My GPS Camera Phone

Something unusual happened this weekend. I was offline nearly the entire time. I was online maybe 30 minutes in about 60 hours. I read a book (All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten), spread a truckload of mulch and took an afternoon nap in a chair outside. Good stuff.

What does this have to do with a weathered faucet? Absolutely nothing. Happy Monday.

Camera phone: Nokia 5610 XpressMusic

All this week, I’ll be featuring nothing but gray. Two reasons: 1) it’s a theme thing that sounded fun and 2) my camera phone takes better grayscale shots.

There’s an interesting side note on how my phone takes black-and-white. Instead of capturing the image in grayscale color mode, it captures a desaturated RGB image. Is this the case for all digital imaging? I just found it somewhat interesting.

Anyway, the picture here is my trusty Weber grill that I’ve been using for about seven years and it’s still going strong. Gas? Who needs gas? Well-weathered and seasoned, this old-school charcoal grill has produced some of the best slow-smoked pork butts this side of the Mississippi. It will be a sad day when it finally falls to pieces.

With a little help from the morning sun, a well-placed tree and some good timing, I was able to remind myself that I need to paint the house.

(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

 Loading ...

Once soaked by the late summer rains, this piece of dirt now watches the sun rise and set, absorbing the radiation and releasing it’s moisture – the life-giving, cooling moisture it once held so closely – back into the atmosphere. Unlike it’s concrete neighbor, the flaking soil will hibernate to one day breathe life again, come the next rainfall.

(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

 Loading ...

When Nancy and I moved from Clearwater to a small town called Anthony, we thought that a year on a 120 acre cattle farm would be a nice change.

Change is an understatement.

I had never lived on a farm and the farthest I had ever been from civilization was about 100 feet (about 30 meters for my metric friends). Nancy had been there, done that, so this was nothing new for her. We lived in a little house on wheels that had an opossum family living underneath it and many giant spiders living all around it. We’re talking spiders the size of your hand. Yeah.

Among the oaks, pasture fences, misty mornings and manure, we found ourselves in a place where you could do something that wasn’t allowed in the city. You could burn stuff. With this revelation, we immediately set out to install a custom fire pit in the back yard (which could have been the front yard because the trailer had a door on each side). Since I like passing on valuable tips to my readers, here’s the way to make a fire pit:

1. Tools: rake, shovel, a few beers
2. Locate spot away from house
3. Rake away debris from the installation area
4. Dig a pit about 6 inches deep by 4 feet wide
5. Line inside edges of hole with cool rocks, bricks and other fire-resistant stuff
6. Cut some green logs and place them around the perimeter
7. Build a huge pyramid of seasoned firewood
8. Light fire, open beers and enjoy the conflagration

You’re probably asking yourself what this has to do with rust. Well, we got to enjoying the fire pit so much that we practically cleared the farm of dead wood, which is a fire hazard if allowed to accumulate too much. Dry oak burns quite efficiently. (Un)fortunately, the day quickly came to move into our current house (without wheels), so we had to say farewell to our beloved fire pit.

After moving in, a good friend purchased us a city-approved outdoor fireplace. This is basically a metal cage that you can burn fires in, without having to worry about burning down your neighborhood. We have had it ever since we moved in and as you can see from the photo, the ash pan has seen better days. It still works, but probably not for too much longer. Ash and rain makes for a wonderfully corrosive environment. A little bit of morning sunlight makes for a great photo. It works, but is nothing compared to the open pit we had on the farm.

With the freezing weather quickly approaching, the old fire pit will be remembered as the family gathers around the rusty one in the back yard, huddled in blankets and lawn furniture, only steps away from civilization. Beer will still be on hand.

Traveling is one our favorite things to do. Beaches, camping, road tripping, whatever. It’s fun to pick up and get out of your circle of concerns every now and again. Of course, we like to bring home a souvenir or two to remind us of the good times we had. Instead of buying a T-shirt or refrigerator magnet, we bring home rocks and garbage.

No, really.

This is a photo of our little front porch garden, which used to be a garden of weeds. Undeterred by the ugliness, we decided to dig out some of the dirt, lay down a sheet of weed block, pour in a base of plain old lava rocks and then start covering that with shells from our beach trips. What started as an ordinary shell bed has become a scrapbook of our travels.

This photo is a showcase for a trip to Key West, not long after the hurricanes blew through a few years ago. The sponges are real sea sponges that washed up when the roads were flooded by the storm surge. There’s the wine bottle we found caught in the mangroves while kayaking, cradled in a piece of bamboo found on the same trip. Coconuts are a must, so we grabbed a few, along with some driftwood and other stuff. The worm-eaten piece of driftwood on the right is about seven feet long. I dug it out of it’s mangrove prison and attached it to my kayak. It was extremely heavy and waterlogged, but well worth the effort.

Most of the shells come from St. Augustine’s Anastasia State Park, arguably one of the best beaches on the east coast of Florida. Dare I say even better than South Beach in Miami? If you’re going for beach quality over traffic and ego quality, then yes, I dare.

Not seen in the picture: an orphaned, blue sandal from Anastasia Beach; an orange, plastic boundary marker from St. Simons Island in Georgia; a small, brown bottle with a rusty cap that floated in from who-knows-where; a Volkswagen Beetle headlight from the Key West mangroves, turned green on the inside from algal growth; a rusty railroad spike found by the tracks running through a small Florida town; the broken pieces of a Circle of Friends candle holder from our old house in Clearwater.

The point is that while it is normal to buy souvenirs, consider that they are usually made in another country or that they only last as long as they fit you. Shells, bottles, driftwood and rusty spikes hold meaning on many levels other than where we got it. Who originally drove that railroad spike in? Where did that brown bottle come from? What did the kid owner of the blue sandal look like? How the hell did a headlight get stuck in a mangrove? Questions like these linger, while reinforcing the original memories of your trip.

Take a piece of your trip home and you’ll see that the memories last longer than any hat, shirt or plastic cup.

NOTE 1: Do not take stuff from areas that disallow it, like National Parks. Tread lightly.
NOTE 2: I almost always make a pitch to “leave that crap here,” but Nancy usually gets me to agree, knowing that I’ll appreciate it once we get home. And she’s right, I really do.

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...

Mail is a funny thing. Here we are in the age of communication, with e-mail, instant messaging, video conferencing – basically anything you need is available via computer. Yet mail still holds a strong position in communications. We make agreements with mail, we exchange money with mail, we get spammed with mail, we hear from loved ones each holiday season with mail. Yes, I do most of this stuff with a computer now, but I still get mail every day.

I don’t know what I would do without the walk to the mailbox. Sometimes I will go check the mail, knowing that it’s probably been picked up earlier in the day by someone else. It’s like visiting an old friend.