Weekend in review

Wow. Had a very, very busy weekend. Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up.

This was the weekend of the Comal County Fair. We took the kids to the parade Friday, and also the petting zoo and other assorted fair things. I entered a bottle of my blueberry mead, which was an utter failure as such--having absolutely no flavor of blueberry in it--yet was surprisingly pleasant to drink as a plain mead with a slightly purplish cast to the liquid. I was rewarded with a red ribbon, which is my best showing ever, with my prickly pear and holiday spice entries both earning third place ribbons in years past. Sunday I took the Bug and Fairy Girl to the midway, paid a small fortune to get them wristbands, and let them ride pretty much everything there all afternoon. I was exhausted by the end, and that was just from watching.

Saturday The Wife had a wedding in Lago Vista. A very nice wedding. We dropped the kids off at the Nama's in Bastrop, and I drove over to the wedding venue (note: If wanting to get from Point A to Point B in Lago Vista, just give it up. It's not possible in that Byzantine maze of roads). My job for this wedding, as it is for all of The Wife's larger weddings, was to back her up as second shooter. She was armed with her newest toy, the 5D mark II camera, and I would be using her 50D with my Rebel as the emergency backup. By the end of the night she would've done just as well leaving me home. I struggled with the 50D, as the settings which are so intuitive to me on my Rebel XTi don't produce the same results on the 50D. I was getting horrible over-exposures and inconsistent strobe illumination. Exposure compensation kept getting accidentally altered. I couldn't adjust the settings in the dark, as the control layout is different from what I'm used to. None of the shots I normally pride myself on--the groomsmen, reception candid shots, infrared images of the venue--came out. In six hours of shooting, I'd wager I got maybe a dozen keepers. That's pathetic by any measure. It all comes from my not being familiar with the 50D's quirks and tendencies when shooting (I hope) rather than any inherent incompetence on my part. At least, that's what I'm telling myself. Fortunately for all concerned, The Wife knocked it out of the park, as usual. She got a wealth of stunning images, despite having to reshoot some of my assigned shots during my long night of crash-and-burn. This is why you hire a professional photographer for important events, rather than a semi-competent amateur.

Last but not least, upon returning home, we discovered that Windows 7 is a very clever program. So clever, in fact, that it will figure out a way to download the latest so-called "Critical update" even when you've told it not to. That same critical update that's crashed the computer on startup five times over the past two weeks, in fact, forcing us to recover the use of said computer via System Restore. But this must have offended Windows 7 in some manner, because it went through the trouble of deleting all of our previously-established system restore points this time, forcing us to to a complete and total reinstallation of every piece of software. Ouch. And certain programs and drivers, which worked fine before, is not being rejected by Windows 7 as not worthy of being recognized. Seriously, it's contempt is tangible. We're now 24 hours and counting on the grand reinstall adventure, and The Wife still can't get the monitor color calibration to work. We haven't even tried to get our Photoshop plugins going. Wouldn't it be nice if Microsoft spent more time designing an operating system that, you know, operated with the software we need instead of automatically assuming the user is a dolt and would much rather prefer to watch dancing paperclips or whatever.

Now Playing: Tom Petty Wildflowers

Parade time

Today was the big Comal County Fair parade. It's a big deal in New Braunfels--larger than even the big 4th of July parade. That's only to be expected, I suppose, since the Comal County Fair is the largest county fair in Texas. A highlight of the parade is all the vintage tractors that turn out. There were many old John Deeres from the 40s, plus a good number of International Harvester/McCormick Farmalls and a surprising number of antique Ford tractors. There's something appealing about the rough-hewn utility of old tractors with their unpretentious stylings.

I also witnessed an interesting barometer of the current political climate as well. Comal County, and New Braunfels in particular, is an intensely Republican area sandwiched between the Democratic populations of Austin and San Antonio. It's very conservative, so much so that staunch moderates like myself are, by default, pretty much the left fringe (Strange how a high-profile Democrat like Bob Krueger calls New Braunfels home, and his wife, Katherine, wins election to the city council with relative ease). Now in years past, whenever the Comal County Republican float/truck drives past in one of the area parades, it's normally met with rousing cheers. Often times there's no Democrat representation at all, and if there is, the reception is decidedly tepid.

So we're sitting there on the San Antonio Street bridge, and the Comal County GOP float rolls past adorned with HUGE Rick Perry signs, along with anti-Obama "Hands off Texas!" signs. The folks on the float are waving at the crowd, clapping and generally trying to stir up enthusiasm. They're met with absolute silence. The Wife and I looked at each other in surprise. We've never heard a parade fall so silent so quickly, certainly not for Republicans in New Braunfels.

Roughly 10 minutes later, a small Democrat contingent came past. Not nearly as impressive as the Republican float, it consisted of a single car and maybe a dozen volunteers, eagerly working the crowd and handing out campaign material to anyone who showed interest. One of the volunteers was Elena White, daughter of Democratic gubernatorial candidate Bill White. She's a student at Rice, so must've she taken the day off specifically to campaign in the reddest county of Red State Texas. I figure either she's the family's least-favorite child and therefore expendable in a kamikaze mission to New Braunfels, or else White's campaign is so confident it can win the election that it's taking the fight to Perry even where GOP support is greatest. "Vote for my Dad!" Elena called out, mustering the honest enthusiasm only offspring can, so I started clapping. The Wife did, too. And sonofagun, a bunch of people on either side of the bridge joined in.

Now I'm not saying this is one of those Hollywood moments where a groundswell of support erupts and Elena's carried off on the shoulders of a joyous mob. But the contrasting response to the two candidates was striking. The Republican governor's proxies earned silence, while the Democrat's was met with applause. In New Braunfels.

Afterwards, The Wife and I discussed what we'd witnessed. We figure there's a large segment of non-teabagging Republicans that are fed up with Perry, and want him gone. These are the folks who supported Kay Bailey Hutchison in the primary, and were put off by Perry's bare-knuckled, scorched earth campaign against her. Also, toll roads and the Trans-Texas Corridor, both pet projects of Perry, remain deeply unpopular. And Perry simply seems more and more willing to do anything it takes to hang onto power for power's sake. These dependable Republican voters don't seem like they can bring themselves to support White yet (if ever), but at the same time they seem soured on the prospect of another four years of Rick Perry in Austin. I don't know if this translates to a White victory this November, but I'll wager that if Hutchison were the GOP candidate instead of Perry, she'd be leading the polls by 20 points.

Now Playing: Johnny Cash The Essential Johnny Cash