Round Robin: Remembrance of Things Past (Part 2 of 2)

As previously mentioned, this week's Round Robin Photo Challenge topic is The Times They Are a-Changin'. Several days ago there was a big change at Casa Blocher that marked the end of an era, maybe even the end of several eras. For years, John has been nagging me to donate our 1984 Dodge Ram van and our 1984 Chrysler New Yorker and get them hauled away. This week we actually did it.



The New Yorker was my mom's car originally, and the only talking car I've ever had. "Your fuel supply is low." This was cutting edge technology once. I thought it was kind of cool, but eventually John disabled it.

It became my car after I drove my mom in it from Florida to Tucson and after she gave up driving. It became John's car after Mom got me a 1997 Saturn in 2001. It became an unused eyesore in the driveway when it started losing power on John's long commute circa 2004, and he replaced it with an Alero.




The major hold-up in the car donation process was that I hadn't been able to find the title to the New Yorker, despite many hours of searching through likely and unlikely boxes. Just before Christmas I went down to the MVD with the VIN and the license plate number to get a new title, but they said it had been so long since the car was registered that the title had been purged from their records. I was advised to get it towed to Motor Vehicles for inspection so they could issue a new title. Like THAT was going to happen.

But the nice man at the service that arranges vehicle donations to charity noticed that the Vehicle Identification Number I read off to him was one digit too long. He took out an extra 9 and the car came right up in the Carfax database. I went back to MVD and $4 later walked out with a new title. Several days after that, the tow truck arrived, this time at no cost to us!




If the New Yorker was a reminder of my mom, the van was a reminder of our year of great adventure in 1986. That may be overstating things, but certainly it was an amazing year for us. The Dodge Ram was integral to those experiences. John finally came into some money from a trust fund, and we were sick of Ohio; so we put everything in storage, bought a van, put a mattress in the back and drove around the country, looking for someplace it wasn't winter. Two months later, John was negotiating over a pay phone to buy our first house, a mile or so outside the Tucson city limits.



Bye-bye, Mom's car. Bye-bye, faithful van. Bye-bye, reminders of times long past. But the driveway looks a lot better without you.

Karen

Linking List
as of Midnight MST
Saturday, December 31, 2011

Karen - Posted!
Outpost Mâvarin
http://outmavarin.blogspot.com


Jama
Sweet Memories
http://mummyjam.blogspot.com


Sherrie
Food for Thought
http://100sweets.blogspot.com/


Terri
Ways I See the World
http://teelgeephotos.blogspot.com/

Round Robin: Remembrance of Things Past (Part 1 of 2)

This week's Round Robin Photo Challenge topic is The Times They Are a-Changin', and I swear I had nothing in mind in proposing it beyond the general notion of clocks and New Year's Eve. But over the past week I've been rather obsessed with my new toy, the iPad, which has nearly replaced my computer already. It occurred to me today that nothing tells the story of time speeding along for us as a society than the acquisition and discarding of computers and other technology. For example:

Our Commodore 64, purchased circa 1985. Now it's a monitor for an outdated VCR.

My iMac and my first laptop, circa 2004, photographed using our first
digital camera, a Mavica. The camera stored the images on floppy disks.

 

My brand new laptop, March 2005.

John's first two iMacs (c. 1999-2005) await recycling, 2011.

The latest and greatest going into 2012, and it's not even a computer. 

My iPad 2 will soon be obsolete; the iPad 3 has been announced. And I don't care.

Two other pieces of outdated equipment left our home this week, leaving behind memories of times long gone. To avoid overloading aging computers with a picture-heavy entry, I'll tell you about that in a second post.

Meanwhile, let's see how other Robins mark the changing times!

Linking List
as of Midnight MST
Saturday, December 31, 2011

Karen - Posted!
Outpost Mâvarin
http://outmavarin.blogspot.com


Jama
Sweet Memories
http://mummyjam.blogspot.com


Sherrie
Food for Thought
http://100sweets.blogspot.com/


Terri
Ways I See the World
http://teelgeephotos.blogspot.com/

Karen

Testing...1...2...3...5?

I got an iPad2 for Christmas. Hooray! Now I need to figure out which apps are actually worth using, and (this is the tricky part) actually learn to use them effectively.

