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Posts Tagged ‘Sue Beauchamp’

Another year passes and the Fourth of July remains symbolic.

Greetings to all from Holland, Pennsylvania as another July 4^th marks the anniversary of freedom from British rule. I’ve been diluting the water­color pigments and marking the cotton paper. Been looking around Bucks County for a good old fashioned Chicken Coop.

Sue found me one out Newtown-Richboro Road at Solly Brothers. Trouble is that it is hard to gather reference through the chicken wire that these rascals are behind. Spot metering and focusing is difficult when the virtual layer exists and the infrared system sees that instead of the intended target. But I will locate some more acces­sible Chickens around here. I’ve seen them on the road down to the Buxmont Veterinary Hospital… I’ll keep looking. I’d like to draw some Roosters.

My personal calendar turns over on Sunday as I reach the 53 year mark. What can I tell you? Beats the alter­native I suppose. I sure don’t like the images that I’ve seen of me lately. I suppose that it’s a good thing that I’m usually behind the camera. Speaking of behind the camera… I see my childhood friend Rob Vaughn is the anchor on the Lehigh Valley’s Channel 69 10:00 PM News carried on WFMZ. I’d seen Rob on a special report or two in the past when they picked up their stories on another channel. I was very glad to see that he’s doing well. His Dad — Bob Vaughn’s voice still echoes in my memory “WCBS news time is… ” Seems like I always had WCBS on in the car when I drove… especially at night. While growing up Rob and I used to use telescopes to practice the primitive art of Astronomy. My synapses do barf up old info from time to time. Rob had a Tasco telescope and I had a Monolux Refractor. I still remember Rob’s mom Ruby, brother Michael and sister Pam. It was just real good to see Rob on television here. Good work Rob.

I hope that everyone has a great Fourth of July Holiday -
please leave the fireworks to the pros…

I hope that all you Mothers had a wonderful day

Sue and I went looking for some more raw materials for her new creative outlet on Mother’s Day afternoon. Sue is getting involved with making jewelry and has had a couple of very successful pieces as she learns the ins and outs of putting gems, beads and metals together. They are really looking nice. Got some nice images of a couple of them on Saturday morning and I’ll put a couple of small shots below. I’ll put up a gallery of images soon. Turquoise photographs extremely well and the lighting looks good.

We stopped in at Tanners and a friendly herd of Dairy Cows came by to look at the funny looking people on the other side of the fence. These are big soulful animals and I can see that they are pausing and having their thoughts about all of it as we stand there. I’d last visited with a herd of Black Angus Cattle that were on the other side of the fence.

I have hundreds of new reference shots (thanks to John at DigiTech) of the Black and White “Gateway” Cows and hope to do some drawings of them soon. Looks like it will rain tomorrow afternoon.

We started at Talbots and widened the search area to yesterday’s score at the King of Prussia Mall. Moving around the area near the Oxford Valley Mall and then in the Oxford Valley Mall itself we looked at just about all the dresses and such that are available. Sue just wasn’t going for what she saw.

The stuff that we found in the local stores was the result of a process of deciding what had the least wrong with it rather than what we liked about it. That’s just not the right way to go about shopping. Sue spent hours looking through the stores online to see whether or not they had something that she truly liked.

All of that changed once we were shopping at the King of Prussia Mall. Quality stores and pleasant sales people make all the difference in the world. The King of Prussia Mall reminded me very much of a Mall that I’d grown up near… The Mall at Short Hills in NJ. That was a nice Mall. The woman who helped Sue was great and it was an easy choice. Neiman Marcus got the sale.

I really don’t under­stand the big deal that people make when going shopping with their female companion. It’s not difficult and the opinion is generally helpful. I had a very good time overall and all those dresses and shoes… My mind was drifting a few times thinking about Sue in some of the stiletto heels that were in the stores. Heels are an “inter­esting” design. Absolutely imprac­tical. Right up there with neckties for men. I can’t imagine standing on an angle like that. Got to say though… Nothing could possibly terminate a beautiful leg more grace­fully than a good pair of heels. At home — Rudy kept his attention on home security while we were out. Growling and gnashing at a whole bunch of nothing.

