weather will be about 70 and sunny tomorrow. I'll get up with fascat (my wife) at 6:30 a.m. and get ready so I can get out and photo with the morning sun. It seems that all good photos are taken right around sunrise or sunset. The light is softer then, gives illumination but tends to not be so bright that it over exposes the photo. I've always been attracted to windmills and like to take photos of them. It seems that they are always found in some of the most scenic locations. I'll get out tomorrow and take the photos but am thinking about scouting it out today. I have to find the location again. I have a good GPS program on the iPhone so I should be able to find them with no problem. I'll try to remember to post photos tomorrow.

Such a lazy guy

I really am, I'm really lazy about this blog. There's no other excuse. I've done a lot of things since my last post and haven't posted a thing about them. I've gone to Corpus Christi for a week and learned about photography. I picked up a few new bits of knowledge with that class. I've been busy at work. I don't see many homicides, and have only worked the scene on 1 prior to one I just worked. I did a lot of the work on that one, it was an assist with another agency. Interesting and a lot of work. I went out to try to capture the Geminid Meteor Shower but the skies were cloudy and there was a large amount of fog. I did manage to get some pictures of a bathroom building using a technique called "painting with light". I also took some long exposure shots of some running water. I'll post photos from each shoot at the end of the blog.

Christmas is coming up soon, I guess I'm ready for it. My boss wants all of the people in our unit to take off the two days next week. As she puts it she wants to work the week by herself. I don't know, just don't want to come back to my office being jacked up and rearranged. That's happened to me before. Went on vacation and then came back and my office and job were completely redone. I guess I'll take the time off. After all, any time away from work is time well spent.

Here's the pictures:

I don't have the paint by light photos anymore. I'll have to post some at another time. If you ever want to see some of my photos, the good, bad and ugly, then go here: czardastx.smugmug.com   That's my online web album. I upload most all of my photos there when I go on a photo expedition. Like I said, the good ones, the bad ones and the ugly ones. I do occasionally go back and clean it up, but not everytime I upload photos.

Until next time, hope life treats you kindly.