After a year and a half of not seeing my family, I reached a tipping point for me personally where the potential travel-induced increased risk of COVID19 outweighed the realized negative impacts of missing my family. So I impulse-bought a plane ticket for two days later to fly back to Illinois. Then I waited 5 days through 4 flight cancellations and reschedules while 3 snowstorms passed through each of the airports I was supposed to fly through. Luckily, all that happened while I was still at home, and at least I wasn’t stuck in an airport. Finally, I managed a smooth flight back to Illinois.

---

Boss Lady

The first two days, I hung out with Meredith, Jonathan, and Lady, a Presa Canario mastiff. Lady—Boss Lady to be more accurate—is the sweetest pup ever. She loves pets, and if you stop too early, she will put her paw up on your arm, gently but forcefully soliciting more pets. She did a lot of laying around, but got frisky for a bit of stick chewing in the yard.

• 

• 

• 

• 

I thought the image below was a good one of Lady, but I didn’t like how the floor seemed to stand out as much as if not more than Lady. I ventured into Photoshop for the first time, to see what I could do. Don’t zoom in too far here—I need to improve my selection technique—but from afar, I like the effect.

• 

• 

Lady is quite photogenic. M & J—Let me know if you want any of these; I can give you the raw files for your own professional editing.

• 

• 

• 

---

Deer

Mother and Dad have a family of deer in the yard, plus regular visitors from a larger herd. I forgot how much fun it is to watch them through the windows as they go about their day.

• 

• 

• 

• 

---

Ernie and Georgia

Paula and Mike’s cats ran away from the camera, so I didn’t get many pictures of them, but here are two to show them off a little.

• 

• 

---

Piper Sue

Piper, on the other hand, is happy to be photographed. Dad assisted with some nuts. The main goal was to get the classic Dachshund position with one paw raised solicitously, but first we got some solid straight-up jumps in the air.

• 

• 

• 

Finally, we got one photo with the classic pose. I used the same technique as with Lady to emphasize Piper and mute the background. Again, don’t zoom in too closely. I’m still evaluating if I like it or not—it might be doctored to the point of looking overly fake—but I learned some more Photoshop basics working on it, so it’s a win for that if nothing else. And in case you didn’t get enough earlier about RAW vs JPEG, I tossed in the camera JPEG here for comparison to the edited RAW image, too.

• 

• 

• 

Piper Sue took several more good photos, so here are a few more of this little doggo.

• 

• 

• 

• 

---

Homer Lake

Paula and I debated for about 30 seconds if we wanted to go for a run or just walk around Homer Lake and take pictures. The latter won.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

An eagle flew arrived in the distance while we were there. I tried to get some shots of him, but he was pretty far away and I couldn’t zoom in as much as he deserved. Here are a couple of the images I did manage.

• 

• 

• 

• 

We did a little walking on the slushy trail and got down to the Salt Fork. Overall, Homer Lake is such a pretty park. I love getting over there any time I’m back in Illinois.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Sunset

On the way home from town, a pretty sunset was happening, so we pulled over the side of the road for a quick shot. Not shown here is the fact that we were coming from Grandmother and Grandpa’s house, where we found—and donned—my mother’s 8th grade graduation dress (ca. 1960s) and the dress my Grandmother wore to my uncle’s wedding (ca. 1970s). Just picture that—two gals in dresses 50+ years old, with hiking boots, pulled over on the side of a country road, taking a picture of this pretty sunset.

•