conductor

conductor, a photo by Mark Bonica on Flickr.

a shot of my daughter's high school band performing their Christmas concert.

some day I'll get a camera that can take decent pictures at high ISOs. In the meantime, I'll have to just play around with these light effects.

Dough

Kandie and I finally made it to "Dough" a "Pizzaria Napoletana".

We waited about an hour outside, but the evening was pleasant and we shared a bottle of wine.

Once we were in, we ordered two kinds of mozzarella dishes - one where the mozzarella was wrapped around a squash paste that was amazing. Amazingly tasty and baffling in how they managed to get the paste inside the squash.

The pizzas were thin crust and light.

Everything was delicious - definitely a must-eat if you are in SA.

Not cheap - this is not Pizza Hut. Fine casual dining, pizza style.

Thanksgiving

We had Thanksgiving in Houston with Kandie's family.



It's all about the cooking. Cooking together, making a shared meal.

Or maybe it's about the food.



Mark made some amazing mashed potatoes.

Or maybe it's about family.

All of that, I suppose. And some football thrown in for some of us. A Texas sized Thanksgiving.

dinner with friends

we haven't done much of anything worth writing about lately - or at least nothing that is particularly San Antonio-ish.  That's part of the problem with living out in Cibolo - just far enough away from the city that it's a pain to get in and appreciate it.  Definitely want to live inside a city if I have the chance someday.  A cool city. 

But we did have dinner with some wonderful friends the other night.  Katya is from Moscow and we toasted with these beautiful little goblets (I hate to call them shot glasses). 

Steele Knights Band (and Football)

We went to watch the Steele Knights Band perform on Friday because S. is playing in it this year.  The high school decided to let the football players play a game on either side of the performance, too, which I think is nice.  It's good to give everyone an opportunity to perform.  Plus it gives everyone time to find their seats.

A few pictures of the football players:









The band was supportive



And then the main event finally happened - the marching band took the field:



along with the dance team



Texas takes its football serious (that's American football, not soccer).

We can't forget about THE Steele Knight:



Good time, good show (and a good game).  (Oh yeah, and the football team won.)

Friday Knight Lights

We went to our first Steele High School "Knights" football game last night.  S. is in the marching band, so we also watched some of the football.



Unfortunately the light was going down and I had to shoot on very high ISO (800-1000) and the shots were all very grainy once the game got going.  My D80 just doesn't handle the dark well.  I need (NEED!) a new camera.



To compensate or work with the graininess, I decided to use "posterize" effect in Photo Shop - meant to give the images the look of those athletic posters that were popular in the 90s.



I may try N's camera next time - I think it may actually be better in low-light than my camera.  Worth a try, anyway.



Texas high school football isn't just a game, it's a pageant.  The game is largely incidental from what I observed.  Each team had bands, color guards, flag twirlers, and some sort of dance team with girls who had military ranks (majors and lieutenant colonels).  Not sure what that was all about.  We happened to be sitting next to the visiting school's dance team.

out and about in Cibolo

Kandie and I went out today to find a photo for the weekly theme "Apathy."   This was mine -



an old house on Main St., Cibolo.  Obviously property values haven't risen enough to justify tearing this old place down.

Kandie shot this door on the side of a closed antique shop:



On the way home, we got cut off by a train, and were stuck waiting for it to roll by. So of course I hopped out of the car and took a bunch of shots.



I'd been wanting to get an opportunity to shoot the trains because of all the graffiti,



but the timing never seemed to work out.



I guess today we just got lucky!



and I was able to get a bunch of shots I liked.



They are pretty heavily processed, as you can probably tell. But I had fun.