Zona

"All softball games for Thursday, August 28th, have been cancelled due to rain"

Bummer.

I got my hair cut. Had about 75% of what was there taken off.
I picked up my laptop from the Apple store and dealt with more of their excuses.
I get to watch Obama's acceptance speach on TV now.
I don't know if I'll watch Gore's speech since I feel he's become pretty insignificant now.
I hit what I consider to be one of my best golf shots ever the other day. I used a 3 wood to hit the ball 200 yards to a spot about 12 feet from the pin giving us a shot at eagle. We settled for birdie. The ball is marked up and on my dresser with another awaiting my next visit to my dad's grave.

My old is in the knees today and everything is boring

And of course the weather is miserable outside and I'm sick and I need to go pick up my laptop and hopefully pass on this cold to every employee at the Apple store.

I need a massage is what I need a massage would be wonderful. Then maybe a sauna where I'm the only one in the place and James Taylor's greatest hits plays over and over. When I was a missionary in Oruro, Bolivia I had a companion who turned me on to saunas and man was it great. Dry sauna with an indoor patio and sandwiches and the only time I ever enjoyed drinking orange fanta. And the only English record the guy had was James Taylor's greatest hits.

So that's what's playing on my iPod and I'm remembering the days when I was young and out on my own for the first, and last time. I made friends who were supposed to be friends for life but instead disappeared just as quick as they had appeared. I met some girls who I wanted to hold on to real tight and although I held on to one I always wonder about the others. Where they are, what became of them and what might have been. How my life would have been different.

I have seen history my whole life

But today I saw something that the world I lived in as a child and a young man would have never accepted. I saw a black man officially nominated as the Democratic candidate for President of the United States.

I saw Martin Luther King Jr speak on TV when I was 9 and I saw his funeral when I was 10. I saw race riots erupt in cities and even got up early to watch the coverage on the news. I saw two athletes raise black gloved hands on the medal podium at the Mexico City Olympics and I thought that they should have been stripped of their medals. To me, in those times those fists were a sign of militancy and that militancy rang as violence to me. Me, as a white boy.

I saw Cassius Clay refuse to serve his country and change his name as he followed a religion completely foreign to me. I saw all white kids in my schools and in my neighborhood. I would not attend class with black kids until junior high school and then it was only one. Although I have not seen him in many years, Fred Mason and I were friends. I saw another black friend come to pick my cheerleader sister up for a party involving the cheerleaders and the football team. He was not the only one in the car, he merely got out and came to the door. Lee and I were also friends. But I saw the anger of my father when he found out a black student had come to pick up his daughter.

The world was very different then and I didn't seriously question any of it. I was just growing up. I watched the Brady Bunch and Gilligan's Island and The Jetsons. Then a man, a TV producer named Norman Leer did something that, in my mind, started mass change of thought. He introduced us to Archie Bunker and his son-in-law Michael Stivik. It was groundbreaking TV and millions watched. We all laughed but the subtle change began enmass. Then he introduced us to a hard working inner city family named the Evans and while we were all laughing at "DY NO MITE" we were also being educated as to what a black family thinks and how they deal with adversity.

Meanwhile men like Jesse Jackson and women like Shirley Chisholm were working for justice and change where others had left off. Because of the work of Martin Luther King Jr and others, barriers that held blacks back were lifted. I remember hearing about a buch of "firsts". The first black Supreme Court Justice. The first woman Supreme Court Justice. The first black congresswoman. The first black Mayor and Governor. The first woman...

Now I am 50 and the old guard is dying off. The old who didn't see a problem with segregating black and white school children, black and white soldiers, black and white athletes.

The bible talks about a time to sow and a time to reap. King and Parks and Abernathy and X and other were the sowers and those who followed them tended the garden and saw that it got the water that it needed. In these last two decades a harvest has been going on and now many of us are working in the garden together and we have gotten to the point where one of the last "firsts" is at hand.

It's time.

What doesn't kill you...

I knew it would happen when the weather went from hot hot hot to cold and I was already weak. I have a demon head cold from hell. I was at work went it put me down. I felt it coming but when I could no longer focus on my computer screen and concentrate on the task at hand, I bailed. I went home sick and called in sick yesterday too. This creates stress for me because I don't like calling in sick. But if I screw up at work, it's my butt. But then you raise eyebrows with some when you call in sick next to days off. It's always a dilemna for me but the latter is much easier to deal with.

I'm reflecting on a week where my body shook me into the reality that the result of being an out of shape 50 year-old is pain.

My back went out doing something very simple and my legs gave out when I tried to run them around the bases. I haven't caught up with rest and could very easily sleep all day if I had the opportunity.

One of the things my body is doing to me is taking away any craving I have for coke until the need for self sustaining caffeine reaches a high level. People at the Burger King here in the food court were floored when I grabbed a milk and had to talk loudly to stop them from getting my usual 5AM coke.

Yes, or course I know what you're already planning to comment.

