A Photogenic Addition

 

This past week, my penny-pinching of per diem money finally paid off when I was able to purchase the camera of my dreams. In a lucky turn, Best Buy honored their online price, and I saved an additional $100 when buying it in person at the store.

I really wanted this camera to document my family reunion in Sedona over the first weekend of August (where I presently am), so getting it in person was awesome. I am wondering if this camera will soon be gone from shelves since the release of the new T4i just last month. Ordering my beloved T2i online would have let the camera arrive too late for taking pictures at my family reunion. So I was thrilled when I got the last Canon T2i on the shelf.

In the short amount of time that I’ve had to play with it, I am absolutely blown away. I’ve watched a few tutorials online, which are way easier to use than a cumbersome instruction manual (though I’ve read it a few times, too). It has been nothing but a treat to play with the camera’s various settings to see what it can do. I had pretty high expectations, and so far they are being blown out of the water.

Though I still have about a month’s worth of posting from my old camera, you will soon notice a difference in the pictures on this here blog. I can’t wait to try it out for recipe posts, shots from the sky, and portraits of loved ones. And, since it was practically free with some extra per diem funds, buyers remorse is nonexistent!

I’m tickled! After drooling over this camera for years, it is finally in my hands. And, since it can also shoot HD video, it does anything and everything that I could possibly want in a piece of technology. I am one happy camper!

Haboobies When I’m Gone

Hubby keeps telling me that we get crazy dust storms, or haboobs, out of nowhere quite often during our summer monsoon months.

Yes, you read that correctly. We have a monsoon season. In fact, while it drops the temperature a few degrees in July and August (just a few…we are still often above 110 F), it propels our humidity into astronomical numbers. At least, the numbers are astronomical to desert-dwellers such as us who prefer the winter humidity of three percent.

Since I was gone nineteen days in July (fourteen of those in a row), I missed out on several Haboobs in action.

By the way, I’m really going to enjoy a few weeks home. I feel like it’s been for.ev.er since I’ve seen Hubby! I had to carry a picture with me so I could remember what he looked like when I finally arrived home at 4:00 AM the other day.

Speaking of Hubby, he shot this picture on the day before I got home. I love that the clock is visible, because it is obviously 5:00 somewhere. It proves that the dust storm has taken over the sky and darkened everything, several hours before we normally see a darkened sky around these parts.

Outside, an eerie, scary orange sky enveloped our home as the dust storm moved over the neighborhood. These haboobs don’t mess around, that’s for dang sure.

Above in the first picture, the flash caught all of the dust particles as they made their way to wreaking havoc on recently-cleaned pools and sparkling patio furniture everywhere. It still baffles me that we are able to keep most of this dust outside…where it belongs.

Do you have any haboob experience? I recommend incorporating the word into your daily vocabulary, just because it’s so much fun. But be careful when you are searching for “haboobs” on the internet.

I’m just sayin’…

California in the Dust

After a wonderful five days in sunny (and sometimes rainy) California, it was time to fly back home to Bremerton. Our passengers live here for the summer, so all of our flights are from this airport until late August.

There were lots of pretty airplanes on the ramp in Van Nuys, but Gladys was the prettiest girl at the ball.

I loved the giant American flag on this airplane based in Ideeho. The paint was pretty cool, too. Obviously a custom job.

We have to taxi in between all of these parked airplanes to get to Runway 16R for takeoff! Tight quarters on this busy ramp, and there are six other FBOs at Van Nuys that are just as busy!

This place is a hoppin’!

As always in such busy airspace, we had to hold for an IFR release at the beginning of the runway. As long as it isn’t more than a few minutes, I always enjoy this wait because I get to see some pretty airplanes land at Van Nuys.

And we’re off! It’s just over two hours back to Bremerton from Van Nuys. The cooler temperatures are going to be wonderful. But it has been a great and busy week in California.

We flew past Van Nuys Airport again as we continued our climb to FL400 for the flight home. We were just down there at that little strip of an airport in the middle of a busy city!

Some beautiful lakes could be seen as we crossed the saddle of mountains towards the Seattle area. These are just north of the Los Angeles valley, and I cross them every time we come to LA.

Now we are flying near Palmdale just past the Angeles National Forest. The best views are always from the sky.

After we leveled off, I had a good feel for what the fuel burn would be for the remainder of the flight. That let me compute the landing weight and thus enter the landing speeds from the checklist into the information boxes in Gladys’ flight computer.

Micah Math at work. Scary, I know.

This was about as exciting as it got for weather during the flight back to Bremerton, and we were way above it. I love when we have great weather for our flights. We weren’t lucky enough to have a tailwind, but that just meant more time in the sky.

As we got closer to Seattle, I had a great view of Mount Saint Helens. Doesn’t this thing still look like it’s about to blow?! See how the clouds just hang around the opening like it’s volcano steam?

I was glad that we were still at 24,000 feet right about now.

And here we are flying over the south end of one of my favorite cities in the world…Hi, Seattle!

It was a gorgeous day to land at Bremerton. It was busy in the traffic pattern, of course. And the Seattle Approach Controller told us to keep an eye out as we flew past Tacoma Airport since they were having an airshow and a B-1 Bomber was there. How cool!

We didn’t see that giant guy, but I could see a formation of what looked like F-16s flying over the field for the show. Pretty awesome!

It’s so green and lush here in the Puget Sound. I love landing here at 65 degrees. It was a beautiful day to fly.

Can you see Bremerton Airport? They shut down one runway years ago and presently use it in drag racing. It’s funny to hear those loud cars going when on the ramp in Bremerton.

They have their priorities mixed up, though. Cars over airplanes?! That’s just crazy talk.

It was late Saturday afternoon when we landed at Bremerton. Since we had a very early-morning flight on Monday, we decided to get our fuel for the trip now. This would prevent anyone having to show up early for us on Monday morning.

This fuel truck is always about to die. Rumor has it that they are getting a new one, but I will believe it when I see it.

Gladys was buttoned up for a few days on the ramp in Bremerton.

And we were allowed to use the crew car for the entire weekend! We drove the eight miles into town and pulled into the Fairfield Inn near the harbor. This is my favorite place to stay while in Bremerton, which we’ve done a lot this summer!

It’s just two blocks from the ocean, and about the same distance to several restaurants in the area. I feel like I’ve tried them all lately!

I walked up to one of my favorite eateries, but it was closed. In fact, almost everything in downtown Bremerton was shut down on a late Saturday evening.

So I walked to another place that I knew would be open. I took some pictures of the fun downtown area of Bremerton as I went.

And over by the Naval shipyard was this neat old building. I love old stuff.

But I was hungry!

Luckily, just liked I hoped it was, the Bremerton Bar and Grill was open.

And I timed it perfectly to get their Happy Hour Food Menu.

And a Caesar salad and sweet potato fries were just the perfect ending to a great day in the sky. Unfortunately, I don’t think the salad canceled out the fries.