Meanwhile, they have wasted no time in moving right over to work on the old bridge that goes right over the dam and the lock.



This is the view of the old bridge from the upstream side.






For the pixel peepers out there, they'll probably see there are a few smudges on some of the photos. They are right. Its from raindrops on my lens. I did not bring a rain coat because "I was only going to be a minute" We're now getting some of the Hurricane Harvey weather here in Tennessee. So I ended up running/walking really fast all the way back to the car.
That's all for this time!

 

Hello PancakeNinja readers! I know its been a while.

Last week I came by this bridge project and I thought of you. I had a half charged battery, or more like half uncharged but is was fine for a few update photos.

 

All the piers have been poured on the part crossing the Tennessee river.

 

 

 

They’re getting decking on too.

 

 

Meanwhile on the part crossing the Tellico River it is looking good!

 

It’s been almost a year since I’ve updated you on the bridge progress across the Tennessee River! Well I stopped by on a rainy afternoon when noone was working because it was just too wet. But they have been making progress! One day I’m going to come by and see those cranes placing the decking! And then one day I’m going to drive across this bridge!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is Harry, he used to look more like this.  He adopted us a few years ago. He was sorta friendly but sorta standoff-ish. He didn't really like to come in the house. He didn’t sit on laps and didn’t let people thump his belly and say “Kitty Witty” nope, he preferred to sleep under the sunflowers at the edge of the garden. But all in all he had a pretty good gig, he was king of the shed.

 

But that changed one cold january day.

 

A young male looking for friends showed up and everything changed!

 

 

Meet Kawi.  The friendly young guy who came to challenge Harry.

 

 

He climbs legs for an extra pat on the head you might’ve forgotten to give.

 

 

Harry had his honor and shed to defend. He was not impressed with a cat who kisses up to humans.

There were subsequent stand offs.

And numerous all out tumbling, fur flying, biting, scratching, gravel flinging cat fights over the issue.

 

 

Kawi likes to come in and say hello.  Kawi is a jolly good fellow, he’ll even stand on his back legs for a French fry. He even begged for dog biscuits with the dog.

 

 

Harry now is a one up ear and one down ear cat. He no longer challenges Kawi to a fight.

 

 

Instead he closes his eyes and mumbles a few lines from that Bobby Bare song

  You gotta speak loud when you challenge me son cause it's hard for me to hear
With this twisted neck and these migraine pains and this big ole cauliflower ear
And if it wasn't for this glass eye of mine why I'd she'd a happy tear
To think of all that you gonna get by bein' a winner
I got arthritic elbows boy I got dislocated knees
From pickin' fights with thunderstorms and chargin' into trees
And my nose been broke so often I might lose if I sneeze
And son you say you still wanna be a winner
Now you remind me a lotta my younger days with your knuckles a clenchin' white
But boy I'm gonna sit right here and sip this beer all night
And if there's somethin' that you gotta gain to prove by winnin' some silly fight
Well okay I quit I lose you're the winner

 

 

Kawi seems a little disappointed.

 

 

But there’s always next time, maybe tomorrow.

 

It was a great day to be pouring concrete yesterday.

I saw the sun reflecting on the water and then I saw it, the mixer backed up to the pump, pumping to a another pump on a barge, pumping to another pump on another barge, pumping it to the pier they were pouring!

 

 

Then I spotted all the mixers lined up waiting their turn.

 

 

Currently this is the bridge to get across the Tennessee river. I’d love to shoot from that bridge but it’s so busy with so much traffic and as each vehicle passes over it the bridge wiggles so I wouldn’t get a clear photo.

 

 

I talked to some old guys in the fishing access parking lot and they said there had been mixers lined up since the first light of dawn.

 

 

When I came back by after dark there were still a row of mixer headlights waiting in line. I didn’t stop for more photos as it had started to rain.

 

The good news is a lot of my old photos were recovered from the broken harddrive!

 

 

The good news is a lot of my old photos were recovered! The bad news is I’ve been looking at them and scaring myself. I know I’m my own worst critic but c’mon, what is the focus of this photo? The one egg with no paprika on it? Nothing is really in focus except the bottom of the pan. Today I’d throw this out.

 

This one I dislike for two reasons, 1, the flash was used and didn’t help. I could easily have moved it near the window and it would’ve looked 100thousand times better.

2, the cup cake dead center is in focus and that generally only looks good on portraits. Ah hah! it was a cupcake portrait!

 

 

This one isn’t too terrible or I’m just trying to be nice to my former self and don’t want her to quit.

 

 

Yeah, keep practicing and learning from it. eventually you’ll learn to see the light. Obviously I didn’t have that part down yet.

 

 

High five for these cookies, there’s a nice feel about this photo.

If you have just started do not be afraid to take bad photos the more you shoot the more you learn. Someone said your first 10,000 photos are your worst. For me it may have been my first 40,000.

 

Hello, yes, it’s been a while. I got busy then I got sick and then some other bad news I’ll get to in a minute.

While sick and up at 2am drinking more of my favorite tea.  I got to see the Christmas lights when I’d rather be sleeping. But there I was, so I grabbed my camera…

 

This Yogi Bedtime tea is really nice, I love the licorice in it.

 

 

I’m going to make something fun as soon as I’m over this cold! I think I’ll add tofu and maybe cream cheese.

 

 

Now for the bad news. I had a hard drive go bad with all of my old photos, photos that I like to know I have but don’t really look at or do much with but I like to know I CAN get them when ever I want.

It is my own fault, this hard drive used to go whop whop, when it ran and then sometime this fall it stopped going whop whop when it ran, I just thought it had cured it’s self and was running quietly.

I was wrong about the self curing over time.

Apparently that does not happen with hard drives. 

No, I did not have this drive backed up anywhere.

In the above photo is the test running on my good hard drive, I never used to read that white text, since I’ve started, I see it says “0 bad file…” That’s the good news.

When the test ran on the bad drive, the test said it took away numerous orphan files then it got to this stage and then said it encountered an error and could not complete.

So I called my computer healers and asked them to prepare healing poultices, ointments and a new patient room. They said Look lady, no promises and we’ll let you know if it has a pulse.

 

Oh.

 

 

I was able to salvage a couple of really low quality photo off of it before it stopped even making the “tick tick” noise.

This is a view from the hike up to Mount LeConte that I know for a fact that I could re-shoot and do 1000x better, but it’s not the quality, it’s the memory, this was the first time. Actually, I didn’t even take this photo.

 

 

Then this, Pond hockey. My brother didn't really care for hockey but was a good sport and went out on the ice with me.

Now that I live in the south, being able to say you played on an outdoor pond is such a big deal to the kids from here. Back then it meant shoveling first, trying to remember not to shovel the snow into your boots at the edge. Trying to con someone else into shoveling.

And then trying to not lose the last puck into the snow.

Good times.

 

 

Talk about photo quality! This is of my grand mother (on the left) and great grand mother.

This is scanned from a low quality 1 hr print 8x10”  that was scanned from a 5x7” print. 

This was 1940s –ish.  I bet they never went to Wal-Mart in their pajamas!

 

So if there is a lesson from today, I hope you will not wait for your hard drives to self heal.

Happy new year!

 

They were out trimming branches from growing into the power lines again and this time I actually got to see them doing it.

 

 

I chatted with the operator for a minute. I told him how it looked like it wouldn’t be any fun on a steep hillside. He said there have been times that he’s had to use his winch on the back to lower himself down a steep hill  just reach the branches and then pull himself back up.  

 

 

 

 

That’s how ya trim branches way up high!