I think that I know that guy!

 Photography  5 Responses »
Dec 172011
 

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Nature adds her own colors

Tom Dills, Michael Williamson, and I went shooting this morning. We planned it over the past couple of weeks. During the exchange of e-mails, Tom added a couple of his friends. One of them, Donald Brown, whose blog can be found here, looked familiar, but I couldn’t quite place his face.

Oh well, I thought, mistaken identity. The more that I thought of it, more the more that it plagued me. I really did know this guy, but in what context, I did not know.

I sent him an e-mail last night asking him some particular questions about where he lived, how the inside of his house looked, etc. He confirmed that I got it all right. Suddenly, I remembered.
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I had met him at a Charlotte photography group meeting. It turns out that he is the president of that group and that he and I had gone out shooting one time, a couple of years ago. I remembered that we had gone to the Congaree swamp in South Carolina. A quick search of the blog turned up the post … it was more than a couple of years ago, in fact, it was nearly 5 1/2 years ago! Holy crap!

I sent done the link to my blog. This morning, I told Tom about it and he said that Don had sent me him an email telling him about the incident! Interesting circle. :)

Unfortunately, Don couldn’t make the shoot this morning, but we’ll have to catch up with him another time; however, it was very cool to reconnect and to be totally surprised at the amount of time that had passed!

 Posted by Paul at 2:56 pm  Tagged with: ,

Hobbs update: Who turned down the lights?

 Personal  15 Responses »
Dec 152011
 

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A couple of months ago when Hobbs was diagnosed with diabetes, another doctor examined him as well, an opthalmologist. She said:

It’s not a matter of “if” he’ll get cataracts, it’s a matter of when. Please keep a close eye on him, as they could form over the weekend. They happen fast.

For the next two months, he was fine. The other day, I noticed that his eyes looked strange. They had the look like when you take a picture of a dog, using a flash. You see the reflection of their retina and it looks white or gray. I hadn’t taken a picture and they looked that way in normal room light. Also, I had noticed that he was having trouble walking with me in the mornings. No trouble in keeping up, but sometimes accidentally crossing my path or not responding when I turned to the left, right into him.
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I tried an experiment. I broke off a piece of one of his treats, tossed it to him. He usually catches with aplomb. Hobbs doesn’t miscalculate when a treat is thrown; however, this time, the treat hit him on the nose, bounced off, landed on the floor right in front of him and he couldn’t find it at first. A good amount of sniffing finally yielded the goody.

This afternoon, after taking him out to the bathroom, a bright sunny day, upon re-entering the apartment, he was very hesitant, as the interior was rather dim. He had to trust me to lead him because he couldn’t see where to go. Poor pup. I had been considering that he was hard of hearing as well and was able to confirm that. When I call him, no response. If I call somewhat loudly, he can hear it, but can’t tell from where it comes and looks all around. I have to wave my arms vigorously to get his attention.

Earlier in the afternoon, when I opened the door to the patio because of the nice weather, he went immediately to the threshold of the door, sat down, and enjoyed the bright sunlight. I can only suppose that it made him feel good to be able to see.

This morning, I called to make an appointment for him to see the eye doctor. He has an appointment on December 28th, the earliest he could be seen.

Yeah, it will be an expensive New Year, but well worth it for my buddy. Surgery is next, then the 6 weeks of recovery. I’ll keep you posted.

 Posted by Paul at 5:27 pm  Tagged with: ,

Proud Parents

 Personal  10 Responses »
Nov 142011
 

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The crew
I just came back from a wonderful weekend, spending time with my son, Pedro, and his wife Ana Kay. They wanted for me to come and spend the weekend with them to see their new townhouse as well as the latest addition to their family, a Great Dane named Dirk Griswold Guimaraes. All of their pets are named after someone or some character, with Ana Kay doing most of the naming. Pedro inherited a number of animals in the marriage. :)

As for the origins of Dirk’s name, well Pedro is a big sports fan as well as a movie buff. Dirk comes from Dirk Nowitzki, 7 foot tall, star power forward of Pedro’s favorite team, The Dallas Mavericks. The middle name, Griswold, from the last name of the main character in Family Vacation, Clark Griswold, the bumbling good-hearted family man played by Chevy Chase, and of course, the surname, Pedro’s own, Guimaraes (acceptably pronounced ghee-mar-ez, Brazilians pronounce it ghee-mah-roins).

