Photo Blogging Challenge – Letters (July 2020)

July has come and gone. Time is flying yet simultaneously standing still. We were talking this weekend about how much we miss simple things like going to see a movie. Anyway, our theme for July was letters. Let's see what I've got!

Looking to get away but maintain social distancing, we headed to the woods. The forest, actually. Pecos, NM to be exact. We spent 4 nights backpacking near Pecos Baldy. Saw very few people outside of the four of us. It was pleasant.

On the way back to Texas, we passed through Ft. Sumner, NM. They are one of two places that lay claim to the final resting place of Billy the Kid. The other is about 30 minutes from home and being a proper Texas boy, I know the one near me is the real deal! 😏

While we were gone, my photo Drobo array failed. New ones are backordered. I have one at the office and was able to get my drives up and running and copied over temporarily saving me the time of having to restore from my cloud backup.

My oldest is no longer a teen. Happy Birthday, John.

July is my birthday month as well. My mother in law gifted me this. My college mascot is a bear.

There's five. There are letters in all those things! I wonder what August will bring.

Food Photo Challenge (July 2020) – Summer Drink

With COVID-19 still running rampant, my Friday night go-to, while open in a limited capacity, has become my Friday night to-go. I'm happy that they are offering curbside service so I can get my Tex-Mex fix. With the new rules, Texas now allows take out liquor drinks provided they are purchased with food. The containers also have a security tab that must stay affixed until you are out of the car. That's a lot of words to say that my summer drink is a refreshing margarita. Typically on the rocks as is this one. This particular one was even sweeter as it was enjoyed on my birthday!

Food Photo Challenge (June 2020) – Veggies

Is a pepper a vegetable? I hope so because this is all I got this month. I flaked out I guess. But take a look  at this sucker. It was huge. I wish I took one before I took a bite. That small bite was all I ate of it. It was pretty spicy!

Photo Blogging Challenge – The Notebook (June 2020)

It's time for another a lil hoohaa monthly challenge. This month's theme was The Notebook. I missed some obvious ones thinking back. But I have plenty of notebooks lying around.

This is my regular catch-all. It was a freebie from a conference a few years back. 

I really like Field Notes notebooks. Several years ago, one of my Boy Scouts told me about Recycled Firefighter. This one holds the Field Note memo book and is made of recycled fire hose by a retired fireman. This has traveled on all of our backpacking/canoeing adventures as my camp journal.

We have just a few notebooks at work holding the paper we don't need to scan or archive for long periods of time.

The last weekend in June is ARRL Field Day for Amateur Radio operators. I earned my Technician license a little more than a year ago. It is the base license and doesn't give me access to many bands. Normally that wouldn't be an issue, our club would get together in the park and I could work off a more advanced license. Due to COVID, our club did not have an official gathering. One of the other members invited me to his place, and practicing appropriate social distancing guidelines, allowed me to work his setup. We didn't get all the continental US states but we covered a great deal of them as well as Ontario and the Greater Toronto Area.

Do we still refer to laptops of a certain size as notebooks? As COVID numbers rise here in Texas again, I'm preparing to move my office back home for a time.

That's five and I'm done. Take a look over at alilhoohaa to see the other participants. And join in next month!

Photo Blogging Challenge (May 2020): Keeping busy

I work for an insurance company and we were deemed an essential business so I've had no real trouble keeping busy. We've got about 70% of our employees working from home now. The first couple of weeks of roll out were a challenge but it's working pretty great. I've done my best to keep busy when not working to try to maintain some sense of normalcy.

I've been holding Zoom meetings with a small group of new scouts who had just joined before the shutdown. It's not the same, of course, but I have enjoyed interacting with them and demonstrating scout skills. We even had a virtual campout.

I've been riding my bike again. The roads, even the back roads, are little less crowded. I love riding through the corn and wheat fields around my house.

I've been hiking a lot too. I'm lucky to have a beautiful city park with fantastic hiking/biking trails so close.

