AOL COMMUNITY PHOTO CHALLENGE

The subject of this week's AOL Community Photo Challenge is:  Love

With Valentine's day upon us this month, our next challenge was suggested by Betty.
Of course, this can be of anything that represents love.  There are many forms of love, so this should be an easy challenge. 
Love is all around us......so find it, capture it, or just use a photo from the past, that says it!

I had no idea how few photos I've snapped over the past couple of years that really demonstrate this subject.  I finally found this shot taken two years ago of my grandson, Trenton and our kittie, Emmie.  There was a lot of affection between these two during the time that Trenton was living with us.  Here is the shot:

I did enjoy this opportunity to go back through my archives and I hope you enjoy this cute shot of the two of them.  Now its off to visit the other entires in this challenge to see what the rest of you have come up with.

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An Ode To My Favorite Gadget

It's that time again! Judith Heartsong's Artsey Essay is wrapping up for this month and I am sneaking in under the deadline with but one full day left to compete.  Here is this months challenge:

An Ode to Your Favorite Gadget

Weave a story about your favorite gadget.... something from the kitchen, the car, the garage, the living room, tool shed or your favorite styling tool. Who knows? It could be anything. Surprise us! Be creative and show us in words or pictures just why your stupendous gadget is the very best. Make sure you spell-check, use colorful and descriptive language, and tell your tale in an engaging way!

You have until the very last minute of the last hour of the last day of this month to spin a yarn to share about your favorite gadget. 

It's not too late for any of you out there to enter, here's the link:  Artsey Essay Contest, and here's my latest effort:

Favorite gadgets, you ask?  I’ve had more than a few over the years and I really had to think long and hard as to which one I’d pick and call my favorite. 

My current camera would have to be given consideration.  It has a dark, black, and mysterious finish to it.  The body is curvaceous and snuggles neatly into my hands as I caress it and coax out its secrets.  I can push buttons and turn knobs for an endless- seeming array of options and settings.  I can make this gadget seem brand new with the simple purchase of a myriad assortment of accessories.  That’s right, put this baby in your hands and feel its sleek design and enticing curves.  Try not to fall for it, go ahead, I dare you!

What really is a gadget, though?  The North America English Edition of the Encarta Dictionary defines gadget as:

1.        Ingenious device

A small device that performs or aids a simple task

2.       trivial device

A small device that appears useful but is often unnecessary or superfluous

 

Now, my camera is an ingenious device, however, taking a good picture is no simple task, and if one is going to take a picture, a camera is certainly necessary and not superfluous.  I think something along the lines of the 3 foot long thingy with the claw grabber that opens when you push the button on the end of it may qualify as a gadget.  One uses it to reach behind or underneath something to retrieve an object.  It is very useful but, if you move the object that you are reaching behind or underneath, it becomes unnecessary or superfluous.  I really enjoyed getting one of these years ago, but needed to use it only rarely.

Now, when I think of gadgets, one name comes to mind.  That name would be Popeil, as in Ron Popeil who, according to Wikipedia, is the master salesman who won the Nobel Prize in 1993 for Consumer Engineering.  He was described by the awards committee as the “incessant inventor and perpetual pitchman of late night television.”  The only problem with that statement is that there is no such thing as a Nobel Prize for Consumer Engineering.  The IG people named their fun prize awards the IG Nobel Prizes and that is what Ron Popeil actually won.  I thought it was a hoot that someone had written that on Wikipedia and thought I’d let you know it just wasn’t so.  Ron Popeil was, however, honored for all posterity with a display in the Smithsonian Museum.  

I never knew his name until I was an adult, but Ron Popeil had me at a very early age.  I’ll never forget the Pocket Fisherman my Mother gave me as a present one time.  At first, I thought it was cute but unpractical.  I still owned it when I started riding motorcycles with my friend Ken in St. Petersburg, Fl. in 1978.  We loved riding around Tampa Bay and exploring off-the-beaten-road beaches and coves.  We’d stop and admirethe water and wish we had a fishing pole with which to try our luck.  I had never used it before, but remembered this gadget was stored in the closet in a box.  One time, before one of our rides, I took it out and threw it on the bike.

The Pocket Fisherman was only about nine or ten inches long and was a complete spin casting system in one handy unit.  It featured a hinged rod that folded up, a smooth reel with anti-reverse and adjustable drag and a mini-tackle box in the handle.  The best part of all was that Ken had no idea I had it with me.   We found one of the best spots on the water yet and, as Ken and I were admiring the view, I was just waiting for him to say, “Boy, I wish we had a rod and reel with us.”    I didn’t have to wait long.

