Stockholm

I appear to be in my 'über blogging' phase - just go with me here (or not...).

When we lived in Norway, we visited Stockholm often and I have a set of photos from a very gloomy day when we were there - not to mention I took crappier photos back then and didn't worry about if I was pointing into the light, etc.

So - taking my newfound 'I'm a wee bit crazy cause Gary's gone' photoshop skills I went to town today (and I have spoken to Gary extensively today - so go figure - I sometimes just go crazy for no reason what so ever ...)

Here are my before and after shots:

Ok, this one is a bit creepy - but I liked the effect - 'monochromatic high contrast' in HDR Toning:

Yes, I know, this one did not change much:

Another creepy one 'photorealistic high contrast' in HDR Toning:

And I threw this in for fun ... it was just part of a photo and I also used the HDR Toning on the photo:

One Tiny Little ... oversight ...

and all hell breaks loose.

Got a Census form to fill out in the mail months ago right before I left for Australia - and, well, I ignored it.

It filtered up from the huge BOX of mail I would go through when I would come home and never had the energy to fill it out. What's another family to the US government? They won't miss us ...

Until they came calling ... and Ryan answered. I got a message from him while I was in Australia that he tried to answer the questions and sort of got some of the stuff right. Gary's birthday he got right. He made me WAY older than I am and got my birthday wrong. Said maybe I should have filled out the freaking form ...

So - I have been steadfastly ignoring the fact that the US Census Bureau is stalking us (having LOST the form it seems ...) until I got a call on my phone last night - lit up: "US Census calling" so I ignored it .... twice. Twice they left messages.

So today - I decide to do the responsible thing and call them back.

VERY abbreviated run through of my conversation with the Bureau ... if you take every question and ask it two or three times and, as I say later, put me on hold between every question - you have a better idea of the 20 minutes I spent on the phone with 'Mi':


"Hello - this is 'Mi' how may I help you"

I give him my "I've been a naughty girl" reference number and he looks up our records.

"Is Gary there"

No he lives in Australia.

"When will he be home?"

He LIVES IN AUSTRALIA

"Well, if I call this number tomorrow, say after 6:00pm, could I speak with him"

Are you not understanding me? HE LIVES IN AUSTRALIA!!! HE HAS AN APARTMENT THERE, A CAR - HE LIVES THERE ...

"So he won't be available to speak to me tomorrow?"

No

....


Silence, I get put on hold (and for the sake of my sanity and this read - I was put on hold no less than 20 times - about between each question, but I am too lazy to write the "I apologize but may I put you on hold while I speak to my supervisor ... 'because I am a dumb shit'" comment over and over again ...)

"Are you sure I cannot speak to Gary this week?"

Seriously, dude - I don't know how to make this any clearer: HE LIVES IN AUSTRALIA, can I answer the questions?

"No, it must be Gary" (apparently to punish me for the fact that I didn't fill out the damn form - I mean - I don't think Gary needed to fill out the form - WHY DO THEY HAVE TO TALK TO HIM AND ONLY HIM?)

Can you tell me why?

"For confidentiality purposes"

Thanks for clearing that up.

"Ma'am?"

Never mind.

"So, is Gary moving home any time soon?"

Not really (I give him a random answer)

"Can I set up an appointment to speak to him next week?"

WHAT? Do you want to call Australia? I can give you his cell phone number, but right now he is currently in the jungles of Papua New Guniea (TOTALLY DID THAT OUT OF SPITE just to confuse the poor little man named Mi)

"What?"

Never mind, no he won't be here next week.

"When can I set up an appointment with Gary?"

I throw out the last day of the month months from now - who knows ... IT COULD HAPPEN Gary could actually be living here then ...

"OK, ma'am, I will make an appointment for xxx at 7:00pm to speak to Gary, will that work for you?"

It will work for ME ... (I don't know about Gary ....)

"Thank you for your time, and thank you for calling the US Census Bureau"

Hang Up....





Gary is SO going to kill me ...

Papau New Guinea

Gary sent me some photos from Papau New Guinea yesterday. Below are the machete wielding cannibals he has to contend with:

Apparently Papau New Guinea'eans have a fascination / respect for / love of (?) pigs. I can't remember what Gary told me about them. I don't think it is a spiritual thing or anything but they are there buddies, live in their houses with them - maybe sort of like George Clooney and his pot belly pig ...

