Our bodacious Christmas party

We are done with the bulk of our travels and will be here for the holidays so we decided to have a big holiday party. With all the other parties going on, travels, and family arriving, we didn't know what to expect for people attending. In rough numbers, we invited 50 and 45 came, and some of those missing were out of town. Awesome!  It's great to have that many friends gathered together.

Julie is a great chef and normally does a huge amount of work for our gatherings, but serious food and beverage for 45 people was out of the question. She found a local catering company, Ellie's. This turned out to be an incredible choice. The food was outstanding and the service was friendly and close to perfect. For anyone in Park City looking for catering, you can't go wrong with her company, which you can find on the web here.  It is a wonderful thing to get done with a long night of partying and discover that your kitchen is clean and put away!

One of the most intriguing laws of physics, much like Newton's laws of attraction, is that everyone will always end up gathered in and around the kitchen.  We have a large house. Right next to the kitchen are a big living room and dining room.  Downstairs there is a huge family room with a pool table and a bar.  Where did all 40+ people gather?  Within about 15 feet of the poor catering people, who were trying to keep food going.

Alison, Arnie and Manette are standing within three feet of the caterers' work space.

Christmas head gear was in style.  Here we have Frank, Julie and JW.  Julie is sporting a Christmas tree hat given to her by Alison. Frank and JW were University of Maryland college buddies of our home builder, Rob Schumacher. It is amazing that they have all settled in Park City.

We kept trying to find things to make the party more fun, and it came together perfectly in the last few days. Our friend Diane, in the red dress and mistletoe hat, offered us the use of her portable dance floor.  We cleared out a big chunk of the family room and made it dance central. What a great thing to own, or better yet, to have a generous friend own one.

And what is dancing without at least once instance of the Village People's YMCA?

Our neighbors Sally and Hannah, tearing up the floor.  Hannah was focused on how all the women danced and did her best to mimic it.

It's scary to have this much trouble so close together:  Derick, Doug and Bill.  Derick and Doug are both snowboarders.  I guess no one ever explained to them that it was for the younger generations. I need to ask them if Medicare covers snowboard accidents.

Manette and Theresa hamming it up. 

Taking a brief pause on the dance floor, me, Lisa, Mario and Julie.  I love how Julie's necklace took the flash from the camera and concentrated it into a little flash.

More on the dance floor.

Loris and JW mellowing out and watching the dance entertainment.

If there was any one true accomplishment for the evening, besides the obvious good friends, food and drink, it was getting this many people out of the kitchen at once.

Julie did a great job decorating the house, finding an excellent caterer, and making sure the entire event ran smoothly.  As your typical guy, I moved furniture and shoveled the driveway snow.  Now we are just trying to decide whether to give Diane back her dance floor or just have weekend dance parties for the next few weeks.

And we end with a transition.  This is Julie with Dick Pick.  I met Dick as a fellow Mountain Host at PCMR.  He's an avid photographer and today we are heading down to New Mexico to do a few days of wildlife photography. Hopefully that will generate a lot of nice pictures.

Also, I put a lot more pictures from the party out on DropBox here.

Good snow

Finally got some good snow here in the mountains.  Julie and I went out to ski at Deer Valley and ended up skiing and lunching with our next door neighbors, the Lutzkers. 

If you can't figure us out, from left to right:  Sally, Julie, Hannah, me, Monty.

We should get another foot or two in the next two days, but I will be down in New Mexico.  Julie will just have to ski it for me!

Steve's Security Update

The other day I was reading this lengthy article in Wired magazine. It's a story explaining how a technical journalist got hacked (very easily) and lost a lot in the process.  If you have 10 minutes, I would suggest reading the article.  If not, here is my quick synopsis:

1. Too many people use the same password for lots of important web sites (email, banking, ...) and there have been lots of hacking events where millions of userid and passwords were stolen and posted to the Internet.
2. It is very easy to buy most of the important personal information for anyone.  This includes things like your social security number, previous and current addresses, and even mother's maiden name.  When you call into a service, like a credit card company, this information is 99% of what they ask you.
3. If someone can get into your main email account, then it is very easy for them to get into most of your other accounts.  They just go to the password reset page and it sends your new password to your registered email account, which they can read, and then put in the trash so you don't see it.  That's sure simple.