You should have seen the look on Ken’s face when I pulled out my Pocket Fisherman.  He had seen these advertised on television but could not believe I had one with me that day.  I fished a lure out of the handle and tied it on the line.  I got a strike on my first cast and actually landed a fish on my second one.  We were hooked and carried that gadget with us until we finally wore it slap out.  I’m here to tell you folks, it really worked as advertised!  Reminiscing about the Pocket Fisherman brings me closer to what would have to be my all time favorite gadget.

 First I have to comment on another one of Popeil’s inventions my family owned.  It was the Chop-O-Matic.  Yes,theChop-O-Matic was a little jar with a screw-on lid.  The lid had a hole in the center with a set of blades attached to a shaft going through the lid.  Outside the jar, above the lid, a small round ball-like handle was attached.  Underneath the lid, between the lid and the blade, was a spring system.  You would fill the jar with nuts or an onion or anything else you wanted to chop, screw the lid on, and start pumping the handled up and down thus chopping up whatever might be in the jar.  It was cute, quick to use, but it was superfluous and unnecessary when you considered the time you took to load it, chop, empty, and wash.  I could dice a whole onion with a sharp knife in the amount of time I would spend just cleaning up and washing this little contraption.   Fortunately I did not go out and purchase it, my mother had one and I could use it anytime I wanted to.

I came by my love of gadgets honestly; I inherited this trait from my father.  Dad couldn’t pass up a gadget he took a fancy to, and believe me; he fancied a lot of them in his day.  Every other year my mother would have to completely clean out and reorganize the drawers in the kitchen because of all the gadgets my father would drag home.  There were peelers, scrapers, and corers.  You could find slicers and dicers and knifes.  He had pickers, clippers and chippers.  I’d see pitters, and presses, and all kinds of things that made messes.  I sure do miss him and all of his gadgets!

My all-time favorite gadget was owned by my father and I was not allowed to touch it.  The problem was that when he purchased it I was still but a boy and into everything at the time.  This gadget had sharp blades and I was liable to cut one of my fingers off if I wasn’t careful, so I was just plain old forbidden to use it.  Of course, forbidding me to use it added greatly to the mystique!  You see, this product could slice it and dice it and cut a tomato paper thin with all the seeds still intact.  This product could cut a whole potato into French fries in one second flat, and it is so easy to clean.  But wait, there’s more!  Yes, my favorite gadget of all time is the Veg-O-Matic, invented by Samuel Popeil, and sold and marketed by his famous son, Ron Popeil. 

All of America remembers those incessant TV commercials of the sixties and seventies describing the magic of the Veg-O-Matic and how this gadget would make your life easier.  We would wake up to see Ron Popeil on TV with his Veg-O-Matic and, if you stayed up to watch late night TV, then you were continually bombarded with this sales pitch.  Popeil was the first to buy an extra minute of time for his pitches and his two minute commercials are the forerunner of the modern infomercials.

Dad purchased one of the early models and demonstrated it at home one night when he decided to make hamburgers and French fries.  This contraption had a plastic base that consisted of four legs supporting a center that was high enough off the counter to leave room for the finished product beneath it.  The midsection was square with a round hole in the center.  Different slicing and dicing blades that were round in shape could be fitted into the round center to cutthe desired shape.  I really should saythat the blade holders were round, the blades themselves crossed or crisscrossed the round holder allowing thick slices or thin slices, with the crisscrossed blades producing French fries or diced produce.  The top of the gadget was raised above the circular cutting hole and the supports for the top were fed through holes in the base that kept it perfectly lined up with the cutting area.  Dad would put the potato between the top and the center of the base, aligned directly over the cutting area, and push down on the top, which pushed the produce directly through the circular cutting hole in the midsection.  I was amazed to watch a whole potato be pushed through and come out as French fries.  The tomato slices were so thin as to be impossible.  His diced onions were, like the potatoes, instant and efficient.  I was enthralled by this gadget and was promptly forbidden not to touch it.  Ever!  There are pictures of the Veg-O-Matic on the Internet, but I didn’t have permission to use any of them, so I did not insert one here.

Dad was a pilot in the Air Force and flew a lot.  That meant that he was away quite often during those years and I rarely got to see the gadget in action.  The mystique never died, though, and on those occasions when we was home and pulled it out, I’d hover around and Dad would have a captivated audience as he made short work of all those vegetables.  Because they were afraid I’d hurt myself if I tried to use it, Mom and Dad hid it pretty darn well when he was not using it.

