Family pics.

We had to hurry to get the family together before Sam took off from the reunion--and, we didn't quite have the t-shirts ready this year. Whoops. Thanks for the pictures, Hailey.

Hi, Audibaud!

Elsie's race

Laura didn't get a picture of the death stare that Elsie gave her main competitor, but you can see the seriousness with which she competes. This girl wants the gold.

Hank's in Oregon

One of the great parts of our summer vacation was driving through my birthplace. I don't remember being born there, of course, because we left when I was still a wee child, and I was frustrated this time at not being able to find the sign that says "Birthplace of Archiblog", but it was fun to drive through nonetheless.

Here are some pictures of what we think may have been my father's place of employment, 70s sign and all:

Other than a propensity to mix up the M's and W's and some very expensive avocados it doesn't appear much has changed since the 1970s. We didn't go inside, unfortunately, because like most legs of our huge roadtrip, we were running late. This time it was to get to Lincoln City, where the wife's family reunion was being held.

Two more shots--one, to prove that my father's college hasn't lost accreditation (well, they still have the sign), and the second because I thought that FOR SURE my mom would remember some old theater landmark like the "Theater in the Grove" because it looked so old and MUST have been there in the 70s. Maybe it was called something else, because she didn't recognize the name on the phone. Is the picture ringing any bells, mom?

Oh, and the missing shoe? It's a new gang thing. Don't ask. I'll add more to this post later, maybe, because it seems like I'm on a roll.

Banners from Family Reunion

We had an Olympics theme this year for our reunion, and each family was to make their own banner. These are the best pictures we've got, mom. I don't know if someone else was shooting photos.

Religious Tolerance Education starts in the home.

Tonight at dinner, the girl started talking about the Jewish temple that is close to the wife's work:

"I liked it on Saturday when we saw those people going to church, dressed all fancy and old..."

She then tried to describe what they were wearing. "He was wearing a. . . a turbine?"

"A turban?" asked my wife. "Do you mean a yarmulke?"

"A yarmonica?" asked the girl. 

The boy tried to help.

"Oh! Some monkeys wear that!"

"A fez?" I asked. "It wasn't a fez."

"Yeah," he said, "a fez."

So, thanks to the Google machine, we were able to look up some images of various versions of traditional Jewish clothing to see the various types of head gear that the girl might have seen on the way to the synagogue.

I guess we need to get out more.

Eclipse (this is not about the Twilight series. Sorry, Ty.)

I lucked out ("You LUCK!") this past week and got a couple pairs of free eclipse-viewing glasses at school from one of the science teachers. This is one of the advantages of working at a school. I will get back to you with the other advantages at another time. We happened to be having family dinner at the wife's parents' place on Sunday, which gave us a relatively unobscured  (which the editor is telling me is not a word) view of the valley. Having never shot a solar eclipse before, I learned a few things:

1. This would probably work better with some sort of filter.
2. It is difficult to see through a camera's viewfinder with eclipse-viewing glasses.
3. Because it is difficult to see, it is difficult to know where, exactly, the solar eclipse is in the frame.
4. Shooting directly into the sun is a good way to find out where you have dust on your camera's sensor.
5. It would be pretty cool to have a fancy telescope and the ability to attach a camera.
6. Sharing eclipse-viewing glasses with a wide range of in-laws, nieces and nephews and my own children at dinner time means that someone, sometime, is going to get jelly on said glasses.
7. The wife's brother knows how to make a camera obscura.

Here are the pictures:

We did not get the full ring of fire (sorry, Johnny Cash), but it just scraped across the top of the sun (scraped, as in "moved in front of, roughly 100 million miles away").  It was still really cool. The last shot is the eclipse-shaped shadows cast by the tree in my mother-in-law's front yard. I liked the flares that my lens captured--what I was seeing through the glasses was always different than how it came out in the photos--I don't know if that was because I needed a filter or what. Probably.