Gary has been spending his time being choppered from one building site to another and he took these aerial shots:

Beaver Falls:

Village:
I was a bit nervous until he told me that he was taking these photos through glass ... I feel much better not picturing him leaning out of the chopper to get the best shot ...

He arrives back in Brisbane straight from the jungles the night before I arrive the next morning.

I think we are both going to be tired puppies ....

Another Cool Trick

Well, Gary has been deep in the jungles with the cannibals for over a week now and I seem to be getting antsy. He is able to call me daily - but just quick calls - but better than nothing. My son is also home so I am not as crazed as I am when I am alone - but crazed I am slowly getting ...

And when I am crazed ... I Photoshop!

Discovered something new today. It is a poor mans version to Photoshops Multi Image HDR Pro (High Dynamic Range Imaging). You can take photos with your camera with something called 'bracketing' that will take the exact photo at different exposures. This command will read them all in, stack them up and let you use the best from each of them.

HOW COOL IS THAT?

Except I haven't used 'bracketing' (Oh, yes I have ... somewhere - another post when I remember where the heck the photos are ...) and the tutorial said that you could use it with a single image to bring out the 'full tonal quality' or something like that - what ever the hell that means (OK, I know, but it just sounds so .... snooty).

So, I took a crappy photograph of mine - but of something I liked. It was a dark day and my exposure was set low so I could shoot in camera raw, but just using the regular .jpg file I accomplished the following:

Original photograph (I CANNOT take a straight photo to save my life...):

Straightening it and lightening it by using the blending mode 'screen' in a layer:

Then, just under the regular: image - adjustments - there is something called HDR Toning. I hit it and this photo popped up:

There were more options, but I liked the default.


I then used the spot healing brush to try to get rid of some of the sea spray spots that were on my lens and sharpen the image and voilà a better photo (at least I think so ...):

I will really, really try to stop posting ....


really

Cool Tricks

Was working on something for Gary this morning, stitching a photo together, then I was watching some videos on the wonders of CS5 and it directly related to what I was doing.

Take this photo - I have stitched it together, but you can see the white chunks of the photo that just arent there:

You go in - select the area, and use the edit / fill command with content aware as the option and it

MAKES CRAP UP FOR YOU!!!


ROCKS!! TREES!!! SKY!!!

I find this very cool. I tried it on a waterfall that I had taken a panorama shot of (about 6 photos that are stitched together). This was what I got (appparently I was leaning while shooting up ....):

So I told it to go to town and this is what it made for me:

OK, maybe there are a few logs on the left side that maybe don't need to be there, or maybe need treetops, but HEY! I think it is cool.



Off to play ...

Sheer Lunacy

So, maybe it is the hour, the phase of the moon, what I had for dinner (wait ... I didn't have dinner ...) - who knows?

Sitting here after 1:00am because I have sheets in the washer and if I don't get them in the dryer tonight, my cleaning lady won't have dry sheets to make the bed and HEAVEN KNOWS I can't make a bed all by myself ...

So - I got the SUPER NEATO idea to check out making your blog into a book.

Found the site blog2print.sharedbook.com and decided ... what the hell? I am sleep deprived, coming off a barfing bender, been running after Jessie all afternoon. What better time to make a timely / pricey decision than now?

Put in the first year I started - June 2008 to the end of the year and it looked pretty cool (yeah - and all the photos here are crap since they have those annoying lines through them like when you take a photo of a computer screen ... - they look LOVELY in the book ...):

So, I decided ... expensive - but I am probably going to do it anyway - lets do 2009. Waited and waited and waited:

And to my chagrin it came back and told me that my blog 'exceeded the maximum allowable pages'. Now that is A LOT OF INSIPID DRIVEL!!!!

Split it into a Vol 1 and Vol 2 and I am the proud owner of 3 volumes of my rantings and ravings.

Some fun stats:

It asked for a Dedication - so here they go - with the actual number of pages in the book following it:

To Me ... 235
To Me ... again ... 409
To Me ... because no one else cares ... 369

That is A LOT of crap ... and I am sort of at a loss as to what my next Dedication should be ... any ideas?


