Christmas in Baltimore…
5 minute read
December 29, 2019, 8:35 AM
So Christmas was pretty fun this year. On Christmas Eve, we had dinner with some of Elyse’s father’s relatives, and then on Christmas Day, we got together with some of Elyse’s mother’s relatives. This was my first holiday with my new, smaller stomach, and so I was still getting used to its new capacity, figuring out how much I should take, what will be tolerated, and so on. I believe that I overdid it by a tad on Christmas Eve, likely by eating foods that I wasn’t ready for yet, but I more or less nailed it on Christmas. When you have a gastric sleeve like I did, you have to chew everything really well, and also not drink and eat at the same time. Generally speaking, you have to give your stomach time to process the food that it just took in before resuming liquid intake. Also, if you put too much in at once, it will get rejected, either by getting sent through to the intestines, or it’s coming back up. But anyway…
After dinner on Christmas, Elyse and I went planespotting near BWI. We had discusssed doing this for some time, even before our planespotting adventure at National, and on this particular occasion, it just worked out. We were already in the Glen Burnie area, I had my real camera with me, and we had about an hour or so of daylight to play with. The location where you typically planespot for BWI is actually specially designated for that purpose: the Thomas A. Dixon, Jr. Aircraft Observation Area. It’s a very nice area that’s operated by Anne Arundel County, with a walking trail, playground equipment for the kids, and plenty of space to watch planes take off and land. On this particular day, planes were landing over the park, and so I got some landing photos. When it comes to planespotting at BWI, it can, for the most part, be summed up in one word: Southwest. BWI is a focus city for Southwest, and as such, sees more Southwest traffic than anything else, and that also means a lot of Boeing 737s.
Continue reading…Categories: Airplanes, Anne Arundel County, Baltimore, Christmas, Howard County, Weight loss
Remembering Snowpocalypse…
3 minute read
December 19, 2019, 11:40 PM
This weekend marks ten years since the “Snowpocalypse” storm came to the Washington region and blanketed the area with a couple of feet of snow. It was my first big snowstorm living in the Washington DC area, and it gave me my first snow day since college. While I was stuck at home, I photographed the snow quite a bit. After all, what else was I going to do while I was snowed in?
Snow coming down on Hewitt Avenue, seen from my apartment balcony, about four hours after the storm began.
Categories: Silver Spring, Snowpocalypse
Such an isolating feeling…
4 minute read
November 7, 2019, 11:24 AM
Let me be the first to say that I am glad that the baseball season is finally over. For those not familiar, the Major League Baseball team that is based in Washington, the Nationals, made it to the World Series, and ultimately managed to prevail, with the franchise’s winning the first World Series title in its history, both as the Nationals, as well as the Expos before that.
I don’t know how you’re “supposed to” feel about when the team that’s based in your city is in the championship round, but I felt a bit alienated. I don’t pay much attention to professional sports, other than what I pick up at work (let’s just say that I am well aware of the Redskins–Cowboys rivalry). It just doesn’t interest me. When everyone around me was celebrating the team’s making the World Series and then winning it, I felt bad because I couldn’t muster up the joy myself. It made me feel very isolated, with everyone around me wrapped up in baseball fever, and my feeling incapable of sharing in the hubris.
It really came to the forefront for me when we were all given World Series hats at work, and encouraged, though not required, to wear in place of our our standard uniform hats if we so desired. I was asked to put it on to verify that it fit when it was given to me. It really brought that feeling of emptiness that I felt for professional sports to a head, and that made me feel guilty because I felt nothing over the success of the local professional team while everyone around me was overjoyed. I never did wear the hat beyond the fit test, and after the period that it was authorized for wear expired, I gave it to Elyse. I didn’t want it, but it made her happy. So that’s a win, I suppose. I also suppose that the hat was a moot point to begin with, considering that I haven’t worn a hat to work in more than a year.
Categories: DC area local news, Washington DC
Meet Woomy…
4 minute read
September 8, 2019, 10:09 AM
In going through what I’ve posted, I’ve realized that I’ve mentioned some things but never fully explained them. I typically realize this when these things are slated to appear again or are otherwise planned to be referenced, but discover that there has not been a proper introduction.
In this case, meet Woomy, one of Elyse’s “critters”:
Categories: Elyse, Frederick, Pennsylvania, Travel, Woomy
Philadelphia? How about New York?