Time passed and the Veg-O-Matic was used less and less.  Part of it was the out of sight, out of mind syndrome and part of it was a reluctance to have to clean up all the individual parts once Dad was finished with it.  I truly thought it had fallen out of the family inventory until either shortly before or shortly after my mother’s death many, many years later.  I was living on our boat at the time and did not have room for any more gadgets and let it out of my grasp. 

I did find a few Veg-O-Matics on sale at Ebay for a very reasonable price, so who knows, I may get to play with one yet.  Paulette is well aware of my proclivity for gadgets, though, and I doubt I would be allowed to consummate any deal on one.  That’s a shame.  Another gadget I would love to get my hands on is the Popeil Showtime Rotisserie.  I’ve been asking for one of those since they first came out and to this day Paulette says absolutely not!  But a man can dream, can’t he?  But wait, there’s more… (wink)!  Y’all have a great week!

Photo Challenge

The new year has been a busy one and I am ashamed I have not been back sooner.  I've been trying to keep current with everyone and have not always commented when I was in a hurry, but I've tried to let just about everyone know I was arround.  I hope the new year is being good to all of you.

I've decided to start doing the weekly photo challenge.  After the Blog Father departed AOL, Marie decided to keep the tradition of the weekly Photo Challenge alive and is graciously hosting this friendly competition. 

The theme for this week's challenge will be Hometown, suggested by Donna.

Select a photo that best represents "Hometown"
This could be something you love about where you live, either your hometown, home state, country....anything that shows your home.  It is your interpretation of "Hometown" or "Home"

Repeat from another post....
[Marie: "Examples; NYC, the city skyline at night.  or  Could be a seaside cottage, or country home.....  I recently was part of a photo challenge & was asked to suggest a theme.
This was mine "Home is where the Heart is"]

You may add something about why you chose this photo.
All entries must have a description of the photo, including when it was taken (the year) & where.   Anything that would be of interest to visitors checking out your image.

There are two catagories, beginner and advanced.  I wanted to enter in the beginner catagory, but I've posted enough pictures over the last three years that I fear I'd get booed out of J-Land.  I swear, this is true:  When I went out this afternoon to shoot the picture for this challenge, I had to read the manual all over again for my camera.  I decided to shoot in a file format I've never tried before and it has taken all afternoon and evening to get to the point of posting a final result.

So, My entry is in the advanced catagory and it is a waterfront scene on the Savannah River.

This is a picture of the Convention Center as seen from River Street on the waterfront of the Savannah River taken today, January 22, 2008 at approximately 3:30pm.  I wanted to take a shot of River Street, but the sun was at the wrong angle for a great shot and I suddenly realized that most of the visitors to our city go to River Street, not Hutchinson Island where the Convention Center is located.  That means that the view they take home of Savannah in their minds is of the Convention Center as seen from River Street.  The tall buliding to the right of the frame is the Westin Hotel.

There are some tugboats docked on a River Street warf in the lower left hand corner of the picture.  These belong to the Moran Company.  There are only two tugboat companies on this river so these boats are a very familiar sight to native residents.

Given my track record, I know you won't believe that I am going to post each and every week now to do this photo challenge.  You know, you may be wrong there.  It was fun getting out and shooting today.  I wanted to enter last week's challenge but events conspired against that happening.  I'm glad I put things aside today and got out there.  I had a blast.

I'll be posting again in a day or two because I have chosen a topic for Judy's Artsey Essay Contest and will be entering that this week as well.

Until then, take care and get out and have some fun with your camera if you have one.

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Happy New Year!

                                 

                     

My gracious thanks to Donna at D's Designs for these great graphics!  Wishing you all a great new year and all the best in 2008! 

 

 

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A Christmas Story

The renowned blogger and artist Judith Heartsong is very timely this month with her chosen topic for her monthly Artsy Essay competition.  Although I don’t enter every single month, I try to enter as often as I can and I encourage other journalists to enter as well.  It’s a fun competition and a win, win situation for all.

This month Judith challenges us to write about:

The Funniest Gift
I Have Ever
Given or Received

There is no explanation needed... let's light up the holidays with some laughter here and make sure you spell-check, use colorful and descriptive language, and tell your tale in an engaging way!

You have until the very last minute of the last hour of the last day of this holiday month to spin a yarn to share.

I have taken many days to consider this topic, and almost passed on this assignment, because I don’t have that many funny gift stories.  An interesting thing happened during this process.  I forced myself to sit down and really try to reflect on the Christmases of my past and the gifts I received through the years.  The memories started flooding back in. 

I am one of the fortunate ones that had a great childhood.  My parents loved my sister and me very much and did everything in their power to protect and nurture us.  They didn’t let us get away with much, but their discipline was meted out with our welfare in mind and with much evident love.

