Between Weeks

Sunday morning, the Patriots are playing in their first playoff game at 1:00 PM. I have company coming (Camera Club) to review some images from our sister club in England. I guess it will be a busy day. I should get moving soon to do some cleaning and setup. If the club members arrive when the game is ending, I'll likely ignore them. There are priorities.

Patriots are expected to win, but anything can happen.

I did have a wonderful time last week visiting Art, Jeanne, and Steven in Merchantville. I was supposed to help Art with a video interview, but the dates got messed up and it didn't happen. We worked on some computer problems and secured/extended his home network. In fact, we found out that Steven, with his own computer, had been hooking into a neighbor's unsecured network accidentally.

While there, I got to visit the Martin Guitar Factory in Nazareth, PA. Wow! Now I want a Martin. Really. It's a good thing they're too expensive. Lessens the temptation. (I teased Lee about this and I think she really thought I was going to buy one.)

We also saw Bethlehem, PA and their massive steel mill operation...well, former operation. It's now a rusting hulk. Bethlehem, itself, is a very nice city with lots of historic sections/buildings. It would make for a delightful place to visit for a weekend. I doubt the steel mill has tours, but you can see a lot of it from the road. Pictures don't do it justice. We were told that folks from the Smithsonian were there, perhaps to help with restoration. It's definitely a part of our nation's history. What's so interesting is that Nazareth and Bethlehem aren't too far apart. A quick drive from one to the other. See more images from Bethlehem Steel here.

We also took a trip to the Philadelphia Art Museum. We went to the Annex section and saw photographs and ceramics and the most interesting was a section by a designer whose designs were presented as art. Nice. It's too bad that I can't describe it better but Art and I probably spent more time in that exhibit than any of the others.

After the museum annex, we walked over to Philadelphia's Farimont Water Works.

...which supplied water to the city for about 90 years of it's operation. You can see the art museum in the distance (center of the image). It's up on a hill above the water works building in the foreground. The museum was built on top of the reservoirs into which the water works pumps pumped millions of gallons of water for distribution by gravity into the city. (I'm sure the reservoirs were filled in before the museum was built.) It's a good thing the folks in Philadelphia had the presence of mind to make the water works a museum because it's quite nice. See more images from Philadelphia here.