Visit and Tour de Force

We had a great visit with Mom and Dad in Morgan Hill this last Thursday.

Linzi and Sean came on down and we had a great time. It was nice to see one of my sisters again. Sue and the girls had a chance to go out and do some thrift store shopping while dad and I worked on getting some connections made with his internet e-mail and parameters setting for working Aperture again.

We worked on bringing photos into the program and making new versions of the photos as he continued to process them. The nice thing about Aperture is that you can make incremental new versions of any of the photo steps you are doing as it goes along. We also worked on using the color overlays to show when whites and blacks in the photo were blown out because of the settings used.

We had a great time and he seemed to really get the hang of it.

After a great Moma Brown ham dinner that night, we traveled north and landed at Lindsay and Sean's new digs in Berkley. Lindsay introduced her mom to the delights of a vegetarian fast food restaurant across the street. It was a new and a pretty cool experience.

The next day we did a run to the Magic Johnson thrift store on University Street in Berkley. Sue was in her element and picked out a really cool Alaska photo book for me for 2 bucks. It had a couple of photos that could me included in my Alaska series. My sister said that a series should be at least 5. I have two completed so onward to three more.

The latest one is a "Leaving San Francisco" painting. Its based on our Alaskan trip that included an under the Golden Gate Bridge scene that is pretty cool. The challenge is to capture the mood and feeling of the scene with many of its conflicting lines without duplicating the photograph.

I started it last Monday in class. My teacher warned me that at first you paint in the basic color blocks before working the detail. That is some very good advice for this piece as it is, is a scale and angle depended work. EH...u.. so much fun.

When we are near an Ikea store there is always something that you need. The mother of IKEA stores in in Emmeryvile, a short drive from Berkeley. Lindsay needed to pick up some supports for her bed and the Expedition would save her the problem of getting them home with a rental car. Sue needed a couple of yards of orange fabric that she had seen the last time we were at an IKEA. It was there along with 200 dollars of other essential merchandise.. what fun. Lunch at IKEA is always a kick. Sue got the salmon with the lemon dill sauce. She reminded me next time to other it without the sauce. Lindsay picked the meatball group with he masked potatoes and veg., and I had the baby back ribs.. yum.

We dropped her off at home and trucked on home. What a great trip! It sure is nice to have the lift fixed on the truck.

Pat