Landlord vs Tenant

Being a landlord has its ups and downs.  One of the big ups is being able to write into a lease the things you want in there.  In the lease we use one of the stipulations is that the tenant cannot put signs up in the yard.  Not a big deal until it is an election year and the new tenant loves Palin while we, the landlord, support Obama.

Of course we have our Obama sign posted proudly in the front yard.

When Jennifer stuck this sign up, our tenant wanted to show her support with a McCain/Palin sign.  Unfortunately for her, she did not read the fine print of her lease and we had to tell her, "no."  However, since I am a kind, understanding landlord I made an exception and allowed her one yard sign.  The only stipulation, it could not be larger than two inches by two inches.  "Ha, ha!  Take that you tenant."

Of course she did and I almost fell off the sidewalk when I saw her response.

But then she takes it a step further.

I need to update the lease to somehow keep unsightly pumpkins from taking over my front porch.  The only upside is the squirrels have now destroyed most all of the pumpkins.

Don't forget to vote!

UPDATE: The dissenting opinion can be found on Fighting Gravity.

Morning in Loveland

It is day five of our vacation to Loveland, Colorado to visit family and help clean up my grandparents' home.  It is a great place, a little unique in many ways but the absolute best thing about the hose is that it sits on the West side of Lake Loveland.  Because of this, I have great memories of opening the curtains in the basement before I would go to sleep at night, just so I would not miss the sunrise the next morning.  While I have been getting up early each morning so far this week, today was the first day that I was actually up before the sun peeked up over the horizon.

Updated 1/8/2010

Sprinkler Time

Just a quick post to let you know I added some photos to my Flickr page.  These photos were made when the girls decided it was time to play in the sprinkler. 

To see the rest of the photos from the fun, look at the Sprinkler Time set on my Flickr page.

RAIN!

Last week we had a great summer downpour.  It was one of those hot, humid summer days when in the late afternoon the sky just opened up and dropped large, glorious rain for about 45 minutes.  Not only did our lawns and plants need the water, but so did my girls.  At the beginning of the storm they were on the front porch, protected from the rain, but still able to enjoy it.  Over at our house were their two best buddies for the summer Jaeda and Britt.  Sitting on the porch I saw Mia looking cute and I thought the light might be nice, so I went in and grabbed the camera. 

I have taken enough photos of my girls that they don't really flinch when the camera comes out, but when I focused on Britt, she gave me a typical here-is-my-camera-smile pose.  Cute enough, but definitely not natural. 

I then made Olivia sit on the wall of the porch and tried to make a photo of her in front of the downpour.  The rain was coming down so hard and our gutters are old enough and probably clogged with leaves that the rain was pouring over the sides and made it appear that it was raining even harder than it actually was. 

Some how, one of the girls got the idea to go out in the rain and wave to Jaeda & Britt's mom who was looking out the door just two houses over.  From there it was all over.  The girls were out in the rain, laughing, squealing, running and having a great time. 

 

The best shot of the day is the one of Britt where I was on our front porch and she was playing in the spillover from our gutters and loving life.  If I have ever made a photograph that captures the pure personality of someone, this one of Britt is it.  If you know Britt, you know this photo is her wonderfully vibrant personality.  If you have never met her, well now you know.

I still had my camera in hand so I was playing around with trying to capture the rain, but none of them really did much for me.  Although, I do find the birdbath photo somewhat interesting.  As I was manually dialing in the correct settings to take some photos of the sky, when out of his house comes Jaeda and Britt's dad, Jon.  Now Jon is a former NFL running back, so not someone who would typically walk around with a lacy parasol.  But out he came with Britt's parasol, trying to protect himself from what, I could not tell.  I swung around and clicked off a few photos, but forgot to change the exposure settings from the sky.  The result, pure black.  Oh well.  Fortunately through the magic of Lightroom I was able to at least lighten it up enough to make it possible to keep the memory.

To see the rest of my photos from the day in the rain, go to my Flickr page and search for the tag: rain

Red Hots

Over the weekend I was able to watch and photograph my niece Katie's softball team, the Red Hots. While the rain screwed up the schedule, it could not put out the fire of the Red Hots.

(How is that for some really obnoxious writing?)

Anyway, the team did great and I posted photos here.

If the link does not work, go to my SumgMug page and look under the Sports galleries. http://pomranka.smugmug.com