| wwww.ericluck.net Eric Luck, the website world HQ for self promotion on the www |
| Get my mystery/suspense novel, "Most Fortunate Son," by clicking on one of the following links: |
|
www.flickr.com
|
email me at
eric@ericluck.net
eric@ericluck.net
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
S
www.flickr.com
|
|
December 4, 2007 Watching for the Man
Last night we attended the Christmas tree lighting ceremony at Children's Hospital in Dallas. The only
goal is to make it special for the kids. Children's Hospital utilizes that goal in much of what they do. It is a
worthwhile endeavor and, last night, it was mission accomplished.
Last night we attended the Christmas tree lighting ceremony at Children's Hospital in Dallas. The only
goal is to make it special for the kids. Children's Hospital utilizes that goal in much of what they do. It is a
worthwhile endeavor and, last night, it was mission accomplished.
December 12, 2007 Merry Christmas from the Lucks
When we last left our dashing hero Dad, his wife had returned from Africa while he explored a complicated new hobby - facial hair cultivation.
The young handsome son had returned from a successful four year run at a college degree. He began working in the real world only to find that
it, along with the rest of real life, is really, really hard. So he moved back to Mom and Dad’s house, where groceries seemed to keep showing up
in the refrigerator and the bills never came due. Life was sorta beautiful.
But Mom and Dad kept showing up too. It was, after all, their house. So the pressure on the handsome young son to get his own place finally
got the best of him. The young handsome son did things exactly right. He asked at work if they really did like his work and if the prospects for
further employment were as rosy as they seemed. The handsome young son received management’s most emphatic assurance that all was
well, they loved him and his work. In fact, they insisted that he should feel extremely comfortable signing a long-term lease on his new
apartment. So he did. Two months later, the employer of the young, handsome son lost their largest client. Management sought to cure the
resulting financial ills by laying-off a gaggle of the least highly paid employees. You didn’t expect them to lay themselves off, did you? Yep, that
included the son who then had a spanking new apartment, a long-term lease and zero income. Welcome to life. Yessir…2007 was in full swing
and promised to become an enormous woven tapestry of maximum-wheels-off-crazy.
Rather than accept his fated financial woes resulting in a diet of starchy carbs, weight gain and bad skin, inevitably leading to a new job as an
overweight band teacher in an inner city middle school, the handsome, young son decided to forge ahead into the realm of financial planning.
That is – formulating other peoples’ financial plans and then executing them…the plans, not the people. The handsome, young son was, after
all, riding an enormous wave of an exemplary financial plan of his own. The dashing hero Dad viewed such a foray akin to appointing Paulie
Walnuts to the State Gaming Commission…any State Gaming Commission. However, Dad recognized his place in the corner of the nearest
room and quietly continued growing facial hair for no apparent purpose whatsoever. Dad did discover that it was possible to learn photography
and grow facial hair at the same time. So he did.
You can see my photographs online here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lucky_e/
Mostly it is just shots of puppies, kittens, sunsets and babies wearing giant, stupid sunglasses.
Enjoy.
Meanwhile, the wife’s travels continued unabated. Colorado, Hawaii, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Victoria, Vancouver, New York…oh, how
her travels continued. Dad did accompany her on most trips, but only whenever she would prod my back fat and make me.
All my medical woes for the year were normal. Most were self-medicated with Milky Way and Heath Bars. It has reached the point where my poor
body image and extra double low self esteem has become simply good common sense.
Cheri’s father continues to battle cancer. Keep him in your good thoughts. Cheri is doing very well. Evan is actually terrific. We will all be in
Colorado for Christmas.
Although I started another story some time ago, I have not been writing. There is no second book about to happen. Read the first book again.
Give them as gifts to everyone you know. Otherwise, I might have to become the overweight band teacher in my next career. The good news is
that I got a head start on the overweight thing.
Merry Christmas with love from the Lucks
When we last left our dashing hero Dad, his wife had returned from Africa while he explored a complicated new hobby - facial hair cultivation.
