Category Archives: Frank's Camera

Seems it never rains in California

Posted on by
1

Seems it never rains in southern California
Seems I’ve often heard that kind of talk before
It never rains in California, but girl don’t they warn ya
It pours, man it pours.

The two pictures with this post are from my brothers, Chris and Frank.  Together they show two different views of the storm that hit northern California on Sunday.  The first picture came from Frank.  It was snapped at a Lake Tahoe ski resort.  In the 1960s, when we were all much younger and all of us were living in California together, we drove up to Tahoe for a family ski outing.  Frank, the youngest, took to the slopes with abandon.  He was so small and so light that we all joked that he didn’t need a lift, because he was light enough to ski uphill under his own power.  These days he is neither as small nor as light as he was on that day.  None of us are, but he still hits the slopes with abandon.  He has traded in his skis for a snowboard, but will be sailing downhill on a regular basis now that the season has officially begun.

What was fresh powder in the mountains of Tahoe was rain along the coast of Monterey.  Chris and I went to Point Lobos, but the incoming storm quickly drove us back to the car and then back to the house.  Chris shot his HDR photo out of the sliding glass door of his bedroom.  In addition to the artist’s talent, you might notice one other interesting aspect of Chris’ photo.  It is the first of what will be many more pictures to breakthrough the 600 pixel barrier that this blogger and his blog have been straining against for some time.  To facilitate this breakthrough I have also shortened the list of widgets in the sidebar.  I might have pruned the sidebar a little too severely; I’ll have to think about that some more.  Anyway, I hope that you full screen viewers like the changes.

Stick a Fork in Me, I’m Done

Posted on by
2

I’m ready to go back to work, I need the rest.  I rode Trailnet’s Great Pizza Ride, on Monday.  For the past six months, Anne and I have been paparazzi bicycling, that is stopping frequently for photo-ops.  This leads to low mileage and plenty of rest stops and lots of great blog fodder, but not very good training.  It is high time that we change the tempo and gear up for our annual MS-150 charity bicycle ride.

While I was out cycling, Anne was doing the real heavy lifting.  She and Dan joined Annie and her Mom to plan this summer’s great western migration.  Wagons ho!  Both Dan and Annie are going to migrate to Southern California this summer, for grad school in the fall.  I’m sure that details will follow.

On Monday, I rode the long ride and got 48 miles.  It was hot enough for me, at only 84 °F by my finishing time.  I did not stop to take photos.  The only picture that I took that is worth publishing is today’s header.  I took this picture like the rest of the other failures from the back of my bike.  This will be a problem.

I was dead tired by the end of the ride. On the drive back to Saint Louis I drank water and ate Fritos Corn Chips.  The water helped me to re-hydrate and the Fritos helped me to restore my electrolytes.  But, I loved the Fritos most of all for all those hot and dusty cornfields that I had to ride through.  There is nothing like eating your enemy.  I feel like the dead gopher in the picture that Frank sent me.  Stick a fork in me, I’m done.

Big Sur

Posted on by
3

Friday night Jack and Joann stopped by to give my mother a Valentine’s Day present, a bouquet of sunflowers.  Jack and my Dad were classmates at Annapolis and attended the Naval Post Graduate School together, here in Monterey.  Jack and Joann live in Monterey now too.  I got the four of them to pose for a picture.  The sunflowers made it in the picture too.  I liked hearing Jack’s recount of the midshipmen’s snowball fight.  With all of the snow that they have gotten, it was one regiment against another.  Sounds Great!

Saturday morning, Chris and I drove down Highway One, the coast highway, to Big Sur.  We passed Point Lobos, crossed the Bixby Bridge this time and continued driving south.  We stopped for a few minutes near Point Sur Lighthouse, which I have recently written about.

We drove through Big Sur and then stopped at Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park.  The highlight of the park is its waterfall.  Although it seemed kind of small compared to the crashing surf that it emptied into.  The surf was way up on Saturday.

After the park we doubled back to Big Sur, for lunch at Nepenthe.  We got there before they opened at 11:30, but they seated us and we sat at a bar overlooking the Pacific.  Today’s Header shows small part of the view.

Lunch quickly devolved into a scene from Alfred Hitchcock’s movie The Birds.  First crows started to gather, then the food arrived.  Nepenthes’ Ambrosia Burger and a basket of fries.  After the food arrived the elusive Stellar Jay that I had tried to photograph made taking its picture all too easy.  It and three or four of its brethren started dive bombing our basket of fries.  We didn’t make it any better for the next party when after lunch, Chris and I began hurling fries to the birds.

Frank sent me another one of his claymation videos, Monday Holidays, you can view it below.  It is very timely, what with President’s Day coming up on Monday.  I’ll be at work on Monday.  Neither President Washington nor President Lincoln ever bought any airplanes.

Dan called home on Friday night with good news.  He had a phone interview with the California College of the Arts on Wednesday, which he thinks went well.  Also, Cal Arts has emailed him that he is a finalist, and has asked him to come out for an interview on March 11. This would probably be a (minimum) three-day trip, as the interview is in the morning and then there’s a tour of the studios or something in the afternoon.  He’s going to check with Steve, his boss, because sometimes Steve has frequent flier miles that he lets his employees use.  Anne also suggested that he call the other schools and let them know that he will be out in California and see if he can set up more interviews.

Frank’s Camera

Posted on by
Reply

The preceeding video is a claymation creation from my utter brother, Frank.  Unlike the preceeding two movies, that were posted this week from brother Chris, this one is brand new,  plus it has sound.  It represents a new hobby of Frank’s.   He promises that there will be more movies made as he gets better.  This was just a first attempt.  He built the dog puppet using an aluminum wire armature with clay added on top of it (see picture below). He hopes to do a regular show on the web.  I went onto YouTube and found these two other, lesser creations, Dog Dump and Green Guy, that he has made.  As you might expect, Frank is into dogs.

Also of possible interest to readers is that last week (or the week before?) Frank visited Ann Arbor.  He visited with old friends from when we use to live there.   They went to Barton Pond and the old house off of Huron River Drive.  He was also able to retrieve the long lost movie, Return of the Wart Hogs, that one of his friends had kept all of these many years.  I look forward to posting it.

Claymation dog skeleton
In other news, I got a call from the computer repair  store.  They had bad news, a fried motherboard.  The replacement cost of the motherboard looked to be more than buying a new computer, so I said thanks, but no thanks,  About all that I’ll get for my sixty dollar deposit is a backup copy of the hard drive.  I’ll be ordering a new refurbished Dell desktop tonight … Done, for only $400!  Specifications include, an Inspiron 537 Minitower with Intel Pentium Dual Core Processor (2.5 GHz), 4 GB RAM and 500 GB disk.  OBTW, the repair guy that I spoke with earlier today, suggested that I look for the exact same model that I had crashed.  I check on the Dell site and they were charging a whopping $1,600 and for an older inferior model.