Your Today in Pictures...

[Steve Klare]

An old friend of mine built the only known snowman in Tucson, Arizona!
They had an extremely rare snow storm down there: maybe half an inch!
In the shadows of the cactus, Rich scraped all the snow in his back yard into a small pile and built a snowman, which was gone by lunchtime.
(He grew up in Buffalo: doing this was in his blood!)

[Steve Klare]

To Everything there is a Season!
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We tend to drag out Christmas...unseasonably long! The low-level decorations came down two weeks ago. The tree came down last weekend. I negotiated another week so I could run my trains around a little longer.

Today was the day, so now we have these strange trails in the carpeting: until the next time the vacuum passes through, we will have a tiny abandoned right-of-way in the back of the house!
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(It was fun while it lasted!)

[Graham Ritchie]

This is neat from the "New Zealand Air Force" up-loaded yesterday

[Steve Klare]

C-130 Hercules! That's an amazing plane!

Years ago we were out to Saturday breakfast at a local restaurant that is next to the airport and one of them taxied up on the other side of the fence from us. It came to a stop and the ramp came down, and a couple of men in combat fatigues and helmets with a full pack came down the ramp, and then a couple more, and then this heavy stream of 'em flowed out.

One minute is was an empty tarmac and 5 minutes later there was this huge crowd of soldiers standing there. (Which, I guess is the whole point!)

(My guess is the Army National Guard was on maneuvers. "So! What did YOU do this weekend?")

[Graham Ritchie]

Well last Sunday I spent the day finishing of some of the display including adding "Mr Magorium's Wonder Emporium" at "Ferrymead Heritage Park", talking to visitors and running the Westar. Its always interesting, not to just talk about what I get up to, but to hear what others do as well. An example of that, was a lady with two children while I was working on the Super 8 display when I started to talk about Super 8, and this person, did not have usual "glazed" look of someone who has not a clue what I am talking about.......mmmmm.... she replied that her grandad ran a film business, when she told me the name. I replied that I knew him, had bought my GS1200 years ago which I still use. She looked at the kids and said, this man knew your great grandad, so we had quite a chat about things. The thing is to, you never know who you are talking to, so you better not be talking BS. The 35mm digest on a 2000ft reel I ran on Sunday was a made up one from "Dolphin Tale" from an old scratched print. In saying that its not too bad scratch wise, and the 20 minute edited version seems to work well, its long enough.

Saturday I just had to call into "Penny Lane Records" they had a sale on plus a visit to "Muffin Break" plus "JB Hi Fi" the manager there, is our previous cinema manager, so we always have a quick chat about those times

One thing I got around to on Saturday, and that was to up-load material onto a Facebook page I have just started called "Canterbury Photography Museum Moving Image Collection" its working well at the moment, looks good also out and about with Yvonne to the Supermarket I hate these places and always glad to get away, they should have road rules for the use of shopping trolleys

[Lincoln Thorn]

Found a pair of 3D glasses while cleaning out my drawers. So, Dracula and I are wishing you Sunshine and happiness this week!

[Brian Fretwell]

A bit late downloading my pics, but I spent the weekend on the Great Central Railway in Leicestershire being hauled by locos like these. The big one being a new build replica of a Great Western express. Two sunny days and one overcast with rain later in the day.

[Graham Ritchie]

Out front yesterday after cutting the grass, although its drying out due to the summer weather we are getting at the moment.

The garage is a mess at the moment, has been for a while to much junk, but will hopefully get around to doing something with it soon. Yvonne got her Gold Card everyone over 65 gets one gives you all kinds of discounts and free rides on the bus, even James Cameron who lives in the North Island would have got one as its automatic.

[Graham Ritchie]

The old tape deck has been getting slower for a while now so went in to a electronic place in town and bought a packet of assorted flat belts, found one that did the job, cleaned the motor which has a date Sept 1978, yikes now that's old, might be time for a new DC12 volt motor soon. I think I can come up with something At the moment the deck is now running fine however some 90 minute tapes can be a bit much for the old thing, but will see how things go. The old drive belt had become quite loose, the new one shown below fits fine.

[Graham Ritchie]

Although I never took this photo, but has anyone here been following the history and final journey of the "SS United States" at the moment? quite strange to see this once magnificent ship at sea and under tow, sad really.

[Douglas Meltzer]

Graham,

Yes, the SS United States (bigger than the Titanic) has been docked in South Philadelphia rusting away for the past 30 years. It will ultimately be sunk off the Florida coast and become the world's largest artificial reef.

_____________

Earlier this week, the Central Park reservoir was partially frozen.







The structure on the right is part of the South Gatehouse at the reservoir. Across the way is the North Gatehouse, where the exteriors for the confrontation between Laurence Olivier & Dustin Hoffman in Marathon Man were filmed.

[Steve Klare]

No Tacos Today (or probably ever!)
,

I went out for my first bike-ride of 2025, hopefully a sign of Spring! While I was out I saw kind of a neighborhood Icon!

When we get to a certain age, the impermanence of things starts to weigh heavily on the soul! Things that seemed unmovable when we were teenagers all of a sudden go by the wayside. Ideas that seemed absolute and certain years ago start to develop exceptions and alternatives. Even the Pyramids are degrading, although they still seem to have a decent shot at outlasting us!

I give here a bastion of hope! A rare island of permanence in an uncertain world!

This is the local Taco Bell,...or maybe "was"! When we got married in 1992, we bought our house here. When we drove down the street to sign the Real Estate contract, we noticed that Taco Bell was closed and looked abandoned. 33 years later, it's still much the same!

When you think about all the changes that have gone on in the last 33 years, this awful-looking building looking absolutely awful seems almost...eternal.

It's interesting to think someone, somewhere has been paying commercial real estate taxes to maintain this wreckage as it is: easily several hundred thousand dollars by now. Tearing it down and selling the land seems like something that should have happened years ago!

PS: There's a really good family run Mexican restaurant a couple of blocks away, so we are OK here!

[Graham Ritchie]

Last night our walls were rattling a bit with a concert across the road, Steven was working security at it last night and around midnight he called us to say "we can sleep now" as it was over, security wise he had no problems. That's the third concert he has done in the last few weeks, but tonight being Sunday its nice and quiet with no sub thumping away zzzzzzz I don't think there are any more across the road for a while now.

Last night

[Graham Ritchie]

Only a couple more weeks and we are again into school holidays, this old video of the slide across the road was very popular with Steven and April during those days, sadly its all gone but this video does show how much fun it was to go flying near the bottom if you get enough speed up. The idea was to get airborne, trouble was the landing, as a adult you would be stupid to try it but for kids, well its a different story.