it’s something…

I am going to guess that you figured out that I went to San Fran. It was our first “real” family vacation. Of course I am not sure how the hell we are going to pay for it…Anyway let me get started with day 1, well I guess technically it is day 2 because we really didn’t do anything on the day we got there.

We started the day with a little ride on the famous cable cars…

From the cable car I saw stuff like this…

We got off the cable car in China Town

Then we walked around a bit in the downtown area, I think they call it the financial district. There was a bank building on every corner so this is a pretty safe guess.

Walking downhill we eventually ended up at the Ferry Building. I don’t have a good shot of the building but here is one of the old timey commuter trains that run up and down the water front area.

Across the street from the ferry building is a park area. The water one is some kind of interactive foutain thing for the kiddies to play on.

We walked around to the back of the Ferry Building and get our first good look at the Bay bridge…

And this is where the ferries dock…no real significance, just thought it was a cool pic.

And a boat docked at Pier 39…think I-Drive crammed on a pier, but I had some pretty good chili in a sourdough bread bowl.

Here is the ubiquitous wharf shot…OK it is not entirely ubiquitous cause is has one of them trains in it and stuff.

We really didn’t do anything in The Wharf, but the wax museum was in this area and my kid wanted to see it…please I beg of you do not waste your money on this.

This Coke sign is on the side of The Cannery…think touristy shopping mall crammed in an old factory.

The ubiquitous Ghirardelli shot…well again not 100% typical of the shots I have seen. Something to note here…there is no factory here to tour and we didn’t find any free chocolate. We did however find a coupon for free chocolate a couple days later.

This is boat parked…docked whatever, at maritime museum area…maybe we should have gone over there to learn more about it.

This is what the a typical row of houses looks like. These are located along a street with a big huge fucking hill. We for whatever reason decided to walk up this hill…

Near the top of the hill I turned around and took this shot. This is not the first shot I took of “The Rock”, but it is by far the most interesting.

At the top of the hill…or not even all the way to the top is the famous crooked street.

OK so maybe not the pic you expected, but from the top of the street it is hard to get an interesting shot.

From here we set off to walk to a place call The Palace of the Fine Arts. Looking at the map it didn’t seem all that far, but after a few blocks I said let’s just get on a bus…my wife says no let’s just walk. We ended up walking about halfway there and finally I convinced her to get on a bus. When we get off the bus we pass by this backyard.

Not only do they have a great backyard…they have a great view from their front yard…

This is the Palace of Fine Arts. It is really stunning. Here are a couple more pictures.

Then we road a bus back to the hotel and crashed. We hit pretty much all of the touristy things in one day. We didn’t really explore them but we can say we saw them. So if you want an in depth review of these “attractions” sorry I can’t give it to you, but it seemed to be a lot of souvenir type shops.

Oh yeah sorry for not adding in the clicky linky things…it is way too much of a pain in the ass so you will have to go here to see bigger ones.

I am thinking you might have noticed the lack of updates over the last week or so…and you may be wondering if something horrible happened to me. Well lucky for you I am fine, but unfortunately I don’t have time to say much right now so I will leave you with this…

I love to find interesting stuff in unexpected places. Like when you have to drive around the back of a run down shopping center to get to the entrance that lets you turn left on the street you need to turn on or you could go out another way and drive around the block or something but that would just be silly when all you have to do is drive around the back, but I digress or run on or something.

Anyway…I was driving behind a shopping center and noticed that the old retention/muck pond thing was covered in weeds. However most of the weeds are those water plants with the fuzzy bulbous things…you know what I am talking about right?

Hmmm…what are they called…not reeds…CATTAILS!!!

Fucking cattails…got to love the goog man.

BTW that whole area there is the retention/muck pond thing covered in weeds.

Today I realized that the Kwik-E-Mart was on Apopka-Vineland Rd. and not in Apopka. Apopka-Vineland Rd. is on my way home…sort of. So I figured I would swing by there on my home to check it out for myself. Boy what a fucking mistake that was.