7 minute read
August 18, 2019, 12:55 AM
August 13 was a day of unexpected twists and turns, for sure. What was supposed to be a trip to Philadelphia with friends ended up turning into a trip to New York City for Elyse and me. As originally planned, we were going to meet up with Brian, Trent, and a few other folks from the DC area who were traveling up separately at 30th Street Station, and the bunch of them plus Elyse were going to go fan transit for a while, while I did my own thing, mostly photographing in and around Center City. That didn’t happen.
What caused our plans to change was twofold. First, the weather forecast called for storms all up and down the east coast. So I would have to figure out something else to do, as I would be rained out. Secondly, we were running a tad late due to traffic around Baltimore that led us to take a more southerly route before resuming our planned route. Once we got up there, the plan was to park in New Jersey and then ride PATCO into the city. What happened, though, was that the other group didn’t want to wait for us at 30th Street Station, and so they went and continued with their plan without Elyse, and took SEPTA Regional Rail out to Norristown, with the idea that we would catch up with them later. We learned this while we were on PATCO riding into the city. So essentially, they ditched us. We did not take too kindly to this, and so rather than chase them in an effort to catch up with them, when it was pretty clear that we were not a priority (otherwise, they would have waited for us), we did our own thing instead.
We ended up getting off of PATCO at City Hall station in Camden. There, we walked over to the Walter Rand Transportation Center station for the River Line. Neither of us had ever ridden the River Line, so this would be a new experience. We were surprised that there was very little transit-oriented development around the River Line stations. Much of what was right around the stations that we could see was older construction that predated the service.
Categories: New Jersey, New York City, New York Subway, NJ Transit, PATCO, Philadelphia, SEPTA
They couldn’t even get mad…
3 minute read
August 12, 2019, 10:17 AM
After the Journal entry where I spoke about my seventh grade year, which generated a lot of great discussion, mostly on Facebook, I thought I’d share an amusing moment from eighth grade.
Eighth grade was one of my best years in school. I had a great group of teachers, and I had a much easier time with the kids. Sure, some kids were still terrible, but not like seventh grade. I didn’t get in trouble at all in eighth grade, except for one time in the middle of the second semester, when I got written up for something relatively minor, but which was entirely my fault.
To give some background, my mother has always enjoyed sharing information that she learns with me. In the era of the Internet, I typically use it as a starting point to do my own research to turn up more information about it, but back then, with much more limited resources, I typically took it at face value, and was still happy to have learned something new, even if I couldn’t necessarily dive into it more deeply. In this particular instance, what Mom shared was that men who wore boxer shorts had higher sperm counts than men who wore briefs. Okay. So 13-year-old me just learned an interesting new factoid, though I didn’t really understand the whole mechanism behind it (if you want to know, go look it up for yourself). But in any case, I was a tad more knowledgeable than I was five minutes earlier, and that was awesome.
Categories: Family, Middle school, Stuarts Draft
Fire alarm at Wheaton Plaza…
3 minute read
August 2, 2019, 8:23 AM
On Tuesday, Elyse and I were out with our friend Kyle Garcia, and among other places, we stopped over at Wheaton Plaza (Westfield Wheaton) for lunch. As we were finishing up, we suddenly saw strobes flashing and then the speakers started up. Yes, after twelve years of living in MoCo, I finally caught a fire alarm at Wheaton Plaza. Elyse, Kyle, and I all got video of the alarm, while everyone else paid it no mind. Here are my two videos of it:
Categories: Fire alarms, Wheaton
In hindsight, sometimes I wonder if I might have had an easier time…
12 minute read
July 14, 2019, 12:20 PM
Sometimes I wonder if, in hindsight, I might have had an easier time in school if I had just beaten the crap out of a few kids. Seriously. I got picked on quite a bit, particularly in middle school. I got made fun of for my weight, I got made fun of for the way I walked (which I found out much later was due to overly tight calf muscles, which is remedied through stretching), and I got made fun of for my mannerisms.
I admit that I was a bit of an easy mark in middle school. I wouldn’t fight back, for a couple of reasons. First of all, I was in a martial arts class at the time that emphasized never starting a fight. Additionally, and more importantly, when students get into a fight in school, fault was typically assigned equally regardless of what happened, and so both students got suspended. Thus even if you were not the one who initiated the fight and you were trying to get the other kid off of you, you were still getting suspended. Since my parents had decided before I was born that I was going to college, getting suspended was viewed as the worst thing ever. Recall the “you might as well wish you were dead” remark from when I got suspended in fourth grade. We later found out after we moved to Virginia that the elementary school suspension wasn’t in my records. Whether that was sloppy work on Mrs. Carmical’s part or what have you, I don’t know, but officially, it never happened. However, getting suspended going forward was a no-go, because of the assumption that it would affect my ability to get into college. As it turns out, that assumption was mistaken, because no college cares about what you did in middle school. But for that mistaken assumption, I had a rough time.
