Archive for the 'Pictures' Category

I am a big fan of bartering. I know nothing about cars. I know how to dig dirt, though. My father-in-law is really good with cars but can’t do as much manual labor as he used to. Today Krissy and I went to their place and dig some dirt out of a flowerbed that hadn’t seen the light of day for over forty years and he tuned up our car. It was hard work, but my in-laws do so much for Krissy and me that I’m glad to help out when I can.

After the mud run we decided that we ought to take a trip out to San Francisco since I had never been there. Tommy and Elizabeth have become quite adept at touring the major spots in San Francisco since they’ve taken so many of their family and friends out there. The drive is not all that interesting. Much of the drive is waiting for your turn to fork over $3.00 for the privelege of driving over the bay bridge into the city. It seriously took an entire hour just to get to the toll booth. After that things moved rather well.

Parking is horrendous and some of the streets are crazy with incomprehensible intersections. Once we parked we tried to figure out how much we would be charged by reading the ticket they gave us. The parking garage had all sorts of confusing pricing plans based on the time of day, the length of your stay, and whether or not you had eaten at any of their partner restaurants. Once we got out of the car, though things started to get interesting.

There is no shortage of street performers in San Francisco. Some people were singing or break-dancing, and others were acting like robotic statues all painted up in silver or gold. Many of the performers looked like they were making about $100/hour. Maybe I just saw them at their best time of the day. In any case, it certainly appeared that one could make a living off of performing and relying on donations from passersby and onlookers. I didn’t take their picture because I assumed that they would expect money for capturing their poses.

We didn’t go out to Alcatraz, but from the area around Pier 39 there is a pretty good view of it. Nearby there are seals that have some protected area where they sunbathe. A few of them were in what appeared to be a rather playful mood. I couldn’t tell if they were wrestling for fun or to actually hog certain areas and claim them as their own territory. The wind was so strong that the pelicans in the area were unable to always fly in the direction they desired. Many of them were not even flapping their wings and were just hovering in the air above our heads waiting for a break in the wind.

Nearer Fisherman’s Wharf there are about five different restaurants with street-vending open on the outside of their restaurants. They all sell about the same food, but they are fiercely competitive with one another often competing on one or two cents difference from their neighbors. Elizabeth was trying to find the cleanest looking setup while the pigeons, no longer afraid of humans, dive-bombed my head. I didn’t actually get hit by any of them, but they were not making me feel comfortable. Once Elizabeth and the rest of us agreed on where we should go to get ourselves some fish and chips we walked around to see their display cases. The cleanest one appeared to be selling minced fish shaped, breaded, and fried. It looked like it came out of a box and it wasn’t what we were after. We walked along and stopped at a moderately less clean-looking stand run by a group of Asians. They had the best looking food, so we decided to order from them instead. While we were waiting for our turn a man asked for a sample of their soup. The cook, who was very busy, took a plastic spoon and, without looking up, dipped it right in the large cooking vessel and handed it to the man who was very surprised and started telling his friends about it immediately.

After we ate we got back in the car and headed over to Lombard Street, the windiest section of street in the world. There was a terribly long line of cars waiting on the incline leading up to the summit where the famous snake-like section begins. Tommy looked at the map and saw that there are three directions one could approach that particular intersection from, so he headed the direction that looked the least congested. When we got to the top and prepared to make a left on the street we were disappointed by a sign reading “No Left Turn.” No one was going, and Tommy was already sick of waiting, so he made a left anyway and we wound our way down to the bottom. We, the three passengers, were incredulous.

We visited the free sample-laden Ghirardelli Chocolate Company store. Tommy demonstrated that the people that hand out free samples either don’t care or don’t notice when the same person exits and reenters with an open palm. I think he got a total of four free samples of their dark chocolate filled with caramel while we were there. If it hadn’t been so crowded I would have enjoyed getting an ice cream sundae for dessert after our meal, but the Ghirardelli place was packed, so we headed out to our next stop: The Golden Gate Bridge.

