@#!%! program!

For those of you that ever struggle on your computer - especially when trying to play with a drawing this is pretty irresistible. Alan Becker obviously has a lot of frustration to take out and he does get the comic side of things.

Yankees vs Red Sox

Well sort of....in the duck pin bowling way of looking at things at least. I still have a post left in me about duck pin bowling from our visit to Danbury this past weekend but I couldn't resist grabbing this photo while we were there and posting it.

I think pops will enjoy this one the most.

D300, 18-200mm, 32mm, f/11, 1/60s, ISO 200, Flash

It doesn't seem to matter how you slice it. The New York Yankees are always worth more than the Boston Red Sox. Of course a green Paramount ball is worth even more.

Hot!!!!!!!!!!! Buffalo Wings!!!!!!

Sue and I spent the weekend in Danbury Connecticut while leaving the kids with Grandma and Grandpa to swim all day. (They spent 5 hours in the pool on Saturday and only a few on Sunday).

I happen to be a lover of all things hot and spicy and have never met a hot sauce store I didn't like. I usually walk out of those stores with at least 3 or 4 new sauces. Imagine my surprise when going through the list of restaurants in Danbury I found TK's American Cafe.They have 37 different varieties of wings and that alone was enough to make me want to eat there.

Sue and I ended up going there for lunch on Saturday and let me say that this is a great sports bar. There are TVs everywhere and when we picked a booth we had our own little TV there that we could change the channels on and everything. It certainly made watching the Olympics while we were eating easy. What's better than a little lunch and some women's beach volleyball?

Now TK's has been around since 1990 and according to the history on the back of the menu it was floundering until it put together 10¢ wing night and history was made. You can take a look at the menu here and see all 37 flavors.

The first five flavors on the menu were Mild, Buffalo Hot, Xtra-hot, Suicide, and Revenge. You can guess which ones I was most interested in. The waitress was extremely helpful and described the difference between all of the wings. The two hottest varieties are Suicide and Caribbean. The difference is in the taste of the hot sauce. This was the best answer ever since I like heat but not over taste. If something is hot just to be hot and has no taste it isn't worth it. So, I was obviously in heaven at this point.

This is when I discovered one of the secrets of TK's, there is actually a 38th flavor that they don't put on the menu. It is hotter than Revenge and the hottest wing that they make. I won't give away the secret - you will have to ask when you go there but if you like your wings extra hot I recommend that you ask for their resurrection wings. The hottest ones not on the menu.

Did I like them? I loved them. They made my eyes tear up and my nose run and yet they had the perfect amount of flavor with an unbelievable amount of heat. My lips were burning all through lunch and everything else I ate set the heat off even after I finished the wings.Sue kept laughing at me but they were terrific.

TK's will sell you the sauce for any of their flavors at $4.75 a jar (+ tax) and needless to say I walked away with a jar of resurrection for my own home use. If you have a chance and happen to be on 84 driving through Connecticut and heading through Danbury I highly recommend that you jump off the highway for a 5 minute ride to TK's and have a generous helping of wings (pick your own heat but I know what I am getting next time I drive through)

Haven't forgotten

This has been a really crazy week. I have been spending most of my day and night working and operating on very little sleep. I haven't forgotten to blog just had no time.

I will probably do some catching up here on Sunday night as this weekend is our 16th anniversary and it is time to spend some time with my wife.

Have a great weekend and you never know what you might see online.

Best way to hunt a deer, for photos that is!

Friday morning I was up early and off to work before the sun rose. I watched it come up and almost stopped on the highway 3 different times to take some photos of it cresting the horizon but I had to be at work bright and early so I kept going. I still managed to get to my exit early and decided to take a quick detour to Sunset Lake in Bridgewater.

For those of you that don't know, I drive a hybrid - to be more specific a Toyota Prius. The Prius is really cool because at speeds less than 30 miles an hour it has a tendency to turn the engine off and use the electric motor. I found a spot to park and glided up and imagine my surprise when I saw a deer maybe 25 feet away. Her ears didn't even twitch. The silent mode of the car took her completely unawares. Of course, I then made my first mistake, I turned the car off. The smarter thing would have been to just open the window and shoot pictures of her from there. (The windows are electric - they Don't work with the engine off)

I decided to be a little braver and got out of the car without closing the door. She pricked her ears at the sound of me getting out and gave me the first shot.

D300, 70 - 300mm VR, 260mm, f/5.6, 1/30s, ISO 800
Click image for a larger view

She didn't like the camera noise but slowly started moving through the woods and since I wasn't moving at all she kept going. She grabbed something to eat but kept her eye on me. When she stopped and looked through the opening in the trees I grabbed my second opportunity.

D300, 70 - 300mm VR, 300mm, f/5.6, 1/25s, ISO 800
Click image for a larger view

I love the way the trees frame this shot. I definitely recommend a hybrid for sneaking up on animals. It makes it much easier.

Long week

It has been a very long week this week. Getting up before dawn and getting home either after the sun has set or a little earlier and then going to a meeting for a few more hours. Sorry for the scarcity of posts but hopefully I can get through the pre-dawn photos I took yesterday (a small advantage of getting up early) and can catch up.

More Flowers

Sometimes it is the closeup that matters and other times it is the background that makes a photo. My favorite from my mother's garden is this photo. The lily is a beautiful flower but the context that Black Eyed Susans give it make it better - at least to my eye.

D300, 18-200mm VR, 50mm, f/6.3, 1/400s, ISO 200

Flowers in Larchmont

While we were at my mother's this past weekend I couldn't resist taking photos of some of the flowers in her garden. She has been spending her summers in her garden for as long as I can remember and really enjoys spending time on her flowers.D300, 18-200m VR, 56mm, f/6.3, 1/1000s, ISO 200

D300, 18-200m VR, 50mm, f/6.3, 1/200s, ISO 200

Dinner in my Backyard redux

My wife was looking at the blog this morning and asked how the picture of the deer had come out so well since I had taken it through our kitchen window. I reminded her that I had turned off the lights in the kitchen to minimize reflections and then I showed her the real secret. You see I had grabbed the camera with the attached lens from the bag and had very little time to change any settings except for the shutter speed. Deer don't tend to stick around when you have a dog that barks at the site of anything encroaching on its territory.

You can see from the top photograph that the whole picture appears washed out and grey. I very simply opened the shot in Adobe Photoshop and reset the black point and white point on the photo using a curves layer. I used the black of the Deer's eye and the white from her ear and the rest of the colors aligned right with it.