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.

Happy Halloween 2009

It's Halloween night 2009. I'm wearing a costume for the first time in who knows how long. That's right, I don't normally look this handsome. To celebrate my wife and I have come out to the Walburg Restaurant Biergarten. We'll spend some time eating, listening to the live music and drinking some good beer.






I'm having a great time. I have my sexy wife by my side. Really, she is. See for yourself






So, it's time to quit writing and time to drink, eat and enjoy the music. Happy Halloween all.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Is it because I'm busy or lazy?

I always think that I can be posting more often. I even installed an app on my iPhone to help make it easier to post here. It seems that I only think of posting an entry at the wrong times. Either I'm just getting ready for bed, or I'm at work or just at the grocery store. I always think "I need to post on my blog". It doesn't happen. I think sometimes, when I'm home, I get distracted by t.v., surfing the net, whatever. I don't know how people post blogs everyday. I have a hard time coming up with material for the infrequent posts I make. Like now for example, I can think of absolutely nothing to post about that would be interesting or captivating. If I were to post an entry about what I did today it would go something like this:

Got up this morning, got dressed and headed to work. At work today I spent some time this morning processing some items recovered from a stolen vehicle. I was attempting to develop latent fingerprints using black fingerprint powder. I processed about 50 items today with very little luck. It's not like CSI on t.v., no perfect latent prints, no pretty women in blouses exposing their over ample bosoms. Nope, you dust the crap outta stuff, wind up looking like you haven't showered your forearms for a week because they are covered with black powder. But let's get back to the day. I also did some comparisons today. Comparing known fingerprints to fingerprints that were recovered from crime scenes. This is one of my least favorite parts of the job. But then again I didn't ask to be moved into crime scene, I was happiest (and loved) being in the evidence room. If I ever quit my job it will be because I am so unhappy with where I'm at now. Not going to think about it right now because it just pisses me off. So anyway, after looking at fingerprints I wrote reports for the items I processed earlier.

That, in a nutshell, is my day so far today. The highlight of the next hour and 45 minutes will be break time at 3:30. Since I don't smoke any longer I have started having a healthy snack. Once in the morning and once in the afternoon. Lately the snack has been apples. Fuji apples. In my opinion those are the best type of apple to eat. I just really like the taste of them. In addition to apples I have mixed in other fruit and some veggies too. I'm just trying to eat healthier and lose some of the lingering fat on my mid section. It's frustrating, I can contract my abdominal muscles and feel a small 'six pack' but it's not visible because of that little bit of fat that just doesn't want to go away. So I'll keep eating healthy snacks, watching that I don't stray at home and hope that eventually it will go away one day. Oh, and I do exercise, 5 times a week for 30 minutes. I alternate what type of exercise I do between core, legs, upper body and cardio. That's how I'm getting the 'six pack'. I just have to stick with it, that's all.

Look at that, it's 3:30. Going to wrap this up so I can have my apple. Have a good weekend, and take care until next time.

TAPEIT

I've been pretty busy this week with the annual conference. I thought I'd be able to give more updates, but the Doubletree only has free wi-fi in the lobby. Needless to say it's a pain if I want to use my netbook. This is a higher end hotel and here you pay (actually overpay) for things that are free at a motel 6. Wi-fi in the room? $9.95 a day. Parking? $5.00 breakfast at the hotel restaurant? $18.00. And what do you pay for those things at a motel 6? $0.00. Next time I'll stay at the cheap hotel a block away.

We have 250 people from law enforcement agencies throughout TX. I had to teach yesterday an have just done the running for stuff today. Day 2 is almost over. It's going to be time to decide on where to eat, I think we might go to Chesdars. I've never been there and am looking forward to it.

Will try to post more later, and maybe a picture or two if I can do it


with the iPhone.

p.s. I guess I figures it out.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone