Pictures Sent To Me In 1985...

I didn't take a picture today for my Pic Of The Day so I thought I'd dig in a box of old photos and choose one. But once I dug into the pictures, I found so many I could choose from. Thus was my quandary. Which one to use?

I found one from a 1992 U of U A'cappella Choir. Personally, I think it's a great picture.

The other pictures, though. I wanted to use them as well. As I looked through only a small portion of the photos, I found a selection of shots that people sent to me back in 1985. Back in 1985 I was living in Europe on an LDS mission. Back then there was no internet, no sending pictures through e-mail or on Facebook. No, we had to share pictures the old fashioned way--through the mail.

As I started looking through them, I thought it would be cool to gather a few great photos together, take pictures of then, and write today's blog post using my family and friends as the blog post subject.

And so that's what I did.

Some in these shots are no longer with us (my mom, my little dog, my VW...). But everyone in these pictures have undergone dramatic changes in their lives. Of course, that could be said about everyone who had lived for the past thirty-one years.

So, I'm including these photos to show you some of the most important people in my life back then. And the good news is, they still are today.

New Banner And Cards...Totally Worth It!

I placed the order with Vistaprint just the other day (click: HERE and HERE for more info from Vistaprint...). It arrived on Friday--we live in amazing times. I've gone to a few conventions over the past few years and I've seen many banners, business cards, bookmarks, and other items brought and set up by other authors and artists, all produced to increase their brand.

At this year's Salt City Steamfest that concluded today, I unveiled a couple of things--an author banner and business cards.

I guess I've got a brand.

On Fathers Day last June my seventeen-year old gave me a picture he drew of me (a thinner, more suave me, but me none the less...). He made me a writing James Bond-type figure. I love it! I used it as my Facebook background image and when I decided I wanted a banner, that image came to mind.

So I used it.

And the banner came out great!

We had a booth at Steamfest and so my banner and business cards joined other banners and cards. I was part of the team. Well, I've always been part of the team, just not the banner team.

I drove away last night after not selling a single book. That's not so unusual. I don't have a lot of books to sell--only my own short story collection. I didn't know if the banner and cards would help move my books. I hoped it would help. But a thought came to me as I drove home. I remembered back to when I was designing the banner and cards. I showed my son--the one who created my new style--the finished product. You should have seen his smile.

I saw that smile again as I unrolled the banner after it was delivered to our home. My son was so happy. He even commented on how cool it was to have something he created be shown at conventions.

The thought I had, as I drove home after packing up the banner, books, and cards was this--no matter how much success the new marketing materials bring or don't bring, just seeing the effect it had on my son meant I made a good decision ordering it. So far, they've brought in no new sales, but ordering them was totally worth it.

Pic Of The Day...Kind Of

About five and a half years ago I started posting a picture on this blog, on Facebook, and on Google + every day.

Every single day.

Of course, when you post a picture every day, that means you need to take at least one photo every day. Some day's I've taken dozens of photos--some days only one. Needless to say, I've filled up computers and back up drives with pictures.

Even if you don't think you'll make rules when you start out doing something like this, rules creep into the process. I ended up making some rules with my Pic Of The Day. It had to be a picture that I took on the day I posted it on social media. And that picture had to be posted before midnight in whatever time zone I was in (I think in the past five and a half years, I've only changed from the Mountain Time Zone to the Pacific Time Zone, and I've only done that once...). Sure, I could use a picture I took a day, a week, or even a year earlier. If it was something like a sunset, no one might ever know the picture wasn't taken on the day it was posted, but I'd know.

So, the other night my wife and I sat out on our porch while an electrical storm blew into the valley. I set up my camera on a tripod and took several time-lapsed photos. Sometimes the shutter would close just before another brilliant lightning strike would hit miles away and I'd miss the shot.

But, I did get one. It wasn't as amazing as the actual lightning bolt, but I'll take it. After I caught the picture, I wondered which picture to use as my Pic Of The Day. I had three I could have chosen. That happens sometimes. Usually, it's not a big deal. That night I didn't use the picture of lightning that I caught.

But I really wanted to use that picture as a Pic Of The Day, so I cheated just a little. I brought up the lightning picture on my camera's little LED screen and I took a picture of that. It followed my rules--I took that picture on that day (even though the original picture was taken a couple of days before...) and I posted it before midnight.

Looks like I've found a loophole.

Just Hanging At The Mall...

Wednesday night I had some time to kill before our screenwriters group assembled.

So I decided to go to a mall.

I don't regularly go to malls. In the history of malls I'm not one who has spent a lot of time at those malls. The first mall I remember was Cottonwood Mall in Holliday, Utah. It's no longer there--it's been replaced by a big empty nothing, a field where the only things available are weeds.

I guess the 1980s were the malls' golden age, though I'm not a marketing expert so I can't be sure. Maybe I think that because I was a teenager in the 1980s. We moved from Holliday long ago and the the mall I probably spent the most time at in my life was in Layton, Utah. They built the Layton Hills Mall sometime in the 1970s, I believe. We'd go occasionally. My brother even worked there.

I also remember hearing how malls were basically evil. Their existence meant the death of "Main Street" and I suppose that's true, but then again, Main Street probably wasn't doing so well anyway and the malls simply filled a void of what customers wanted.

But, as it happens, things that rise must eventually come down. The dominance the malls once had has been replaced.

By the internet.

Again, I'm not an expert. It's just how I see things. Malls have adapted and changed, stumbled and clawed to keep the people coming through their doors. Walking through the doors of Valley Fair Mall the other night transported me back to those 1980s when girls and boys used to wander the halls looking for an adventure. Of course, things have changed. Thirty years ago, every other store sold jeans, not cellphone cases. But one store at Valley Fair Mall made me smile...it was an arcade with real-live video games. Haven't seen one of those in a mall in a long time.

