50 // via Samsung Instinct M800: The River Flows
Nice to see on a recent walk the Monocacy, which has been looking a little anemic, flowing strongly. I don’t know if it means anything with regards to a drought (or if we even have one), but it’s a refreshing change from the recent low flow. This was taken on a walk this evening.
49 // via Samsung Instinct M800: Just the Facts
This is a press conference. I was at one today. It’s been a while. As a government and politics reporter, I used to find myself at these on a regular basis, so I was somewhat nostalgic.
I shouldn’t love press conferences. If you’re at a press conference, you somehow can’t help but feel you missed the story, that you should have somehow scooped the info coming out of the event before the event was held.
But I do love press conferences. Yes. I used to know all the people at them and they knew me, and we had a sense of community, collegiality. Even if you were trying to shank each other to get to the story first.
So, why is a fat, over-the-hill pasty white English former reporter turned desk jockey editor doing here? “You’ve been promoted and sent up the hill with the generals. Why would you be back in the front lines, sir?”
Well, today at the paper I work for we tried something new: Twittering the event live. Gubbins here was the keyboard monkey. And I think I acquitted myself quite well, thank you.
48 // via Samsung Instinct M800: New Shoes
It was that time of year again: New shoe purchases to ensure proper growth of young feet. Very dashing, I think you’ll agree. Her’s have flowers with LED bulbs that light up. Nothing so special for him, although the shoe sales lady did manage to spin the efficacy of the bouncy rubber balls in the soles:
“There’s no scientific evidence for this,” she said, “but I hear that the balls make you jump higher.”
47 // via Samsung Instinct M800: ‘Scuse Me While I Kiss the Sky
Some events in life leave you with an indelible mark, something you feel you will never wash away. Saturday was one of those days. I’ve had worse, but it’s been a long time and before I had a family.
After six or seven hours soaked in details of imponderable, unexplainable violence, I left work and met up with my wife and kids at a local playground. (Laura, God bless her, has long suffered the exigencies of my career.)
Washed in the love of my family, the joyous giggles, the playful taunts, the hugs, the kisses, the sight of my boy up there on the slide, framed against a deep blue sky, daring life, I forgot the pain just for a moment, pain I feel I have no right to.
So here’s to Francie, and Chandler, and Gavin and Fiona and the moments like these they will no longer have.
46 // via Samsung Instinct M800: Fine Art
I went to art school. I think I’ve made this sad confession elsewhere on Small Things. I’m not much of an artist. Frankly, those two years were more about beer and women than charcoal and color theory. Thus, I’m a journalist who sometimes dreams in oil paint and ink.
My dad is a frustrated artist too, and I think maybe I picked up a gene or two. He started life as a bookbinder’s apprentice, and still, somewhere in his collection, has some nifty books with cover illustrations in gold leaf.
It may be the next generation who will carry this artistic gene to fruition. This is a picture by Alex, merely 4.75 years old, but ripe with expressionist potential. I mean, seriously, I’ve seen some abstracts that lack this kind of intuitiveness in color.
I know, I know. Proud dad.
45 // via Samsung Instinct M800: Stupid Glasses
Isn’t this great? My below mentioned MIL has had these joke glasses for I don’t know how long, and Alex dug them out of the toy box last night. Cue stupid pictures of stupid glasses.
Here’s me:
You know you want me.
44 // via Samsung Instinct M800: The Big Hel-l-l-l-l-o-o-o-o!
It was dinner at my beloved mother-in-law’s last night on a beautiful evening. As I stepped out of my car in her driveway, I heard the shouting: “Daddy! Daddy! D-a-a-a-a-ddy!”
Down the road a ways my wife and kids were at the playground. Nothing like a welcome you can hear shouted over 300 yards.
43 // via Wikipedia: Let’s Hear it for the Girls
I’ve been really lucky to have had some excellent influences in my life among a ton of really bad ones. Many of them have been from strong women I’ve known along the way.
So I wanted to post about the top five who have had the strongest positive impact on me. Naturally this list excludes my wife, who deserved a post all to herself, and my mother, without whom there wouldn’t be any list of any sort.
So, here’s to the female role models:
My daughter, Alex. This wonderful, bright, shining life. I find it hard to imagine I had any part in her creation. The things she has taught me about wonder in life and about myself are too numerous to list here. They are lengthy and deep, and if I were to write them down, they would just seem trite and cliched. So I’ll leave them in my heart and in my head.
Popnizzle. You can find the Urban Dictionary definition here. Suffice to say if Alex grows up in spirit to be anything like my friend Sarah B., I’ll be very happy. Strong, independent, although still coming to grips with her path in the world (you’ll make it, the Niz), she has a formidable moral compass. And although she denies it, she shares my corrosive and somewhat inappropriate world outlook. I was her boss for a while in the technical sense, even though she’d argue that was never in fact the case literally.
My mother in law, Mary Ellen. There’s not enough good things I can say about my de facto American mother. She’s certainly one of the most giving people I’ve ever met, male or female. She’s generous with her time and has been an invaluable help to young parents. She’s incredibly intelligent, and extremely politically astute (a trait that has only fed my wonkishness). She also subscribes to several print newspapers, notable enough in itself.
The Hibbs. Jessica, or Zaminy, is a true Renaissance woman. She gardens, she photographs, she’s a musician. In between all of that she manages to find time to squeeze in her job as a communications director for the local chamber. She kicks ass on design, and has a phenomenal mind for both marketing and political flackery, and has offered a slew of good advice to me on just about any subject.
Vivian L. If it wasn’t for Viv’s early and expert guidance, I can honestly say I would have ditched journalism a long time ago (I wonder day to day if I made the right decision … ). As my editor when we were at The Gazette, Viv was in large part responsible for helping stoke my early interest in American civic life and unleashing me on an unsuspecting Frederick political community. I’m glad of that; others may not be.
42 // via Samsung Instinct M800: Shrink ma dink
When it comes to art projects I am an unbelievable pain in the ass. This may be because of my art school training (so long ago as to be almost irrelevant now). But I get really farty when it comes to coloring in. As you heard below, I decorated all but two damn Easter eggs.
Here’s a Shrinky Dink caterpillar. Color, bake, shrink. Sounds simple enough, no? No. I had to shade mine. I had to give it some 3D shadows. I had to give it some feathering to the tail, a glowing yellow background, a tinge of red border.
Honestly. What a twit.
But it makes me happy. What can I say? For the record, this one never got baked.
41 // via Samsung Instinct M800: Egg-cellent
Only one time in a year, I promise, will I make that pun. Seriously.
So it was Easter this weekend, a time to gather together family, to eat, to make merry, to color and hunt for eggs.
This is always a fun affair. This year, my son has reached an age and level of coordination where he could join in.
He must be a distant relative of Henry Ford. Two-dozen eggs colored — admittedly not very well — in a matter of minutes.
Plunk: “Another.” Plunk: “Another.” Plunk: “Another.” Plunk: “Another.” Plunk: “Another.”
You get the idea.
Daddy, who painstakingly, obsessively only colored two eggs total with multiple washes, dryings and more washes, did encourage the kiddies to go back in and re-coat.
Why? I’m not sure, really. Trying to hang on to the day’s egg-citement.
Hah!
