Virginia Beach Dance Trip

Took the family to Virginia Beach for a long weekend for a dance competition.  Prior to this I may have been to to Virginia Beach once, many many years ago.  We stayed near the convention center, about 15 - 20 min west of the beach, but drove to the beach for an afternoon and a day.  We liked the Virginia Beach area, maybe even more then North Myrtle Beach and will try to detail a few reasons here.

Public parking was easy to access right across the main street going down the beach.  The sand was darker in color and thicker in granular size (not as fine as MB) and from what they call the "Board Walk" to the ocean was a good distance, plenty of beach area.  The beach was clean, no trash, no dead jelly fish, no broken shells all over.  At one spot there were maybe 9 beach volley ball nets set up for people to play.  At another location along the beach there was an assortment of fitness / jungle gym like structures set up, like climbing ropes, swinging ropes, parallel bars, pull-up bars, monkey bars, and climbing obstacle.  Every couple blocks up and down the beach were public restrooms.

Their "board walk" was instead concrete, but it ran for about 3 miles or so along the beach.  This was great for late afternoon and evening walks at the beach.  The section we walked was not scattered with T-shirt and trinket shops, but instead hotels, parks and music pavilions.  So as you walked the board walk the evening you could hear an array of music performers every couple blocks or so, stop, listen and walk on.  Somewhere about the center of Virginia Beach is a statue of Neptune with dolphins, sea turtle and octopus.  Beautiful sculpture and nicely lit for the evening.

I need to find a beach like that here in North Carolina.

    

7 Days To Die

Though I have played my share of PC games in the 80's and 90's, I am not much the "Gamer".  But, my kids introduced me to 7 Days To Die on the Xbox One recently, but the game originated on the PC and utilizing a home network, multiple family members can play together in the same map and work to survive together.

Putting aside for a moment that there are Zombies in this game and they are serious about trying to kill you, it is a clever and fun survival game.  You, the player, are placed into a world or map with several different Bioms (biological environments), Burnt Land, Desert, Plains, Forest and Winter wonderland.  Your player starts in just underwear, and you have to scavenge for resources (weeds and plants for example so you can craft some cloths, or wood and stone to make an stone ax).  You have the day to gather resources, and avoid roaming zombies, and gather food and water (or find it by searching items and structures) but by night fall, you will need to build a shelter or find an abandoned structure that you can fortify to stay the night and survive any zombies that may visit overnight.

You do this for 7 days, gathering resources, building better and safer structures, finding water and food as you go.  IF you survive till the 7th day, a large horde of zombies will come and find you and hopefully you have a real safe place to hide.  It's a fun building and survival game.

The word map, circled in red, where I like to build my base.

House up on the hill I like to use, good central location and great view point.

Up on the roof and the view.

Caitlin - A potential model

A few weeks ago, Kim, Caitlin, and Aunt Julie went up to New York, NY to meet with MMG and a photo shoot.  The trip was good and exciting for them all.  This was Caitlin's first airplane flight and first trip to NY.  The photo shoot was in a small residential apartment.  Shortly after getting back, MMG asked to submit Caitlin for Macy's school catalog, but the professional shots she did in NY would not be ready in time, so could we please get shots of Caitlin and send them up as soon as possible.

So I set up my studio lights and backdrop in the garage one night and had our own photo shoot.  Below is a sampling of the pictures we took that evening.  I used a white paper backdrop and a light blue fabric backdrop along with two strobe lights shooting through white umbrellas.  My camera is Nikon D5100 with and 18 to 55 zoom lens,  not a professional camera, but it gets the job done.

No, she didn't get the work with Macy's, but we look forward to the next opportunity.

    

    

            

    

To view even more click on this Google Photos Album.