David's blog: Photos

Sunday, August 1st, 2010

I just read a sad article bemoaning the end of the Kodachrome era.

Kodachrome, in case you’re too young to remember an era without digital cameras (and cell phones and DVRs and god I’m old), is slide film and used to be ubiquitous; instead of posting all one’s vacation photos to Facebook, one used to force family and friends to sit through slide shows. (My great-uncle Frank had tons and tons of slides, and I vaguely recall some of his slide shows.)

One commenter on the article says he won’t miss Kodachrome because he’s switched to Velvia. Having fully embraced the digital revolution, I’d never head of Velvia, which apparently is a newer color reversal film introduced in 1990 by Fujifilm and which is credited in the Wikipedia article about it with the demise of Kodachrome (along with, of course, the digital revolution).

And that brings us to the point of this blog post, which is that if you like the saturated colors that you used to be able to get with Kodachrome film and can still get with Velvia but don’t want to give up your digital age conveniences, you can approximate that retro look with a quick and easy Photoshop technique that I found on the Intertubes. It involves adding a channel mixer adjustment layer to punch up your red, green and blue color channels by 150% each.

Which do you prefer, with color saturation or without? I dug out an old vacation photo of mine (from Gera, Thüringen) to try it out on, and sure, it does make the colors pop, but even with the wonders of Photoshop actions and batch processing, I’m unlikely to Kodachrome-ize oodles of photos.

No, that time would probably be better spent scanning old slides.

A drab non-Kodachrome digital photo:

A color-saturated Velvia-esque digital photo:

Saturday, July 17th, 2010

Looking out my window this morning and seeing a plane circling downtown Dayton pulling an airborne ad along did make me curious enough to get my camera out to take some photos but did not motivate me enough to call 1-800-STATEFARM.

Monday, June 28th, 2010

I love the view from my balcony, day or night. The moon is out, the city’s alight, oh, what a beautiful night!

Click image to embiggen

Sunday, May 23rd, 2010

Amidst our festively decorated sanctuary Ruth read the Scripture.	This Sunday at my church, Cross Creek Community Church, United Church of Christ, we celebrated Pentecost Sunday. Our worship space was festively decorated in Pentecost Red with balloons everywhere lifted by the Spirit! Click any photo to embiggen it. Of course, I brought one of the balloons home myself to enjoy on my balcony:	After worship some people released their balloons into the wild.
Mike Castle preached about Pentecost and said next year perhaps we should add a goose to the decor as an additional symbol of how the Spirit works.		Watching balloons everywhere after worship
Being mainline Protestants we don’t normally do Communion except for the first weekend of each month, but for Pentecost we made an exception.		Dan Carl, the pastor’s wife, snagged a couple balloons.
Happy anniversary to Ken and Richard!		Sue tries to get her balloons into her van.

Saturday, May 22nd, 2010

Today I was curious about this crowd near my building.

Each of these images is just a clip from the same 3648x2736 telephoto shot, which you can view if you want to see whether you recognize anyone.

Living on the same street as the Greek Orthodox Church, the Art Institute and the Masonic Temple, I get occasionally get some noise from crowds.

Today, hearing some noise outside, I went out on my balcony and saw a crowd pouring out of the Masonic Temple spilling into the street, a crowd that with some googling I discovered was the just-graduated Class of 2010 of Stivers School for the Arts and their families and friends. I don’t mind the crowds—they’re fun to watch and they involve a fair exchange of value. I give up a bit of my peace and quiet, and the crowds give up a bit of their privacy.

Sunday, August 23rd, 2009

I’m sure some people (probably many of the same people who’d be surprised a church like mine does river baptisms) would say this cool October-like weather in August means global warming isn’t real. What they don’t realize is that it isn’t global warming but rather climate change and unusually cool August days are not evidence there’s no climate change (plus what about the unusually hot summer in the Pacific Northwest?). At any rate, the show must go on, and Cross Creek’s annual river baptism did go on, as witnessed by the photos I took.

Friday, August 21st, 2009

My co-worker Anita brought her new daughter Addy into work today, and Anita also brought ice cream for a certain big baby Anita works with who kept pestering Anita to bring ice cream. Thanks, Anita!



(Click any photo above to embiggen)

Wednesday, August 19th, 2009

Today’s bonus blog post consists of some photos of the flowers on my balcony plus a bonus shot of a nearby building’s rooftop pool, abandoned for the moment because of the rain.