Change is inevitable — so I’m changing this page layout

Just set up a new fixed width blog with what I hope will be easier to read text. All of my widgets and images in the main column will be out of whack for a while but it all will be lots better once I get it organized.  I used the latest version of Artisteer to mess with the theme and it worked out pretty well.

I had this blog design finished last month but Sue and I spent a long weekend down in Cape May and Passover then Easter came into play as well. Really nice here again today with temper­a­tures in the 80s but we are cooling off tonight and expect a line of strong thunder­storms before that happens. It has just been one extreme after another all winter long right into early Spring. I wrote a couple of long entries here about specific storms we’d had and sure enough the next week another would come along that was bigger and badder than the one that preceded it. All photog­raphy is currently offline. I took a shot at sunrise looking over the ocean from our deck and it was a fatal digital click that was heard in Cape May. I was fortunate enough to have captured a number of spectacular Victorians the day before though.

Is everyone aware that Cape May surely seems to be haunted? We were taking some shots at one of the old Hotels when a piece of siding hit the sidewalk a couple of feet away. With so many Nor’easters coming through over the past couple months — slightly hard to imagine that on this gust free, almost totally still day that a piece of siding just happened to coinci­den­tally float by…  Some pictures to follow later on.

Sue and I drew pictures of Cape May Lighthouse from various angles. Unfortunately the museum and light­house itself was closed due to the off-season. Tree damage around the parking area there showed that they had the same nasty winds that we’d had recently. Never seen so many broken limbs in my life.

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We found really nice Mums and Gourds at the Farm & Garden Station here in nearby Ivyland, Pennsylvania. Not too far from here out old Almshouse Road in (depends on your source of infor­mation) Ivyland or in Warminster, Pennsylvania. I notice the same problem with Tanners in the web look-ups. The shots that I have here were done on October 10, 2009 in the afternoon. The tracks were quiet but the New Hope & Ivyland Railroad crosses near the property — hence the name “station”.  It was a nice day and my wife Sue wanted to go bring home some Fall decora­tions.  So that was exactly what we did.

The shop there had a couple Enormous Pumpkins on display. If you guessed the weight of the large one inside you could win it. Then you would have to figure out exactly what you were going to do with the rotting hulk and seeds… Clever. The store at the Station doesn’t really have a great deal to sustain it during the winter months. It gets pretty darned quiet around January there but each Spring they continue to be a good source of Mother’s Day plants and flowers. Lots of nice hanging plants. Anyhow I enjoyed bringing my camera and catching the color and light patterns. Here I’ll share them with you in a little NextGEN Gallery. Incidentally the NextGEN Galleries are very compatible with CoolIris and it makes a nice little slide show of the images.

[Show as slideshow]

[View with PicLens]

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If you’d like to go see the Farm & Garden Station — here is their address and phone number. I’m quite sure they’d appre­ciate your business.

Farm and Garden Station
1370 Almshouse Road
Ivyland, Pennsylvania 18974
Phone: (215) 396‑6898

Because that’s exactly what it was yesterday afternoon. Been having a toothache for a while now and finally got over to Newtown Endodontics to get it taken care of.  It didn’t take all that long and the Doctor was gentle and the surroundings pretty serene. Made a difference to me.  Sue drove me over there and that let me allow my mind to drift on the way.  Sort of a Zen state that you have to get yourself into to deal with these things. One of my biggest problems is my history with medical illus­tration. I visualize all too clearly the pulp being removed from the center of that molar and the small circular files penetrating into the root itself. Widening the lumen and removing the tissue that has any feeling. Porous bone through which the syringe with anesthesia has to reach. I could do a great painting of it… But the theater of the mind will suffice. I’m glad that it is today instead of yesterday and it is mostly over now.

Yep — When you under­stand how things work — sometimes they are larger than life… yuk.

I was napping on the loveseat yesterday evening post root canal and a line of showers and thunder­storms came through and Sue got to see a double rainbow. That’s pretty sweet. I didn’t see much more than a bunch of overcast by the time I got the camera there.  I did see a really red tinted sky. It was also gone before I could take a shot. Weather effects are often very fugitive.  Sue got the camera just in time because she caught it — though faintly.