Random Ramblings

Just a few random ramblings from the Payne home...

I took the boys to the father's and son's campout last weekend.  It rained the entire time and blew like crazy but the boys had a great time despite being covered in mud (we all came home without our shoes).  Wesley rode home in his underwear- we were so muddy, but we were happy when we got out of the truck...  (And yeah, we think Wesley cut his own hair- or at least we found either his or Rachel's hair on the bathroom floor).

For Mother's Day we had crab from the wharf in Washington DC (Maine ST. downtown).  I picked some up just before returning from the trip.  My boss snapped this pic- we both bought some live blue crab (behind me in the pic) which were cooked on the spot, flash frozen and boxed up on ice for the plane ride home  We also brought home some of the jumbo snow crab legs (in front of me in the pic).  How we made it through with 20 pounds of crab between us (full of nasty ooze inside) when you cannot even take a water bottle much less a thimble full of shampoo is beyond me.  We thought we had made a huge error and were going to have a crab feast in the security line of Dulles.

The Mother's Day dinner last Sunday was great- everyone loved the crab, even Rachel. 

For my Christmas present, Joy bought an .mp3 player for the stereo in our truck.  We finally installed it with cords coming out in the center console of the truck yesterday after some open heart surgery.  Joy came around the corner and saw the truck in pieces and started to worry a bit.  I couldn't shift after the first reassembly but it's all back together now:

And last but not least, the eclipse!

We all climbed on top of our next door neighbor's roof for the event.  Thankfully our kids didn't fall off and we had a nervous great time.  Our neighbor made a pinhole viewer out of a shoe box:

 

I bumped it right before I snapped this photo- look at the concentration to realign it.  I didn't figure out how to take a snapshot with my DSLR- I was placing viewing shades immediately against the lens but not touching (lens manually focused for infinity) which didn't work out for whatever reason.  The only photo I snapped during the "annularity" event (maximum eclipse) was through the shoebox: (unprocessed):

 (heavily processed, cropped):

 Main event:

 All of the next few photos were not processed at all: pretty cool to snap photos with light coming from a complete eclipse illuminated by the "ring of fire".

 Cool hand Luke:

 After maximum eclipse, I figured out that if the shades were held about 8 inches away, the camera could focus.
 (unprocessed):

 (cropped, heavily processed):

We had no idea that the completely full eclipse was going to pass over Albuquerque so it was an extra cool treat.