A pleasant walk

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One of those nice afternoon walk with Benny.  Yes, he is 13 and he is not as peppy as a puppy any more.  But on a nice day when the temperature is in the 70s, he is happy to go for a walk in the neighborhood, and I am always happier after the walk.  I am one of those weird people that do not like to meet other dog and dog owners on the walk.  I did meet a few neighbors and we had pleasant greetings, but I would really prefer a walk by ourselves and enjoy the weather, look at the clouds, the sunsets, and just walk quietly and peacefully.

Bloody Mary at Flip Side

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Craving for a good burger today.  After a swim at the gym, Leo met me at Flip Side in Hudson to quench the craving.  Of course, i forgot to take a picture when the burger came and I couldn’t wait to dig into it.  But I managed to at least take this one of the Bloody Mary.  Leo was eating the olives, bacon and pickles that came with it.  I just enjoyed the alcoholic drink, as I do.  The burger was very good, with a side of sweet potato fries.  We both think that Flip Side has a better burger than Bar 145 downtown Kent now.  Don’t know what happened to Bar 145, they used to have very good burgers and bone marrow on the appetizer menu.  They took the bone marrow out and the burger is bland even with all the fancy things you can choose from the menu for your customized burger.  The main thing just isn’t up to par, at least in the past few times we went.  We stopped going there.  Flip Side though is still good along side with Louie’s in Akron.  Leo still likes Louie’s the best even though it’s the greasiest with a bar sitting and small parking lot.  The bottom line is we can ignore those things when the food is good.

A favorite photo of Leo

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We were at Panera getting some lunch.  Just a day of leisure in our retirement life.  As usual when I point the camera at Leo, he tensed up and I got an awkward picture of him.  As he looked away, I snatched this one.  You don’t quite catch Leo in this state, as if he is deep in thought.  He cares about the person in front of him, so he doesn’t go into deep thoughts with someone around.  But I got a glimpse of him in that state accidentally.

Playing with colors

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Another fun day with colors.  I have got a lot of crafty/painting things for a while and haven’t got around to play with them.  Today, I finally got the water colors out, both the Koi one and the cheap ones to compare.  The Koi one does have more color pay off but for my purpose at the moment, making background colors, it really doesn’t matter.  Then I got the black acrylic paint, painted an area of the page in my journal, and heat dry the page, then got all of my white pens out to test.  Not surprisingly, POSCA is the easiest to go on.  Sharpie doesn’t work at all.  It may not work on the acrylic paint, then the others were in the middle.  The gelly roll pens are the best for writing.

Listening to “First to Kill” by Andrew Peterson while playing with the colors.  It’s a good day.

Today’s fun page

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Playing in my journal today.  Gave Benny a new bone to “play”, but all he did was to “protect” it from Tido.  Every time Tido is near the bone, he chases him away.  But Tido can care less about his bone.  Instinctly though, Tido gave Benny lots of room when he passes by.

Unknown fruit

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While walking Benny a couple of days ago at the Al Lease Park, I came upon this tree with the unknown fruit ripen at the op.  Wondering what it is…

A trip to Li Wah

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We haven’t been to Lih Wah for a while so in the spur of the moment, we decided to go there for lunch.  I wanted to play with my camera and try my hands at creating a video for it.  So I used the iphone for this experiment.  Leo kept asking about when will the video be ready.  And I wanted to get my workflow worked out for the pictures and was playing with the photos and videos anyway today.  So I finished the short clip.  It’s getting easier being the second time I try to edit a video with music.  Pretty fun.

Failed Tomato Growing

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These were the best photos of the 6-7 tomato I grew this summer.  We bought a plant that already had tomatoes growing on it with a cage on top.  The tomatoes and the leaves were already growing sideways out of the cage and the pot was relatively small.  I was very enthusiastic and the tomatoes grew nicely in the first few weeks.  The pictures were tken when they were nice and plump.

But then before I knew it, even with daily watering and plant food, all of them split before they were ripen and the insects got to them.  We got to taste a couple before they rotted on the plant, the rest all went to the trash.  So sad.

Well, I tried and at least I had pictures when they were still promising and nice.

Basement project

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This was a project long time coming.  We have been in this house for 9 years now and I just got to it in July this year.  It wasn’t bad in the beginning, but 9 years of accumulation has made it impossible to walk through to the back.  We talked about it, me and Leo, lots of times in the 9 years that we will go down and start throwing things out or giving things away.  And I have made a couple attempts at sorting the electronic things into drawers.  But eventually, things got out of hand and were left to disarray.

After Elim left for San Diego, I was in a low spirit for a couple of weeks and decided to do something productive to get out of the funk.  And this was the project that I picked.  Boy am I glad I did.  It was overwhelming in the beginning when it was hard to move let alone sort in the basement.  After moving some out to the rec room area, I was able to slowly make progress.  It wasn’t a linear process either, things got moved around plenty of times before they settled in the final spot.  I went through all the boxes and containers this time instead of just piling them up.  Now that it’s finished,  life feels lighter too.

I didn’t stop there, I went through my dressers and threw out and gave away clothes that I don’t wear any more.   They were so crammed, they were hard to close.  Then I went to the office and rearranged the camera equipments and made them easier to access, too.

Today, I got the last big cardboard box of sheets sorted out from the rec room and cleared the last bit of misc, the rec room is also back to its original shape.

Now if only we can keep things in maintenance mode and not create any more chaos.  At least that is a goal.