Why I would pay for this is beyond me. I will wake up in the morning and probably kick myself, but ... they are in the mail.

One of the funnest things? It takes the first photo of the blog and uses it on the cover. On "Lori's Blog 2009 Vol 2" it is a picture of Gary's butt ... how fun is that?

Let the kicking commence in 6 hours ....

Dear Jessie ...

Happy Birthday Miss Jess! You turned 22 today!

Wow! Twenty-two. That's a big number. It reminds me that my age must be a really, really, really big number!

I hope you had fun today - at your birthday party at our very, very special friends home: the Randalls:

Good food, good friends:
You blew out all the candles!
And the presents! Oh, how you like to open presents!

Then off to play with your new bounty with friends:

What a wonderful time! And what wonderful friends. Even Ryan stopped by for a surprise visit! Wasn't that nice?

Miss Jess - where do I begin on this twenty second year of your birth? It seemed like only yesterday that I was so immobilized with fear that I didn't know how to survive. So many things to be afraid of, a future full of unknowns - fearful unknowns. But survive we did, didn't we? Together as a family. Maybe a little crazy, a little unconventional, a little just 'getting by' some days - but we did it!

And now you are a grown, beautiful young woman. Very different than the girl that I dropped off at Richmond Assisted Living Center (note the name change) on that horrible, dreadful day two years ago. You are just a shell of yourself! In a good way - you are healthy, happy, have friends, are acting more mature and listening to your house advisers. I am SO very proud of you!

Of course, sometimes my heart breaks when I realize that this beautiful grown woman standing in front of me will probably never function over the age of 3 or 4 years old. But I love my little girl too! I love the little girl as much as the young woman she has grown into. Just more to love, I guess, isn't there?

Here's to another year of fun, growing (well, you - yourself will probably keep shrinking - you know what I mean), learning new things, making new friends, having fun at your home visits and everything else you have experienced in your new home.

I love you, miss you, see you soon.

Love,

Mom

New Meanings ...

American. Patriotic. Freedom. Country. Honor.

Words. Just words to me for the longest time.

Then I moved to Norway. And being an American was not exactly a popular thing. It would have been easy to back down and agree about what ever system they were deriding at the time, much harder to stick to your guns and try to help explain that maybe they didn’t have the big picture, maybe the system was flawed, but we were free! We had freedoms that the Norwegians did not have. Although I walked away the loser in every argument (of course – I was not going to change anyone’s opinion about politics – never have … never will). Just got to the point where I politely said “Why don’t we agree to disagree and still be friends?” Surprised with this response, and really having no choice – they most always agreed.

This still was no biggie – just differing of opinions of one countryman views from another.

These words still didn't mean very much to me, but I still tried to defend them the best I knew how.

Then, on about July 1st, 2005 I got a call from my mom. I was worried about what she was going to say. You see – a Navy Seal had been downed behind enemy lines, his fellow Seals all killed, with his rescue Chinook helicopter being taken down by a RPG. My brothers job, there in Afghanistan was to rescue injured soldiers behind enemy lines. And here was an injured soldier being talked about relentlessly over the airwaves.

My worst fears were realized as my mom said “Jeff has dropped off the radar. No contact with Penny for days. This means only one thing. He is involved with the rescue of Marcus Luttrell.” And I started to cry. I have never felt farther from my family than that day in Norway.

My little brother, my beautiful, funny, insane little brother was in danger - huge danger.

I spent a lot of time thinking about him during this time. Our youth, his visits.

When Ryan was blessed:

Family reunions:

But it always came back to the photo he sent me - with guns strapped on and ready to fly (and of course the typical Jeff silly kiss ...):

This was my brothers life and I couldn't come to grips with my little brother and this soldier that was going to go behind enemy lines to rescue an injured soldier being the same person. They just wouldn't mesh - so I spent a few days stumbling around, not thinking about much and praying like I have never prayed before.

A few days later, it happened to be the July 4th, 2005 we were sitting at the picnic table out on the deck with the missionaries having hot dogs and apple pie -the best we could come up with in Norway for a July 4th celebration. When the phone rang.

I froze. Then jumped up from the table and ran to grab the phone. It was my mother. "He is safe" was all she got out before I burst into uncontrollable sobs.