Hail to the return

Doubleheader softball last night. I took to the mound in game one as an extremely rusty and out of shape pitcher and slowly got my touch back about 50%. It aint too hard anyway. By the second game I was to the point where I could get the ball to go pretty much wherever I wanted it to. The trouble was, that the guys on the other team could hit it wherever I chose to put it. And they hit it well.

We lost both games.

My at bats were what was to be expected. I had no timing on my swing. I got on base a couple of times by actually having to run. My legs were, "what the HELL are you doing?!?!?!?!!!".

So this morning I am sore but it's a good kind of sore I keep telling myself. I'm back in the game.

Genius my ass!

I just got a call from the Apple store. The genius (that's what they call their tech wizards) that told me my computer was going to cost me $218.00 called and told me he was wrong. He's sorry but it's going to cost $1,000,00 to fix. Seems the whole monitor needs to be replaced. So basically a little after a year, my $3,000.00 laptop is a paperweight.

I'm just a tad pissed.

No fucking way I'm spending a grand when I could take that grand and buy a NEW laptop. One that DOESN'T have a bitten apple on it. I think my ass is an apple and just got a bite taken out of it.

So now I'm on the phone, on hold actually, with Apple.

I was going to go eat sushi for lunch but now I'm just not hungry anymore.

So I came off hold with a consumer dept guy and in a couple of days I'm going to go pick up my new paperweight.

Three reasons to love the Olympics

An athlete from Afghanistan won that country's first Olympic medal EVER and was given a house by the Afghan Government.

An athlete from South Africa finished in the middle of the pack in marathon swimming despite the fact that her leg was amputated after a motorcycle accident 8 years ago.

An athlete from the United States won a gold medal in wrestling. He is the son of illegal immigrants from Mexico and was raised along with his 7 brothers and sisters by a single mother who fled Los Angeles with them to get away from his criminal father.

There's nothing quite like the wave of aromatic nicety that announces when my grand daughter has loaded her pamper. The paint is sliding off the wall yet she remains surrounded by toys on the floor begging for her attention.

Hang on a sec

Must

Open

Win......dow

I sure am glad that you girls decide soon that farting is not for you and I thank all of you from the bottom of my lungs because we have too many guys who still like filling small spaces of perfectly good air with weapons of mass destruction.

After I finish this I will jump in the shower in preperation of heading downtown. The part for my laptop is finally here. I'm doing the public transport thing because 1) my wife and daughter took the car to Bellingham for the continued pilfering of my fortune and 2) even though the bus seems beneath me, I loathe driving downtown. Why drive when I can be driven?

Tomorrow I come out of retirement and set foot on the field of battle. I have joined a softball team in Lynden, WA. The team is made up of law enforcement types like me and I ordered a uniform shirt so plan on seeing some baseball card type photos guaranteed to make all the chicks crazy. I have not played since 1998 so it should be a breeze to get right back into the swing of things and despite the fact that we play TWO games, and that I am about 50% on the back issues, I am confident that I will not be sore the next day.

So everybody is calling me spiderman at work because of my recent incident that caused me to take two days off. I unseated the guy who fell down the stairs. I don't mind. I mean what more fun do we have in life than laughing at ourselves. And if comical crash-and-burn pain is involved, even better!

The Apple store called and the part my macbook needs is finally here. Now I get to drop the thing off and in 3-4 days I'll be in my happy position on the sofa watching TV, listening to the iPod, and playing poker online while obssesively checking my blog and flickr for new comments.

I'm really excited because I have two flickr accounts and I'm using one to set up the 2009 calendar I'm going to have made.

Who wants one?

My friends Renne and Kelly on their wedding day. You would have to search high and far to find two other people more in love. I wish them many happy years together. This is one of the very few weddings you will ever see me shoot because it's so much pressure for me. They love how the pictures came out so it's a nice relief for me. It's not like you can go back and reshoot.

They asked and I was happy to do it.

Weekend off, off weekend

I got up and showered on Saturday and noticed that the wife had not been to bed. I saw her at the computer when I went down the stairs. I had my suspicion as to why she had not come to bed.

I turned on the TV to the Olympics on CBC and I saw the spider making it's way across the floor. I looked for a weapon and ended up grabbing a children's library book.

WHUMP on the floor went the book.

The spider kept walking despite my shot being on the mark.

Whump on the floor again.

Whump a third time and this time I grabbed a kleenex and finished the thing off.

My wife came down the stairs to find me on all fours. I could not get up. My lower back was protesting the slaughter of the innocent arachnid by paralyzing me with pain. The wife disposed of the spider and it took me a good five minutes to get up to a sitting position on the sofa.

Our son had not returned from his evening out which explains my wife not haviing come to bed. She had called his cell phone "20 times" and it was off. I moved around in pain before removing my uniform and calling in sick to work at 4:40. Our drunk son arrived home at 6AM to much chastizing and the claim that his phone had died. He also claimed that he was out "having fun" and that he was "responsible" as in responsible for his own actions. He also said that he worked at 9AM. Long story short, my wife went to bed and I stayed up to see the men's 100 meter final before joining her. At 8AM I opened the door to our son's room.

