One A Day - Aug 31st

San Francisco 2009 a few weeks ago.

This was taken at the Ferry Building Farmers Market. They have a wide variety of fresh produce including many colors of chili peppers.

One A Day - On this day in 2002

Jumping back in time.

This was taken on Aug 30th 2002. I guess Disney was advertising Lilo and Stitch (which opened in 2002) by placing a giant Stitch Blow Up in the middle of Downtown Disney.

One A Day - Aug 29th

I am going to try to get myself to post more pictures so I will be jumping around in time. I will still do big posts from time to time but I would like to do a few One A Day posts for a bit. Let me know what you think.

This is a shot I took with my pocket camera on the way to dinner last night. This is in The Richmond. It was a beautiful day and it was about 75 degrees at 7:23 pm when this photo was taken.

Adventures in Nebraska Part 2

I'm back with more photos from our Nebraska trip.

I'll just jump right back into it. This post has fishing, family reunioning and a trip to the Omaha Zoo.

Saturday was the big family get together. As with all big events there was a lot of prep work to do. We didn't feel like doing prep work so we went fishing. Neither Donna or I really fish so we went along for the fun of it and to take pictures.

The trip started with Allen and Co. using a net to catch minnows in a local irrigation canal.

They netted a few crawdads too.

The fishing hole was off he beaten path so we had to beat our own path.

There were many red wing black birds for Donna to spy on.

We even had to beat our own path to the fishing hole.

The grass was high

The family tree was hand written on the back of this cool chart

This is a center pivot irrigation system for the corn. I left with a few of the men to "help" install a pivot stop.

This is a shot from the top op the pivot. I climbed up and started shooting.

This is Neal. He was riding the pivot to the stop we installed. The stop is a fail safe. If the software doesn't stop the pivot, the pivot stop will. It prevents major damage.

We then drove to the Soy Bean Field. There were a few more stops to drop off. In this picture 3 people talked about complex farming things way over my head in one of the most beautiful conference rooms I have ever been in.

This is a shot back at he farm. We investigated a barn that probably had not been investigated in years.

Here is Lyle with their old 69 Ford Falcon. This was the first car both he and Donna had ever driven as kids. It was pretty dirty and filled with mouse droppings. About a month later they sold it to a local for $1.

After our time with the family we were off on another adventure. There had been a bad hail storm and so we went to see the damage. Hail can devastate a corn crop. You can see the line between devastation and non devastation.

Here is a gravel crossroad that I liked.

At the Laurel public pool every hour or so they have Adult Swim. They kick out the kids and let the adults have a go. This kid could not wait to get back into the pool.

Here is a shot I took when I grabbed the rental car and drove around a bit.

And another on that trip

We went to The Omaha Zoo. In Nebraska you can carry a concealed weapon so in various public places (like the zoo) there are signs reminding you to leave your weapon behind.

A Nile monitor posed for me at the zoo.

A penguin swims like a torpedo.

At one of the aquariums, there was a fan hitting the top of the water and it caught my eye.

Paul feeds a pond with more Koi than you can imagine.

The zoo had an underground area that housed their nocturnal collection. They even themed some of the areas.

A Bat

They also had some crocodiles that looked cool with the reflection from the water's surface.

That's enough for now. See you soon.

Jon and Donna

Nebraska Family Reunion Part 1

So here it is! The first of the Nebraska posts.

Donna and I went to Nebraska to the Lindgren 2009 family reunion. I am a big fan of traveling and when I can take pictures it's even better. My only thoughts about Nebraska before this trip were created when I drove through the western portion as a junior high school student. Flat and boring were what came to mind. I had forgotten that anything that had sitting involved in Jr. High was considered boring. After visiting I now know that Nebraska is a very nice place to visit in the summer.

We arrived at the Airport in Omaha and I found this great landmark right away. As we were taking this picture I knew it would be the photo that kicked off this blog post.

We stopped in downtown Omaha and had lunch at a place right on the Missouri River. The red umbrellas covering the picnic tables got my attention.

We made the drive to Laurel NE and made it just in time to meet with family at one of the local churches. I was drawn to some of the lighting fixtures.

Andrea was not camera shy at all. I think I ended up with about 4 gigs of photos of her alone. She was always up to something cute.

Here is a row of mailboxes outside our condo.

We kicked off the family reunion right. They had about an hours worth of amazingly dangerouse fireworks. At dusk the kids started off with sparklers which I found photogenic.


No one was hurt (very much).

More sparkler action.

Paul had a Mickey Mouse Lightsaber. I found this intersting because the 2 large companies I have worked for are The Walt Disney Co. and LucasFilm Ltd.

The next day we drove to South Dakota to visit The National Music Museum.

Paul used an old PDA to snap photos of the cool instruments.

This museum was packed with all kinds of instruments.

Organ!

This whas their Johnny Cash exhibit.

I am often trying to take pictures that I think would make a good desktop image. Here is one that I had in mind.

The musuem had more harmonicas than I knew existed.

Of course I had to take an artsy shot of Donna.

This was a cool statuette in the lobby.

Here is a shot of an old barn on the farm that we visited every day.

Here is a shot of the mailbox that is associated with the farm.

The farm house is very old and there is plenty of room to keep things around. The National Geographic collection went back to the early 1900s.

That's it for now. I still have quite a few more Nebraska photos so I will get more up shortly.

Jon and Donna