The Beauty of Junk

I randomly came across some amazing photos today of my former home town, Rio Linda, CA. There is not much that is beautiful about the town, in my opinion anyway, but these photos capture a side of Rio Linda that could only appear beautiful on film, or in this case in pixels. Click here to see how Steve Shames made Rio Linda's reputation for yard-cars really shine in a different light, high-speed infrared film to be precise. I never though junk could look so good.

#1 Dad

Being the father of twin toddlers, I have little free time, so I am somewhat behind in my posts, picture and video editing, etc. I even forgot to post on my first Father's Day! So, let's pretend it is Father's Day again. If it were, I would have posted these cool photos the girls made for me at school (aka daycare). Apparently I am the #1 Dad, in their eyes anyway. Don't mind the grumpy looks on their faces. The sun was in their eyes, and they don't seem to like the sun much, which is great for them since we don't see it that often up here.

Sleeved

Stickers are THE RAGE in our house these days. The girls wear them with pride, as you can see here in this picture of Olivia displaying her "sleeved" look. She even has a little 'tude in her facial expression to accompany the look of a hard-core sticker girl. This look says, "Don't mess with me! I've got Hello Kitty watchin' my back, fool!" As you can see, we have a lot of fun around here with the little things.

Hey From the Bay

I am about to settle in for the night in my hotel room near the corporate hive in San Jose, and I realized I had not posted in a while. I am watching the local news cast on channel 2 (a former haunt on weekday nights), and here it what I have learned about what's happening in my former home region.

* The beaches in Santa Cruz are polluted
* An elderly woman was killed by a train in Oakland
* The 49'ers are trying to move to Santa Clara and still keep their team name
* An SF supervisor is being ousted because he lied about which neighborhood he lived in
* The SJ Mercury News is laying off more staff
* A 5 acre, uninhabited (and probably uninhabitable) island near the Richmond Bridge bought in the 1960s for $50k is up for sale for $10 million.

I didn't hear a single positive news story in the one hour broadcast. Not much has changed in the Bay Area. It makes me miss my beautiful Bainbridge Island, and my wonderful girls at home (mom, and twins).

Accountants

After writing the entry about the girls counting their green beans at dinner, I began to wonder if that was indicative of a tendency toward an Accounting career. After all, they were counting BEANS, so maybe they will be corporate bean counters some day?

I hope not...

Counting

We were pleasantly surprised yesterday when the girls began picking up the green beans we served with their dinner, and started to count them. They had a few of the numbers in the correct sequence, but just the fact that they understand the whole concept of counting, at less than two years old, amazed us.