Category: Slice of Life

Summer’s Almost Over Already?

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"Socks n Crocs" Cedar Park, 2016
Photo info: FUJIFILM X100T, 23mm, f/3.6, 1/100 sec, ISO1600
 “Socks n Crocs” Cedar Park, 2016

こんばんは！Hi, how’s it going today?

This week is the final week of summer vacation for the kids as the school year starts on Monday. It seems like it has come so quickly! To me, it’s been a short summer and the recent rain 🌧 and grey skies here in Texas have changed the tone of August. We are still only in the middle of the month, so I know we have at least a month and a half of hot sun left, but the feeling to me is that summer is over… 😢

Hopefully the rains will end soon and the sun will reappear! I am not an overcast-weather lover… I need the sun and bright days to keep my spirits high. 🌞 I guess I am fortunate to live in a place where we enjoy lots of sun. I could not hear to live in the north. Even the “June gloom” of Southern California was almost too much for me! (I spent the first 26 years of my life in SoCal)

Today’s photo is of Koa, and his regrettable fashion decision. He calls it “socks n crocs” but he doesn’t mind it so much. I don’t either, actually. It’s kind of funny! However, most would say it’s a fashion no-no. 😜

I hope you had a nice Thursday! Can it be almost Friday already? Craziness!

おやすみなさい！

– バロン Barron Fujimoto

Into It

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"Playing the Game" Cedar Park, 2016
Photo info: FUJIFILM X100T, 23mm, f/5, 1/105 sec, ISO400
 “Playing the Game” Cedar Park, 2016

こんばんは!

Today I picked up my 12-year-old son from his middle school Band Camp and on the way home we stopped at the nearby park to play Pokémon GO! again. He’s pretty good at the game (he’s spent lots of time building up his Pokémon collection and character) so he wanted to take over a gym.

What was interesting to me was that while we were walking to the location, two of his classmates rode up on their bikes and they of course were also playing. When Koa saw them in the distance, he was saying… let’s go… I don’t need to play. It was funny! He is so shy sometimes. But the classmates were friendly and wanted to see Koa’s pokémon. As we expected, Koa didn’t have much trouble taking the gym, and he also let me put one of my pokémon there just for fun.

And then while the four of us were talking, a big SUV drove up and parked by us. Of course, the lady driving was also playing and wanted to take down the gym. How funny! But I suppose this kind of thing happens everywhere.

Anyways, I thought it was pretty interesting. Just a couple months ago, things like this never happened… but life changes quickly, doesn’t it?

I hope you had a nice Wednesday. The weekend is quickly approaching! 😀

おやすみなさい！

– B Barron Fujimoto

Cutie

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"Cute Fish" Cedar Park, 2016
Photo info: FUJIFILM X100T, 23mm, f/7.1, 1/40 sec, ISO3200
 “Cute Fish” Cedar Park, 2016

こんばんは！Hello!

Here in Austin, we’re experiencing a lot of rain. 🌧 So today’s photo is of a little guy (or gal maybe?) who is right at home in the wet stuff. Literally. Its home is water.

It’s one of my new fish, an Albino Barb. It look just like my Tiger Barbs except instead of black stripes, it has white stripes. It’s so cute, isn’t it? 🐠

By the way, it’s so difficult to get a close-up photo of the aquarium fish. I set the camera to manual focus, pre-focused about 6-inches away, bumped up the ISO to 12,800, put the camera on burst mode and waited… and waited. When a fish came into the frame, I pressed the shutter and let it capture a dozen or so frames. 📸 And I still didn’t get a really good photo. Oh well, it was still fun!

When I imported into Lightroom, I had about 340 photos. From those, I rejected using the X key. If you hold down the Shift key while pressing X and you will reject the photo and move to the next one automatically. Makes it quick to mark photos for deletion. After setting the reject flag, just Delete Rejected Photos and say bye-bye to all those unwanted photos. After doing that, I was left with about 8 photos of the three types of fish I have, the two types of Barbs, and the Siamese algae eaters.

I find it so fun to delete photos… weird huh? But hoarding photos and things that are not useful or beneficial is so unattractive to me. Ugh the clutter!

I hope you had a nice Monday. Stay dry! ☔

おやすみなさい！

– B Barron Fujimoto

 

 

Library Visit

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"At the Library" Cedar Park, 2016
Photo info: FUJIFILM X100T, 23mm, f/4, 1/60 sec, ISO1000
 “At the Library” Cedar Park, 2016

こんばんは！

Today Koa and I went to the library to pick up some more books since he blazed through 5 paperbacks of One Piece manga. I also returned a book that I started reading, but was not really into anymore. That book, “Cursor’s Fury” is the third in a series of a fantasy epic. I thought the first two were really good, but for some reason, I just didn’t feel like continuing the series at this time. I’ll probably pick it up again at some point in the future, but for now I felt like I wanted something new.

I was just browsing the fiction section and I came across “Panic in a Suitcase” by Yelena Akhtiorskaya. It sounded interesting… the story of a family of Russian immigrants to the United states. We’ll see!

One thing that has changed about me as I get older is that now I don’t worry about not finishing books. When I was younger I’d feel an obligation to soldier on through a book that I wasn’t even enjoying all the way to the end. I’m not sure exactly why. But now I feel like it’s not such a big deal to not finish a book… who cares anyways? Life’s too short to spend time on things that aren’t fulfilling or enriching. You have to just let things go, right?

Anyways, that’s my thought these days.

I hope you had a nice weekend, and let’s have a great Monday!

おやすみなさい！

– B Barron Fujimoto

Saturday with the boys

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"Out for a Walk" Cedar Park, 2016
Photo info: FUJIFILM X100T, 23mm, f/3.2, 1/1600 sec, ISO200
 “Out for a Walk” Cedar Park, 2016

こんばんは！Hi, how’s it going?

Today Bay and I went out to look for Pokémon again at the local YMCA. It’s got several good types that we like to catch, and also a PokéGym that Bay wanted to take over. It was fun hanging out with him once again! After that we went to the pet store to buy some more fish for his tank and also a couple fish for my tank. I’ll have to post a new photo of the aquariums soon… they are looking good! 🐠

In Louisiana today there were severe floods from some heavy rains, and here in Austin we also had a lot of rain. ⛈ I first heard the raindrops early this morning, at about 4 AM. It sounded pretty heavy but didn’t last long. This afternoon we got hit by another round of storms which is good because water is very much needed around here! ☔ Thankfully it wasn’t too heavy so we aren’t in any danger of flooding, but it is always a concern because the weather can be unpredictable. I guess that is the way of the world nowadays.

For dinner, I took the boys out to a Tex-Mex restaurant for enchiladas, and we enjoyed each-other’s company. In the photo below, Koa is giving his approval. 👍 Surprisingly, no one was able to finish their meal and we ended up bringing a lot of food home with us. I guess I know what we’ll be having for lunch tomorrow. 😀🍴

I hope you had a nice Saturday!

おやすみなさい！

– B Barron Fujimoto