Click on any of the above photos to embiggen them.

Tuesday, August 18th, 2009

I just got an inexpensive tripod, so I decided I’d experiment with some night photography. Here’s a fun shot of the Dayton skyline at night from my balcony:

(Click to embiggen)

Wednesday, August 12th, 2009

Trash

I happened to look out the window as I was sitting at my computer working and I saw a guy toss a plastic bottle onto the sidewalk and then get into a car with his family. Sometimes I wonder just who it is that litters since I know that my family certainly taught me that littering was wrong. Well these are the kind of people who litter — this guy and apparently also his family, who didn’t think anything of his having done so.

Trashy people

I decided to go pick up the bottle, and by the time I got to it, these trashy people had driven up to the traffic light at the end of the street. Rather than try to chase them down I took out my cell phone and snapped a photo of their car. Don’t know if they saw me doing so. Probably they didn’t give a damn even if they did. I was too far away to get a clear enough shot to read the license plate, but next time, if there is one, I’ll get closer.

The trashy guy’s bottle ended up in my office’s recycle bin.

Thursday, August 6th, 2009

I took some photos this evening of the I-75/N Main re-construction.

Monday, May 25th, 2009

Check out my latest gallery page to see where these photos are from.

Thursday, May 21st, 2009

	I breakfasted on my balcony this morning (cold pizza from Pizza Factory, yum!), enjoying the summer weather and my flowers.
	While I was breakfasting, Dayton blasted its river fountains, perhaps flaunting its abundance of water in preparation for a water war with Montgomery County.
	This photo, obviously, is not from this morning but rather is of a full moon over Dayton two weeks ago.
Click any of the above photos to embiggen

Sunday, April 19th, 2009

The results of our workships
(Click to embiggen)

The results of my gardening
(Click to embiggen)

Today I did two things:

1) I participated in work-ship at my church, where during worship we bagged household supplies such as toilet paper, paper towels and dish soap to be given away to clients of our food pantry, Feeding Friends.

2) I bought some gardening supplies and planted some flowers on my balcony.

You can see the results to the left and the right.

Friday, April 17th, 2009

Good Friday Greek Orthodox-style
(Click to embiggen)

Dayton skyline at night
(Click to embiggen)

CareSource’s building all alit
(behind some others)

Tonight I heard singing and chanting outside that I couldn’t understand. It was Greek to me, and when I went to look for its source, wouldn’t you know, it was! Tonight the church across from my apartment celebrated Orthodox Good Friday, and part of their service was this candlelit procession around their building. Fun!

While I was out I got a decent shot of Dayton’s skyline at night. Healthcare must be really profitable because not only could CareSource afford to build a brand new building downtown but they can also afford to keep all the lights inside fully blazing along with fancy colored trim lighting along the roof.

Sunday, March 22nd, 2009

Duck, duck, goose, goose…

I saw some wildlife at Cox Arboretum today.

Sunday, March 8th, 2009

This photo doesn't do the rainbow justice (click to embiggen)

The evening sun against downtown Dayton’s skyline was pretty too

After the rain this afternoon we had a really pretty double rainbow, prettier than my photo really shows.

The evening skyline was pretty too.

Saturday, February 14th, 2009

I took some photos from my balcony today. You can see them in the galleries.

Friday, August 3rd, 2007

This evening was my church council’s summer potluck. Food, of course, is important at churches, and our church is no exception. In fact, food’s so important that we’re putting together a 10th anniversary cookbook to collect recipes for the various good things we’ve had to eat over the life of the church. Since the council was gathering this evening to eat together, our cookbook coordinator had us prepare items from submitted recipes for testing and for photographing. I made Mexican deviled eggs.
	The first thing to know about making deviled eggs, Mexican or otherwise, is how to make hard boiled eggs, and the first thing to know about making hard boiled eggs is not to use extremely fresh eggs because if you do, you’ll have a devil of a time peeling them. You want eggs that are at least a week old. So you have to plan ahead a bit to make deviled eggs, and not having done so, I had no eggs on hand, week old or otherwise. But a great thing about the apartment building in which I live is that they have a little convenience store, and so yesterday (I did plan ahead a little) I was able to buy some old expensive eggs, $0.99 per half dozen, expiration date 8/3. Perfect age-wise, if not price-wise, because they were still fairly fresh but old enough to be easy to peel. I boiled them yesterday evening, gave them a quick cooldown afterwards under running cold water and then stuck them in the fridge to peel today. I stopped by Krogers later yesterday evening to get some more eggs, not for this recipe but to have some more on hand and out of curiosity as to how old the other eggs were. The eggs I bought at Kroger had an expiration date of 8/21, about 2 1/2 weeks out, which means the eggs I bought at my building’s store had been sitting around about that long. Also, the Kroger eggs cost $0.99 per dozen, meaning my building’s store’s markup is 100%. Ah, well, you do have to pay for convenience. Though I took some pics today at various stages in the preparation of my deviled eggs, I’m not going to give you the recipe — if you want that or the recipe for anything else you see, you’ll have to buy the cookbook. I will tell you that Mexican deviled eggs have salsa, mayonnaise, sour cream and cheddar cheese in them.