It was overcast and the top of the Golden Gate Bridge was obscured by the low clouds. It was still an amazing sight. At a prime photo spot a large group of people of Indian descent was trying to get their picture taken together. Tommy negotiated a camera swap and he and Krissy took pictures with their cameras, then we switched. Tommy gave his camera to a man who appeared to be the Father or leader of the group. I gave my camera to a 16 year-old girl from the group. The Father went first. He took about 20 seconds to take the first shot. Then he spent another 20 seconds trying to figure out how to get the zoom to work on Tommy’s camera. Tommy helped him get it figured out. Then it took him another 30 seconds to finally take his second picture. When the girl with my camera’s turn came up she took the picture in about 2 seconds. The pictures on Tommy’s camera cut off Elizabeth’s chin. He had sacrificed us to frame the background perfectly. The picture taken with my camera came out almost perfect. We wanted a picture of our group, not the bridge. I guess he didn’t understand that the bridge was only there to incidentally show where we were at the time.

We had a lot of time on our metered parking space so Tommy convinced us to walk across the bridge. I’m glad he did! It was amazing to feel the strong winds out there. Many people from all over the world were taking pictures as they walked across this California landmark. Tommy demonstrated that it took almost 30 seconds for spit to reach the water below. The wind was so strong that after you spit over the side and after it had fallen below the level of the bridge the wind would carry the spit far out away from you and you could watch it fall all the way to the water’s surface. Right after we both did this a few times I noticed a sign that said it was a misdemeanor to drop anything from the bridge. I assumed that included spit. Strangely, the sign specifically included missiles. I would have thought that dropping missiles from the Golden Gate Bridge would have carried felony charges, but what do I know. It was now getting late in the day, but there was one more spot we wanted to see.

There is very little parking at the base of Coit Tower, so we parked a little way down the hill and walked up some stairs, the construction of which appeared to have been funded by donations. Tommy and Elizabeth had never been up to the top of Coit Tower. It’s not free, but Krissy and I wanted to go, so we took the four of us up to the elevator to the top. Although there are some amazing views up there, I was more fascinated by the international coinage that had been dropped through the edges of the windows and that had landed on the sills of each port hole. I also found a soccer field at one of the ports which seemed oddly out of place and somewhat suspicious. By the time we had seen all there was to see and had taken nearly a hundred pictures of Alcatraz trying to time it when the light from the lighthouse was facing us, it was starting to get dark.

I’m so glad that Tommy was driving because I was pretty tired. We had just driven for nine hours the previous day and were looking at a total of six for today. I don’t know why it is that sitting in a car makes you get tired when all you really have to do it not move much for hours on end, but it sure takes the energy out of me.

It was great to finally visit San Francisco even if it was for only a whirlwind tour all over the city. That’s one more place I can check off my list of places to visit!

Tommy and Elizabeth wilfully ran two laps around a mile-long obstacle course that included a mud pit through which the runners had to crawl on hands and knees. Krissy and I went along to watch and I waited along the sidelines to take pictures. I got quite a few good shots and they seemed to have had a lot of fun. They are trying to convince us that we should form a team and participate together next year. I’m leaning toward maybe having Krissy do it, but someone has to take the pictures. Right?

We traveled the eight-hour trek to Folsom, CA to visit with Tommy and Elizabeth. They live relatively close to Folsom Prison. We were exhausted when we arrived. We had planned on leaving at 2am, but we didn’t get to bed until after midnight. The alarm went off, and we just kept on sleeping. We ended up getting on the freeway at around 5:30am. We arrived in Folsom at around 2:30pm. We hit some unforeseen traffic around Sacramento.

When Tommy got home we decided to take a 5-minute walk to an area where you can see part of the prison.

Later we went to the Sacramento Temple Open House and afterwards went out to eat at In-N-Out Burger.

I parked in the Institute parking lot this morning like I always do. On my way back to the parking lot at around 4:40pm I was greeted with caution tape completely barring access to the section of the road that the gate leading to the Institute is on. On top of that the gate was closed and locked with even more caution tape on it. There were lookouts all around the perimeter ensuring that no one would enter the swarming bees zone. It was hard to take the signs seriously as they were made using Comic Sans MS. It looked all whimsical when it was supposed to be stern. I don’t have any direct evidence that there were any bees, but they sure did make me mad. I had to walk an extra half-mile to get around the bee warning area. It was huge. I can understand that they want people to be safe, but I think that the measures they took were a little extreme. I think some large signs warning of danger would have been enough. If I want to take the chance of running into some bees then that should be my prerogative.

