Radio City Music Hall

Let the rumors begin.

Word on the street yesterday was that Rush is about to release the dates of the second leg of the Clockwork Angels North American tour.  It’s supposed to take place in March and April, just prior to the band going to Europe in May.  There are no definite dates yet.  There was a leaked itinerary that was pretty clearly fake.  It featured three separate stops at one venue.  That seemed very unlikely and it removed any possible credibility from the “leak”.

Still, the rumors suggest that there will be another stop at Radio City Music Hall in New York City.  I remember back in 1983, reading in some lame rock magazine (Circus?  Maybe?) that Rush had booked six nights at Radio City.  Back then, that sounded like the most amazing example of success.  To book six consecutive nights in one of the most famous of all US venues.  It was hard to believe.  The 13 year old me decided that someday, he would see Rush at Radio City.

I am still waiting for a chance.  I have seen them in Manhattan twice.  Both times at Madison Square Garden.  As unbelievably awesome as those experiences were, they still weren’t Radio City.

I have been inside Radio City Music Hall once.  My wife and I took the tour on one of our visits to the city.  Hopefully the next time we’re there it will be to see the Holy Triumvirate of Prog Rock.

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My 2012 in Pictures – Part Deux

Yeah, I did a my-year-in-pictures thing the other day. It was fun. What the hell, thought I, why not do it again? This time I’ll run fast and loose with the whole one-pic-from-each-month thing. I’m crazy like that.

We have to get our pics of the Sands Bridge in Methuen before she collapses. Or maybe I should say before she finishes collapsing. It’s already started. Also, I don’t think I found a relative in the Grove Street Cemetery, but who knows?

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In February I finally finished an RPM Challenge on time. It only took me five tries. We also got a new bed. Jen’s penguin approved.

Showdown at Canobie Lake Park

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In March, the kids and I became wilderness explorers. Hipstamatic came along for the ride. Actually, we just wandered around in the woods behind our house for a little while. It was fun.

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April in San Diego. I want to go back RIGHT NOW!

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May gave us baseball, Bar Harbor, and my first up close New England Lighthouse.

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The picture pickin’s are slim in June, but we did get a new Rush album (and it is awesome) and we got another fantastic piano recital from the kids.

And all was right with the world...

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July offers more choices after a spontaneous trip to Boston, and a week long stay in Maine that included some time in the mountains of New Hampshire.

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In August we went to the Top of the Hub for the first time in my life. The views of my city were spectacular. We also spent some twilight time on Hampton Beach.

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September had mountain waterfalls, leaf peeping, my first ever attempt at photo-walking in Tewksbury, and more Rush.

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October continues to belong to Washington, DC.

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The camera didn’t come out much in November, but I did torture the cat, and my wife, with my camera phone, and we did celebrate Turkey Day.

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December had more mountains, more mountain streams, and Christmas.

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And there we have a second view of my 2012 in pictures. Forgive the gratuitousness.

Happy New Year (again).

My 2012 in Pictures

In January I took my swanky new lens out and about in Methuen to see what it could do.  These trips usually focus on the Spicket River, but this time I went to the Merrimack.
Reflections in the River

As usual, February focused on the RPM Challenge. This year my saxophone came out of retirement.
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In March I finally managed to get a few pictures of the night sky that only mostly sucked, as opposed to the normal total suck. This is the Moon, Venus, and Jupiter, all at once.
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April brought us back to San Diego and I swear, each time we go there it gets harder and harder to come home.
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In May we brought the kids to Fenway Park. Dustin Pedroia and the Red Sox won the game, but went on to their worst season in 100,000 years.
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June was very quiet, photography wise, but we did get another piano recital in the wonderful Nevins Library in Methuen.
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In July we spent a week on Long Lake in Maine. I managed to accidentally take a few pictures that didn’t suck.
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In August we spent a day wandering around Portsmouth, NH including Strawbery Banke.
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In September we took the kids to see Rush. Now they know what I’ve been talking about all this time.
Rush on the opening night of the Clockwork Angels tour

In October we took the kids to Washington, DC and tried our best to see everything in the short time we were there.
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In November I didn’t post a single picture taken with my D90. I did, however, learn that this existed and it made me feel a little better about the human race in general.
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In December my wife and I ran off together to the mountains for a few days. It was wonderful to get away.
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And there you have it. A brief synopsis of my 2012, in pictures. I could have posted hundreds of pictures. Maybe I will later on.

It is Snowing

It is snowing here tonight.  I just took my camera outside for 2.5 seconds to document the occasion.

First we have the nice looking no-flash pic that magically does not suck.
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We follow that with two pics that used the flash in an attempt at showing just how heavily the white crap is falling on us.
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Tomorrow I expect I’ll have to spark up the snow blower for the first time in two years. I hope it still works. I hope I remember how to use it.

Potential Banner Pics

I’m in full on nerd mode right now.

I wanted to change the photo in my banner. I figured something guitar related would be appropriate. I had a couple of pics that might be good source material…

This one has received over a thousand hits on Flickr.

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This one seems to have a little too much going on, but after cropping it down it might be okay.

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I don’t want to use camera phone pics, but this Hipstamatic of my 12-string is a minor favorite.

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In the end I decided to take a couple of new pictures of my Les Paul and try those.

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I ended up going with an attempt at redoing the banner on my Google+ profile, which is a camera phone pic taken on the day Jim Marshall died.

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And there you have it… A nerd and his camera and his guitars.

Deer

This morning as we were walking out to the car I heard leaves rustling behind our neighbor’s house. I looked up and saw, just on the edge of the woods, a deer running away. I called out to the kids and my step daughter and I both saw a second deer, but my step son was too far away an he missed them.

