Ok, here is the image:
I’ve been thinking of ways to improve it. I think cropping out the right side where the building wall ends might not be a bad idea. I don’t think doing anything to the color beyond auto balance corrections is needed. I have toyed with tightening up the shot, but I think having the forground is nice.
How bout ya’ll? I might try some edits and post them up here later.
OK …. I have now been skiing. Sort of a prerequisite for Colorado residence. We went to Steamboat, which Kevin informs me is a quintessential Colorado Ski Experience.
I tried to use the Flickr Manager, but it spun and spun and wouldn’t let me do anything. Didn’t know enough to know better, so I just gave up. You can view the one & only picture of Ramona in skis at the regular place.
We also learned that our camera Does Not like cold weather. Just like on the Mills Lake hike, we took a few pictures, and then the camera stopped working. That’s why there’s only one picture.
This picture was taken early in the day, with me standing in the Adult Ski Training Corral. I have mastered standing upright while perfectly still and am thinking dark thoughts about skiing, people who ski, and people who bring their spouses skiing.
It took about 2 1/2 hours in the (3-hour) class before I finally ‘got’ the basic concept of how to distribute your weight and control the skis (things like speed, navigation, and staying upright while moving). After that, I started having fun. I would say that things started going uphill, except that the whole time was spent going downhill.
On the first day, I did the class, and then the bunny slopes (there are three bunny routes) a few times and then it was time to go home. The second day, I reviewed the bunny slopes for an hour or so, then started venturing out into the green slopes. (Map – Day 1 was Preview, Lil Rodeo, and Stampede; Day 2 I did the routes starting with Boulevard & Main Drag; I also did Why Not)
And it was all made even better because the Hot Springs were directly across from our hotel. We went there right after skiing, both days. Sat in a 103 degree hot spring mineral pool while it snowed on us. It was heaven.
OK, we went hiking again.
I’m going to try to post pictures like a tech savvy person. We’ll see……
Arthur’s Rock (the rocky thing to the right), as seen from Horsetooth Reservoir
Horsetooth Reservoir, as seen from Arthur’s Rock. Fort Collins spread out beyond.
OK … now to see if the picture thing worked … Chris, if I did it wrong, let me know …
We went hiking – up Horsetooth, local landmark. If we ever have visitors who want to hike, this’ll be an easy obvious choice.
There are some pictures at http://ramona.4101.org/ – all the ones that start with ‘Horsetooth’. The order – if you want to look at them in order – is R_base, K_base, R, K_west, K_east, K_chasm. The March08 picture is a shot of Horsetooth itself.
No; I haven’t really figured out how to link pictures to the message board. Or use Flickr.
This is along the same lines as ‘what is your horoscope sign’, but done with the Tarot.
So, what are you?
Well, Tomorrow morning Pat goes in for his neck surgery. It is a pretty complex operation. They estimate 6 hours.
So, I went snowshoeing for the first time. And it turns out that I’m not permanently injured! Very happy.
OK, the before pictures (before the camera died, so sad) are slapped up at http://ramona.4101.org. My favorite is 100_1678.jpg … very creatively named, yes. We hiked to Mills Lake – if you do a Google image search for Mills Lake, you can see what we didn’t have the camera to take pictures of. We saw Alberta Falls on the way there. It was very lovely, though frozen solid and snowed over. But I hiked straight up the waterfall (in all the snow). That was fun.
And All Very lovely.
But here’s what happened to make it all so memorable.
Continue reading
Stumbling, i ran across a short video on how to build a camera stabilizer you can carry in your pocket, using a bolt, a washer, and a piece of string. I thought it looked like a good idea.
One of the things we need more of in our house is shelves. We could use more shelves virtually everywhere in the house. Currently there are two kinds of shelving we are thinking about: garage shelves and book shelves.
Garage shelves would be used for storing all the boxes of stuff that most people would put in the basement/attic. I haven’t really scoped out our attic for how well it would work for storage purposes, but I do know it doesn’t have any kind of flooring. And I don’t have a ladder either. Thus we’re thinking of building shelves that would be about 2 feet below ceiling level. We have about 15-20 feet of space to cover with these shelves. There are two options we see for this: 2×4’s and plywood or wire-frame shelves. The wood option would be heavy and I’m not sure how to make it look good. The wire-frame shelves are the same shelves we have in the rest of the house. I have talked to other people around the block that have used the wire-frame shelves and they report no problems with putting lots of weight on them.
On the other front, we need bookshelves. First, would ya’ll build in bookshelves or would you buy stand-alone bookshelves? Building the bookshelves has the issue of having equipment to cut/trim/ect wood bought. We would probably transport thing between our house and Victoria, as Christina’s folks have every woodcutting tool we’d ever need and the space to do the work in. (they have a workshop setup for the work they are doing to restore a house). Or we could try to find good pre-made shelves to buy and put in place.
So, I’m wondering, for those of you that have already done this, what does your experience tell you?
We know some folks that have recently moved into the Austin area. When they moved up here, they already had a vacation home in the area. Being that they wanted to be able to come to their vacation home to relax, it was totally furnished. This worked well when they maintained two houses. However, they wanted to sell their old house. They sold off quite a bit of their furnature and a buyer requested that the rest of it stay in the house as part of the purchase. Christina and I are one of the people who bought up some of their old furniture.
We bought two pieces of furniture from them: a table and a display cabinet. They are both well taken care of. The table shows more wear, which I would expect, but it isn’t anything that we mind. (although one of their kids had a heavy hand when doing math homework; you can see their work on the table)
Here’s a few pictures:
Note the chairs laying on the floor. We got a full six chair set with the table. The table is about three inches longer than our old table, and this one has a leaf insert to make it even larger. Next time everyone is at our house, there will be no problems getting everyone space at the table.
This is a closeup of the top. Note that there are lights built in. There are two lights in the top, and two lights in the bottom (not in this picture). The shelves are glass. Two of the middle shelves were broken when the previous owner was trying to take them out for the move. I didn’t expect it, but he is going to get us new glass shelves to put in there.
Here’s another shot with the camera’s exposure time turned down a bit to see detail in the couple of items we’ve put up there.
The most awesome part of this was the price for these two solid wood, quality construction pieces:Â price of rental truck to go pick them up, gas to put in the rental truck, and our time.
Kevin on the trail
Kevin on the top
Ramona on the trail
Ramona on the top