I did have to make a trip up to our Tulsa office to check on things. The Tulsa airport was packed with these parked American aircraft. It was surreal to see.

Back to the fun of keeping busy, I finally became one of those people baking bread. I found a copycat recipe for the Outback Steakhouse honey wheat bread. It was delicious.

We are just in the beginnings of June already. Summer will be here soon. Things are just so weird and different. My youngest child has graduated from high school. All of the college camps for the summer have been cancelled so his freshman experience is going to be so different as was his senior experience. I hesitate to call anything "the new normal" as people are wont to do. I don't think anything has stabilized enough to be called any kind of normal. We just keep doing what we do. Making the best of it. Keep taking pictures!

Food Photo Challenge (May 2020) – Snacks

I've been watching different folks over the last few months in my social media feed doing all sorts of baking. I've seen people even growing their own bread starters, naming them, caring for them as children, to counter the yeast shortage. I don't have the patience to grow my own starter but finally found some yeast. We had been talking about how good the bread was at Outback so I googled a copycat recipe and finally became one of those people baking bread. It turned out pretty good, if I say so myself!

Photo Blogging Challenge: April 2020 – Your (My) World

An April like no other April. This them was difficult as I had so many to choose from, if you don't want to choose, you can go check out my April. But here are the five-ish I pulled out.

Staying at home brought back new old activities. We haven't worked a jigsaw puzzle in years.

Nature keeps on like nothing is going on. Birds, squirrels, even snakes, have been particularly active.

Family Easter Dinner was unlike any we have experienced before. But it was great to see and hear from our family even if we are apart.


My baby sister, turned 50 this month. We had big plans for celebration but those were all cancelled. Instead, we had a socially distant tailgate party for her with cupcakes, Taco Bueno, and at least six feet of separation.
She can still do a cartwheel without breaking anything. Click through the video.


I rented a 24 yard rolloff dumpster and cleaned out our family garage/storage. 40+ years of old paint and garbage accumulated and is now gone. Room for new stuff!


I had to sneak in a sixth; I made it smaller. It wouldn't be spring without our family bluebonnet photo!


So there you go. April at home.Head over and check out the others at a lil hoohaa. And maybe join in next month.

Food Photo Challenge (April 2020): Dinner

Dinners in the time of COVID have been kind of different. My favorite local spots have been doing curbside and family dinners so I'm doing my part to help keep them going in these weird times. Bangkok Royal has been a favorite for nearly 30 years. Cashew Chicken (HOT HOT HOT HOT HOT HOT, no really a HOT number of stars).  It's so good. Not the same as being there but I'll take it!

Photo Blogging Challenge (March 2020): Seven

Wow, this month has ended quite a bit different than we started! The theme for this month is Seven. Let's go on and get started.

Baylor University is celebrating 175 years, it was chartered before Texas was a state. This is Judge Baylor. He has a pink nose thanks to the Noze Brothers paying a visit.


After the social distancing guidelines came about, we have tried to find some out of the way parks to walk the dogs. This one has a disc golf course. It was advertised as 9 holes, but it appears they are up to 18, sharing baskets. How fortunate that hole 7 is shared with hole 1(+)6.


How's about seven cows standing in a field?


We have a Jeep CJ7 that needs some work. John loves it but it just got to be too unreliable once he moved off campus. It's waiting for summer for school to let out so John can get back to troubleshooting.


I finished up the month with a 8K trail run/hike that was turned into a virtual. I had the course directions so went out and hiked it alone Sunday morning. I made a wrong turn or two and that added to my mileage. And then I dropped signal on the GPSr just shy of seven miles, that drives me crazy! But it still has a seven in it.


That's five. Let's see what the April challenge brings. Thanks for visiting.

