To kick things off, here's some snaps from the Udvar-Hazey annex to the National Air and Space Museum. I was out there today because they were having an open house, which meant we could go into the preservation & restoration area, normally off-limits to the public. First up, for Forbin, a fine example of the P-47 Thunderbolt. A B-26 named Flak Bait being restored. I was told this was a B model and one of only three known to exist. And the main event, the original shooting model of the USS Enterprise, NCC-1701 (no bloody A, B, C, or D) which has been removed from display at the museum on the national mall for some restoration work. Some fellow fans taking pictures. Down low view, showing that they've removed the main deflector dish. A good profile view.
Meanwhile, in Florida... this is my sister's 40-something daughter, and her teenage daughter. My niece is a midwife at a racehorse breeder. These are a few of the recent crop. We always told her to get a stable job!
Far too big to upload and only good in hi-res. A very large pic of the clearest I've ever seen the view from here. Some of the clear-looking hills in this are over 30 miles away. And I'm only a few hundred metres above sea-level https://www.flickr.com/photos/danleach/16435952215/sizes/o/
That's lovely, that is! I love the transition from suburban row houses to rolling sheep-spattered hillsides all in one view. And the mountains in the b/g are gorgeous.
We were wondering if Nikki was the last of her litter. Sammies usually don't live as long as 14. Well somehow the people who own her brother Spryte heard about Nikki's passing, and emailed us condolences right on their mutal birthday, with pictures of 14-year-old Spryte still alive and... well, not kicking, but looking fine:
So I felt like building a model that didn't need to be clean and pretty and I could weather the shit out of. Only one thing came to mind: This is the little 9" Falcon made by Fine Molds. The base is a vacuformed moon texture made by Plastruct, glued to a board.
It's what I've arrived at after eight winters in this house, tho. Go down one side to define the edge, go down the other side to do the same, then go cross-ways so I can throw the snow into my own yard instead of into the neighbor's. Oh, and I've also learned to clean off the bottom of the driveway first, where the plows pile it up, because that's the hardest part and doing it when I'm fresh is better than doing it after I'm tired out from shoveling the whole rest of the driveway.
I think what he meant was that because they're all framed so similarly, at first glance, the photos appear to be out of sequence. I thought something looked "wrong" about it, too, until I looked more closely and realized the camera position was different in each shot.
Forbin you should have been disk jockey - anybody ever tell you that you have a great face for radio? BTW I think that pretty lady next to you likes you.
I hear you! I've hit pay-dirt from ladies way out of my league, but never in a long-term situation. I doff my hat!
And again with the driveway . . . Getting started. The tree in my front yard, all snowy beauty. My road. Look, they plowed this time! And done. Again.
