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May 4, 2013 by Tom Dills

Still Here

Wandering around downtown Waynesville, NC on a weekend perfect for a wanton disregard of critical obligations.

I thought I had better post a few words and some pictures just to prove that I am still alive and kicking. Things have been a little hectic lately around The House of Dills.

After about 5 years of preparations, Kathy & I decided in February that this seemed like the right time to put our house on the market. We began working with a Realtor to get things finalized so we would be ready for the spring sales market, which we expected would be a good one. It’s amazing how much there is to do to a house to get it ready to sell – things you haven’t thought about or had just put off because you just hadn’t gotten around to it. Despite having been “getting ready” for the last couple of years, there was still a last-minute rush to get things done.

Wandering around downtown Waynesville, NC on a weekend perfect for a wanton disregard of critical obligations.

In true Tom & Kathy fashion, we did the sensible thing and immediately headed out of town for a quick rest-up before we got started. That was the weekend in February when we headed to Charleston, SC. When we returned, we dove head-first into a 6-week period of repairs, staging and primping. I also took photos for the listing, which I’ll probably share in another post. By the end of March, we were ready.

Wandering around downtown Waynesville, NC on a weekend perfect for a wanton disregard of critical obligations.

Kathy & I had decided that we didn’t care to be hanging around the house for the first weekend that the house was on the market, figuring that most of our traffic would come that first weekend and we likely wouldn’t spend much time in the house anyway. Another excuse to travel! The listing hit the MLS on a Wednesday, and we immediately started getting calls for showings. We went to work on Friday packed and ready for a weekend in Waynesville, NC, one of our favorite weekend getaway destinations. By the time we were ready to come home on Sunday, our Realtor called to tell us that we had “multiple offers.” Amazing.

So we came home, settled on the offer that looked the best and seemed like it would have the best chance of closing, and signed. Now we’re waiting. In NC the buyers have a period of time – the Due Diligence period – when they can pretty much just change their minds and walk with minimal consequence, and that period expires next week. We have every indication that the buyers really want the house and that we will get through with no issues, but you just can’t be 100% certain. You really can’t start heavy-duty packing just in case the house has to go back on the market. In the mean time we have been organizing and getting ready to pack and move, so we’re ready to go once we get the green light that the deal is going to go through. It’s a frustrating process, but one that I suppose will benefit us when we decide it is time to buy.

Wandering around downtown Waynesville, NC on a weekend perfect for a wanton disregard of critical obligations.

Here are a few photos from our weekend to Waynesville. Just so you’ll know I’m still around and doing a little photography. We’re planning to move to an apartment on May 23, and we’ve already got plans to head out of town on May 25 for another getaway weekend, so all is good here!

Wandering around downtown Waynesville, NC on a weekend perfect for a wanton disregard of critical obligations.

January 1, 2013 by Tom Dills

Happy 2013!

Evening Light, Corolla

Just about the time I figure I’ll stop doing this monthly wallpaper thing, I hear from someone else who really likes it. So here you go, a start to another year!

This image is from a style of photograph I don’t post very often on the blog, and I’m not sure I’ve ever used one for wallpaper. But I really like these impressionistic photos, as they often reflect a peace and calm that a “normal” photograph can’t capture. I recently sold a group of prints that included this photograph, and I liked the print so much I decided I’d like to look at it for a month or so, and hoped that my blog followers would like it too.

For those interested in the technical details, this was shot in 2009 on the beach in Corolla, North Carolina. And even though I’ve been calling it “Morning Light, Corolla” for a number of years, in looking at the metadata for this blog post I discovered that it was actually taken in the evening. Oops…I guess I’ll have to start calling it “Evening Light, Corolla!” It was taken with my lowly Canon 40D with the 24-105 lens at f22 for 1/4 second, panning with the wave movement to give it the blurred effect.

I know I’m looking forward to the new year and can’t wait to make new photographs to share. Thanks for reading and for all the great comments. Hopefully I’ll get to meet some of you in person soon! Happy travels!