The young handsome son had returned from a successful four year run at a college degree. He began working in the real world only to find that
it, along with the rest of real life, is really, really hard. So he moved back to Mom and Dad’s house, where groceries seemed to keep showing up
in the refrigerator and the bills never came due. Life was sorta beautiful.
But Mom and Dad kept showing up too. It was, after all, their house. So the pressure on the handsome young son to get his own place finally
got the best of him. The young handsome son did things exactly right. He asked at work if they really did like his work and if the prospects for
further employment were as rosy as they seemed. The handsome young son received management’s most emphatic assurance that all was
well, they loved him and his work. In fact, they insisted that he should feel extremely comfortable signing a long-term lease on his new
apartment. So he did. Two months later, the employer of the young, handsome son lost their largest client. Management sought to cure the
resulting financial ills by laying-off a gaggle of the least highly paid employees. You didn’t expect them to lay themselves off, did you? Yep, that
included the son who then had a spanking new apartment, a long-term lease and zero income. Welcome to life. Yessir…2007 was in full swing
and promised to become an enormous woven tapestry of maximum-wheels-off-crazy.
Rather than accept his fated financial woes resulting in a diet of starchy carbs, weight gain and bad skin, inevitably leading to a new job as an
overweight band teacher in an inner city middle school, the handsome, young son decided to forge ahead into the realm of financial planning.
That is – formulating other peoples’ financial plans and then executing them…the plans, not the people. The handsome, young son was, after
all, riding an enormous wave of an exemplary financial plan of his own. The dashing hero Dad viewed such a foray akin to appointing Paulie
Walnuts to the State Gaming Commission…any State Gaming Commission. However, Dad recognized his place in the corner of the nearest
room and quietly continued growing facial hair for no apparent purpose whatsoever. Dad did discover that it was possible to learn photography
and grow facial hair at the same time. So he did.
You can see my photographs online here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lucky_e/
Mostly it is just shots of puppies, kittens, sunsets and babies wearing giant, stupid sunglasses.
Enjoy.
Meanwhile, the wife’s travels continued unabated. Colorado, Hawaii, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Victoria, Vancouver, New York…oh, how
her travels continued. Dad did accompany her on most trips, but only whenever she would prod my back fat and make me.
All my medical woes for the year were normal. Most were self-medicated with Milky Way and Heath Bars. It has reached the point where my poor
body image and extra double low self esteem has become simply good common sense.
Cheri’s father continues to battle cancer. Keep him in your good thoughts. Cheri is doing very well. Evan is actually terrific. We will all be in
Colorado for Christmas.
Although I started another story some time ago, I have not been writing. There is no second book about to happen. Read the first book again.
Give them as gifts to everyone you know. Otherwise, I might have to become the overweight band teacher in my next career. The good news is
that I got a head start on the overweight thing.
Merry Christmas with love from the Lucks
| December 22, 2007 An Action Shot of Youth Being Wasted on the Young I have been working with my scanner to try and repair some old, favorite shots I took in a previous life. We made many trips from Denver to Lake Powell over the years. In the desert surrounding Lake Powell, we sometimes would document our fun utilizing the timer on my old AE-1. I often used the boat as my tripod for such shots. I would not have dreamed of hauling a tripod around at that time. From l to r, we have Fast Eddie, the delectable Mrs e, sweet Punkin and some spare, pasty bodybuilder in poozzypurple pants. Okay, that one is me. Early 1980s. We probably had the BeeGees playing in the background...or a little Barry White, possibly Rick James a hollerin' "Give It To Me, Baby". None of us can even remember our twenties. Nice light, though. |
| December 25, 2007 Ho, Ho, Ho It is a white Christmas in Steamboat. |
