To flash or not to flash ...

Life is just never dull around here. After we returned from our long, long trip to the state football finals, we are spinning in new directions, in a number of ways.

On the Monday after we returned, my wife started working at the call center in town. She is taking orders for a highly seasonal company that sells gift baskets. People call on their 800 number and talk to someone at the call center (right here in town), who takes their order and credit card info and sends the order to the distribution center.

It's just for December, but we have to make some serious changes to our lives while it's going on. I'm driving her to the call center at 11 a.m. or so and picking her up at 5:30 p.m. Sometimes it's a very fast supper before I head off to a basketball game or wrestling meet. Tonight, I get to stay home. It's a busy time (for her, too), so we have to cooperate.

And we do. This is the second year she has done this, and she seems to be really enjoying the work. Maybe next year, she will take part-time work during the rest of the year, if it's available. Last year, the jobs started too early in the morning (she still doesn't like to get up early), and we had all the work at my mom's place anyway.

Just days after the football finals, the winter sports (basketball) season started locally. This is the first year Michigan has had the boys and girls seasons taking place at the same time, so it's a bit hectic. I think I'm going to be damn tired of basketball before it's all over. Besides, I prefer hockey, anyway.

Wrestling season also started last week, and an all-day tourney was held here on Saturday. I like wrestling more than basketball. Here's one of our guys facing a Negaunee opponent ...
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/XParade-grapplers-12-07.jpg[/IMG]

Between matches, I took a look outside. When I arrived at the meet (9:30 a.m.), it was just cloudy. By about noon, the clouds seemed to have broken up into billions of tiny little pieces that were falling all over ...
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/XParade-HSlot-12-07.jpg[/IMG]

Well, we knew it was coming. Snow and wind and more snow and more wind. Our temperatures had already done a nose-dive, and the snow made the transition to mid-winter conditions complete.

The wrestling meet lasted until mid afternoon, and it was snowing harder as I drove home. My wife and I had a quick supper together, and then we both bundled up. It was time for a parade.

It was the second annual "Holiday in Lights" parade in town. Last year it was called "Christmas in Lights," but the name had to be changed to "holiday" because the organizers were getting some government money. So that made some people unhappy, and they were crabbing, and a few were raising a big stink, saying they would boycott the parade and might even picket it. They were just plain making asses out of themselves.

The snow wasn't going to let up, so we bundled up in heavy coats and boots and drove downtown. I had, you see, volunteered to take photos of the parade.

Yes, it was still snowy. Here's a look down the street before the parade started ...
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/XParade-snowstreet-12-07.jpg[/IMG]

And then it began, starting with the local veterans' unit, carrying flags ...
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/XParade-VetsFlags-12-07.jpg[/IMG]

... followed by the high school band ...
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/XParade-HSband-12-07.jpg[/IMG]

By now I think you can see what I was up against. To flash or not to flash. If I didn't use my flash, I had to rely on the illumination from the street lights. You could do that with some units, like this one ...
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/XParade-PizzaExp-12-07.jpg[/IMG]

But most of the units weren't so well defined (indeed, they looked downright murky) without light from the flash unit on my camera. Of course, the light from the flash first had to pass through a million jillion snowflakes (all of them different!) that were between me and my subject.

Eventually, I decided to use the flash and try to get close to the subjects--so there wouldn't be so many jillion snowflakes in between. Here are some of the shots I got ...

This was from one of the churches that decided not to boycott ...
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/XParade-1stBapt-12-07.jpg[/IMG]

This tiny herd clip-clopped down the street ...
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/Xparade-ponies-12-07.jpg[/IMG]

And this guy brought a famous Christmas season celebrity to town ...
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/XParade-Reindeer-12-07.jpg[/IMG]

St. Lucia (from an upcoming museum celebration) rode in the back of a truck ...
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/XParade-StLucia-12-07.jpg[/IMG]

There were many floats from local businesses and organizations, mostly decorated in lights. Dozens of floats. If you want to see more photos, ask and I'll add more later. These should give you a good idea what it was like. Plenty of people lined the parade route, though some tried to watch from parked cars. (The sissies.)

And of course, at the end, riding in a fire truck, was the star of the show ...
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/XParade-Santa-12-07.jpg[/IMG]

But that wasn't the end of holiday events on this night. Next, we walked down to the local chamber of commerce office, where they held a short tree-lighting ceremony. And then the town shot the works. People were wondering whether they would be able to see the fireworks through the snowflakes. They didn't wonder for long ...
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/XParade-Fireworks-12-07.jpg[/IMG]

The snow had let up a little bit, but it was still falling and blowing around quite happily. My wife and I walked back about three blocks to our car and drove home. We had been out about an hour and a half, and temperatures were in the teens. I tried taking off my gloves when taking pictures, but my fingers quickly got too cold--as cold as they were during that playoff football game a few years ago. Once I got feeling back in my fingers, they did pretty well.

For people who wear bushy mustaches, it was quite, umm, scenic ...
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/XParade-iceman-12-07.jpg[/IMG]

My wife had her boots on, but her feet got cold anyway. I found that out once we were back home--her toes felt icy. How could we feel warm again? We sat on the couch and put a comforter over us. She had her feet up, on my warm lap, and I put on a movie I had recorded from Turner Classic Movies a few days earlier.

It was called "Age of Consent" and featured James Mason as an artist who left the big city for life along the North Queensland coast of Australia, where he met a young woman--Helen Mirren ([I]that [/I]Helen Mirren; it was one of her first movies)--who was in her mid 20s and was an island girl, collecting oysters and crayfish to sell to people. She becomes the artist's model.

Some of the most beautiful scenes show the girl diving around the Great Barrier Reef in a light purple dress--and sometimes nude. Those scenes were absolutely beautiful ...
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/Xparade-corals-12-07.jpg[/IMG]

The two of us were entranced, seeing the girl diving among the corals, imagining how warm the water felt, how the sun was beating down. And for a little while, all the snow and wind blowing just outside our door was thousands of miles away. My wife's toes felt toasty warm again, and we both felt warm and happy. After feeding the kitty-cats, we went upstairs to a warm bed and slept soundly.

Of course, all the snow and wind became very real once again the next morning, as I had to dig out eight inches of snow around the car so my wife could get to church and her altar guild duties. But we got a short escape from reality.

P.S.: Overnight, we're heading for 10 below!