November 14, 2012 by Tom Dills

Subscribe to Comments

Fernandina Beach, Florida

Thanks to Paul’s suggestion I’ve added a “Subscribe to Comments” feature to the blog. Even though I use that on the blogs that I follow and comment on, I never tried to add it to my own. My technical knowledge of this blog stuff is challenged at best, even though I know it’s pretty easy. I think I mostly just need to spend some time playing with it, but once it works the way I want it to I kind of hate to mess with it! Hopefully you’ll find it to be useful. And feel free to let me know if there is anything else I should look at adding!

September 24, 2012 by Tom Dills

Resourcefulness

Beach Vision

This is a way off-topic blog post but I thought some of my readers would find it interesting:

The work I do for money sometimes involves tracking down customers who, other than the fact that we receive their payments every month, we never hear from them. It’s pretty rare, but we can go for years without needing to know their current phone number or address. I came across such a customer this morning. This guy, an intellectual property attorney from another state, owns an investment property in North Carolina that he bought 7 years ago. His loan is coming due, so I needed to contact him about renewing it. The only phone number I had took me to what I expected was his office, but when I called I was told that “he was no longer with the firm.” Oops.

Now I realize that in this day and age there are lots of tools available to assist in the search for missing attorneys. But of course I turned to Google in hopes that I could turn up something that would lead me to his current position. I came across dozens of dead ends, articles that referenced his name and some kind of presentation or case, but they all referred to his former employer.

Somewhere in all my searching I came across this guy’s LinkedIn page. And it showed who he worked for but no contact information. I thought about sending him a note through LinkedIn, but figured that wouldn’t be terribly professional and saved it for a last resort. I Googled the company, but their headquarters is in another state. No good. But then, I went back to LinkedIn and noticed that a lot of his contacts were co-workers at his current firm. I looked through his contacts, Googled them and finally found a phone number. Not for my guy, but for his boss. Ah-ha!

Figuring that there is no way a direct call for an attorney is going to go through to him, and if it did I could easily explain myself, I called the number. Got a voicemail system, and after a few “Press #,” “Press 1,” etc. I got to where I could search a department directory using the first 3 letters of my customer’s last name. Call goes straight through and he answers it. Yep, he’s my guy!

I know what I did wasn’t anything really special, but I was amazed at how I was able to solve the puzzle. It was fun, he was very helpful and we’re going to do his deal. Not a bad way to start a Monday!

July 1, 2012 by Tom Dills

Long Overdue

Kathy & I had been trying to find a weekend to head to Waynesville, NC – our favorite little town in the NC mountains – since March. With the exception of our Alaska and California adventure, things just haven’t been very conducive to getting away for the last several months. We finally had our chance this past weekend and took advantage.

As luck would have it we didn’t get a lot of relief from the high temperatures, as Waynesville – while about 10 degrees cooler than Charlotte – was still unseasonably hot, to the point where most of the HVAC systems were doing their best to keep up. Most of them were up to the task, a few were not.

We wisely headed out early and got our in-town sightseeing done early. In the heat of the afternoon we headed up to the Blue Ridge Parkway for a few hours, and while it was 97 in town, it was an unusually warm but relatively cool 84 at Waterrock Knob, an overlook and visitor center at 5,820 feet. After a stop for ice cream it was back to town for a nice dinner and some rest in our thankfully-air-conditioned room.

Sunday was spent getting back to reality, and after a stop in Statesville here we are. A couple of work days with a holiday sandwiched in, and before we know it we’ll have another weekend!

No serious photography this trip, but I had a camera with me at just about all times!

May 12, 2012 by Tom Dills

Choices

Sunrise at Cone Manor, Julian Price Memorial Park, Blue Ridge Parkway, North Carolina

Several times over the last few weeks, people have asked me about our upcoming vacation. Way too often, the comments I’ve gotten have been along the lines of – insert mopey Eeyore-voice here – “boy, I’m really jealous,” “must be nice,” “I wish I could take a 2-week vacation,” “wow, two weeks? I’d never be able to be away for two weeks.” Etc., etc., blah, blah, blah.

