It just amazes me how some people just expect to be given things they didn’t earn. And I’m not talking about a Millennial here, either.
Friday evening I found myself at a neighbor’s house watching a skilled man with dreadlocks mix fancy craft cocktails with a bunch of other guys I didn’t know. I was invited by the father of one of Finn’s friends and walked down the street to his house after dinner.
The first cocktail I tried was a barrel-aged Manhattan, which was served over a hand-carved chunk of ice and went down a little rougher than I’d anticipated. Next up was an old fashioned, and by this time I’d made acquaintances with some of the other guys as well as run into another Dad I knew from the playground. As the evening went by I met some other men from the neighborhood, played a few games of darts, sampled a Ho-Ho from the dessert table, smoked a decent cigar, and sampled three more drinks, which were enough to tilt Beechwood Avenue about five degrees on my walk home. And: a true whiskey sour is a new go-to drink for me, because nobody will know how to make a Blood and Sand.
Saturday I recovered quicker than I fairly should have and we made preparations for the annual Ice Cream Social put on by our friends the Wards. Finn got her face painted, chased bubbles, watched the cows walk up the path, and played with balloon swords under a perfect blue sky. We made a brief stop at IKEA for a roller shade part and then got Jen home into bed, after a late-day migraine came on. Finn and I stayed up to watch Monsters vs. Aliens in our Pjs and then went to sleep.
Sunday I hit the Lowe’s for shingle supplies and started peeling 20-year-old layers off the far side of the garage roof. It’s been leaking for a couple of years and this winter it just stayed wet and disintegrated. A closer inspection revealed a hasty patch job over the old shingle but no attempt to repair the sheathing underneath–which was completely gone in some places. I removed several layers and cut bad wood back to the joists, then laid in new sheathing and started tacking shingles back in. There’s about three layers on there in total, which didn’t surprise me, but the amount of water damage was actually less than I thought there would be. I didn’t lay any tarpaper down, which may be a tactical mistake, but we’ll see how it holds up when the next rain falls.
While that was under way, I stoked up the smoker with charcoal and mesquite chips and dropped a 5-lb. bird on the grill. Following the directions, I used about 150% more charcoal than was needed, and so the fire was too hot. As we all know, there’s no turning charcoal down, so I had to pull it off and let the fire die down for about 20 minutes. The final flavor was OK, but the bird was dry, so there will be lots of experimentation and testing before we perfect this method.
Last night I did some consulting for a friend and then came home for a frosty beer. Looking at the half-full, unused Hefeweizen keg, I figured I might as well try fixing it, as I’ve known it’s been leaking for two weeks. I pulled the bad valve post and tried replacing the whole thing with one from my spare shorty keg, but of course it’s a different thread size. Then I remembered I had spare poppet valve stems, swapped the old with a fresh one, reinstalled it, and pressure tested it. It’s holding pressure finally! there’s a lot to be said for stocking spare parts.
I’m in love with the Canon f/1.4 lens we have at work, and I’ve been casually looking at inexpensive alternatives for the Nikon DX gear I’ve got. Most of Nikon’s really sharp AF-S glass is >$300, which is more than I’d like to spend, but it would be great to have a fully automatic lens if that’s what I’m going to pay. I have a 50mm f/1.8 lens which was inexpensive and works great; they make a 50mm f/1.4 for ~$300, but I like the 28-35mm range from a shooting standpoint. Nikon offers a 35mm f/1.8 prime for $200 which would be perfect, and my brother-in-law has one that I’ll have to borrow sometime to try out.
Nikon also made a bunch of razor-sharp manual prime lenses back in the day, an f/1.4 and an f/1.2, which are both compatible with my DX gear. I’m toying with the idea of buying one of the f/1.4s from eBay, if I can get the price down low enough, just to see what it’s like. One of my photographer friends says the local camera shop usually carries a few used copies, so I’ll have to ring them up and see what they’re charging. The f/1.2 is another matter entirely. It routinely sells for ~$300 on eBay, which is a lot of coin for a manual lens but I do see some examples for cheap here and there. I’ll just set up a Craigslist alert and wait it out.
A rough count on our YouTube page shows I’ve shot at least eight finished videos this year. Most of them are simple one-camera setups, which are pretty easy to bang out at this point. Now I’m learning about multi-cam editing in preparation for editing the Forest project videos I shot a while back.
I made a breakthrough on Tuesday after a few weeks of gridlock. I’d shot tons of footage and struggled with exactly how to start piecing it all together. At first I got hung up on the technical challenge of syncing everything together, adding B-roll, and timing it all. Then I realized I didn’t even know what I had, so I stepped way back and started cutting out the junk footage to where all I had was their answers, assembled in rough order. Using this method, I cut rough reels for two subjects and sketched out a workflow.
Then I installed Final Cut Pro on my home machine Tuesday evening so that I can keep working in my spare time, and set up a portable drive to move the project and all its files back and forth. I’m definitely enjoying this.
I saw this in (ahem) my Facebook feed this afternoon. It’s quite amazing; a camera drone that doesn’t need piloting. It’s got a bunch of pre-set modes, and it follows a tracker you carry. Pre-order is $599, and the full price is a cool $1K. Still, I’d have a lot of fun with this toy.
Could Mastodon be any cooler? Not after being invited to portray Wildlings on Game of Thrones.
Friday morning I worked from home because there was a water main break at our office, and apparently they don’t have sprinklers or flushing toilets. Whatever! It was nice to chill on the couch and catch up on small things.
Saturday I spent the entire morning moving concrete from a pile next to the garage over to the dumpster in our neighbor’s driveway. It took a lot of time and energy, and by the time I was done, I was ready to be done. Luckily we had a low-impact evening planned with friends, and grilling food and drinking beer was a great way to cap off a long day.
While we were sitting in the backyard, this fox trotted brazenly into the yard, sniffing out some scraps under the picnic table, and made off with them before we could pick our jaws up off the ground. He was within easy throwing distance, and not the least concerned with us at all. I saw him again on Sunday afternoon cruising past the house, obviously looking for more picnic treats.
Sunday Finn and I took in the Farmer’s Market for some veggies, and we did some light chores around the house. I hung new hooks on the back of the garage for the second ladder my father sent me home with, and took the old rusty mailbox off the front of the house.
Then, Finn and Mama went to the park for a playdate with a friend, and I brewed up a batch of Session IPA with the propane burner.
After dinner, I helped Finn finish her homework, and then I took the girls out for some gelato to celebrate a fine weekend.