Every Christmas Jan and I were asked to write out a wish list early in November.  Mom always hoped she got it well enough in advance that we would forget exactly all that we put on our lists.  You see, the lists were guidelines and she never wanted us to think they were absolutes.  We may have gotten one or two items from the list or, some years, not even one item depending on costs and availability of our requests. 

We never went wanting, though.  Christmas morning Mom and Dad always made sure we would enjoy a great Christmas under the tree and we never went away disappointed.  Sometimes the occasion would call for extreme action to ensure that happiness, but if it was within their power, they would do it.

One such occasion was the year 1964.  That year I wanted a model car racing set.  Not the little tiny ones, but a set with the larger race cars, oh, say, six to eight inches long.  The track was a figure eight design and could be set up in our living room without much problem and plenty of room.

We were living in Smyrna, Tennessee that year.  My father was stationed at Sewart Air Force Base and we were about twenty miles south of Nashville.  This part of Tennessee is of temperate climate and gets snow on the ground for one or two days perhaps twice a winter on average.  1964 was the year that Smyrna would have a white Christmas.

The snow began to fall late in the afternoon on Christmas Eve, big white flakes, wet and sticky.  Much different than the almost dry, tiny flurry type of snow we were more accustomed to.  The kids in the area were elated and hopeful.  Too many times we had snow start only to stop a few minutes later and disappear like a phantom in the night, silently appearing and leaving with no notice or trace.

Every few minutes I would leave the comfort of my usual spot in front of the TV, where I would be ensconced on the couch in our den.  I would run to the picture window in the living room or open the back door and peer out.  Once assured that the winter onslaught was still coming down, I’d march through the house and deliver the great news to any I happened upon that, “Yes, it was still snowing and it looked like it was sticking!”  Or, “Yes, it’s still snowing and it looks like an inch deep now!” … and so on as the evening progressed.  By bed time we were assured we would have some snow on the ground come morning.  The only question was, how much?  I fell asleep that night with that wonderful feeling that we would finally experience a White Christmas.

Until that Christmas, a White Christmas was only something I had seen in the movies or heard about from adults who had been raised in a colder climate.  The linking of Christmas with snow on the ground was like magic to me, mystical in a sense that I could not fathom.  When I awoke that Christmas Morning, I sprang out of bed and hurried to the front door.  I opened it on a magical scene that I will never forget. 

Every tree was covered with a white blanket.  The road in front of the house was indiscernible from our front yard.  There were two or three feet of snow out there and it was still falling lightly as I stood in awe.  The term, “winter wonderland,” seemed no exaggeration at the time. 

It was cold on that door step and I pulled myself back into the living room, withdrawing from the cold and reveling in the warmth of our house, my immediate attention fixating on the tree in front of the window.  The lights were twinkling like a thousand stars beckoning to me.  Pretty colors played from the lights and were reflected on the wrappings of our collective gifts.  There, on the floor in the center of the room, my race car track had been constructed and two shiny cars were poised at the starting line, set to speed off at the drop of a flag.

Our custom was that the kids did not do Christmas without Mom and Dad.  I danced around the house as I waited for everyone to assemble in the living room so we could open the presents.  It was pure torture that Mom insisted on taking the time to brew that cup of coffee before we began.  But, alas, the time finally came.  My opportunity to feel the controller in my hand and press the accelerator control had arrived.  I pressed the button and waited with great anticipation for the little race car to roar to life and command that little figure eight track … and waited, and waited!  Nothing happened!

I checked the power cable, I checked all the connections.  I read the instruction manual forwards and backwards.  The car still would not budge.  My racing set did not work.  In today’s retail parlance it was an out of the box failure.

There I sat on Christmas morning with a toy that did not work and, for the first time in years, we were snowed in.  Two feet of snow in that part of Tennessee pretty much paralyzed travel in those days.  There was no equipment available to plow the highways; all you could do was to wait for it to melt.

I will never forget my father for what he did the next morning.  We still had more than two feet of snow on the ground, (it had snowed some more), yet he loaded me and my defective race car set into the family vehicle.  There were few cars on those snow covered roads as we made our way the twenty miles into Nashville, back to the store where the toy had been purchased. 

I thought there would be no chance that the store would even be open with that much snow on the ground, but, lo and behold, we made it there and was able to make the exchange.  The ride back home was one of the scariest I’ve ever made.  Shortly after leaving the store, the snow began to fall again.

The visibility on the highway was about ten feet.  The slippery roads became even slicker.  We almost got pushed off the road by a trucker barreling down on us trying to get out of the area before being stuck there and losing precious time.  The car lurched as we went into a skid, sliding across an unseen tarmac, frantically trying to maintain our path.