It's amazing how memories can be triggered by just entering a building. That's what happened to me Wednesday night.

Looking For Mercury...

"It's really hard to see--if you look just above the island," my oldest son said as we gathered outside tonight in the driveway. "It's really faint--like sometimes it's there and sometimes it's not."

I found Venus and Jupiter. We could even see Mars, but for the life of me, I just couldn't see Mercury. Dusk faded as we stood, a trio of bats ravished unseen bugs in the air separating us and Mercury by  millions of miles. A creature stirred at our feet, one of two cats that tolerate us. This one hunts at night--the other, stays inside.

"I can't see it," said the youngest who followed his mother and big brother outside to see what they what they saw. I couldn't see it either.

"So, where is it?" I focused. I looked west where colors slowly faded. "It's not in the blue, but still in the orange, but not the bright orange," I said. This had been explained to me earlier. I really wanted to see that rock, the closest planet to the sun in our solar system.

"Where is it over the island?" I asked. They said you look from the highest point on Antelope Island and travel the line north. I needed to spot a line of thin clouds. I followed the line and found the clouds. "I've found the clouds--where it is from there?" They told me it was at the north end of the clouds and about two times as high from the clouds as the clouds were from the island.

I looked again, right where they said.

And I saw a dot, a fleck of light as if I had earned the right to see the planet so far away.

"I see it!" And I did. As soon as the speck of light appeared, it disappeared--there one moment, gone the next. Tonight I spotted an object between seventy-seven million and two-hundred and twenty-two million miles away. 

"That was cool."

Sara B. Larson's "Defy"...A Book Review

I bought the book for my daughter, but it was something I wanted to read. Last week I got the chance. Yesterday I finished it.

I liked it.

I should say, I read a lot of Young Adult literature. I enjoy YA--it's, in a word, safe. Not that all YA stories are necessarily "safe" but there are aspects in these books that aren't in, say, a Stephen King or Michael Crichton yarn.

Larson's Defy begins with a slaughter. Twin children watch as a sorcerer kills his parents. The first thing one sibling does is cut his sister's hair. At first it seems an odd reaction, but the reasoning becomes perfectly clear. It cannot be known that Alexa, the girl twin, is indeed a girl. If so, her life will become a living hell.

Defy basically begins three years later. Alexa--now Alex--and her brother Marcel are guards to Prince Damian, the only living heir to his father. Both siblings are excellent fighters, but Alex is better. However, with many stories where a girl pretends to be a boy (because of ghastly repercussions if her lie is discovered...), things change--specifically to her own body--that threaten to destroy her world.

A war rages in the land between the king's people and an another army. Soon Alex, Damian, and another guard Rylan find themselves captured and they must somehow return to their own kingdom. How they do this is the plot. How Alex/Alexa survives is the story.

About the only time I have to read is on the bus rides to and from work. While at work there are down times, times to think about things, and many times, I think about the stories I read earlier in the day. While reading this book during those down times I found myself thinking about the "girl pretends to be a boy" plot device, and why it's used so much. A thought came to me--by pretending to be someone else, and by so doing, we can escape our own reality. I remember growing up. I remember pretending to be someone else and the freedom those thoughts can bring, even though they're fleeting. Is the urge to be someone else stronger in girls than boys? I can't say, but I know there's more stories out there of girls pretending to be boys than the other way around.

I always enjoy reading books from authors I've met. Sara and I were on a few author panels at a previous Salt Lake Comic Con. It's fun to watch these authors I know succeed. I watched Sara's books be checked out many times while I worked at the library. I have yet to read Ignite, and Endure, books two and three in the Defy series. It intrigues me to find out how this all comes together.

Reminiscing With Mom's Recipes...

It's been over nine years since my siblings and I lost our mother.

Nine years.

Time is a funny thing. Time can move like molasses. And yet, it can race by so quickly, it boggles the mind. In some ways it feels like she's been gone for decades, but a moment later you almost expect to get a call from her to talk about the kids and the day she had.

After she passed, we had to clean out her house to prepare for the sale. She had already chosen the family she wanted in the home her husband almost finished building for her and us. There was so much stuff--she survived the Great Depression after all. It took several days to just remove everything and the memories that flooded back to me as we threw most of it away were almost at times too much to bear.

But not everything was tossed. The other day my mother-in-law brought over boxes of recipes and cookbooks once owned by my mom. I guess we wanted to go through them, but didn't have the time back then. We had the time now.

Over the weekend my wife and I went through the collection, keeping a few of the cookbooks and little else. On thing that I enjoyed was checking out the newspaper clippings. On one side were the recipes, but occasionally, there would be interesting things like society articles, marriage and engagement announcements, and things on the other side. Some of the clippings dated back to the 1960s. It's fascinating to see what was important back in the day.

Looking through the recipes--most of them hand-written, I would say something like, "Fudge recipe," and my wife would respond, "We've already got a couple." My mom had multiple copies of the same recipes time after time. Fudge, homemade caramel, brownies, and various other treats seemed to be her favorite. She even kept several chocolate chip wrappers. It reminded me of when we cleaned out her house, we found so many empty chocolate chip wrappers. We even found an unopened bag of chocolate chips. It had to be at least twenty years old. Classic mom move!

In the end, we threw most of it away, just like we did almost a decade earlier. Like I said, time is strange. At times, it feels like just yesterday she was with us--at others, it's been a lifetime.