| December 29, 2007 Night Moves When I was a young man and I went to the golf course, it always seemed as if there was either a) a really fat guy or b) a really fat, old guy that they sent out to play with me. Invariably, they were really, really good players. It was not a brain buster to see that I was really, really bad at golf. It always pissed me off that these fat, old guys were really good at golf. It could be that they only sent out the handful of old, fat, good guys to play with me to keep me from playing more. I have torn up a golf course or two in my time. Now, I am the really fat, old guy but I ain’t beating anybody at golf. I am still a pretty good snow skier. I can negotiate the black diamonds with a little style, but would rather not. My back protests the bumps now, seemingly before I even glance down a slope covered with deep moguls. I never really loved the bumps, but when you are young, you have to pretend to love them. You have to. There is some kind of ordinance or some such. It includes provisions compelling anyone under 21 to yell “Woot”, “Stoked” or “Gnarly” as they head into the bumps. One advantage of being old is that you don’t have to pretend to love anything. So awesome. Bumps suck. Golf sucks. Skiing does not suck because now I am the old, fat guy that pisses off the young mediocre guy. Life is good. Preferably, the sun is shining on the morning of a day that I go skiing, right after a big powder dump all night before I show up. Truthfully, I can enjoy a groomed slope now, while I did not as a younger man. What you cannot see until you are old is that grooming keeps old, brittle bones from spontaneously snapping in two. It is so hard to be smart when you are young. I am beginning to think that being smart may be impossible for a young man. There is plenty of evidence. Actually, you are not really allowed to even act smart when you are young. Just know that if the kids tell you that they love the bumps and the double black diamond slopes, they lie. That is all there is to it. I have been downhill skiing for just over forty years. Yeah, a long time. But I have not blown the family fortune on ski outfits. Still use the same crap I used in high school….and, I just simply don’t care. Duct tape has amazing powers. I love being old. It is still fun to ski but once you have done something about ten thousand times, the shine is a little worn off that penny. The first skis that I ever owned were wooden and my boots were leather and laced up. And the dinosaurs did not like snow. I bought those skis at Target with money I earned because my parents would not buy them for me. They felt that skiing was too expensive and I might get hurt. They were right on both counts. A few ski seasons after buying them, I broke the tip off one ski up near the top of Vail. It took a while to figure out how to get down with only one ski. Ended up sitting down on the back of the good ski and tucking the busted ski under one arm. It was tricky and I crashed a lot. I was more flexible then. We will never know why I held onto the broken ski. There is no repairing a ski that snapped into multiple pieces. My memory of that day is good. Sometimes it is better not to be smart. I rented some more skis for about four dollars at the bottom and made it a day. I did some rough math. I have been skiing on something more than 400 days and probably less than 500 days in my lifetime. The most I ever went during a season was 30 days and I did that a couple of times. That is a lot of skiing to me. It is if you hope to do anything else during the winter. There were some years that I did not ski at all. Baseball coaches do not like snow skiing. Snow skiers sometimes hurt body parts that are crucial to being able to play baseball. I had a couple of coaches that demanded their players not participate in skiing. That means if they catch you skiing, then you don’t play. I always complied with their requests. I still wish I could play baseball and would give up skiing today to do so. I will wish for that until I am gone. I can remember when Keystone Ski Area put up some lights and advertised that you could ski at night. Lake Eldora, Colorado had already done it for years, but Keystone was a bigger resort than Eldora in the 1970s. Somehow, when Keystone did it, it became a little more legitimate. I have been skiing under the lights five or six times total. I never much cared for it. The light is all funky. No matter how good the lights are, I just never much cared for it. Here is something for you to remember: It is cold at night in the mountains. There is no chance the sun will warm you at night. If you pause on the top of the mountain to admire the view…uh, there is no view. It is dark. If you gaze up to the heavens to warm your face in the sun…uh, there is no sun. It is night time. Snow always melts a little during the day from radiant heat of the sun. That is true regardless of the air temperature. Guess what the snow does at night? Yep. Freezes. So, the light is funky and the snow is funky. That is a little too much funky for my old, fat guy taste. The best part of skiing at night is that the crowds are non-existent. If you work all day and love to ski, it is an option in some places. Night skiing is just a little weird to me. So, I thought I might take a picture or two here in Steamboat Springs so you could see it done at night. Maybe it will look weird to you too. If so, I recommend picking a sunny day after a big snow and stick to the easier slopes. You will enjoy it more. Follow that recipe and you might see me out there too. I do still enjoy it and especially when the sun is shining and there are “Wooting, stoked” teens to piss off. |