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His paws are already bigger than Hobbs’s
The remaining cast of characters include a cat, Rhyner, 2 or 3 rabbits, and a flying squirrel! A menagerie if ever I have seen one. :)

During my time there it was fun to watch Dirk and Rhyner play with each other. At this point in time, Rhyner still has the upper hand, but that’s sure to change soon. Rhyner weighs in at a cool 9 pounds, while Dirk, at 7 weeks old, is weighing in at about 15 or 16 pounds. They said that his weight has tripled in the last 3 weeks! Overall, he’s expected to top out at about 160 pounds. I don’t think that the cat will have much of a match on his hands! LOL
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Proud Poppa!
At this point, Dirk is quite uncoordinated. Seeing him jump down from the couch is quite comical. It always results in a face plant as that head is a little bit heavy for the landing gear to hold up to! He jumps! He lands! Knees buckle. Face plant. Every time!

I also had fond memories of my puppy raising days; this time, I got to watch from the comfort of Pedro’s easy chair as he placed the puppy on the floor and had to keep a close lookout for any ‘sniffing with intent’ activity. Pedro did pretty good, getting ‘burned’ only once. Ana Kay was on the ‘spill’ right away. :)
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Rhyner keeps Dirk at a distance … for now!
I got to spend a bit of time playing with Dirk, too, but he was really more interested in the cat and I was more interested in watching those two go at it. Rhyner was, for the most part winning, doing his classic big cat take down. He’d grab Dirk by the skin on his jaw or neck, use his body weight by leaning back and rolling onto his back, then wrap his paws around Dirk’s neck. It worked 100% of the time, but right now, the weight discrepancy is only 6 pounds. I would imagine that by Thanksgiving, two weeks from now, that this move may be a waste, as Dirk will have topped 20 pounds!

It was a great time seeing my kids and their ‘kids’. We even went out to breakfast on Sunday morning with Ana Kay’s dad. Just the four of us: two dads and two kids. What a great time!

 Posted by Paul at 8:04 am  Tagged with:

Changing Seasons

 Personal  2 Responses »
Oct 182011
 

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Things have been a bit off since my visit to Australia. Certainly this had nothing to do with Australia, at least I don’t think so. :) Since I’ve been walking, the last 18 months or so, I’ve not missed a single week of walking; however, since Australia, there have been more weeks than I care to admit where I walked only once or twice in the week. I could give a hundred excuses as to why, and some of them might sound pretty good, but they’d be excuses nonetheless.

This past weekend, I made it a point to stop offering excuses and get back to walking. I walked 5.5 miles on Saturday and on Sunday. This morning, I did only 4 because I had to come back and get ready for work. The sunrise is at 7:30 now, so I leave around 7:00 … I want to be able to take pictures, too.

Per Monte’s suggestion of yesterday, I put my Canon S90 in my pocket this morning, and set about my walk, intending to take some handheld macro photos, of which this is one of them. The walk is different now, without Hobbs, who cannot even come close to keeping with me and forget about the distance, so he gets his own short, 3 block walk after I’m finished.

As I leaned down to take this picture, I had a number of thoughts about life’s seasons, particularly about Hobbs, remembering when it was painful to take him for a walk when he was young. He was so full of vigor, swagger, and hard headedness, that he was a constant challenge to get under control. Spring.

Later, as he grew older, he became a slightly better listener, could always be out in front of me and give me a serious run for my money. Those were the days when I could take him to the park, let him run in the fields for hours, and then we’d head home, him asleep on the seat of the car. Summer.

Now, he can’t keep up. He’s very easy to manage because he just wants to go out, do his business, come back in, and sleep. I miss him on my walks. Autumn.

I had another thought this morning while I was waiting for him to finish. I let him walk off leash for the most part and he walks very slowly, at his own pace. He ambles. I don’t rush him. I think of the times when I’ve seen younger folks taking care of their aged parents. It does my heart good to see those who are so very patient with the elderly. I feel like that person, now.

In truth, Hobbs is old. He’ll be 12 on October 31st. However, I do believe that he’ll get back some of his energy after he gets stabilized, at least I hope so. He’s a cool guy to have walks, even if he makes it difficult to take photos with his constant pulling to get that nose of his over that interesting smell. :)

 Posted by Paul at 9:19 am  Tagged with: ,

Photos and memories

 Photography  9 Responses »
Oct 042011
 


Shells – Galveston, TX

First, let me start off this post with a gasp! *Gasp!*. I was looking through some ‘old’ photos, circa 2004, and thinking about that post that I wrote only a few weeks back. You know, the one about taking my old photos, making books, and keeping a copy of the book, by year, of my favorite photos. Oh? You don’t remember that post of a couple of weeks ago? Well, I most certainly do … but, it was back in April!!!. That was what the gasp was for. Has it really been 5 solid months since I thought of doing that?
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Anyway, I finally got around to picking out the photos from 2004. I picked out 42. I think that the magical number for all books will be 50. No particular reason, other than it’s a nice round number.