Food Photo Challenge (March 2020): Lunch

A Jamaican restaurant opened late last year. What a great time to be trying to make a restaurant go, eh? Many places are doing curb side take out and family meals trying to stay open as long as they can while we are social distancing. Tru Jamaica is good! We've been once to dine in when they were just opened. They were having oven problems so we didn't get a meat patty. I was happy to find them available and even happier that they taste just like the islands. The plate is rounded out with some jerk chicken, plantains, roasted veggies and peas and rice. So tasty! And it was a lovely day so we at outside.

Vernal Equinox 2020 - COVID-19 Edition

Picked up some BBQ for dinner and a sandwich for lunch. Supporting our locals, Curb side pick up. Stopped in the park for lunch.


HonkyTonk Kid Rye Melt. Chopped brisket and cheese for days on a marble rye!

Short walk to stretch my legs. Social distancing was observed.


A friend was waiting when I got home.



Old Sadie was dragging today so Amy and Rosie went on and we took the circle. Lots of sniffs.


Can you see the bee?


HonkyTonk Kid brisket and sausage along with some Dr Pepper baked beans. The beans may have been a tad too sweet!


Laid outside by the pond a bit. Taking some time to notice what's around me.

Ended the day with music. Willie Nelson's Luck Family Reunion was cancelled but it didn't stop the music. A night of Skype and Facetime sets from the performers.

Will and I saw Paul at last year's Old Settler's which has also been postponed due to the COVID19.

Food Photo Challenge (February 2020): Breakfast

I'm not a big breakfast eater. I like to sleep until the last possible second and scramble to rush out the door. I get my good breakfast eating in on the weekends but just not much during the week. I love breakfast foods. Breakfast for Dinner is the greatest.

I couldn't pass up when my friend, The HonkyTonk Kid, announced a special BBQ sandwich using waffles for the bread. He baked the waffles with those little sugar balls so they got all good and carmelized. You had your choice of meats, I did chopped beef. It also come with 2 strips bacon, Muenster and colby jack cheese, and a choice of sauces. I chose the Strawberry Chipotle.

I present the My Liege’s Sandwich!




It was so good. It came with a little side of fruit and yogurt to cool things down. Also, his place is the only place I ever drink Mountain Dew. I really stay away from sodas for the most part. I would totally eat this for breakfast!

Photo Blogging Challenge – Money (February 2020)

I got to tell you, I've been really busy at work and I just didn't think about this project until this weekend. I pulled up the prompt and took a look at what I had shot and nothing was particularly good for the theme. I was digging around in  a closet and found some boxes. One contained a bunch of stuff I had saved from a trip to Europe in the summer of 1987. Among that stuff, some film containers with coins from some of the countries we visited. So, like my kids cramming for a final, I laid the coins out and did what I could with the iPhone. I'm not proud of them; but I didn't get a zero either! :)

So here's a small collection of coins. I need to get those cool little clip on lenses! These are from Czechoslovakia, pre-Czech Republic. We weren't supposed to take any money out so 18 year old me was terrified when we were stopped at the border.

The 500 Lira coins were my favorite. I keep some in my golf bag, I like to use them as markers.

I had a bunch of coins from Austria for some reason.

A few from England.

And we'll wrap it up with some Swiss francs.

I'll start working on next month right now so I don't have to cram!

Photo Blogging Challenge (January 2020): New

A new year, a new challenge, a new theme. It's all new. Let's go!


A new toy. I got a GoPro Fusion 360 degree camera to play with. You can do all sorts of things besides just VR. Like our Tiny Planet selfie at the top of Enchanted Rock.


My gym got these new bikes. Similar to Pelotons, they have trainers that lead you on bike rides through cool scenery to keep you mind off the exercise and that it is cold and rainy outside.


I bought a new reflector and gave it a shakedown on some senior portraits for Will.


Connor is our troops newest Eagle scout.


And I got a new library card. My kids had theirs but mine was long expired. No more!


So there's what's new. January was super busy; February is not slowing down. I can't wait to see what's next.