Wednesday, August 1st, 2008

	This evening my nephew Carl and I did a typically American summer thing, namely go to a ball game, the Dayton Dragons vs. the Wisconsin Timber Rattlers. The game was actually fairly fun, almost a shutout but Rattlers managed to get one run in the top of the 9th, not enough to save them however against the Dragon's 8 runs, several of which were home runs. The Dragons mascots Heater and Gem had various fun activities on the field between innings. And of course there was food. We started with ice cream dots on the theory that life is short so you should eat dessert first and also on the premise that the rule about having to eat something green in order to get dessert is suspended at ballgames. We did end up having something green though — cotton candy.

Tuesday, July 31st, 2007

If you've visited my books page or if you're a long-time reader of my blog, you know I'm a fan of Dayton's library. I'm still a fan but this summer construction on St. Clair Street downtown has made trips to the library a real aggravation!

Construction started in the spring, initially just a small area of St. Clair near Second Street, but now, almost August, instead of cleaning up their mess as they progress down the street, the construction crews have managed to block off all of St. Clair between Second and Third Streets as well as starting a mess on the next block.

Why is this a problem? The library's main entrance, which used to be on Third Street, was relocated to St. Clair a few years ago because there's a whole lot more parking on St. Clair. Or at least there was. Now they've managed to block all parking in the block in front of the library's main entrance as well as access to the library's drive through window and handicap parking spaces. Now to be fair, sometimes they do have a single lane open on St. Clair, so the drive through and handicap spaces are sometimes available, but not so you could count on them!

Another reason this construction mess is a problem is that St. Clair, one of Dayton's infamous one-way streets, is a major thoroughfare through downtown for people traveling south on Riverside Drive heading for Patterson Boulevard and points south. Patterson Boulevard passing the library and Fifth Third Field is one way north, meaning everyone coming south is directed onto Monument Avenue and then onto St. Clair. Which now, more often than not, is closed at the library.

Brilliant planning. No end in sight. Ugh.

(click pics to enlarge)

There's parking on Third Street near the front entrance if you're lucky, but then you have to walk across the construction

I don't know if this is new or slated to be replaced

It makes for an interesting photo at least

Capitol Tunneling of Columbus seems to be one of the culprits

No parking and no passage!

Sunday, July 29th, 2007

No, not from Martha Stewart Living but by Cross Creek's very own Dan Carl!

Today was my church's annual summer picnic, and you can see lots of pictures in the galleries, but I wanted to point out one photo in particular, namely that of the delicious Watermelon Bowl O'Fruit, a creation of our pastor's ~~wife~~partner, Dan Carl. Doesn't it look just fabulous?

If you want to learn how to make this yourself, look for the Cross Creek 10th Anniversary Decade of Daring Cookbook, to be published this fall!

Wednesday, July 11th, 2007

"2" movies

Something fun about the apartment building I live in is that they have movie nights and games nights (ever play Pokeno?). Tonight was a movie night, featuring, as you can see from the flyer to the right, "2" movies, Bridge to Terebithia and Daddy's Little Girls. All the announcements at Park Layne are in this style, with creative uses of quotation marks and punctuation.

I don't usually participate in these group activities, but I did want to see Bridge to Terebithia, since I'd become familiar with the book when I took Adolescent Literature a few years ago. The movie's not typical Disney, staying fairly true to the book including a tragic event that was the point of the book's being written. A great story for helping kids learn that tragedy's part of life and that they can deal with it. Also a great story for teaching about foreshadowing. Disney even leaves in (somewhat shortened) a little lesson about Jesus and Biblical literalism, which I think would make this a great film for a youth group to watch and discuss.

