Good weekend!
This is a bit of an old photo, but I like it for its abstract-ness. That’s about how my brain was feeling up until late last week.
It’s been a bit since I’ve had a chance to update this. During the last weekend of June, the New Kensington Bureau of Fire held our Community Days festival. I coordinated the admission gates this year, which was fun, but also kept me pretty busy for the entire weekend, and the general set-up for the festival kept me busy for most of the week prior. Last week I had to spend catching-up on stuff that I couldn’t do while I was working Community Days.
Jenny could tell that I was getting a little run-down, so she suggested that we go out after work on Thursday and walk around the North Shore. We did, and had a great time doing it. I took a pile of photographs, some of which will be posted here in the coming days. It was a great time. The weather was beautiful. Armed with cameras and a tripod, we did the Oyster House for dinner and checked-out the re-vamped Market Square area, got some popcorn at the Pittsburgh Popcorn Company, and then headed across the Third Sister at 9th St. to wander around the North Shore area.
Friday was the New Kensington fireworks, and we had a little picnic at the fire station for firemen working the fire watch and their families.
Saturday, I rode in the Arnold High reunion parade with the NKFD. We didn’t have enough people to march, so we just took the engine and truck from our company. #2 had their engine, and #3 had their engine and the 1949 antique. After we got back, Jenny and I left to check-out the bike trail down in Braeburn. Unfortunately, moments after I had loaded the bikes into the truck, Jenny heard a woosh. Upon investigation, she found that the tube in my rear tire had finally given-up and died. So, we made a quick detour over to Gatto’s bike shop to get a new tube (and a new spare), bought new helmets for both of us (ours were getting pretty old, and they’re supposed to be replaced fairly regularly), and took off back across the river to go to the trail. I took a few photos along the trail, too, though the light just wasn’t so great. It was a fun ride, though.
We spent Sunday early afternoon riding the Roaring Run trail in Apollo. It was HOT. This is the first time we’ve made it onto that trail since it re-opened after a bunch of construction. It is really nice now, and definitely worth the ride! At the end of the main part of the trail, we found a neat little stream with a small waterfall. The cool stream caused that whole area to be just a little bit cooler, which was great relief after pedaling up the hill to get there! At least the ride back was pretty easy, being downhill for a good portion of the distance.
Sunday evening we spent with Jenny’s awesome family, enjoying some good food and fireworks. By the time we were leaving, I had sufficiently rehydrated myself (thanks to my wife, who kept giving me things to drink the whole time we were there). Yahoo!
Monday was a do-stuff-at-home day. I ran a bunch of errands, picked up our new sink for the downstairs powder room, and got some computer stuff finished. I had a chance to import all of the photographs from the last few days, and got started on processing them. I had a meeting in the evening to attend, but Jenny and I managed to fit in a trip to Jerry’s Custard after dinner and before my meeting. I had never been there, actually, so it was fun to try a new (to us) place. It was good stuff.
Now I’m finishing-up my lunch break at work, and looking forward to spending some more time tonight on the photographs from last week. One of the reasons I’m not done with them yet is because I’m moving from Aperture to Lightroom as my post-processing and library management system. It was getting to the point where I had to plan to use Aperture. Aperture 3 is a real dog, and it just eats system resources. Unless I quit pretty much everything else I’m working on, it would become sluggish to the point of being unmanageable after just a few edits. When I have to plan to use an application, I use it less. That’s not the way I want my library management and post-processing environment to be, so I had to look at other solutions. So far, I’m really liking Lightroom. The one thing that confuses me is that they offer a lot of great in-program touch-up and post-processing tools, but one that I used a good bit under Aperture seems to be missing: Arbitrary rotation for tilt correction. Maybe it is there and I just haven’t found it yet. No matter–I’m still liking the system a whole lot better, and I’m just getting started!
So, sorry for the lack of photos on this one, but I’ll have a few posts soon.
