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Janet and Bernard are in town for a few days on their way to a six week tour of seven European countries. How fun! We helped them begin their trip last night with a fabulous meal at one of San Francisco’s most famous restaurants - Postrio. Bernard brought three outstanding bottles of wine to drink with the beuatifully prepared meal. Kelly’s duck was excellent - my blackened prime rib was amazingly delicious.

As always, it was great to see the two of you. We will try our best to make it to Hawaii next year. Bon voyage Janet and Bernard!

Today’s Photos of the Day were shot at Salem Nuclear Plant near Salem, New Jersey and at the Farley Nuclear Plant near Dothan, Alabama.

Most of you know that in my previous life I helped inspect nuclear plants. I always traveled to these plants with my camera. Unfortunately, even thgough I was in the industry for more than 11 years, I was never able to get shots of the most interesting parts of the plants - the reactor and spent fuel pools - largely because most things brought into the containment building come out as nuclear waste and wind up smashed into yellow and magenta 55 gallon drums.

The highlight of last night’s show at the scenc Mountain Winery was definitely the 90 minute performance by Buddy Guy. Our buddies Paul and Joanne drove more than two hours for the performance, which was fabulous. Even at 67 years old, Mr. Guy wowed the crowd with spellbinding guitar licks and vocals. The main attraction was Los Lobos, but I think everyone felt like we did - that they should have opened for Buddy Guy.

I needed a nap after work this evening before I could summon the energy to blog. Sometimes I think I’m getting too old for these late nights. Nah…

I dated Ann when I was 24 - half a lifetime ago! Today, Ann and her 19 year old daughter Lexy dropped in on their way to a wedding in Santa Rosa. While Alexis napped in their room at the cozy Nob Hill Hotel, I subjected Ann to a whirlwind tourist treatment. The usual - food, Twin Peaks, the Haight, Golden Gate Park, the Castro. Later, Kelly Joined us at P.J.’s Oyster Bed for a Cosmo and a blistering Cajun Martini and of course - more food.

As I type this I’m listening to The Moody Blues’ Lovely to See You. Seems fitting. I wish I had more time to spend with my friends Ann and Lexy.

Last night finds us at one of our most favorite restaurants with two of our most favorite people - Chris and Ben. We started the evening with wine and a cool sunset on their balcony. At the restaurant, Sam, our favorite sushi chef tried a special dish on us - he calls it “Wheel of Fortune”. It contains a little of everything, and is delicious. (I swear, I could live the rest of my life eating nothing but sushi!) Later, Ben feels the love.

By the way, you know by now that my wife Kelly is my favorite subject. What you may not know is that when she’s not in front of the camera, she is often behind it shooting some of the very best photographs on thedude.com. Great job, Dear!

So we spent our Saturday doing (almost) nothing - and it was beautiful. We both loved it! Of course, that does not excuse me from my resposibility to post something to my blog! Guess it’s time to drag out another old image and call it Photo of the Day!

I shot this 180 dgeree panorama of Kelly admiring the kilometer wide Halema`uma`u crater - part of the Kilauea Caldera on the big island of Hawaii in September 2001. Also on this trip, Kelly managed to take the worst picture ever taken of of thedude. (Hey, it was my birthday, and I may have had one too many pina colladas.) I grabbed the camera from her and got much better results. I suppose you’re gonna say that this is due to superior subject matter. Ha!

Our annual camping trip to Lake Huntington was a blast, although, I wouldn’t exactly call it “roughing it”. The Hunter clan believes in packing everything - yes, even the kitchen sink. For a blow-by-blow account of the event, check out Wendy’s highly entertaining blog entry.

If you’d like to see even more images of our fabulous trip, click here.

My fans are demanding that I do some blogging. I have 80 pictures of a recent camping trip - four of which might make it to these pages. Sorry I-’ve been really busy and really lazy lately. It’s just so much work to get my images ready for:

1. Printing
2. Uploading to Ofoto
3. E-mailing
4. Blogging

Each has very different requirements, and it often takes hours to get to to step four. However, I can do a Photo of the Day relatively quickly - just scan through a kajillion images with Adobe Album - a pretty cool program, but that’s another blog entry.

So, here it is. I must tell you that a shot shot like this is not easy to get. You see, it’s daylight, the digital camera shutter will stay open no more than 1/15 of a second, (even with the nuetral density filter enabled) I have no tripod, and it’s starting to rain. To get this shot, I had to stand motionless and press the shutter release over and over and over - more then seventy times, actually.

An hilarious article about “Dude” in popular culture. A must read!

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