I can't tell you whether "2" movies were actually screened (or if that "2" meant something else) because I didn't stay for the second one. Sorry.

While I'm on the subject of fun things about Park Layne, here's another, namely that the basement garages flood whenever there's any rain outside. Usually I just see the aftermath, but yesterday there was a downpour outside as I was leaving, and so I got to see that my garage floods not just because of seepage from the walls but even more so because of a big leak in the ceiling. You can't see the leak so well in these photos, but you can see the effect of the drips hitting the pond below the leak:

Sunday, July 8th, 2007

I teach Sunday School at my church, and today my class (9 and 10 year olds) volunteered to help the older youth out with their car wash, so I got roped into moving cars. You'd think pulling cars up wouldn't be very strenuous, but we washed 35 cars during worship service, so we had to hustle!

Sunday, July 1st, 2007

For the past year, I've lived near downtown Dayton on Grafton Hill. I like living downtown because there are lots of fun things to do within walking distance. I spent part of today with my mother, sister and brother-in-law. First we walked over to the CityFolk festival, where we got something to eat, watched some dancing and listened to some music. Then we went to the Victoria Theatre for the first of this summer's Cool Films, 1776, a film fitting for the holiday weekend but one about whom I agree with Roger Ebert.

Something I love about my place on Grafton Hill is being able to watch the sun set, and this evening I got to see another beautiful sunset. I finished the night by walking down to the river with a neighbor where we stood and watched the fireworks, after which most people had to walk through the crowds to get to their cars to fight the traffic to go home. Not us—just a few steps back up the hill and we were home.

Tuesday, March 13th, 2007

Dr. Pruett with the good stuff
Click to read another story about Dr. Pruett

I found out today that Robert Pruett, the Communications professor at Wright State for whom I worked as a T.A. for several years, died last Saturday. He was only 69, which is fairly young, but he was of a different era. Dr. Pruett had a Wright State e-mail address which he never used because his university-issued computer always sat unplugged on the floor of his office. The years I worked for him were his last before retirement, and, for COM101 at least, his only duties were one lecture a week—he never heard any of his students' speeches nor graded any of their work. In exchange for the work we TAs did for him, he treated us each quarter to dinner, usually at his country club, where he flirted gently with the girl TAs (yes, to him they were girls, not women) and shared stories from his long career. My glimpse of Robert Pruett was from a strange vantage point towards the end of his life. He was a good man.

Here's to Dr. Pruett and the quarterly TA dinners:
- December 6, 2002
- May 15, 2003
- November 21, 2003
- March 17, 2004
- June 8, 2004

Tuesday, February 6th, 2007

Sure, I can go months without posting anything, but give me some snow and a camera, and it gets me in the mood again.

Sunday, December 10th, 2006

Today was the fourth annual Dayton Gay Men's Chorus Christmas concert, and I took tons of pictures, more of which you can see in the galleries.

Saturday, December 9th, 2006

Last night my friend Derek was in town, and we went out to eat, did some shopping and then hit the bars. I was all excited about that last bit because Thursday was when Ohio's new ban on smoking in public places was to have taken effect, so this would be the first time I could go to a gay bar in Ohio and not come home smelling all smoky. Well I was being naive and forgetting that people don't like to obey laws they deem to be senseless or intrusive, which of course I do myself when it comes, for example, to speed limits.

In the first bar we hit, the Right Corner, there was a sign on the wall left over from Wednesday night touting their big Smoke Out ending at midnight, after which, I can only assume, everyone had a big chuckle and continued to smoke because on Friday there were still ashtrays on the bar and lit cigarettes galore. I asked the bartender about that, and he said, "Oh the ban doesn't take effect until May." Right. Derek texted his bf Chip to text us back the number for reporting violations, which is 866-559-6446, but they only take messages during business hours M-F 8-5. Oh well.

A cute and friendly bartender from Stage Door
(If you see him, ask him to take off his shirt)

So we moved on to the Stage Door, where smoking was also business as usual, although they have a second bar where there wasn't any smoking going on yet, though there were ashtrays laid out. I asked the friendly bartender what that was all about, and he said, yeah, he knew about the new law, but he'd been told by his boss to set out the ashtrays. I stacked them up and set them on a chair while we were there.