Take this Blogger app I'm currently typing in an example. When I signed in, it took me to the archived Blogger version of the private AOL blog on which Carly and I used to keep notes related to the Round Robin Photo Challenges. It hasn't been used since 2008, but because it was first alphabetically on my list of blogs, this app assumed that was the blog on which I wanted to post. In fact it was rather insistent about this; it took me a not-so-good five minutes to escape to a list of my blogs! And what do I have to hit to accept the completed words the app occasionally suggests? Ah. That worked, sort of.

And I just took my first photo on this thing. Will it show up in this entry? Where? What size will it be? I suspect the iPad will never give me the control over the look of a blog entry that my computer does.

Still, I don't mean to gripe about this marvelous and expensive new toy. I've wanted something like this since the Newton and the first PDAs. Over time I'm sure it will only get more useful until it fools me into thinking it's indispensable. In the meantime I'll read books and Twitter on it (I gave John the choice of getting me an iPad or a Kindle Fire) and play with the Doctor Who Encyclopedia app.

And I firmly believe the learning curve on mastering the iPad operating system is a good and important thing to tackle. Years ago (I've probably mentioned this before) I saw a Scientific American Frontiers show about the aging brain. At least one study showed that learning something new later in life - not just more of the same but something markedly different from existing knowledge - helps to build new synapses and stave off the creation of the lesions that cause Alzheimer's. At least, that's my memory of what they said. I'm going to be 55 years old in March, and I'm already painfully aware that my memory is not what it was when I was younger. Learning to thumb my way around the quirky little QWERTY keypads and navigate the bare bones or nonexistent menus in iPad applications is proving enough of a challenge that it probably qualifies as a new skill. Got to keep my brain working in case anyone has need of it...!

Karen

Tucson Sunset: #413,941,038 in the Series

Sunset over Thimble Peak, December 16th, 2011.

Karen

Round Robin: A Cactus is Also Ever-green

For Round Robin Challenge: Evergreen, I asked to see any plant that stays green all year, whether it's a pine or fir tree or something very different from what we normally think of as evergreens. I can show you both, so let's get started!



Christmas tree lots aside, most of our pine trees and such are up in the Santa Catalina mountains, where the climate is cooler. Late this afternoon I heading up there with my camera and my dogs, hoping to make it to the evergreen forests that start around ten miles up. I was reasonably sure that's where I would also start seeing snow. Mt. Lemmon's Ski Valley, the southernmost ski resort in the continental United States, officially started its season today with a 14 inch base and over two feet of powder from the massive storms we've had over the past week. Not that those ski conditions mean anything to me. I haven't skied since I was about eight years old.



It was just about sunset as we climbed the lower reaches of Mt. Lemmon Highway, so I made the traditional stop at Babad Do'Ag Vista, one of the best sunset vantage points around here. You can't really see them, but under that gorgeous sunset are some ever-green cacti and palo verde trees (the name means "green stick").



See? Told ya!



Climbing higher, we reached the Ponderosa Pine trees (I looked it up) and the snow at about the same time.



By the time we reached the Middle Bear Picnic Area, dusk was closing in on this shady and snowy part of the mountain. My old sneakers weren't much good on the snow, particularly with two dogs pulling on their leashes in two different directions; so I settled for a few not-so-good shots and headed back down the mountain.



Really though, there is no need to climb mountains to see green plants in Tucson in winter, even Christmassy ones! These saguaros at the entrance to Tucson Medical Center are dressed for the season.



And on the street behind Calle Mumble is a seriously big Christmas tree, part of the biggest Christmas display in the neighborhood.



Now let's see what's ever-green where the other Robins live!

Linking List
as of Saturday, December 17th
at 7:53 PM MST

Karen - Posted!
Outpost Mâvarin
http://outmavarin.blogspot.com

Gattina
Keyhole Pictures
http://gattina-keyholepictures.blogspot.com/

Freda - Posted!
Day One
http://fredamans.blogspot.com

Jama - Posted!
Sweet Memories
http://mummyjam.blogspot.com

Pamela **Welcome, new participant!** - Posted!
Words Can't Express How Beautiful It Is
http://www.jdskids.blogspot.com/

Karen

EMPS: It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas - Almost!