We moved to a new office a few months ago and there are about three different ways that I can go to get home from the office. When we first moved I went the way that took me by this Sev everyday. Then I got way too fed up with the tourists I would encounter going this way so I started going another way…that isn’t much better, but better is better. So I went the “old” way today and it sucked balls…and it fucking sucked before I even got to the tourist area. Luckily once I got to the tourist area the traffic wasn’t so bad so it actually only took me a little extra time to get home…even with a stop to grab this pic…

UPS dropped off a package for me today. This was not a surprise because I have been tracking the package since Sunday. Sure I know that UPS doesn’t do anything on Sundays, but when I order something online and they send the “Click here to track your package” link, I have to click it. I can rationalize that part, the part that bothers me a bit is that I tracked it at least two more times on Sunday…

Anyway, UPS finally dropped it off today. It is called a Gorillapod. Many of you are now saying: “What the fuck is a gorillapod?” It is a very “bendy” table top tripod. I have been looking for a tripod that I can throw in my bag and carry around all the time. I was looking for a more traditional model, but kept coming back to this one. Mostly cause the shortest traditional tripod I could find was 20 inches long when collapsed…little too long for everyday carrying around.

I think I will be able to some fun with this though..

I stuck my film camera on here for the shot, but realized it took “focus” away from the tripod.

More info on the pod here…

And…I bought mine here.

I guess this is a pretty decent pic, but it doesn’t really excite me all that much. The problem is that I don’t have any other new pics to post, and I really don’t want to deal with the tons of email I get when I neglect to post something. So I guess we can call this B-Roll. It doesn’t suck, but if I had something better I wouldn’t have posted it.

Of course you guys probably love it…

I stopped in the middle of the road to take this picture. I drive by this pond all the time and and have wanted to take a picture of it, but it was never “right”. I am still not sure that this is the best shot I can get of it, but I think it is decent. I don’t think I have too much else to say…maybe cause I know the new episode of Dirty Jobs is getting ready to come on and I just want to wrap this up before that starts…

I love old oak trees. For one thing they have great “bones”. I have taken a lot of pictures of big old oak trees. I am not sure that there have been any that really capture the interestingness of the trees. One problem with capture an oak on “film” is the shear size of the “good” ones. It is hard to get a good perspective of the tree. Most of the time the trees are in the middle of “stuff” that gets in the way. Stuff being anything from shrubs and weeds or other trees to junk left behind (or built) by people.

So it is nice to find a lone oak standing there “posing” for me to take its picture. Well…it would be nicer if it was still surrounded by woods, but it is good that the developer who cleared this land decided to leave a few behind…especially this one. I think with this shot I was finally able to capture some of that interestingness.

There are times in our life when we must sit back and take a good look at where we are…

Hmm…that doesn’t work so well for me. I have issues with introspection. Hell I am having trouble writing something deep about not being deep. I guess that pretty much says everything I need to say about that.

So how about something shallow instead?

Something like a shallow…hmm…it isn’t a pond really. I guess they call them pools. Reflection pools. Yeah that’s it…reflection pools. There is really cool reflection pool on the mall in DC. It reflects the big white phallus known as the Washington Monument. This phallus isn’t quite that big, but it has a pretty decent sized pool…maybe it is some form of reflection pool overcompensation.

I will not comment on the “extras” in this pic that annoy me…

I have mentioned before that I am not a fan of power lines “stinking up” my photos. So tonight I was out driving around in and undeveloped are of a new development and found what seemed to be an interesting shot. So I took a few shots then walked through the weeds to take some pictures of this pond I noticed. Those shots all kind of sucked because there were too many weeds and shit, but as I was walking back to the truck I noticed that the light behind the towers had changed and it actually looked really good, so I setup the tripod and grabbed some “proper” shots.

While I was “processing” the shots I thought I would try converting it to B&W. Now I don’t know which one I like better…