In going through these photos, I was transported, almost magically, it seemed, to that time and place where I took the pictures. I could remember what was going on, where I was, and what I was doing. That was pretty cool. 2004 was my transition year, in many ways, but physically we moved from Texas to North Carolina. In looking at the photos, the first half of the year are Texas shots, the latter half, NC. That was the year that I saw Looking Glass Falls for the first time, Great Smokey Mountains National Park, and The Blue Ridge Parkway. It was such an amazing change from the views of Texas, which I shot mostly in B & W, to the colorfulness of North Carolina, where I started back shooting some color.

Looks like I need to set a goal, a deadline, if you will, for my books so that I can remember to do them. I don’t want another 6 months to pass and still not have even one of them done! :)

 Posted by Paul at 9:13 am  Tagged with: ,

It’s that time already?

 Personal  6 Responses »
Sep 282011
 

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Yesterday, I received a reminder in the mail from the DMV telling me that it was time to renew my driver’s license. I will need to come into the office, take the signs and vision test again and pay my $32 to renew for another 8 years. Wait a minute, I thought! I thought that my license was good for 8 years. Say what? It’s been 8 years! Well, that means that on my birthday I’ll be 50! Yikes! :)

Instantly, this thought transported me to another place in time. I remember, as a child of about 16 or 17, my friends and I used to ‘fantasize’ about what it would like to be old. By old, we meant 30! LOL. Later, I would think: Wow! In the year 2000, which seemed so very far away in 1978 or ’79, I thought that I would be 38. Wow! Just frickin’ unimaginable. When I signed up for my North Carolina license, at the tender age of 42, I had another thought: I won’t need to renew this baby until I’m 50! Hmmmm. Seems as if that time has come. LOL

Today, I was in a meeting and we were all introducing ourselves and telling how much experience we had. I came in with 27 years. One of teammates mentioned to me that I had as much experience as he had life! Oh boy! However, he did say that he does like working with me because I know so much and come up with solutions quickly. I guess so. Been there. Done that.

At any rate, it’s no big deal. I wouldn’t change this age and the accumulated wisdom for any younger age. I love where I am. I understand that soon I can be expecting letters from AARP. All that I can say is: Let the discounts begin! Ain’t no shame in my game!!!

 Posted by Paul at 9:52 pm  Tagged with:

A long day for Mr. Hobbs

 Personal  15 Responses »
Sep 272011
 

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Today was a long day for Mr. Hobbs. I noticed that for the past couple of weeks, he’s been exceptionally thirsty. His bowl holds about 48 ounces of water, or about 1500 ml, or so. Normally it would take him about 2 days to empty it. This is normal, as the vet says about 1 ounce of water per pound. He weighs in at about 24 pounds (11 Kg), so 48 ounces in two days is about right. Lately, he’s been consuming it at about 4x that rate. Two bowls per day!!! Naturally, this causes him to have to go to the bathroom very frequently.

I had also noticed that his fur was getting wet around his belly and hind legs. At first I thought that he was licking himself a lot, but then didn’t see the truth in that. Upon closer inspection, I found out that he was ‘leaking’. It was urine. He was consuming so much water that his bladder couldn’t hold it. Also, during his walks this week, he was lagging behind considerably after only a block or two. I knew something was very wrong.

This morning, I took him to the vet. I did a walk-in. They saw him right away, did an examination, took blood and urine, and pronounced that he had canine diabetes! His blood sugar level was 652. Normal range for dogs is about 73-123. The doctor referred me to a specialist.

We returned home and waited for the specialist to call. They called about an hour later and set us up for an appointment at 2:30 PM. We took the appointment. Hobbs was a super trooper, trying to ‘regulate’ while he was there, you know, take charge. For such a super duper bad guy, he sure needed some coaxing to go with the doctor when it was time for his exam.

After the exam, the doctor told me that we needed to get him started on his insulin regimen this evening. She prescribed insulin and a special type of canned dog food to mix with his regular food.

When we left, Hobbs, who is usually all excited to jump in the car and search the floorboards for food, simply looked up at me and waited for me to pick him up. He was tired. Too much activity for one day.

We drove home, I dropped him off, filled the prescription, came home, fed him, and gave him his first insulin shot … of many. He’ll need it for the rest of his life. He’s my buddy and I’ll be taking care of him. He’s taken care of me plenty of times when I was down in the dumps. Now, it’s my turn to return the favor! :)

He’s eaten. His belly is full. He’s taking his nap right now, a much needed nap.

 Posted by Paul at 6:14 pm  Tagged with: ,
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