"Grapes."

If you don't know who this is, I feel sorry for you. Got a rare chance on Saturday night to watch the Red Wings game on Hockey Night in Canada on CBC out of Windsor, Ontario. After the game we got to see this.. Is that a great suit, or what upholstery? And that's not all.

Uh... Thanks!.... Somebody.

I owe somebody a big "Thank You". Wish I knew who. This very outrageously colorful item of headgear arrived with our weekly mail forward.

Let me back up a bit and explain how our mail works.

Full time RVers, like Margaret and I, get to pick where we call "home". Pretty cool, huh? After a lot of research, back in 2003, we chose South Dakota. Thousands of other RVers call South Dakota home, as well, for a lot of reasons, but mostly because there is no state income tax, no vehicle inspections, and vehicle insurance rates that rank among the lowest in the nation.

Where there are incentives like that, there are numerous businesses that sprout up to cater to people like us. One such place, in the tiny town of Emery, SD, is My Home Address, Inc. When you send something to us by USPS, that's where it goes. It gives us a street address in the community that allows us to get driver's licenses, vehicle registration, voter registration and more. For all intents and purposes, were South Dakotans! Unlike many of the people who use this service, we actually stop in from time to time and pick up our mail in person. That lets us go to the bargain hot lunch at the Senior Center, and meet and chat with our "neighbors".

Usually once a week we call Ron at My Home Address and tell him where we'd like that week's mail sent. And that's where we came in...

Last weeks mail delivery came in two packages.. one Priority Mail envelope, containing all the bills, and checks, and magazines, and other flat stuff. and a small box. The box had the hat, in a plastic bag, and nothing else. No shipping notice, no notes. Just the hat.

The folks at My Home Address had to obliterate the original address and return address before they put their address label on it, so the original return address is mostly unreadable. I can make out the last three letters on the first line: "son", (maybe "sson"), and the last digit of the zip is "5" (maybe "45", maybe not).

So there it is... somebody knows about my checkered military past, and sent an appropriate gift. If someone doesn't fess up here, it will forever remain a mystery. But thanks... whoever you are. I wore it at the MGA trial this past weekend.

Prom Season

1967

Fun With Photoshop Elements.

...and a distorted window. Just for fun, while we wait for the wildflowers to bloom in Michigan. Expecting Trilliums any time now.

Meanwhile, On the Fringes of a Field Trial...

Unless a field trial (lure coursing, racing) is being held on private property, there's usually more going on. Over the years, we've seen draught horse shows, radio-controlled gliders, and of course, soccer... going on nearby. Because Margaret needs a spacer between courses or races, I'll fire off a random shot of anything that's happening.. most often it's just a shot of the grass, or trees, or clouds in the sky. But often it's birds, or airplanes. Case in point this past weekend:

The military's largest aircraft, the C5, doing touch and go's at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, and out on the cross-country course, this young lass....

Field trialing is never boring.

Lights On!

There's a phrase in lure coursing and racing, when a dog whose previous enthusiasm for pursuing artificial lures is, shall we say, lukewarm. We say "the light came on" when that dog suddenly goes from lackadaisical to earnest chasing.

It happened with Fanny, it happened with Rally, and Saturday evening at the end of the practice sessions at the OKIGO trial in Ohio, it seemed to happen with Sandia!

His eyes are locked on the lure, and he ran right past me, (and that's a new thing!). In fact, he didn't even glance my way. He needed a bit of the ol' "gitit,gitit,gitit..." a couple of times, but he ended up doing most of the course.

On Sunday, we tried it again, and he demonstrated that, while the light is indeed on, it's a low watt bulb. He'll need a lot more practices before he's ready for the intense, heated competition of...

...the Singles Stake ;-)

New Gear!

Last Summer, when I wrote about the sad plight of our Nikon D200 digital SLR, I mentioned that I thought my good Karma was starting to turn bad. I may have been a bit premature. Just a month later, Nikon introduced the D3 which, at $5000, I can only dream about, and its little brother, the infinitely more affordable D300. The two cameras are nearly identical.. the major exception being the D3 is Nikon's first "full frame" digital SLR- it has a larger sensor than all the preceding models- and it can shoot at ridiculous resolution at nearly night-time conditions.

Since that fateful immersion in July of last year, we've struggled along without a high res camera. Our old D70 was obsolete even before the D200 was introduced. (It's for sale- make an offer!) Our workhorse D2H's only advantage is a very useful high shutter rate.. (8 frames per second). Unfortunately, in the last two weeks, the D2H started showing signs it was reaching the end of its useful life. Not surprising, in that we fire the shutter off 2-3000 times a weekend. Do that for 4 years and the shutter starts resisting my commands that it do its job. It's begun hanging up on a regular basis. I got through last week's trial, but knew something had to be done. And soon. Even though we couldn't afford it.

Last Monday, we ordered up a D300. It arrived Wednesday. And I love it. It makes obsolete everything we've used before, and most everything else on the market, excepting the D3. The most striking difference? Color. Color like I've never seen. The following images were all basically point-and-shoot snapshots, at my brother's house, and Margaret's parents' house. Also, check out the "white-on-white" dog statue... last year's technology wouldn't be able to capture that tonal gradation without completely blowing out the highlight areas. And it all works without me having to think a whole lot about what I'm doing. And that's the most valuable advantage of all.

UPDATE: Apologies to those who looked and found no pictures. A Blogger problem. I've had to reduce the file sizes significantly, so the resolution isn't quite what you'd see if you looked at the originals, but the colors are still there.