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.

Football gone bad

I spent a lot of the weekend watching football, mostly college teams.  What a miserable weekend.  Almost everything I could hope for, failed.

• Michigan lost to Ohio State
• Florida State, the ACC's leader, lost
• Clemson, the ACC's second team, lost
• Notre Dame, who I hate, won and locked in a place for the national championship
• UNC won (Teach your kids the ABC's:  Anybody But Carolina)

The only thing that went ok was NC State beating Boston College.  Of course, the Park City high school team might go toe-to-toe with Boston College.  This win gives us a better bowl bid, perhaps.  Should we celebrate?  Nope.  The next day our Athletic Director fired our coach.

Tom O'Brien spent 6 years coaching NC State's football team. He came in to take over Chuck Amato's little disaster.  He rebuilt the program and created some real discipline. Unfortunately, he just didn't create enough wins or enough excitement.  Some people look at the fact that the team has gone to bowls the last three seasons and wondered "how can you fire that guy?"

• We have a losing ACC record
• We having a losing record against Boston College, Wake Forest and Maryland, the worst three team in the ACC
• We barely beat Maryland this year, making us 1-14 on the road against  teams in our division
• We finish in the bottom half of the conference in recruiting every year.  Last year we were dead last.
• Season ticket sales are down 1,000 since Tom took over

He's a great guy.  He cleaned up the program, but it just doesn't look like he was ever going to be the guy to take us to the next level. Now we just have to wait and see who we can talk into coming.

What a nasty football weekend.

Thanksgiving weekend

We just finished up a very nice Thanksgiving weekend, except for the total lack of snow.  PCMR and Canyons are both open now, but with only a few runs and no fresh snow in sight.

The pets are loving the change to the winter holidays.  Jasper gets cold weather to go out and play in and Cosette gets a fairly frequent box update from Amazon.

Thankfully, she doesn't actually play with any of the low-hanging Christmas ornaments, but she does like napping under the tree.

For Thanksgiving, Julie cooked up a wonderful meal of turkey, potatoes, stuffing, cranberry sauce, and green beans.  Then Bill, Loris and Seth Benson came over to join us, bringing some appetizers, a wonderful mushroom soup and a salad.  Tons and tons of glorious food topped off with Julie's pumpkin pie and some Deer Valley carrot cake. Needless to say, I have gained several pounds over the last few days.

While my photographic skills are improving, I have one fatal flaw as an event photographer.  Once the event starts, I get distracted and forget to take pictures. I walked around before dinner taking pictures of the Christmas decorations, the table setting, the pets, ...  The beautiful turkey was done, but wrapped up tightly.  Once everyone arrived and we started eating, I forgot to take pictures of the people, the turkey, or anything for that matter. Maybe next holiday I will just walk around with a Gopro camera strapped to my head.

Julie's mom sent us a pretty floral arrangement. I think was part Thanksgiving and part Happy Birthday.  Today's is Julie's birthday! No huge plans but we are doing dinner and a movie (Lincoln).

On Saturday we journeyed up to the Montage Hotel for their tree lighting.  In the lobby, they have a huge Gingerbread House.  They also have two Gingerbread Dog Houses for Monty and Jonas, the hotel's pets.

What does it take to build such a large creation, besides many, many hours?  480 pounds of flour, 165 pounds of sugar, 135 pounds of butter, ...  Now I understand why they charge over $800 per night for a hotel room.  Someone has to pay for this place!

Julie, in her younger days (two days before today's birthday).  You have to get up around 9,000 feet to have all that snow in the background.

The Montage was also serving Smores, with about 10 different flavors of marshmallows.  Hannah seemed to be loving hers, although her marshmallow never got toasted, or even very warm. Although this misses the true pleasure of a Smore, apparently a graham cracker, chocolate, and marshmallow sandwich was just fine.

It got surprisingly cold as the sun set, so everyone was getting quite impatient for the tree lighting.  They had some fires out for warmth, but I think they could better be described as smoke pots.  When the trees finally did light up, they were very pretty.

Other than our fabulous Thursday dinner and the follow-up leftover meals, it was a fairly mellow weekend.  We watched a lot of football, because that's what you're supposed to do. We avoided Black Friday, Grey Thursday, and every other form of panicked shopping.

Next we are off to Florida for Seth Benson's wedding.  Hoping for warm sunny weather!

No elk, again

Chad Rexroad, a friend of mine, texted me a blurry phone photo of a herd of elk meandering along the Jeremy Ranch golf course.  I went out early this morning to see if I could find them for some pictures.  Elk seem to both sense me and hate me, so of course they were no where to be found.

I did get a view of a Bald Eagle. Not the best of photos, but decent considering it was early morning light and he was about 1/4 mile away.

Kind of makes me wonder what the hell Benjamin Franklin was thinking when he proposed the turkey as our national bird.

A fairly serious oops

Our Park City neighborhood has about 40 condos and 30 single family home lots. Most of the lots are built on, but a few of the remaining ones have recently been sold and construction is starting.  What you see below, isn't that.

This is what happens when someone buys the lot next door and has it surveyed, only to discover that you built your driveway and retaining wall a few feet onto their lot.  You have to tear down the wall, cut back your driveway, and rebuild the wall. Ignoring the expense, I wonder how long it will be before someone backs out of the garage and goes over the edge. Can you say 11-point turn?

Kindle vs Tablet

Tim Huntley, a close friend and business partner of mine, knew that I had both an iPad and a Kindle.  He asked "If you were doing it again from scratch, what would you buy?"  It seemed like a question that a lot of people might have, especially at Christmas time.  Here is a cleaned up version of my response:

• Hard core book readers: get a Kindle Paperwhite. Very light. Very easy to read. The battery lasts eight weeks. Much cheaper than a tablet at $139.  You can also get a version for $119, but it shows you some ads.
• Everyone else: get a tablet. My choice would be the Apple iPad or the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2. For pure reading, it is heavier, shines a light in your eyes, and the battery only lasts about 10 hours. However, it does everything else. I almost never take my laptop when I travel. A tablet is enough. I read lots more news and magazines than I do books, at least right now. Applications like Flipbook make this incredibly simple. Throw in everything else a tablet does: games, maps, sports, ESPN streaming, movie watching, web browsing, …

Most people seem to discover they use them more than they thought they would. For any brand of tablet, get at least 32GB, not 8 or 16. I wouldn’t bother getting the cellular modem support unless you will be traveling a lot with it. Both Julie and I have WiFi versions and we are quite happy with that.

Tim said he is leaning towards the Kindle, but made a good point.  At just a bit over $100, if you decide you don't like it, it's not the end of the world.

Why I Won't Touch Windows 8 Yet

Microsoft did its big launch of Windows 8 a few weeks ago.  I am normally on the bleeding edge of technology, but this is one I won't touch for six months or a year.  Windows 8 runs on three separate platforms, and here is where I think it is for each:

• Phones:  It's getting decent reviews on phones and I think that the only things missing are some new phones and a few more key applications.  As much as I "must" have an excellent phone, I would give this another 3-6 months.
• Tablets:   Much like the phones, Windows 8 seems well designed for tablets and I really like the systems with integrated keyboards as covers.  Still needs more apps, but if I was buying anything with Windows 8 today, it would be a tablet.
• Laptops and desktops:  Simply put, don't do it.  Not all your apps will run.  Not all your drivers will work.  The main interface is really designed for touchscreen and is much harder to use with a mouse.  You will spend a lot of very frustrating time doing the most basic navigation.  If you buy a new computer, definitely, without a doubt, get Windows 7.