There's more in the article, but I found it a bit disconcerting.  I am not going to dive into a cave of paranoia, but I did make one change. My primary email is through Gmail and Google has added an option called two-step verification.  Instead of just wanting you to know a password, it wants you to know a password and have your cellphone.  I will let Google explain it to you, but it took me about 20 minutes to set up the first time and for my day-to-day email with Outlook, my iPad and iPhone, it won't take any additional time.  If I try to log in from another computer, phone or application, it will require another minute or two.

Here is Google's  little video explaining it and there's a link to take you to the setup.

By the way, I think this works best with phone's that get text messages, but you can set it up so that you can do the same thing with a voice call instead.  As an aside, if you still don't get text messages on your phone, I would offer that you may want to join us up here in the 21st century. 

A wee bit of skiing

Julie and I went over to Deer Valley for our second day of skiing this year.  Honestly, the snow sucks so we are working on a lot of man-made stuff.  They are doing a nice job with what they have, but we could certainly use a few big dumps. With two days of skiing, we have to be getting close to four hours on the mountain. 

Here Julie is styling her optic yellow pants so she can be spotted anywhere on the mountain.

 One of the houses just to the right of Julie's left ear (were it showing) is ours. 

Think snow!!!

Last Moments of a Bison Calf

I was reading one of my photography blogs when I ran across this story from a very impressive photographer.  It is one of the more moving things I have read and it really makes me wonder how we can treat other animals around the planet like such garbage.

Grab a Kleenex, click here and read...

The office window view

I was sitting at my desk typing this afternoon when I caught a bit of movement to my left.  Here is what I saw. This mule deer was right outside the window, snacking around the bird feeders.

 Julie and I watched him for a few minutes before he finally got tired of eating there and wandered off down the driveway.

Yes, there is a fair amount of snow on the driveway.  I refuse to run the snow blower until the snow stops and the wind dies down.

The harsh realities of winter

One of the saddest days every year is when Jasper and I stop on the way to Home Depot, only to discover that Jasper's llama friends have all been trucked off to a warmer location for the winter.  He stands at the fence searching and sniffing the wind for about two minutes before finally walking back to the truck.

It will be six months before we see them again.

Just a pretty cloud day

I wandered up onto the hill behind our house with the dog and a camera. On our side of the hill, it was completely sunny with blue skies (boring). On the other side, the clouds were quite heavy with the hills acting as a dam.

This is Deer Crest, right above the Deer Valley base.  I really should try playing with black and white more often.  It is a skill I am completely lacking.

This is a view looking down 224 towards I-80.  You can see where the "dam" has burst and clouds are rolling over the hills and into the valley near the White Barn. The ski runs on the left are at Canyons.

Benson Wedding in Fort Lauderdale - Part 2

Yesterday I wrote about Fort Lauderdale and our visit.  Now, on to the wedding.

Living in Park City, we don't find many opportunities to get dressed up.  You can go years without having to wear a suit here. It was fun getting to clean up for the event.

Julie, Loris (the groom's mom), and Kathy all looked stunning.  This is in the hotel bar right before the wedding.  It was nice to have the barbeque Friday night, the wedding and the reception all at the Harbor Beach Marriott.  Not only is it convenient, it eliminates any issues of driving after a few drinks.

Jim, Bill (the groom's dad), and Dave (the groom's brother-in-law).  Same bar. Same time.

The wedding was held outside and the weather mostly cooperated.  It was sunny and warm but a bit breezy. Erica is Jewish, but I would have to describe the ceremony as "just a tiny bit Jewish". I like weddings that are short enough to keep your undivided attention, but long enough to make you feel like you have witnessed something important.  This one was right in that sweet spot.

The happy couple after it was all over, or just starting, depending on how you want to look at it.

Bobbie, Julie, Bill and Jim.  Jim and Bobbie are our friends who live in Fort Lauderdale but have a condo in our Park City neighborhood.

Here we are at the reception.  I normally don't end up with photos of me, but Kathy was nice enough to take a few of us.

And a close-up. I am fairly certain it wasn't intentional, but the wedding's flower arrangements went absolutely perfectly with my tie.  I figure that's at least a good omen.

Jim and Kathy, right before hitting the dance floor.

They did the traditional "chair ride" for the bride and groom, the bride's parents and then the groom's parents.  It was tough getting a good photo with my little camera, but this one came out ok.

I think they made a wise decision doing this very early at the reception. I understand a lot of weddings do this late into the drinking, which has to make the likelihood of serious injury go way up.