"Hey, responsible boy. It's 8 o'clock. Time to get up and get ready for work".

He stirred.

I stirred when I heard the phone ring downstairs after 9AM. The responsible boy made it to work around 10.

So today is Sunday and I called in sick again. It took me about 10 minutes of pain to get up from lying down feeling no pain to standing feeling like I stretched heavy rubber cords. The wife had to go down and bring up a kitchen chair for me to use to get upright. A family friend is a physiotherapist. He works with the Vancouver Giants and Canadian Women's Softball Team. Hopefully I can hook up with him for some acupunture.

Blogging for me is cyclical and I'm in the "chore" stage. I know I should but I get lazy. I try to come up with a story but only get sentences so I put it off.

My granddaughter has to be chased down when she has a load in her diaper because she'd rather play with toys than be changed. Of course that changes with age and social rules and we end up reprioritizing when it comes to loads but sometimes we still end up dancing in the bathroom before we pee.

I went to the wedding of a good friend to someone who is becoming a good friend and the asked so I took some portraits. I have never seen two people more in love. Just the look on their faces of such bliss hit me to the core when I worked on the shots in the computer. The wedding was outside at a park by a big river and I have never seen more cameras at a wedding in my life. Some of the still shooters were complaining about the video shooter and I was paid a huge compliment by one guy who saw me compose some shots with the flowers and the harp player and then shot the same after me.

But right after the ceremony the happy couple and I walked over to another place where it was just us for the portraits before going back over to the little dock where they had exchanged vows. I got my shots just ahead of the slew of photogs spotted us and came over for shots of their own.

Don't get me wrong, I liked the fact that many people were shooting because I don't shoot weddings except for this being a good friend who has seen a lot of my work and asked. It's hard to say no to the bride. All those other cameras take the pressure off me.

It was certainly the most photographed wedding I have ever seen. I MAY post a pic or two later. The newlyweds have not seen them yet.

Got out on a sunny day for a bit of photographying play. This shot was at People's Pigeon Park on East Hastings in Vancouver. Warm day and lots of walking.

Another Olympics

I still have a hat from the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. I remember watching Peggy Fleming skate. I remember when to black athletes bowed their heads and raised their gloved fists during the national anthem in Mexico City. I was glued to the set during the tragedy in Munich. I saw the "miracle on ice".

I saw a basketball dream team do what we had always wanted. We finally sent the best basketball players we had instead of a college all-star team and that team destroyed the competition. I remember a Brazilian basketball team member being asked what he thought about the dream team and he said he thought it was great because it would raise the level of basketball the world over and now the NBA has players from all over the world and it isn't an easy time for us anymore.

I crushed hard on Dorothy Hamill in 1976. I watched Carl Lewis dominate and then fail when he tried to repeat. I saw Mark Spitz win 7 gold medals. I saw Nadia's 10 and loved Olga's smile. I saw the favorites fall and underdogs win.

I love the Olympics but hate all the commercialism. But I understand that they could not survive without the money. I hate the U.S. network's coverage because I want to see all the winners from all over the planet not just the American winners. I love the Canadian coverage because they are on live and show more. I would LOVE a cable package where you could see coverage from even more countries.

I LOVE it when an athlete or team from a small country wins because those people are then national heroes.

In this year's opening ceremony the U.S. flag was carried by Lopez Lomong, a refugee from The Sudan.

"American people, with the great democracy they have, chose to vote for me. I don't have words for it. I'm so happy," Lomong said. "I'm so proud to be an American and raise that flag proudly."

Lomong was kidnapped at age 6 and spent 10 years in a refugee camp in Kenya before being adopted by an American family and becoming a U.S. citizen last year. The story brought tears to my eyes. The only thing better would be if he competed with a team from The Sudan and that there was peace throughout that region. But that isn't the case and I know that in his heart he runs for his people and he is already a hero to them.

There will be lots of tears during the Olympics for me. I'm just that way. I don't care who it is, but when they're on that podium and their national anthem plays I get emotional.

I love the Olympics.

I was bummed that Doria was only slotted enough time to play three songs at the dyke march. I did get to say hello afterwards. For me, there were too many performers and they were ALL acoustic which got old very fast. Of course Doria is an amazing talent and Yvette did some very nice stuff too. I just wanted MORE of them and LESS of the others.

The wonderful Yvette Narlock www.yvesapple.com/ She sings one of the most beautiful love songs ever called Navigating. It's a song of a lesbian woman wooing a straight woman so if you're open minded you're in for a great song

So here's my last day of vacation. Today is the Dyke March and it was supposed to be sunny but it isn't. Detlef the "genius" at the Apple Store said it's gonna take $218.00 and ten days before my macbook is ready to go again.

We had dinner on Commercial Drive after we got out of Apple because I didn't feel like dealing with rush hour. Marcello Pizzeria and Ristorante was fabulous.

I was in Drumheller, AB on the same weekend as the rodeo

Big Valley
Stettler
Meeting Creek