David's stripper doesn't mind his butt being seen

After a couple drinks, we hopped on over to the last bar of the evening, Cell Block, where, yes, there was smoking going on, but by that time we no longer cared quite so much. We ran into a friend of mine, David, who doesn't like having his photograph taken and who gets lap dances from strippers. During all the ruckus, Derek broke a nail (omg!), then he snapped a picture of me and him, and then I snapped one of Derek kissing ass.

Update 12-11-06: I did remember to call the Ohio Department of Health to report Right Corner, Stage Door and Cell Block, each of whom will be getting warning letters. Whether that will do any good remains to be seen.

Wednesday, November 8th, 2006

I saw an old friend, Scott, at a party last Saturday and was reminded of a trip we took several years ago with a group down to Keeneland, to see the races. I'd posted photos from that trip the next day on my old website, but they never made it to this site, until now.

Tuesday, May 16th, 2006

Today my friend Melissa wore the stylish sandals she chose to highlight her best feature, namely her big toe. If you have a big toe fetish, e-mail me, and I'll put you in touch.

Friday, April 14th, 2006

This year was the first year that my church, Cross Creek Community Church, participated in the annual Good Friday Stations of the Cross walk for justice and peace, along with people from College Hill Presbyterian Church, our partner church. The walk combines the traditional stations with important social justice issues of today and relevant contemporary quotes about each issue. Our church's Justice and Witness committee thought it would be good for us to participate; we got to sponsor station 8, where we talked about discrimination.

So many people think that this week is all about Jesus' having died as part of some convoluted way through which his father could forgive us all for our sins (God couldn't just choose to extend grace to all of us?). Whether or not that is true, I do think that the historical Jesus was a witness for peace and justice, and by calling attention to issues he would have cared about, we take a step towards following his example.

You can see more pictures from the walk in the galleries.

Tuesday, April 4th, 2006

Derek's 28th birthday was yesterday, and so to celebrate he went out with the SPC (a private club in existence for a while but named only last night), whose members include me, Ryan (who's been present at earlier club meetings), and Chip (the club's newest member). (Check out thingstodoindayton.blogspot.com to read about some of Chip and Derek's adventures.)

I met the group at the Stage Door, where I found them engaged in an enthralling game of video "what's different about these two pictures." That got boring soon enough, so we went to Club Masque, which on Monday nights has no cover charge, which we discovered is because no one is there on Monday nights. That was okay, though, as it allowed our drunken antics to go mostly unnoticed. As you can see, Derek is quite flexible for a 28-year-old, he sometimes launches sneak attacks on unsuspecting SPC members, and Ryan doesn't like to have his nipple exposed for viewing on the Internet.

Friday, March 31st, 2006

Editorial differences

I took over responsibility for the Dayton Gay Men's Chorus website this month. Our director, Gregg Sewell, set it up, and it looks pretty, but it got stale to the point that our March concert wasn't advertised on it until a week beforehand.

Now, I'm definitely not criticizing Gregg for not keeping on top of the site because when it comes to stale websites, I live in a glass house and because Gregg's responsible for a lot, from picking music to preparing for rehearsals and retreats to finding musicians to getting demo recordings made. But still an up-to-date website can be an asset to an organization, so we're going to do better.

The offensive material

Trying to uphold that spirit, I updated the site after our fabulous March Savory Songs and Decadent Desserts concert to thank everyone who came to that and to promote our Pride concerts in June (the 10th and 17th). I even posted a fun picture taken in the choir room at Shiloh before the concert.

Well, the picture, or perhaps the caption, or perhaps both, was deemed inappropriate by DGMC's officers and board, and yesterday I was asked to take the pic down pronto, which I did. At first I thought it was an overreaction, but I asked my best friend to look at the site and tell me what he thought, and he did think it was a bit much. I do see that it may not have presented the image that DGMC's board would want for the group, and I agree completely that my role as webmaster is to maintain a site that shows what the board wants shown.

So what image should DGMC project? Part of it is that gay men aren't just about sex, which is an important message. Back in 2004, DGMC was disinvited from participating in the All Ohio Boychoir Festival because of what they felt people associate with the word "gay." So I can see that saying on our front page that our director was "getting a little horny with the boys before our Savory Songs concert" might not help our cause.

But do we have to pretend to all be characters from Gay as Blazes, a bunch of noble gay men interested in nothing but culture and good works? Pretending is what it would be. Gay men aren't just about sex, but sex and kidding about sex is part of who we are (a part of who all men are even), as anyone who would attend one of our rehearsals would quickly discover. At times we're like a bunch of junior high boys, laughing about anything that has the slightest sexual connotation.

