no news but still talking..

Well, I have glasses again - a bit more reflective (not me the glasses :) but they'll do nicely. I also found another gore-tex hiking hat for $10, not as stylish as the mustard-colored wonder ($30) but again it'll do. I'm waiting for a classic lens to arrive for my digital slr, a Minolta 35-105mm ("new" style); that will act like a 52-156 mini-telephoto in 35mm equivalence. They stopped making these in 1990 or so (the "old" style was from 1985, I believe), but it's reputed to be in original condition. I need to stop buying lenses for a while; I nearly didn't get this but for backpacking it is small and light, supposedly like new, and a great complement to my 17-35 zoom. Speaking of hikes: my bride and I continue to recover from ailing knees (tendonitis & bursitis respectively), and our hiking season has been drastically altered.

The photo at right shows the beer* I had tonight - it fit extremely well in my hand, and bottles should Not do that! The bottle has a fine dent that feels quite spooky, like I had partly crushed it.. but like I say, it felt really nice.

* Oh, I hadn't mentioned that I have celiac disease, no wheat/rye/barley products for me. The 'beer' above is made from fermented sorghum, and I thank Anheuser-Busch for making Redbridge Ale for people like me. Five years ago when I made my own beer you'd have never heard that from me; but times change..

Aggravations & exhilirations
While on the way to replace the lost glasses, I lost a week-old GoreTex hat -- arrgh. Then on Thursday my wife and I went hiking with co-workers, and I lost a large lens-cap for my camera. Seems that things are just trying to get away from me!
On Friday, we went north to see Stevie Wonder at the White River Amphitheater - great stuff! We got back to PDX around 3AM, it's now 9 and I should be sleeping.. ah well. Legs are feeling the ache from the hike (climb!) of Dog Mt in the Gorge, where my lens-cap awaits. I'm 0-2 on lost and found (glasses & hat), so will need to shop for a new lens cover soon. Took a few fine shots of Mt. Rainier, only to find today that I had dust on the sensor. Seems that I'm complaining a lot, must get my mind right...

Fourth of July retro

We had a fine time at the Vancouver fireworks show.. mostly. We set up shop in a large field, then sat for over three hours and literally chilled as we awaited darkness. The setting moon was a fine sight. When the fireworks began our entire area was in motion -- two huge trees were blocking the view! I had expected the shots to go much higher, and the trees would be nice foreground objects, but this was not what we came for! We shifted over and saw the rest of the fine show, but many of my images were now off-tripod. Still, I liked the effect of shorter shutter speeds, so no big deal. The big deal came later, when I realized that I no longer had my glasses - somewhere in our shuffling in the dark, they unclipped from my shirt and disappeared. So the rest of the 3-day weekend I've been using reading glasses, so that was/will be an expensive loss. Check out a few of the images at http://picasaweb.google.com/alphaPDX/Fireworks