One of the hits of the evening was the photo booth.  You could either do something serious or get dressed up in the fun accessories. We tried piling everyone in and getting a shot, but it was way too crowded. This shot was in the photo booth, but with my camera and the curtain open.

A shot of your ever so serious photographer.

The Benson family: Shannon, Seth (the groom), Loris and Bill.

By the end of the night, things were slowing down pretty dramatically. We left the dancing and the reception and went to the bar.  Everyone was tired and mellowing out.

It was an excellent weekend.  We got to hang out by the pool, walk along the beach, see friends we don't see enough, and celebrate the marriage of the Benson's son. Spectacular!

Benson Wedding in Fort Lauderdale - Part 1

Julie and I took off for Florida to see Seth Benson (son of our friends Bill and Loris) get married. It has been a long while since I have spent time on the beaches in Florida.  I'll cover the actual wedding stuff in another blog entry.  This will just deal with the non-wedding part of our trip.

The weather was probably common for Florida this time of year:  lows around 70, highs around 80, scattered showers, and quite blustery.  Julie manages to look wonderful, even standing out in the gale.  I feel lucky to have "married up".  Bummer for Julie.

How can you tell you are in Florida?  When you go to a small drug store, the aisle for sun tan lotion just keeps on going into the distance.  Not nearly this much on the shelves in Park City, although our county does manage to lead the country in skin cancer.  Perhaps we could learn something?

We saw quite a few kite boarders out blasting around in the ocean. We were impressed at their skills, given how windy it was. That was until we came across this one.  As best we can tell, it wasn't someone surfing a bit too close to the beach.  It looked like someone had brought their kite up into the parking lot to go home.  Like I said, it was very windy.

It got worse though.  The trapeze part of the kite was about 30 feet  up in another tree.  In between the trees, the line was wrapped around a light pole.  I can't imagine how they got everything down, but the next day it was all gone.

Boats, boats, and more boats. 

The cruise liners just keep getting bigger.  On Saturday, there were eight of them in port and they are all the size of small towns. I understand ballast for ships, but for the life of me, I can't figure out why these don't blow over in a stiff wind.

Right before the wedding this "little" one headed out to sea. My guess is that this one is half the size of the one above. Just the same, it is about 5,000 people more than I ever want to be on a boat with.

Jim and Bobbie are two of our neighbors in Park City. Their primary home is in Fort Lauderdale and they have a condo in April Mountain.  We met up with them several times during our stay, including a visit to their beautiful house and a dinner at Grill 66. 

Just as we finished dinner, we were looking out the window and saw the boat on the left come in to dock.  It is the 257 foot long Pegasus V.  They had three small boats helping nudge it into its spot on the pier.  I guess my technique of "steer  it towards the pier until you hear a thump" isn't as effective with a $100M boat. The bumpers that go between the boat and the pier were the size of a small car.  We took our wine outside and watched for about 30 minutes as they were docking.  When we left, they still weren't done.  Glad it comes with a crew of 27.

There are some gorgeous photos here, where they also mention you can rent the yacht for $650,000, as long as you get it in the off season.  It does sleep 12 though, so you can split the costs with some friends. 

Jim described Fort Lauderdale as "ground zero for yachts".  Even though I grew up just outside of Annapolis and had a house at the beach in NC, I saw more yachts this weekend than I have seen in my entire life.  It was nothing to have a 60 foot boat docked behind your house.  100+ footers were everywhere.  If you had a 30 footer, it was probably just a tender to get to your bigger boat or a little fishing skiff to get around. 

I know that fishermen always have to hurry up and get to the fish, but I have never seen this before.  I always thought the offshore boats with three 250 horsepower engines were amazing.  How about four 300 horsepower outboards?   You catch a few fish, but burn several thousand gallons of fuel doing it.

All the kites, boats, and such just don't compare to the joys of a simple walk down the beach.  Bill, Jim and I enjoyed our last day in Florida.

Kathy Compton is a big fan of breakfast places and so we made a big adventure out of brunching each day.  I wasn't smart enough to get pictures, but we ate twice at the Floridian and once at Lesters.  These are both greasy spoon diners serving ginormous servings of breakfast.  I recommend them to anyone visiting Fort Lauderdale.

It was a nice visit and a great place for a wedding, but Florida will never be my state of residence.  Other than the appeal of the water and boating, I just don't see the attraction.  I guess it's good that we all like different things or we would all end up in one place, and that would be a bit crowded.