It’s a cool place, and while it’s not near as remote as it appears in The Shining, once you get up to the hotel itself you can’t shake the creepy vibe the fictional history lends it. As we were walking out, I ran out onto the edge of a walkway out front and snapped a couple pictures of the front of the place, including Tom, Michelle, the Wife, and the Midget (barely a toddler at the time) coming toward me. I caught a few that I thought looked great, including one I thought would make a nice picture for the office. The sun wasn’t quite in the right place and the focus on the family & friends could have been better (it was just a simple point-and-shoot camera), but it was mine and I was happy with it.

Then I promptly lost the picture. I was juggling systems and hard drives at the same time, I procrastinated making prints, and before long the pictures disappeared. I was fairly certain I screwed up and deleted one of my backups that may have included those pics, and I figured that was that.

Flash forward five years. I’m digging through a box of junk and I find a CD labeled “laptop backup” and dated back to ‘04. It had pictures on it, so I imported them to iPhoto. Over time I’ve been going through and sorting them out, tagging them, and so on, when I stumbled across a picture of the elk from Colorado.

Dare I hope?

I scrolled through the pics and boom! Found her:

Guests check in... but they don't check out!

It made my day. I hate losing pictures, but I missed this one and I have no idea when I’ll be able to get out to visit Colorado again. Even if I did go out there and reproduce it with better light and my new camera, it wouldn’t have the same magic attached to it. I still procrastinated on buying a print, but believe me, I’ve got backups!

Now that I’m getting ready to send Tom a copy of my book, I thought he and Michelle would like a copy of the picture. This morning I uploaded it to Flickr, ordered a copy, and the Wife picked it up while she was out grocery shopping. I finally have a hardcopy in my hot little hands.

Of course I forgot to tell her to pick up a picture frame, so now it’ll probably get buried on my desk and collect dust for another year or two.

Redneck Car Repair

Originally uploaded by MikeOliveri.

“Hmm, our quarter panel is coming loose. I know! Let’s lash it to the license plate!”

Wow. I’m surprised it made it around the block.

Best. Con chair. EVER.

Originally uploaded by MikeOliveri.

I could tell you what he just did for us, but then I’d have to kill you.

These Aren’t the Dorks You’re Looking For

Originally uploaded by MikeOliveri.

The entire 501st hits on Willie’s Wenches

Tools of the Trade

Originally uploaded by MikeOliveri.

The VisionCon staff

Originally uploaded by MikeOliveri.

The REAL rock stars, the folks who make this happen.

Daily digests of Twitter posts will appear here, as will the occasional mobile blog post and/or Flickr photo. I don’t know that you’ll be able to live the convention vicariously through me, but you’ll at least get a flavor of what’s happening.*

If you’ll be there, see you soon. If you won’t, try me at one of my other Appearances.

*Some photos may be withheld to protect the guilty.

Icy Doom Hates My Tree
Originally uploaded by MikeOliveri.

This is the small fir tree near our front porch. It sprang back after an icy rain last year, and hopefully it will again.

The power went out about an hour ago, and there’s no ETA on restoration. I went on a brief photo expedition and will have more pics to share, including an example of why the power lines don’t fare so well in this stuff.

The roads aren’t bad, though, so once we figure out how widespread the outage is we can go get some chow and check out some more of Mother Nature’s ice performances. If it looks like it will be a while for power, we can also take a run to pick up my father-in-law’s old generator.

I laugh in Icy Doom’s face!

Ice Road Truckin’
Originally uploaded by MikeOliveri.

Sights like this are one of the few things that make me miss living in the ‘burbs, or at least living in larger towns.

The drive from my office to our second campus is six miles, and today four miles of it were covered in the ice and snow you see here. We face a double whammy: the county is low on funds and thus is low on road salt, and there is nothing in our wide-open fields to stop the wind from blowing snow across the roads.

I realize the city streets may not be ideal, either, but you’re typically going to be traveling at a lower rate of speed and at night you have streetlamps so you’re not surprised by sudden drifts.

Yes, drifts. Though a lot of the ice had melted off on the other side of town by late afternoon, driving home from karate this evening I ran into knee-high patches of snow along the center line. If there hadn’t been a steady stream of traffic to keep the snow from building up in the traffic lanes, the road would have been impassable.

It’s days like this that it would be nice to have a much shorter drive to the dojo, or be able to walk to the corner store, or to have dinner delivered. I think it’s going to be another long winter.

Now I understand why we have so many neighbors who are snowbirds.