In reading various discussions online, one thing that I saw over and over was that when the victims of bullying retaliated against their attackers, it generally put an end to it. One story from online that stuck with me was where a girl who was being bullied walked by and jabbed a pair of scissors into her attacker’s back. She got in some trouble, but the end result was that her bully now feared her. Seemed like a good result. She ended it. And in a fight, if everyone is getting suspended, it really changes the dynamic of things. With nothing to lose, why not inflict maximum damage? Give the kid something to remember you by. Bet that they won’t mess with you again after that.
Categories: Middle school, Stuarts Draft
Elyse goes to Build-A-Bear…
3 minute read
June 27, 2019, 11:47 AM
On Tuesday, June 26, Elyse, my friend Matthew, and I went to Build-A-Bear at Fair Oaks Mall in Fairfax, Virginia, where Elyse got herself a stuffed bear. This was part of a larger adventure which took us to Manassas and a few other places in that general area. In the case of Build-A-Bear, Elyse had entered into the sweepstakes for the “pay your age” promotion and got selected, receiving a ticket with a date window to visit a store and redeem it for a bear.
First, we had to find a suitable character. Elyse briefly considered this flamingo.
Categories: Elyse, Fairfax County, Matthew, Retail
Looking at some old photos from 2002…
6 minute read
June 17, 2019, 11:54 AM
Sometimes, it’s fun to look back at old photos. The world changes, after all, and sometimes, old photos document things that don’t exist anymore. For whatever reason, Elyse and I were looking at my photos from a trip to the Washington DC area that I made on April 13, 2002. For context, back when this trip happened, I was a junior in college, and had just been notified that I was being laid off from my call center job with Telegate USA (the successor company to CFW Information Services) after just under five years’ employment there. The call center where I worked was closing, and Telegate, primarily a European company, would exit the US market entirely within the year.
This particular trip produced the Old Town Alexandria set in Photography. I now consider that set to be poor work, and have it on my list of photo sets that I eventually want to reshoot, along with Meridian Hill Park. I figure that, with the passage of time and my becoming more proficient with the camera, I could do a much better job a second time around. In the case of the Old Town Alexandria set, I really didn’t take enough time to compose the shots. Timestamps indicate that it took me an hour to cover from near the waterfront to the Metro station. I was really just walking and photographing without putting much thought or effort into it.
The rest of the day was spent wandering around the DC area via the Metro, and more or less exploring around.
It’s also funny to think that I took these photos with my original Sony Mavica camera, which recorded at 640×480 resolution, with corresponding image quality. It was only slightly better quality than a potato.
Categories: Alexandria, Arlington, DC trips, Maryland, Photography, Washington DC, WMATA
Toronto in a nutshell…
6 minute read
April 24, 2019, 9:30 PM
I mentioned about a month or so ago that Elyse and I were going to Toronto in mid-April. That trip is now in the history books, and much fun was had. I’m going to do a more detailed photo set in Life and Times later, but I want to present a high-level view of what we did on our trip now. Much of the focus of the trip was to visit various locations where Today’s Special was filmed. We visited the store, as well as other places where various characters visited over the course of seven seasons. We also rode a lot of the TTC, visited friends, had dessert at a poop-themed restaurant, and rode some vintage elevators.
So here we go…
Main Place Mall, a mostly dead mall in Buffalo, New York, where we met up with a friend.
Categories: Canada, Today's Special, Travel, TTC
Pinball and the Big Apple…
7 minute read
March 23, 2019, 1:55 PM
You know, one of these days, I’m going to realize that doing New Jersey and New York City is too much to bite off for a day trip. However, that day has not come yet, and so on Tuesday, March 12, Elyse and I did exactly that, going to Asbury Park, where we visited the Silverball Museum, and then we rode a New Jersey Transit train from Long Branch to New York City, and spent a few hours in New York.
All in all, though, it wasn’t a bad trip, but it was very strenuous. New York definitely needs to be its own thing, and always its own thing. No bundling it with stuff in New Jersey, because we always end up getting home extremely late. But unlike the last time that we bundled New York with Asbury Park, this time, New York was planned from the outset.
Our time in New Jersey was pretty typical: in via the Delaware Memorial Bridge, up via 295, make the big right turn near Trenton to get on 195, comment on the sign at milepost 14.6 that says that the trees are treated with a noxious substance, go to White Castle, and then arrive in Asbury Park.
