It's News to Me

The Pellissippi State Balloon Festival turned out to be little more than a bunch of hot air.  Mother Nature did not cooperate; it drizzled rain most of the night.  The advertised Balloon Glow did not occur.  Only two of the balloons were inflated at all on the first evening of the event, and because they were tethered to the ground, they never got more than a couple of hundred feet off the ground at most.  The nice lake beside which the event was scheduled was apparently the happy hunting ground for all the mosquitos in Knox county.  All-in-all the event turned out to be disappointing.  It was a nice idea that just didn't turn out as well as Mike and I had hoped it would.

Keep reading →

Do you own a camera? Want a good photo op? This weekend might be just the ticket.

Keep reading →

Happy Birthday

Originally uploaded by Dr Reelgood.

Today is my son Mike's 38th birthday, and this is the birthday present he bought for himself. It is a Canon Digital Rebel XTi, a sweet new weapon in his photographic arsenal. In just over a year and a half, he has developed into quite an accomplished photographer. After I gave him and his family a Canon A510 to introduce them to digital photography and to record the growth of his son, Connor, who was born on 5/1/05, he was bitten by the shutter bug and for his birthday last year, he bought himself a Canon PowerShot S2 IS. Now, he has graduated to this model. It's pretty obvious that the course of the «disease» has progressed significantly.

Keep reading →

Miss Carole Jean Oglesbee walked down the aisle and became Mrs. Carole Nelson on August 25, 1962. It's good to remember such milestones, I think. We divorced in February of 1981, but before doing so we had a lot of fun and interesting experiences together. And, of course, we had two sons, Jeff and Mike, who are themselves now fathers and husbands. I wouldn't have missed it for the world.

Keep reading →

This past weekend, I rode with Mike and Cheryl, Kaitlin and Connor, down to Georgia to visit Carole. The trip takes about 4 hours, and on the way down, after Cheryl and Mike got off from work on Friday, things were a bit stressful because everyone was tired and hungry. However, when we came home on Sunday, we left at 2:00 P.M. after having eaten a nice lunch with Carole before we left. As we rode, both of the children drifted off to sleep, giving us adults a nice opportunity to talk without interruption. I am very pleased we took that opportunity and made good use of it, apparently without any pre-planning on anyone's part to do so.

Keep reading →

Smokies Baseball Fathers Day 2006 043
Originally uploaded by Dr Reelgood.

As a Father's Day gift to me, Mike and his family took me to see the Tennessee Smokies play the Chattanooga Lookouts at the Smokies stadium in Sevierville, TN. This picture of Mike and Connor, taken by Cheryl, captured a milestone in Connor's life -- the time he first attended a professional baseball game with his dad and his Granddad.

Keep reading →

After three days of near continuous effort, I've uploaded 198 pictures of the Alaska trip to my Flickr site, beginning with this one. If you'll click on the next picture (for instance the one of Carole that is over at the right) that will reveal the next photo and its associated narrative. You can proceed like that throughout the series.

Keep reading →

I've spent most of today uploading some of the photos to my Flickr site from my Alaska cruise. At this point, I have uploaded 78 photos of the first 307 I've reviewed, out of a total of 954 pictures that I took. I've reached the point of satiation, so I'll return to this activity tomorrow and see if I can't complete uploading the pictures. Once that is done, I'll come back to the task and write about the experience. But for now, I'm pooped. More later.

Keep reading →

I'll be spending a good deal of today going through the 963 pictures I took during my Alaskan cruise vacation to see which of them deserve to be uploaded to my Flickr site. Adjustments (to lighting, cropping, etc.) are needed before I can begin to decide about what to include and what to exclude. I will have to say though that I was pleased that as many of them turned out well as they did. Certainly the scenery there is worthy of photographing and whether or not my pictures do it justice, starting with a great subject sure helps.

Keep reading →

Today Carole and I board a train for the trip from Denali National Park to Anchorage.  We'll spend one night there before returning by plane to Atlanta tomorrow.  While the trip to Alaska has been wonderful, it will be good to get back home again as it always is after a vacation.  Next post here will probably be from Carole's house in Lula, GA, and it will probably be on Tuesday morning.  Talk to you then.

Keep reading →