When I read the topic for this week's Ellipsis Monday Photo Shoot #153: Here Come The Holidays, I immediately took two non-flash photos of the only Christmas item on hand that wasn't buried in a storage bin or closet somewhere:



This fresh wreath is from a St. Michael's Day School fundraiser, and a gift from Father Smith and the church. A week later, it's still on my kitchen table. I thought John was going to put it up. He thought I was. I'll take care of it tomorrow.

I've got more interesting shots now, though, and certainly less grainy ones. Yesterday (Saturday), John took a rare day off to get work done at home. We had lunch together, went browsing at our local Ace Hardware, and spent the afternoon going through our Christmas stuff - most of it, anyway.



We had two huge plastic storage bins and five of the big cardboard ones. To free up storage space for other things, we managed to empty four of the cardboard ones.



We also made a bit of a mess, at least temporarily. It didn't make sense to put away everything we're actually going to use this year! But we did fill our big fallout shelter barrel (once used to store potable water) with trash, twice. We threw out melted candles, old Christmas cards, crumpled paper and broken boxes, among other things. We also filled one of the emptied boxes with stuff to donate to a rummage sale, a gift bag with stocking stuffers for the children of John's co-workers, and a small grocery bag with selected ornaments for a friend. Even after all that, we probably still have enough ornaments left to fill three Christmas trees. Come to think of it, I'm pretty sure we did have three trees up one year: the vintage silver one with the color wheel, a big pink one, and a small live tree that was my small rebellion that year. I've since learned to live without live Christmas trees, albeit reluctantly!



We ended up with two very full plastic bins plus a cardboard one. One problem: John's pretty sure the bins are now too heavy to lift back onto the top shelf in the laundry room!


Karen

Round Robin Challenge: Families Where We Find Them

I set myself a bit of a Challenge this time. The Round Robin Photo Challenge topic is Family, and how am I meant to photograph that? My dad is in North Carolina, my brother outside Cleveland. I haven't seen either of them in years. My own family is John, who doesn't like having his picture posted, plus the dogs, who have no opinion either way.

But I went to Reid Park, on a chilly day of intermittent rain, to see if there were any families my camera could find. I stalked one family from across the duck pond with my zoom lens:



I like that we can't see their faces. They become a generic family. The adults are both women, but they're still a family.



We don't know who these people are, really, what their actual relationships are and why they came to the park on such a blustery day. I hope they enjoyed the park and each other's company.

Okay, let's go for an even more generic family, albeit an extended one: the bronze people of Cancer Survivors Plaza:





According to my previous post on the subject, the entire sculpture (all the bronze bits) is titled "Cancer...There's Hope." It was the last work of artist Victor Salmones. The five figures at the back - a dad and his Picachu-toting little girl, the grandparents and a young woman - represent cancer patients and their supporters as the patients enter the maze of treatment with fear and determination.

In lieu of families like this, we build our families of choice, people we aren't necessarily related to at all. In my "church family" are two close friends I spend a lot of time with, Kevin and Jan:



So okay, I managed to find some substitute families to photograph. But at bedtime, after a bit of nagging, my own family graciously posed for me:



Now let's check out the families the other Robins photographed!

Linking List
as of 3 AM MST Saturday
December 3rd, 2011

Karen - Posted!
Outpost Mâvarin
http://outmavarin.blogspot.com

Jama - Posted!
Sweet Memories
http://mummyjam.blogspot.com

Freda - Posted!
Day One
http://fredamans.blogspot.com

Dave Richards - Posted!
daves(old short legs)photo blog
http://davesoldshortlegsphotoblog.blogspot.com/

Gattina - Posted!
Keyhole Pictures
http://gattina-keyholepictures.blogspot.com/

And it's not too late to join in yourself!

Karen

EMPS: Fantasy in the Sky

This week's Ellipsis Monday Photo Shoot calls for an FX shot of something seen In the Clouds. Going through my photo archives, I soon came across this:



I don't know about you, but I see a baby in the cloud pattern on the left side of the sky. Let's take a second look:



See it?



Getting clearer!



Ah, there she is!



Oops! I hope my neighbor doesn't need his truck while the Sky Baby is around!

(The original baby is from a photo of a 2006 baptism. She had her father's arm around her hips, and no leg showing.) 

For extra credit, Carly wanted a photo of a reflection of an object. The house is pretty dark these days due to cloudy weather and early dusk, so I dug into my archives:



Karen

See also: Round Robin: The Beatles' Fool, Illustrated