When I ask people why they don’t think they could take a two week vacation (keeping in mind that many of them don’t even take one-week vacations) I get answers like, “my wife would never spend that long in a car/on a plane/with me,” or “we could never leave the cat/dog/fish/grandchild that long,” or we just can’t afford that while we’re paying for private school/ivy league college/my Mercedes/my wife’s Mercedes/our 4000 square foot house.” I get the same comments when I buy a new camera, to which I reply something about the new Harley/boat/RV or the golf club membership or the 3 car payments that some other people have.

Most people don’t mean anything by their comments, they are just trying to express their interest or make conversation. I understand that, but it still bothers me.

Everything we do has a price. My friend John Schornak refers to it as “currency.” He says there is a cost to everything, and it just depends on what kind of currency you want to use to pay for whatever you do or buy. And I agree. Sometimes it means giving up a fancy car to pay for a vacation. Sometimes it means teaching classes to pay for a camera. Sometimes it means wearing older clothes to be able to eat out more. What do you want? What are you doing to get it, and what are you willing to give up? I’ve always tended to err on the “Life” side of the Work/Life balance equation. Not everyone agrees.

Granted, we’ve been very fortunate. We’ve made good choices and things have gone our way. Some people have had bad luck, and I understand that. But most people have just made different choices, and I believe that sometimes luck comes from good planning and making the right choices. Choices that suit our needs and desires. The grass is always greener somewhere else, but that doesn’t necessarily make it better. That just means that it’s different.

I’m going away for a couple of weeks. Have fun and be good. And no whining!

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This is my 200^th post. Can you believe it? Thanks for stopping by and making it fun.

February 19, 2012 by Tom Dills

A Little R&R

: Policy Out of Date

Kathy & I are spending the long President’s Day weekend (President’s Day for most banking-related employers except mine. Oh, well….) in Belhaven, NC, one of our favorite getaway spots. We enjoy coming to Belhaven because we can do or not do, as much or as little as we choose. It’s a nice little town on the Intracoastal Waterway, a little sleepy but there’s enough to do if you want something to do. We’ve got some good friends that run a B&B here, and it is nice to visit several times a year to catch up. After the hustle & bustle of The Big City it is a welcome change.

Saturday we visited Washington, NC, just down the road between Belhaven and Greenville. There’s a great wine shop there we like to visit called Wine & Words (‘Words’ because it is also a used book store). We go for the wine but I’ve also bought books there, once picking up a copy of Peter Turnley’s The Parisians for an amazingly good price.

: Pink Building in Washington, North Carolina

I’ve been begging Kathy to let me try out her little Olympus E-PL2 for quite some time, and she decided that she wasn’t planning to do any shooting this weekend, so as long as I used my own memory card (so I wouldn’t corrupt hers!) I could shoot to my heart’s content. I didn’t shoot a lot with it, but I did get a chance to make some walking-around-town photos in Washington and worked a little bit around the Sunset Hour, although colorwise there wasn’t much to work with.

: Looking For Antiques

Today has been wet and cold and rainy, so while I ordinarily wouldn’t spend time processing and posting photographs, it seemed like a perfect day to play around with Lightroom 4. I’m teaching a Lightroom class this coming Saturday and thought I probably should at least be able to discuss the upcoming update. I decided to just jump in without reading any tutorials, so now that I’ve spent some time with it I can look at some tutorials and figure out what I should have known before I started. Sort of like reading the manual after assembling the swing set, but I figure I can’t hurt anything. So far, so good.

: 2 Cool Dudes

A lot of the new version looks pretty much like the old one, although I’m obviously going to need to spend some time learning about the new Map and Book modules. There are some interesting new slider functions in the Develop Module, and that’s where I spent most of my time. It will be interesting to read about the changes and find out what I should have known before I started!

: 2 Cool Dudes 2

So anyway, these are a few images shot on an unfamiliar camera and processed with a partially unfamiliar program. I think they’re kind of fun, I had fun making them and fun working with Lightroom 4.

: Zig-Zag

: Danger High Voltage