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The holiday weekend consisted mostly of the usual fare - family and tons of fabulous food. Of course, any outing with the Hunter Clan is guaranteed to produce a few memorable moments. This year was no exception. The first surprise was a doozy… Imagine your standard-issue bar stool strapped atop a custom built five horse-power motorized platform tooling down the road at 35 miles per. That pretty much sums up my almost-brother-in-law’s latest masterpiece. She’s a wee bit top heavy with thedude on board, (read: DANGEROUS!) but a hoot to drive nonetheless. No helmet required, although full body armor is probably a good idea.

   
   

Another treat this time out was visiting my pals Greg and Kathleen in her lovely home. (LOVE that red wall!) Turns out they live less than two miles from Kelly’s parents. Greg can be a bit too generous with the wine and tequila, but hey, who’s complaining? Certainly not me.

On our last day in the central valley, we decided to visit Ficklin Vineyards and sip some of their fabulous ports. Despite the fact that the trip took a bit longer than it might have - possibly on account of the 10 wrong turns - it turned out to be well worth the trip. (Hey Wendy, did you say Avenue 24

My wife asked me to post a few things I’d like to see under my Christmas tree this year. Here’s a good one.

UPDATE: Scored a beautiful Forschner steel. Thanks Grant and Sandy!

Wow! What a terrific day! Our dear friends Jeff and Wendy drove up to the bay area all the way from Fresno to test drive a Mini Cooper. (They loved it.) We spent the rest of the day eating, sightseeing and *sigh* Christmas shopping. Lunch at Jack’s Bistro, cruising past the USS Midway, martinis at the Top of the Mark, white-knuckle cab rides and dinner at Soizic helped make the shopping more palatable. All things considered, I’d say it was a perfect day!

   
   

A friend just sent me this awesome image of the recent fires in Southern California.

Add this to my Wish List. It looks like it is better than the horrible Turtle Beach Audiotron. For one thing, it can search songs by filename as well as ID3 tag. I’m assuming it will have better sound. And wireless capability could be nice. I think I have enough wires running around this place already.

My wife just told me that my blog is getting boring. She said, “You need more photos!” So, with apologies to those who have seen this image 10,000 times, I bring you my favorite shot from our last Bali trip. Why am I subjecting you to this shot again? Well, because I have decided to have it printed large - 44 x 46 inches, to be exact - and that means that I have been working with the image a lot in PhotoShop lately preparing it for output at Pictopia.

I had a proof print made of a small section of the finished print at the final resolution. It looks great, so now I’m really anxious to see the final print. More on all this soon!

Wow! Our friends in Alameda would see us a lot more often if we could get there in one of these babies!

Our dear friends Andrew and Barbara returned from a three week trip to the UK yesterday. While there, he received a copy of a curse cast on the Johnstone clan 500 years ago…

In the sixteenth century, the border riding clan of Johnstone, having reverted to a pagan and warlike tribe, caused so much trouble for so many people that their Bishop put a curse upon them. This curse, sometimes called the Mother of all Curses was pronounced upon the riding clans by the Archbishop of Glasgow.

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This little silent PC is even more appealing now that they’ve announced an ATX version.

Oh yeah, and don’t forget these.

I just installed a very cool freeware program called TinySpell. It does real-time spell checking. I can finally (easily) spell check my blog entries - or anything else, for that matter. Woo-hoo! TinySpell is far from perfect, but I’ll definitely use it. Recommended.

I know, I know - it’s a tiny bit late, but I just discovered this. Click the image to view the latest installment from Odd Todd. (Don’t bother if you’re not on a broadband connection. The file is 5 megabytes large.)

Next time I promise to try to get more shots of the actual bride and groom.