How to cope with a power outage, part one.

In the event of a power outage, first, take your Zassenhaus hand cranked coffee grinder and use it. After that, everything will be okay. If you can't find your Zassenhaus coffee grinder, there are alternate methods such as putting your coffee beans in a sock and smashing them with a hammer, crushing them with a big rusty jar of peas on the cutting board, or wrapping your coffee beans in saran wrap and jumping up and down on them on the floor while screaming. None of these alternate methods work, but you'll feel better because you tried.

Hopefully you have a gas stove, a camp stove, or a chair that you never really liked that much which you can ignite in the back yard in order to boil some water. Don't forget to thank god that you roasted enough coffee beans before the power went out. If you didn't, you don't have enough chairs for that. Give up and drink tea.

Most serious coffee drinkers have at least two alternate methods for making coffee in case of a power outage.

Boardwalk

Shoe tree

Stump 2

Different lens, different filter, different camera settings and very different photoshopping of the image. I wanted to see what I'd think of the two after a full day had gone by. Otherwise the two images were taken only minutes if not seconds apart.I like stump 2 much better. It's more the way that I saw the stump. The other one was an interesting experiment with a very different mood.

Stump

Today's photos

Canada Geese

Took this today at Westlake park.

Beware of dog

Sometimes an off the cuff snapshot gets weird. Sheryl and I have both noticed that our cameras have an occasional "magic factor". There are other folks who put "magic" to good use with old polaroid cameras (I bought one recently at a second hand store, then couldn't bear to pay more than a dollar a shot for film). Some still use the "Holga"; a very cheap toy camera with plastic lens, light leaks, and all manner of aberrations to technically ruin your shots. . . or create a masterpiece which cannot be repeated. I'm working on breaking the rules more, and having some fun making bonehead mistakes with interesting consequences. I un-weirded the above photo quite a bit in photoshop, but then I liked the remaining bizarre color cast, and most especially like the way that the dog lined himself up behind the wire. Click on the photo for a much larger view.

After the rain

Liberation

Looks a lot better if you click on the photo.