Nothing to offend here,
and no one to recognize either!

Besides, a staid image, such as the one to the right, which is from our last Christmas concert and appeared on the site until this month, isn't going to convince people like Reformation Ohio's Rod Parsley that we're fine upstanding moral citizens who deserve respect and equal rights. The only thing that might please them is if we posted on our front page that we were becoming the Dayton Ex-Gay Men's Chorus.

One more thing about that pic from December: see anyone you know? No, of course, you don't because you're not supposed to. A concern the DGMC board has is that of displaying photographs or names of people in the chorus who don't want to be identified. There are no photos on the site of anyone in the chorus. Members quoted on the who we are page are identified by first names only.

If DGMC were allowed to have but one message, it should be that we're proud of who we are. I realize that not everyone who's gay feels comfortable coming out or is in a place to do so, and that's fine. But if you're singing in this chorus and marching with us for Pride, you have to have reached a certain comfort level in strangers knowing that you're gay. If you're a gay married Republican Southern Baptist preacher, then perhaps joining DGMC isn't the right decision for you.

DGMC's board is going to work on establishing some guidelines for what goes on the site, and it's going to be an interesting discussion. All opinions and viewpoints have to be considered. And I do see that even if we decide that there's room on the site for some fun pictures from rehearsals or parties, such pictures may not be what we want to showcase on the front page (though I do hope we don't try to lock them up tightly in a members-only section — do we really not want non-members to know we have fun?).

Regardless of how DGMC's site develops, I am glad that there's a site over which I have exclusive editorial control. davidlauri.com may get stale from time to time, but if I ever feel like saying something, I've got a place to say it!

Wednesday, December 22nd, 2004

We're having a pre-Christmas blizzard! I went out in it and took some pictures.

Monday, December 20th, 2004

With our most demanding performance season since June over, the Dayton Gay Men's Chorus had a holiday party tonight at our host bar, Collector's, where one of our accompanists, Ms. Raymonde Rougier, plays and where our president, WYSO host Jerry Kenney tends bar. This was one event to which I didn't bring my camera, but John, one of Collector's owners, covered that and even arranged for Santa to come. We each got to sit on Santa's lap, and John e-mailed us our pics afterwards.

Sunday, December 19th, 2004

Today was the final Dayton Gay Men's Chorus concert of the season. Pictures are online in the galleries.

Tuesday, December 14th, 2004

I had a busy day today. First I went with my mother, her friend Nancy and my uncle Bill down to Cincinnati to see the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center. We lunched afterwards at Montgomery Inn at the Boathouse. More pictures are in the galleries.

We saw something scary on the way home, namely this gigantic statue of Jesus rising out of the earth in front of Solid Rock Church in Mason along I-75. Talk about retribution theology and putting the fear of God into you! (Update: Solid Rock Church spent $250,000 on this statue!!)

Then this evening was a performance by the Dayton Gay Men's Chorus for PFLAG Dayton (which meets at my church). Pictures are in the galleries. You have one more chance to see us this month.

This is supposed to make you
feel good about Jesus?

Saturday, December 11th, 2004

I had another Christmas party yesterday. Pictures are in the galleries.

Sunday, December 5th, 2004

Pictures of last night's Cincinnati Men's Chorus concert in Dayton, at which the Dayton Gay Men's Chorus sang a few songs, are now online in the gallery.

Tuesday, November 30th, 2004

Yes, I still have my tomato plant on my deck. I should have dug it up a while ago, but I'm lazy. However, the result of my laziness is that I now know that squirrels like tomatoes. I already knew squirrels could scurry up and down walls. I caught this squirrel scampering onto my deck, picking up a tomato with his teeth and trying to scurry back up the wall. Unfortunately for him, he dropped the tomato. He went back after it once, but after his second attempt he scurried up the wall without it and spent a few minutes looking down at it, perhaps trying to figure out a better way to retrieve it. I was surpised he hung around long enough for me to get my camera, but after I got these pictures Phineas wanted to see what was up and scared the squirrel away.

Thursday, November 25th, 2004

This year my sister and her husband hosted Thanksgiving. My mother and I live in the same neighborhood, the historic Oregon District near downtown Dayton. I walked over to my mother's, so we could ride together to my sister's. Before I left, I took a picture of my cat, Phineas, who wasn't invited to dinner. He was happy enough for me to leave him on his favorite chair. On the way I took a picture of the Thanksgiving display in Newcom Park in the neighborhood.

