Memories 2002

Memories from December 2002!
 

A Few More Looks Back

at our 2002 trip to China. Or at least things I see now, I didnt notice then! Well we were TOTALLY focused on our daughter and of course still are! She will turn 23 in August two days after her dad gets even older!

left click to enlarge!

Going Back About 22 Years!

 I've been going back in my digital files to 2002. I had about a year or so experience in digital then and was very certain it would NEVER replace film for me! But we were about to embark on the most eventful trip of our life.... to China to claim our daughter! I had a couple of digital point&shoots and a Nikon D100! It had just been released in February of that year and had a price of 2K and a whopping 6 megapixel capture! Thankfully, all my Nikon lenses fit the camera!

Besides bringing home our daughter that trip convinced me there was a future in digital! If for no other reason than the thousands of photos I took would have required over nearly fifty rolls of film and we had no room for that because as you know, my wife took ( and brought back) a case of toilet paper!

My digital editing skills were primitive ( are pretty much still are) whats amazing is how much differently you see things quite a few years after the fact. Of course becoming parents had a huge impact on our outlook of everything!

So I'm gleaning, re-editing, and going to be posting some of those "new" images.  I now have a 40 megapixel plus camera, which all things considered produces not much better than these pictures.

Our amazement at our daughter and who she has become has only grown 100 fold!

I Wish I Could Remember

 exactly when I moved to Austin. Too young then, about to turn 23, to remember even the exact year! My memory is that it was about May of 1975 or 76! When I arrived there was only one building downtown taller than the State Capitol along with the UT Tower and Dobie Center on the UT Campus! I wish I had taken a picture of the skyline then, this one is from about a month ago. I don't know that I've ever seen a more dramatic sky than this though!  There were also only a few more than 300K people, now  nearly 2.3m!!

So much more than the buildings or the population has changed in that "50 years +or-". The best was marrying my sweetheart of five years in 1978! We've been working on a life together, here in Austin- or really Dripping Springs , for over 45 glorious years!  Well, maybe there have been a few stormy days, like the one this picture was taken!

  

left click to enlarge!

Pecos Cantaloupes!!!

Our mouth starts to water, and we swear we can smell the melons ripening in the field every year for the Mandujano Brothers Cantaloupes! Their production is small- but they are the only farmers growing Pecos melons left! It can e hard to find them as they are more than 350 miles away, but nothing, absolutely NOTHING, rivals the flavor!

We were a little late in tracking some down this year but we are certainly happy to have them in our refrigerator now! Strangely, after 45 years of marriage my wife told me to "Keep Your Hands Off My Melons"!

Can you imagine  what they taste like if the rinds look this good?

Dreading the Fourth of July!

 And by that not the celebrations themselves but the thought of the nights of fireworks around it! Where I live on the edge of the Texas Hill Country we have a huge wildfire risk and now that there are thousands of homes scattered and PACKED all over it there is an ever growing risk of those fires. Several insurance companies will no longer provide fire insurance. And while fireworks are nominally "banned" there is no enforcement.  So starting a few days before and continuing after until all the munitions are gone we get little sleep! Not just from the noise but the fear that our little oasis of six acres may go up in a blaze! This year, with the Fourth falling on a Thursday, most are taking a four day holiday and have even longer to simulate the sky's
over Ukraine!

Soooo, two more nights to go before the fear of seeing night sky's like these ease a little!