Monday, August 24, 2009

Death of a Friend Update!

I've added two more pages to DoaT. I'd like to promise regularity, but... let's just say there's a reason I don't have one of those PayPal whoosits on the site.

I recommend starting one page earlier on page five. I added a single sound balloon to the last panel. It doesn't seem like much, but the first panel of page six won't make much sense without it.

Enjoy, please!

Listening to while posting: Some song by Goldfrapp. It sounds like it should be about sex like every other Goldfrapp song

Friday, August 14, 2009

Why am I doing this again?

Not sure why I'm doing this blogging thing. I'll probably still post updates for Obscure Tales, but other than that, who cares?

Saturday, August 8, 2009

Meep Meep

Let's set the scene. We live in a house, on a hill, in the woods, on a dirt road in a semi-rural area. There are houses around within sight, but separated by trees; its a quiet, relaxed place to live. Last night about one a.m. Sweet Enemy and I were awakened by the blaring of a horn. At first we thought it might be a car alarm, but it didn't have that insistent feel. This was different. The blasts were rhythmic, but not perfectly even with long blasts and equally long pauses between them.

Now, where we live is almost silent, especially in the summer when the trees are leafed, so this was odd as well as annoying. After about five minutes I decided to investigate. I threw on some clothes, grabbed my maglite and went outside. I determined that it was coming from the next house down the hill, a house about 50m away that's owned by a deaf guy. Well, that would explain it, I thought.

I trudged down the hill in the moonlight wondering what I was actually going to do when I got to the house (I was also wondering why his neighbor hadn't come over yet. The horn must have been maddening at that distance). I could only hope that the guy had one of those doorbells with a flashing light, otherwise we were going to be treated to a car horn contata until the battery ran down. As I got up to the cars in the driveway, I found the source of the horn, a minivan with Georgia plates and it's lights on. I had a feeling I should look in the car to see if there was anybody in there.

And there was!

Ok. Here we go, I thought. I walked up to the blaring minivan and, against all reason, pounded on the window. I paused for a moment to reflect on my stupidity, then looked in. Slumped against the steering wheel, with his face on the horn was an adult male. I took a breath, opened the door and touched the guy on his shoulder. He awakened instantly and sat up; the horn blessedly stopped. He was confused, but not overly so and there was no smell of alcohol at all. I mouthed "are you okay" to him. He smiled and nodded. I asked again, he replied in the affirmative, then we traded thumbs-ups and I walked back to our house.

It had been the movement of his head while breathing in sleep that had caused the rhythmic horn blasts. SE and I speculated for a while as to why he was sleeping in his car, but in the long run, it doesn't matter.

Sunday, August 2, 2009

photographs!

I took a pile of film to get processed the other day. A bunch of stuff from Old Rhinebeck, but not much different than my dad's really, but here are a few.

Old Rhinebeck's founder, James Henry “Cole” Palen's first full-scale replica plane he built a Fokker Dr.I Dreidecker . Since nearly all WW 1 aircraft on all sides were painted in the pilot's individual colors, Palen decided to do the same (open image in new window for larger version):



Sweet Enemy asked the reason for this image and I thought it was a mixture of two things. Palen was probably told he'd get the replica finished when pigs fly and so he was painting a flying pig and telling the doubters to kiss his a$$ at the same time.

I took some artsy photos of aircraft parts. Here's a rotary engine close up:



And here's a picture I really like, if I do say so myself. It's my dad in one of the Old Rhinebeck Museum hangers:



There were, of course, a bunch of non-Rhinebeck images. Here are two from the wooded park down the street from our house.




And here's a girl I saw in downtown Burlington. I just HAD to take her picture. I cropped it to a square as that is how I plan to mat it if I print it.



Well, we're pooped. We just got back from a fantastic weekend at Sweet Enemy's family-in-law's "camp" (that's what Upstate New Yorkers call a "cabin/summer house on the lake". It's a great place. Truly cozy and full of wonderful people. It was the old arts and crafts building from a Catholic summer camp that was active in the 1930's. It's been in the family-in-law's family for decades and SE and I really appreciate their hospitality. There may be some pics of this trip in the future (I would post a link to Google Maps, but the resolution is pretty awful)

listening to while posting: nothing. Don't want to disturb SE. She's in bed and I'm going to sleep, too.