Across the street a crew was hard at work on the old Southern Belle bar building. No parade watching for them. The Southern Belle moved a year or so ago to Patterson Boulevard, near Fifth Third field, and now its old building is being gutted and converted into a residence, with an upstairs even!

Sunday, November 14th, 2004

I've lived in the Oregon District six years this month, since November 1998. Knowing that I won't be living here next year makes me a little sad, not enough to reconsider moving, but I will miss my house. When I bought it, the previous owners, the Brubakers, left me a notebook of photos from the renovation of the house in the early 1980s. They bought the house in 1984, historic but with all new innards.

I finally got around to scanning the pictures, which you can now see online. In addition to the photos, I scanned the tourbook from the 11th annual Dayton Heritage Tour, held Sunday, September 23, 1984 and sponsored by the Oregon Historic District Society (visit the OHDS web site to find out about this year's tour, to be held Dec. 6, 7 and 8). The Brubakers were #1 on the tour. Here's the info about the house from the tourbook:

Sold for $48 at a public autction held at the National Hotel, the lot which was to eventually gird this post and beam, Greek Revival home was purchased in 1835, by constable Ebenezer Henderson and his wife, Mary. In 1836, they built the home they were to reside in for the next 17 years.

Hamilton Bates, moving here when a foreman at a machine shop, eventually owned Hamilton Bates & Sons, manufacturers of woolen machinery, blacksmith's drills and washing machines. Various members of his family continued their residency here after his death in 1884.

Tuesday, October 19th, 2004

It's fireplace season again!

Thursday, September 30th, 2004

I'm taking GER361 at UD (read how and why here) on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and it's been fun for many reasons, one of which is that today we got to have class outdoors. Dr. Schellhammer made us promise not to tell anyone. One of my classmates took a picture of this rare event, so I decided to take one too. No one reads my blog, so posting it here doesn't really count as telling anyone.

Saturday, August 21st, 2004


My first event today was a family luncheon at Applebee's. My uncle Will's birthday was the 16th and my uncle Bill's is the 26th, so today was a celebration of both. My sister's in-laws came too, so the event was in part a celebration of Jackie's retirement. (Yes, Larry is wearing a Bush pin. No further comment.)
	My second event was Saturday evening worship at Cross Creek. I usually go on Sunday mornings, but since I was going to visit my friend Keith's church on Sunday I decided to go to Cross Creek tonight. The Saturday service, at 5:30pm, had fewer people (at least this weekend), but was a fun opportunity to talk to people I hadn't seen in a while.


My third event was the Dayton Gay Men's Chorus performance as the opening act for the Rubi Girls at Celebrity. Our sound check was at 8pm, but we didn't go on until 10:30, which left lots of time for getting loosened up. As often happens when there is alcohol there was some nudity, which I probably shouldn't mention lest it attract more Google Image searchers. Despite some troubles during practice with the piano, our performance went pretty well, and, as always, the Rubi Girls were fabulous!

Sunday, August 15th, 2004

It may or may not surprise you to learn that I went to a river baptism today.

Friday, August 13th, 2004

	Marty and Linda are moving to Kenne-bunkport, Maine, and so Mark and Patty and Judy and Roselin hosted a going away party for them. To help Marty and Linda fit in, they got them pearls like Barbara Bush's. Roselin wore a pig snout to warn them not to cast their new pearls before swine. I taught them how to do the drag queen wave -- wrist, wrist, elbow, elbow, clutch the pearls (sorry, no pic). By the way, if you run into Linda and Marty, of course you've heard of the tradition that going away honorees must feed each other goodbye cake.
		By the way...
		any complaining I did
		about German summers
		applies also to Dayton weather this summer. (Happy fall, anyone?)

		The cute German is Linda's friend Friedeman, who will be studying law at Vanderbilt this year.

Monday, August 2nd, 2004

If you've been a fan of my blog since its beginning, you might remember that some summers I've had tomato plants. This summer I didn't even think of doing tomatoes since I knew I was going to be in Germany for a month, but my mother, industrious woman that she is, surprised me before I left and planted some tomatos and flowers in the barrel on my back deck, promising to water them while I was gone. As you can see, the tomato plants have done quite well, to the detriment of the flowers, and there are some tomatoes that will be ready for picking soon. Yum!

Blog tools

Months
Tags
Email