With the aid of a cat, a duck family and birthday candles, I explain why I am blogging when I am not blogging

The duck family, a few days older. My, how those lings

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I cannot not blog the Fourth of July, so here it is

Somebody strung up a badminton net. Kalib loved

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Lisa, post surgery, with cats Zed and Junipurr

It's now late Wednesday night, just tiny bit shy of eight days since I made my last post very early last Wednesday morning. Over the week, I had shot a number of things I thought I would make room for in my Wednesday post, including some material that I believe was quite good, such as a study series depicting Charlie buckling himself into the driver's seat of Lisa's new car and then driving away.

Yes, it is quite an excellent series - and I got a pretty damn good picture of a cat in my rear view mirror on a day when I had just depressed myself by... well, it would take too long to explain.

So I thought I would put up a pretty long post tonight with many pictures.

But you know what? I am tired. And a little bit discouraged. My good black cat, Jim, is sitting between my keyboard and monitor, making it a bit challenging to see what I am doing and to make this post.

But that is not why I am tired and a bit discouraged.

I am tired because I spent most of this day in Anchorage, much of it sitting in the waiting room of the day surgery wing at the Alaska Native Medical Center.

My daughter, Lisa, underwent knee surgery today. For a torn meniscus in her knee. It was supposed to be a short, simple, matter, but wound up eating up the entire day from noon until about 6:00 PM, or maybe close to 7:00. I lost track. In the process of that surgery, the doctor found her anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) was also torn. It sounds like she may well need surgery on that a bit later.

I don't know they could have missed the ACL tear on the MRI they did on her before scheduling this surgery, but they did. Otherwise, they could have fixed both problems today. Now she apparently has to go through it again and in the meantime "feels like I am walking on another time bomb."

Afterward, lying in her hospital bed, she was in a great deal of pain. I cannot tell you how much it hurt to see my baby daughter hurting like that.

Still, when we left the apartment she shares with boyfriend Bryce and cats Zed {black) and Junipurr, her spirits were much better. The pain killers had taken effect and she was able to joke, laugh, and play silly games with her kitties. So her mother and I were feeling a bit better, too. But very tired.

Her she is, looking over the instructions for her medications and care while she is at home.

Her kitties look out for her.

My beloved daughter, Lisa, at home with her kitties.

I accidently made this post with a much larger file than normal. So, if you are looking at this with a large monitor, like an iMac, and want to see the picture big, just click on it.

Beneath sun and ice - an airplane flew overhead

OK. It's Wednesday. Just barely. I have felt pretty bad, not putting up a new post for this much time, but given what I am struggling to finish up (and greatly enjoying the struggle, I might add, even though sometimes I get so stressed I forget I'm enjoying it), I truly have not had time to fool with this blog. Still, I've got to keep it on life support until I can give it some attention again, so I am back to the Wednesday post schedule.

I have been debating what to put up. Off and on for a few weeks now, I've been shooting a series of studies of Kalib drinking lemonade and eating chips at Taco Bell and I thought I might put that up. I've got some back-logged Jobe and Lynxton studies and some of them ought to one day be classics. Last Saturday, Margie pulled me away from my desk and said "let's go have lunch at Subway and then drive up to Hatcher Pass." So we did, and it was wonderful and I got some pretty good pictures, including one of Margie I really like, which doesn't happen that often because she hates to be photographed, but, due to being a little absent minded the night before and thus making a mistake a photographer should never make, I missed a once-in-a-life-time photo opportunity of some Laotians dressed in brightly colored traditional clothing, shaded beneath bright umbrellas, as they wandered about the old buildings of the Independence Gold Mine in Hatcher Pass. It is a story worth telling as a warning to other photographers not to make the same mistake.

There were many other picture possiblities for me to post, too, including the Mahoney wedding - but all the things described above would take some time. Especially the Mahoney wedding.

I decided to just post this picture of this airplane which flew over me a couple of days ago while I was walking. This will take a minimal amount of time. 

I did not even know there was an ice halo ringing the sun. The sun was too bright to look at. But whenever I hear a plane coming my way, I look for it, spot it, raise my camera, focus on it and follow it until it flies away. And this one flew directly beneath the ice halo.

Sweltering! 92 degrees right here in Wasilla, Alaska! (I'm going to take a break from this blog for awhile now)

I decided I might as well stop briefly in the parking lot but it was full. Not a parking space to be

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