She said they didn't know much. He had called his wife and since they cannot talk about missions, they had a code that they had worked out before he had left. I can't remember what the guys name was - but if he told her "I'm with Jack" it meant he was safe. And that is all he had told her. Since he was very emotional - having been the most dangerous thing he had done in his life (this includes putting a plastic bag over his head to 'see what it was like' - luckily walking by my sister as he passed out, and burning down our grapevines in the backyard with gasoline and matches, breaking his collar bone skiing off a cliff, and oh so many other things we won't go into).

Safe. My brother was safe. The mission was successful. At the time we didn't know how dangerous it really had been. He later visited us in Norway and told us the entire story which sound like the action packed motion picture that I believe I keep seeing references to on Marcus Luttrells facebook page (although that might just be Marcus Lone Survivor story which didn't really touch on the rescue) but an unbelievable rescue.

It made me realize that my brother was someone special. That Lt. Colonel Jeff Peterson - or Spanky as everyone calls him is a hero, fighting for our country, our freedoms, our safety. I love him to pieces.

But I thank him - over and over - for teaching me what those words at the top of this post really, really mean.


Love you little brother and every single other soldier out there keeping this country safe.


Three Generations:

Have a wonderful July 4th, y'all ...

Rain

My friend last night mentioned that the pain in every joint of my body probably has something to do with the weather. Duh ... Why I hadn't thought of that is beyond me ...

But: WHAT IS UP WITH THIS RAIN?

We got home from Austin and I don't think there have been more than a few hour breaks from the rain in the last 3 days. I feel so sorry for moms with small kids - I am sure being housebound for days is oh so much fun - for both mother and child.

I like in these photos you can see our mail carriers truck peeking out from the left side ... neither rain, nor sleet, nor snow, ... (but apparently Saturdays) can keep the mail away - poor mailman ...

It started up again this morning. I thought maybe the worst was over. I mean - how much water can actually dump from the sky day after day? I would assume it would run out.

And it seems to now be weighing down my psyche. Rain is depressing, gray, gloomy. Rain makes you want to stay indoors and not get chores done. Rain is just ick. It just make me pull the covers over my head and try not to weep ... FOR NO REASON WHATSOEVER!


I am hoping it goes away soon ...

2(X) = Sigh ...

Gary called today and told me that I needed to blog. At 6:00 I go up and yelled 'I'm up!!' to no one except Charlie in this big empty house - using that voice you use when you have fallen and get up and say "I'm OK" - Charlie was not amused.

Told myself that I was going to stay up until I dropped.

Why?

This is why:

I know - it looks nice and all, but in reality it has become my prison and memories of pain, illness, and trying not to barf are all I can come up with when I lay in my beautiful hand made bed. I am assuming this will change - I like the bed too much to not make a concerted effort to fix this problem ... one day.



Soon.

The end is in sight. Not so near I can blog about it, but I can see it! I can feel it! And I can say, no matter how much longer this goes on, this next trip to Australia will be my last. I have mixed feelings about that, but I don't think I can keep up this schedule much longer without, what? I don't know - getting sicker I suppose ... so - my last trip to a place I have come to love.

When Gary talked to me yesterday - and it does not take Gary, my mother, my close friends more then my 'hello' to discern whether I feel good or not - how pathetic is that? I cannot fake it enough to get a phone conversation out of the way without them knowing how I feel. I'm not very happy about that - but I have tried to fake it and apparently sound much worse than if I just say 'hello'. So the first thing he says is 'you are not feeling well, are you?'- which I told him yes. He then said that I just needed to rest up until my flight week from Sunday. I told him I was desperately resting up for Jessie's birthday party on Monday. It is now Friday night and I have yet to get out to purchase her birthday presents - so tomorrow will most definitely be a "Y" day - in and out of bed ...

After that - yes, then I get to relax until I am in Australia.

I don't know if we are going to do much. But I know I will spend a lot of time staring out the windows. One of my favourite views - and I will miss it terribly.

But - based on the math - it is time for me to stop being the 'great world traveller' for a bit. I might go stir crazy - but I think with my schedule being a bit less hectic, I will start to slowly get feeling better.

Until then - it will be prison, hopefully with a good book, and lots and lots of time.

Patience, my dear ...

Patience ....