Patrick

A colourful day

Posted on by Patrick
Pink flamingos on the lawn

Today was Kath­leen’s birth­day. I ordered up a flock­ing from the local Kins­men club, and so this morn­ing, before dawn, two dozen plas­tic pink flamin­gos showed up on my lawn.

Pink flamingos on the lawn
In the chill of Jan­u­ary, a burst of ludi­crous trop­i­cal pink.

Then, tonight, my phone buzzed: there was a strong pos­si­bil­i­ty of auro­ra. So I grabbed my gear and drove out of town, where I found it was cold and very bright under a near­ly-full moon. There was indeed auro­ra, right at the edge of vision, but the moon washed it out quite a bit.

Faint aurora to the north
I processed the heck out of it, and you can still only just see a faint smear of green.

But I did find a new loca­tion for star trails, to be filed away for a warmer, dark­er night, so at least there’s that.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I think I might need a hot chocolate.

Half-moon

Posted on by Patrick
The half-moon

There’s half a moon in the sky tonight. I snapped some quick pho­tos from my deck. It’s a bit chilly so I did­n’t spend much time out there.

The half-moon

Nerdy details: 1/100 sec­ond expo­sure, ISO 100, 250mm, f/5.6, hand­held. Pho­to was cropped and the colours tweaked a lit­tle bit in GIMP.

Frosty

Posted on by Patrick
Frosty branches

It was a misty Man­i­to­ba morn­ing¹, but then the clouds cleared about 11 AM and the sun came out. I grabbed my cam­era and head­ed out at noon to see what I could see.

  • Frosty branches
    Tak­en out my upstairs window
  • Frosty branches
    Tak­en out my upstairs window
  • Frosty Tree
    On the side of 50th Street
  • Frosty branches (macro)
    I do like that sky
  • Frosty branches

Which of these three do you pre­fer? I can’t choose.

  • Frosty landscape
    Focus on the fencepost
  • Frosty landscape
    Focus on the trees
  • Frosty landscape
    Focus on the fore­ground grasses
I can’t decide which of these three I like best. Same com­po­si­tions, dif­fer­ent item in focus.

¹ I hon­est­ly thought that was the name of the song, but I was wrong.

Memories of JJ, 9: The Beard

Posted on by Patrick
My dad with a beard

Hav­ing noticed the aus­pi­cious anniver­sary, I was think­ing a bit about Dad. I thought I’d told this sto­ry already, but I could­n’t find it in a search of my site. Maybe it was just in my eulogy.

For most of my life, Dad had a beard. If you dig out the real­ly old SRCI year­books, you can find pho­tos of him clean-shaven. I think he grew the beard in about 1980 or so, and he must have liked the way it looked because he kept it for a long, long time.

He told me once that his plan was to win the lot­tery, do all the nec­es­sary pub­lic­i­ty, cash the cheque, then shave his beard off and become invis­i­bly rich.

It was a sol­id plan, too. If you saw a pho­to of him pre-beard next to one of him with the beard, you might be hard-pressed to say the two pho­tos were the same per­son. JJ : Beard :: Super­man : glasses.

Then one year, when he was work­ing up in Lac Bro­chet, he and Mom came out of the north for the sum­mer and… he was clean-shaven.

The first thing I asked him, when I saw him, was, “Is there some­thing I should know?”

Posted in JJ.