We made it home without further incident.  I saw a side of my father that morning that I had not seen before.  It was only after I returned home that I realized to just what extent my father would go and what he was willing to risk to insure the happiness of his son.  Yes, that was truly a magical Christmas that year and one I will never forget.

Thank you, Judith Heartsong.  I may not win a prize in this Essay Contest, because my gift was not a funny one, but the memory I retrieved was priceless.  Merry Christmas everyone, and a very Happy New Year!

 

Caroling Through J-Land

Thanks to Donna at D's Designs for this great graphic!

My apologies to those who have dial-up.  This is my first Video Only Post.  If you can't get it to play, Email me and I'll let you know what it is all about.

 

Happy Holidays!

 

I hope everyone is having a Happy Holiday Season.  We are all doing fine here in Georgia and enjoying this unseasonably warm weather spell.  Who can get upset about the weather when the highs are in the mid to high seventies each day?

My Thanks to Donna for the graphic above which really spruces up this place!

Our household is not that much different than most of Y’all’s.  We are still doing Christmas shopping, most of our cards are in the mail, and we are still decorating the house.  Oh, and I am performing my usual Christmas screw-ups.  Yesterday I mailed a beautiful card to my sister and did not realize until after it was in the post that the gift card had not been put in the envelope.  So, today I wrote another card and ‘fessed up to the deed.  A second card is in the mail and fully armed this time.

I was given eighteen postcards yesterday to take to the post office.  My instructions were to, and I quote, “Buy some Christmas stamps for these and get them in the mail. “  So, I wait in line for a good twenty minutes, get up to the clerk and do my Priority Mail transactions and ask for eighteen Christmas Stamps.  I take the stamps over to a counter top and stamp all the envelopes and stick the cards in the mail bin.

Last night when Paulette got home I got the third degree.  Did you get receipts and tracking numbers for the priority mail?  (Yes!)  How many stamps did you end up having to buy?  (Eighteen, honey, there were eighteen cards.)  What?  Eighteen stamps?  How many stamps did the larger envelopes take?  [Suddenly I knew I was a cooked goose].  (Honey, you said to buy Christmas Stamps for the cards and mail them.  That is exactly what I did).  No, what I sent you to do was to hand the eighteen cards to the clerk and have the clerk weigh and size them and affix the proper postage on each for you.  [We are now in danger of four cards being returned for insufficient postage]

I held my tongue and did not ask why she did not explain it to me if she wanted it done in a certain manner.  I am a typical guy who does not keep track of postal rates and wonders why a thin, light card would cost more than normal airmail postage no matter what the dimensions are.  After all they are all about an eighteenth of an inch thick for goodness sake. This is a normal part of marriage, and next year SHE will be in that postal line no matter HOW busy she claims to be, LOL.

On a positive note, I have maintained my diet that I started in July and now have officially lost thirty pounds.  I’m pleased, but the goal is to lose twenty more.  I may not get there for another few months, but I know I’ll make it.

Just how many months it will take will depend on what I succumb to during the Christmas Season.  I have lost the three or four pounds that Thanksgiving threatened to stick me with, now it will be the battle of Christmas’s repast, not to mention those innocent looking stocking stuffers.  We have always loaded our stockings with little trinkets and lots of nuts, fruit, and chocolates.  We may break with tradition this year; Paulette and Sandy have gone into diet mode, too.

Last Christmas I wrote a post about the music of Christmas that filled our house every year growing up.  I even recorded the song, “Here Comes Santa Clause,” and included the video in the entry.  It was fun and well received.  This year has been no different than previous years.  I held true to my annual pattern of practicing my guitar playing through the holidays and into spring time.  Then, as work got busier, I put the guitar away for the summer.  The vicious cycle continued.  All the progress I had made went by the way side and all the songs I had memorized became faint memories and had to be learned all over again.

I have said it before, but this year I mean it.  I am not going to put the guitar down this summer and I will not let this progress I’ve made go by the wayside this year.  When I set my mind on a goal, I don’t often fall short.  So, I think next year’s post may have a much higher quality to the home grown music offering.

All this is leading up to this year’s offering which is quite short, and … if I get really industrious… may be joined soon by another song if I can get another one on tape, so to speak.  I get real nervous when the camera is on and don’t perform very well.  30 years ago it was a much different story, but this is the reality of today.  So, for those of you who have requested another Christmas music offering, here it is.  Merry Christmas, everyone, and I wish you all a very happy holiday season.  I hope to post at least one more time before Christmas, but I have a lousy track record and don’t know if you should trust me on this.