We went through a stretch last year where we were seeing deer behind the house pretty often. Once every couple of weeks or so. They would sometimes even come out of the trees into the yard and hang out for a while. Once I even managed to get into the back yard with them, but only for a second before they got spooked.

This year… nothing. I’ve seen one deer since January, and that was at night a few houses down the street. This is the first time since then that I have seen them up close, even if it was just a couple of tails dashing away. I love living in a house that has wild deer living close by. I have thought about getting a salt lick and hiding it behind the house somewhere, but I doubt the neighbors would appreciate that. Random deer sightings will have to be enough for now.

12/11/10…
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1/21/12…
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11/2/11…
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7/17/11…
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The Last Long Weekend Post

Any time we go away and my D90 comes with us I have to milk as many posts out of it as possible.  This is a good example of that.

Technically, we stayed at a Bed and Breakfast.  In reality, we had a house to ourselves.  There was a legitimate Bed and Breakfast, called Old Field House, but the building we stayed in was a single house about a half mile away from the main building.  Our building was called Holiday Ridge.  It had four bedrooms, a fire place in the center of the living room, a nice deck on the back of the house, a private hot tub (that was a huge selling point for us), a nearly vertical drop behind the house, and the previously mentioned spiral staircase of death and doom.  It also had a full kitchen and dining room.

Here you see the futon we used a couple of times, as well as the top of the spiral staircase of death and doom.
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Here we see the fireplace. Note the comfy chair behind the fireplace. It was in fact very comfy. Too comfy. Once I sank into it I had a legitimately difficult time getting out of it.
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Here are the glass doors to the back deck as seen at night.
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Here are the glass doors to the back deck as seen in the morning light.
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This is the back deck, following Friday night’s rain. This was a really great spot, but it was way too cold to make use of it. Should we ever find ourselves back here in the summer we will definitely make better use of this.
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The room felt a little dated.  Not much though.  The bedrooms down stairs were much more so.  The furnishings could probably go for an update.  We slept in the master bedroom the first night but the bed had a serious sag into the middle.  The rest of the time we slept in one of the other bedrooms and it was 100 times better.  Still, we did not pick this place for the bedroom decor.  We picked it for the hot tub.  Yes, we did.

The tub is outside, below the back deck.  It’s not as private as we hoped it would be.  It was private in that we didn’t have to share it.  It was not private in that there was a house next door that could see it.  My wife has a seriously bad back.  I have a bunch of regular aches and pains in my back and my feet (and my brain, har har).  The air temperature ranged from the high 20’s to the mid 30’s.  Getting from the house to the hot tub took about five steps, but damn those were a cold five steps.  Once we were in the 100 degree water though.  All of our aches and pains washed away.  We both just sat there, melting.  I could have spent the whole weekend in there.  Hell, I could have slept in there.

We didn’t see a single wild animal during our stay.  We were hoping to see a moose, or even a bear.  Assuming, of course, that said moose and bear were close enough for us to see them, but far enough away for them to not be able to see us.  Get it?  At one point I had to go outside after dark to put the cover on the tub.  I had this crazy thought go through my head as I stepped outside that some mountain lion or something was going to try to drag my fat ass off.  I figured if I got jumped by a cat I would try and flip us both into the tub.  Cats hate baths, right?  That would probably be enough to save my life, right?  Right?

Dixville Notch

Yesterday the plan was to spend some time Christmas shopping in North Conway, and to spend some quality time in the hot tub.  Instead we went on yet another ridiculously huge drive.  Jen wanted to go North.  She’s always wanted to go North of the White Mountains, but it takes us around three hours to get that far, we don’t have the energy to go on for another three hours.  Since we were already in the mountains we figured what the hell, and pointed the car North.

After wandering aimlessly for a while we decided to head toward Pittsburgh.  My step kids go there with the father and step mother roughly once a year to try and see Moose.  The kids have told me many times that Pittsburgh is the largest town in New Hampshire, although only in terms of area.  In terms of population… well… not so much.  Just as we were reaching Pittsburgh we started seeing signs for Canadian Customs checkpoints and border crossings.  We also saw signs for towns in Vermont.  We actually detoured a little just so we could say that we went to Vermont, but we didn’t actually do anything there.  We never made it to Canada.  I don’t have a passport, and Jen didn’t have hers with her, so we weren’t going to be able to cross in anyway.  We got as far as a sign that said Canada was 26 miles away.

The most interesting surprise on this drive was that we passed through Dixville Notch, NH.  You have heard of that place.  In fact, it got national news coverage last month.  Dixville, NH is the first town in the United States to close its polls on election night, and therefore they are the first town to release its election results to the press.  They only have about 20 registered voters, and they all meet in a hotel at midnight on election day.  They each have a personal voting booth, and they all cast their vote and have them counted within a couple of minutes.  This is legal for them to do because they verify 100% participation.  Otherwise they would not be able to close the polls so quickly.

Anyway, we were driving through this particularly terrifying little mountain pass when we saw a gigantic hotel and a welcome to Dixville Notch sign.  I had to pull over and take a picture.  The hotel is called Balsams and it instantly overshadowed the whole election thing.  Look at these pictures and tell me that this isn’t the most haunted hotel on Earth.  The Overlook hotel from The Shining has nothing on this place.

It turns out that this is actually the place where the residents do their voting.  Can you imagine?  It must be terrifying in there!  There is no way that this place isn’t haunted.  Every Hollywood movie cliche tells me that there are at least 500 ghosts in those buildings and at least 10% of them are the ghosts of psychotic axe murderers.

Enjoy your stay, and happy voting!

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Are you ready for the worst part? The hotel is closed for renovations. There is probably a guy, a caretaker, living in that hotel right now. He’s probably writing a novel about how all work and no play make Jack a something something, and he’s probably shuffling up to the bar to talk to the bartender who hasn’t been there for 50 years.

Creepy!