The Silverball Museum was excellent, as always, as I played my way around the facility. They had some new chairs this time around, and a few new games. Elyse noticed that besides her favorite baseball game, there were four or five other vintage baseball games to try. They also now have the arcade version of Asteroids. I used to play Asteroids for the Atari 2600 all the time, so I knew my way around that game. The controls are different on the arcade machine, though. I found that the all-button controls were not as intuitive as the Atari 2600’s joystick-based controls. That said, I didn’t do very well, but with more practice, I could probably get a decent score.
Categories: Asbury Park, New York City, New York Subway, NJ Transit, Video games
A time to heal?
3 minute read
March 14, 2019, 10:00 AM
I was checking my Facebook feed on a break at work on Sunday, and imagine my surprise to see one of my old elementary school teachers post this:
Lost a special teacher friend this morning. Sharon Bradley made you smile, and was the best story teller! She was also my neighbor for a few years. Sharon was good to my children and the students she taught. Prayers for her family and extended school family who loved her.
Apparently, my old fifth grade teacher, Sharon Bradley, died on the morning of March 10, at the age of 76. As of this writing, I do not know the cause of her death.
You may recall that I wrote a very long Journal entry last June about my fifth grade experience, after Mrs. Bradley came up in the “people you may know” list on Facebook around that time. Fifth grade was, without question, my worst year in school, from kindergarten through college. I suffered so much emotional abuse under her over the course of those nine months, enabled by the school administration and the guidance counselor. When presented with the opportunity to reconnect through Facebook and potentially make peace, I declined, choosing to keep her out of my life.
Categories: Arkansas, Elementary school
Returning to Toronto…
3 minute read
March 10, 2019, 12:17 PM
In about a month, I’m going traveling. Elyse and I are going to Toronto for about a week, and we’re going to see as much as we can in the five days that we will have on site. My goal is to see as many Today’s Special filming locations as possible. I’ve done a lot of research on these for the new version of the Today’s Special site that I’m still working on, and have written about these filming locations in the past. I plan not only to visit the store again, but also a whole lot of others. Meanwhile, Elyse has given me a list of stuff that she wants to see – a lot of it elevators – and we’re going to work as many of those in as we can as well.
It’s funny about what I’m doing similarly to my original trip to Toronto back in 1999, and what I’m doing differently. We’re staying the Chelsea Hotel at Gerrard and Yonge, just like I did last time. I booked a deluxe room, just like I did in the nineties, which should place us on a relatively high floor. Mom and I had room 1667 back in 1999, and then I suppose that we’ll see what they give us this time around. I would laugh if we got room 2137, which is also the number of Elyse’s favorite Metrobus. We’ll see, I suppose. From the photos that I saw, though, the Chelsea has been renovated since we were there before, so the Chelsea will be a very different experience than before, as I imagine that everything will look quite different. The rooftop bar is now a fitness center, for one. And speaking of the rooftop, unlike last time, when I was just under the age requirement to go on the roof deck (you had to be 19, and I was 18), and Mom brought me in anyway, I now am well above the age requirement to go in there.
I also wonder if the fire alarm will go off this time, like it did back in 1999. I remember being a little uptight about that whole situation before. After all, all of my experience prior to this was that if the fire alarm sounds, you leave the building. They only evacuated three floors: the fire floor, and the floors immediately above and below. I found out later that it was a relatively minor electrical fire on the 20th floor that was the source of all of the commotion. Nowadays, I know a lot more about how high-rise fire alarm systems work, and might be a bit more sedate should something like that happen again. I wonder if it still has those Pyrotronics pull stations. Funny, though – I still remember what their alarm sounded like almost twenty years later. That was the first time that I had ever heard a voice evacuation system, or a two-stage system. It was memorable, but also a bit unnerving, since this was well outside of my experience, plus it was getting close to the time that we needed to leave to head home.
Looking back on some old photos…
3 minute read
January 29, 2019, 1:32 PM
Recently, Elyse and I were coming home from Frederick on a night with a very bright full moon. The discussion turned towards how it was moonlight that was making everything so bright. I was no stranger to this concept, and remembered a set of photos that I shot on July 31, 2004. There, I was up on the Blue Ridge Parkway in Virginia near Rockfish Gap, shooting photos after work using Big Mavica with the tripod, under a full moon. It was late at night, but the photos might have almost led you to think otherwise:
Categories: Blue Ridge Parkway, Photography