This Old Blog

My dad is not a retired CIA counterintelligence officer (Delta, aeronautical engineer, 44 years), doesn't give lie detector tests (doesn't need to, after raising four kids he knows when you're lying), and is actually a pretty nice guy in spite of having raised four kids. My mom is equally nice, but is the classic southern steel magnolia, the center of the family that binds and the power that keeps us on the (reasonably) straight and narrow. Although I tower over my mom and I'm twice her weight, I wouldn't dare to harm a sacred hair on her head. And neither would anyone else in the family. They will both turn 80 later this year, which makes each of these trips up to Atlanta more and more important. While I expect to see them both for quite a few more years, life, if anything, is unpredictable. So I take the time to travel and visit and tell them I still love them very much. Technical Both were taken with the E-P2 and M.Zuiko 45mm. I took my dad's while ...

Or not to the home you remembered from 30 years ago. This former movie theater is close to my parents place. It's the theater I first saw "TRON" in 1982. Watching movies back then was a lot more low key than now. It was out several weeks before I even knew it was there, and it played for several more months before it moved on. It was inexpensive and fun, usually costing no more than one or two dollars to view any movie (depending on its release). It's shut down now. Right next to that theater was a small electronic arcade. I don't remember the name of it anymore, but I do remember it having the first TRON arcade game I ever played the same year the movie was released. Since I went to see movies there on a semi-regular basis (I lived in a small apartment off of Peachtree Industrial at the time, as I also worked for DCA when it was located on Peachtree Industrial), I tended stop off at the arcade after the movie to drop in a few quarters and play the games. No...

First comfort stop, Ocala, Florida My mostly-annual January trip to see my family in Atlanta started around 1:15 am this morning at the Orlando Greyhound terminal at John Young Parkway. I got to the terminal around 11pm so I wouldn't be late and to be able to queue up early enough to get a decent chance at picking my seat on the bus. Normally I fly up, but this year the prices out of Orlando to Atlanta were trending towards the outrageous (Delta flights had hit $500 round trip and were going higher each day). So I booked a round trip bus trip between Orlando and Atlanta on Greyhound for a rather inexpensive $90. It's been a while (years, really) since the last time I traveled Greyhound anywhere; the last trip was up to Tallahassee so I could ride back to Orlando with number 2 daughter in the Volvo (which we still own). Traveling by bus was simple back then; walk in, purchase the ticket, wait for the bus, board the bus, and then get off at your destination. This time I h...

Preparing for the trip to Atlanta, I headed out for a rare lunch trip to pick up some travel money from the bank, and then stopped off at the local Bubbalou's for a Big Big Pig (pork) and a large foam cup of Luzianne tea (unsweetened). Then I sat in a corner and chowed down. This Bubbalou's is pretty big (the biggest of the three I've eaten in, I think). They've added the Luck Pig bar as well as enhanced the overall interior. And it's a good thing because this Bubbalou's seems to stay pretty packed, at least around lunch time. I don't normally come here due to its location, and that's a good thing, or else I'd eat here all the time, and as good as the food is, that would be a bad thing for my diet. In particular I go to Bubbalou's when I want to break training and eat french fries with lots of Heinz catsup, BBQ sauce, and lean pork. Oh well, back to work, then later tonight a ten hour bus trip to Atlanta. More to come.

Orlando's City Hall is a sleepy little affair, nestled in the north-east quadrant of the I-4 and 408 interchange, at the corner of W. South Street and S. Orange Avenue. It usually sees more activity when there's a protest rally going on than it does the city's business is supposed to be conducted. I decided to make a quick stop on the way home because I wanted to see if anyone from Occupy Orlando was there. They'd long ago left their original starting place on S. Ivanhoe next to the Chamber of Commerce. A mix of self-inflicted factors combined with being hassled steadily by the police convinced them to withdraw and re-group at City Hall. ChargePoint charging station When I arrived at City Hall I parked in the first empty spot I could find. I couldn't believe my eyes when I looked to my right and saw an electric vehicle charging station by ChargePoint . I'd been told that a few had started to appear around Orlando, but I hadn't seen one yet. This one w...

I missed this one. Friendly's declared Chapter 11 last September and closed 66 stores in the process. This store, at the intersection of University and Alafaya, was one of the 66. I'd eaten there a number of times in the past, but I hadn't been there for some time. So many have gone bust that I've grown rather numb to the whole process. Fortunately, every business along University that has gone out has been re-opened with something else. That is, except for this former Chevron station that's been an empty lot on the corner, next to the former Friendly's, for nearly three years. This is a view across the property where the gas pumps used to stand. The close, larger circular plates on the ground are the access ports to the underground tanks that fed the pumps. And yet a new business is going up a block west of all of this, at the corner of University and Quadrangle Blvd. This used to be a heavily wooded lot I wrote about in 2010, a small piece of remainin...

Look in the corner of any guy's closet and you'll find a small pile of shoes. Shoes that usually span about a decade, give or take a few years. This is the corner of my closet. At the lower left you'll find a pair of waterproof deck shoes that my late Uncle Tommy wore and that were given to me by my aunt. Next to them are my Skechers slip-on, and then surrounding them a few pairs of lace-up Rockports. All of them size 12 wide. I decided to go back and photograph them because I'd read a tweet from a Proper Photographer who sagely tweeted how they didn't get 365 day photo projects "when people shoot their lunch, their shoes, and other stuff like that." Suitably inspired, I mounted an FL-50R on my E-P2, went back into the closet, flipped the head around on the flash for bounce, pulled out the wide-angle diffuser, and fired off a few quick photos of my shoes in my closet, choosing this as the best of the best. While not quite the same thing as Arab shoe t...