I was planning on going to Costco to get some of their really inexpensive pairs of jeans, so I was on my way to the car about thirty minutes earlier than I needed to be to go pick up Krissy, so at least I had that going for me. I wasn’t all that upset, really. If I had gone out there with just enough time to pick her up, though, and had run into the cordoned-off road and gate with no time to spare I would have been positively angry. As it was, I was afforded a nice walk, even though the sun was a bit warmer than I would have liked.

When I got to my car there was a prospective Institute student who was wondering when the Institute would be open so he could sign up. We had a nice chat and I was off to get Krissy. I was way early picking her up, but I didn’t have enough time to go and do anything else, either.

Oh well, here’s a nice picture to reward you for reading so much.

My grandparents were down for the weekend and we decided to attend the ward in which I grew up. It was a lot of fun seeing acquaintances I hadn’t seen in a few years. Grandmother and Grandfather seemed to have an especially enjoyable experience catching up with longtime friends. Here we are in front of the building together.

I ordered some t-shirts with my own designs on them on August 15th from Spreadshirt.com and they arrived today. They said it was supposed to take up to ten days, so I was surprised to see them here so soon. I didn’t know exactly what to expect when I opened the package. The part where the design is feels like a very fine velvet, but you can’t tell that from looking at it. It looks like paint, but that might be because that’s what you would expect on a t-shirt. I can honestly say that I am completely satisfied. We’ll see what it looks like after a few trips through the spin cycle. Spreadshirt.com guarantees that the design will last longer than the shirt it’s affixed to, though. I can hardly wait to get started on my next design. It’s gonna be great!

I never seem to see police officers patrolling the carpool lane. I see people with only one person in the car all the time though. Today we thought the person in front of us was alone so I started taking pictures. I think she saw me and got scared and so a little kid in the back raised his hand up so I could see him. A short time later after traffic had slowed to a crawl and there was no longer any advantage to being in the carpool lane a cop on a motorcycle came moseying on by in the shoulder checking all the cars for carpool compliance.

Krissy had me find Superman’s logo so she could make a cake with the shield on it. The base coat of frosting is blue Cool Whip. The actual shield is made of red and yellow butter cream frosting. Krissy worked on this thing for about three hours total. She decided it would be a good idea to try and make the Cool Whip a little less squishy by putting the cake in the freezer. This worked out rather well. As time went on it got softer and softer, though.

Krissy then transferred the printed design onto wax paper by tracing. The wax paper was then placed on the top of the blue Cool Whip. She used a hatpin to poke holes in the wax paper. When you remove the wax paper then the holes are left in the top of the cake to serve as a guide. She used a star-shape to fill in the yellow and then the red parts. The original idea was to finish off the cake with very dark-blue lines to emphasize the logo and make it stand out a little more. We couldn’t get the frosting a decent dark blue color, and Krissy was afraid to screw up the cake with squiggly lines that were supposed to be straight. I think it was a good idea to stop when she did. The cake turned out great.

Incidentally, this cake was a poke cake or, what some people call a Jell-O cake. She used a single 3 oz. package of strawberry Jell-O mixed into one cup of boiling water. This was poured over a 13 x 9 in. white cake that had holes poked about three quarters of the way through the cake and spaced at one half to one inch intervals. Then you pour the liquid concentrated Jell-O mixture over the top of the cake slowly. Try to cover all of the top of the cake. Allow the cake to cool in the refrigerator. After the cake has cooled spread Cool Whip over the top of the cake, and you’re good to go!

The cake was a success and everyone at work was very impressed by Krissy’s cake decorating prowess.

Mesa Arizona has excellent fireworks shows. Thanks to some tips from Digital Photography School on taking pictures of fireworks I was able to get a lot of great shots of fireworks. I had to rely on a one-second photo timer to get shake-free shots. Despite this I was able to time most of the shots rather well. The shots range from 1.3″ to 2 seconds shutter speed.