I had another defining moment for my career yesterday.  They let me go up and do some ariel photography.  Most people would find the subject matter of dams to be somewhat boring but I don't care what I am taking pictures of as long as I am taking pictures.  This is a little narrative about my day.

This is the little cessna we commissioned to fly us over, intially 4, but ended up to be 7 or 8 features.  

This is semi-retired Larry Caldwell.  He is the "Old Dam Man".  He told us he was going to retire but his office is still open for business nearly every day.  He's the biggest so we stuffed him in the back seat.  Actually, you can't shoot good pictures from back there since only the front window opens while you are flying.  (That's right, open window picture shooting at 5000 feet.)

Naturally we had to have a pilot.  This man was an excellent pilot.  If I hadn't been wearing the seat belt I would have only fell out of the plane twice.  He was impressed that I didn't ralph.  Most people who shoot out of planes get queasy even when they normally wouldn't.  Has to do with the limited information your eye gets from your surroundings when you close one and force the other into the viewfinder.

This is part of the reason we do what we do at the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS).  It is hard to get a good idea of the true scope of erosion unless you can see this.  Water is a powerful earth mover.  People underestimate this power all the time.

In the end we landed with over 1000 pictures, many of them just versions of others.  I had my camera set to rapid fire to make sure I got the shots we needed.  Next time we take off I will have a better idea of what I need to do.  I will probably take fewer pictures but I don't think I am quite up to eliminating the rapid fire just yet.  That will come with experience.  I may get lots of practice as everyone agrees we should do this more often.

Drummond Flat Wetland Area

Cimarron River

How excited am I?

I am excited enough to post a photograph of pee on my blog that's how excited I am.  Maybe this is a little out of the ordinary.  I am sure Xyla will be angry with me when she grows up for posting this but . . . 

Considering the fact I thought it would be a major effort to get her to be ok with the concept of pee in the potty this is huge.  She has made it to the pot 4 times already and it isn't even noon yet.  I suppose I can start investing in pull-ups so that she will understand the mechanics of underpants.  I can see being able to save $50 a month in my close future.  I am beyond excited.

Her favorite hat . . .

This is a short post.  It's just to show  you her favorite hat.

On the death of my grandfather. . .

I was going to write this post so long ago.  It's been quite a while since my grandfather died.  He was the last living grandfather and none of us had seen him since I was about thirteen.  It is hard to know what to tell about him.  I remember the fall and a large wheelbarrow but that was about it.  We got a call from him when we lived in Pinedale that goes like this:

Brandy: (answering the phone) hello?  I don't know let me ask my mom.  Mom, there is a man on the phone who wants to know if I am old enough to pay taxes.

Mom:  It's your grandfather.

Brandy:  No, it's a man who wants to know if . . . 

Mom: It's your grandfather, give me the phone.

The one time he did call and just ask to speak to mom, we were all a little dumbfounded. I was 6.  I don't think we really heard from him again, that I recall, until he showed up when I was around 13.  He had been there a couple of days and baked a cake.  I don't know if it was someone's birthday, but I remember wanting to taste the icing.  I swiped a fingerful of it.  Clearly, the cake had been violated so I evened it up a bit and ran my finger in a straight line around the bottom of the cake to make it uniform.  And, no . . . I hadn't considered getting a butter knife to 'replace' the missing frosting.  

My grandfather saw it and was furious.  At first he was so angry, I was scared to tell him I had done it.  He decided that all of us kids would go to bed without supper if someone didn't fess up.  I finally did.  I went to bed without food - over some icing.  It was weird.  I know that he and my mom had a discussion about it and he was gone the next day.  Even though quite a bit has been revealed to me about who he was, that event still sits oddly with me.  I don't know what to think of the man.  I see his features that were passed through my mom, handed down to me.  

His death was really hard on my mom.  We hadn't heard from him at all since that incident.  We had heard a limited amount about him.  My mom saw him just before he passed away.  I don't know if she got to say everything that she needed to say to him.  It is weird because, though he was my grandfather, I didn't really know him.  It is hard to mourn for someone you don't know. It is hard for me to grieve for him, because I never had more than a weird feeling about him.  Perhaps this is all I can do to remember him.

  I have these few pictures of me when I was a kid.  We must have had fun at some point.  I don't remember it.  To give some perspective, I do remember that chair in the background.

But that isn't what I stopped by to write about today.  What I am writing about today is this little gem right here.

We may not look alike but I'll be darned if she isn't her mother's daughter.  I caught her doing this . . . that's right.  She refused to eat the piece I put on her plate but she had to lick the pizza in the box.  I did not send her to her room without dinner.  I made her take the piece she licked and tried to get her to eat it.  Funny thing is, once it was out of the box - she didn't want it anymore.  I love this girl.  She makes me laugh.  I want her to remember these good times when she tells her kids about me.