Polar vortex weather in Northern NY: Zero degrees, snow,

Overnight snow lay in a picturesque manner in Chaumont NY. The van in the photo is a 2011 Kia Sedona. Gary Walts photo January 31, 2019

Awoke to more snow and cold this morning in Chaumont, NY. It was zero degrees and overnight snow lay upon the landscape in a picturesque manner. I cancelled my guitar lessons which I don't think I have ever done before. Spent a couple of hours shoveling snow from the driveway and sidewalks. This was at noon and the temperature had risen to 11 degrees.

View from our front porch in Chaumont, NY. this morning, January 31, 2019

View from kitchen window, Chaumont, NY, January 31, 2019.

Monday Jan 28, 2019 working on an apartment between tenants

Today started out at 4 below zero here in Chaumont NY. Got up later than I like, 7:00 am, put some time in on the guitar. I mostly worked on a nice arrangement of La Paloma that was made by Francisco Tarrega. Beautiful, long time favorite for many people. By 10:00 I was out of the house, did some banking and got back to one of our vacant apartments on Franklin St in Watertown. I am installing new carpet in 3 of the rooms. I have2 of them cut in. One is completed. My celebrity brother will finish up the bedroom for me. That will be a big help. The unit has been vacant since October. So much other stuff going on (the Better Half in the hospital on 2 occasions, planning a surprise birthday for the Better Half, and ongoing things with my mother) I have been dragging my feet getting it ready to rent since the last tenant vacated.  Beside the carpet I painted some baseboards and other little odds and ends. Hopefully I get a reliable tenant in there in a week or so.

Target shooting ice blocks & grilling wings January 17, 2019 slow motion video

Jerk chicken wings on the grill in 16 degree weather at our home in Chaumont, NY. 

The last couple of nights the temperature has been going down below zero. Perfect for freezing some blocks of ice for target practicing with my Gamo air rifle. I filled some balloons and some zip lock sandwich bags with water & placed them outdoors over night to make the targets. Meanwhile I've had some chicken wings marinating for 3 days in some Jamaican jerk sauce. So The Better Half's son in law D & his son J came over with their air rifles and we had some great amusement shooting the ice targets while the wings roasted on the grill. It was a Wednesday and D had the day off. J had to go to work at 4:00 that afternoon. So they got here about 11:30, left about 3:00.  The weather was sunny and no wind. The temperature about 16 degrees. All together it made for a beautiful Winter afternoon.

Winter afternoon target shooting blocks of ice with air rifles.

Winter afternoon target shooting blocks of ice with air rifles..

Here is a slow motion video of some of the ice exploding as it is stuck by the air rifle pellets. It's great fun, better than shooting bottles because there is no glass to clean up. Also, the extreme low temperature mad for some dense and brittle ice that intensified the shattering effect.

Christmas Eve 2018 classical guitar video: Christmas Time Is Here

In recent years I have made guitar videos of myself playing a Christmas song and posting it on Facebook on Christmas Eve. This year I played Christmas Time Is Here by Vince Guaraldi. The song was written for a Charlie Brown Christmas TV special. The special has been aired on TV every year since it's 1965 debut. So this is me playing the song:

This arrangement is from Christmas Songs For Easy Classical Guitar by Mark Phillips. Not only are the arrangements easy to play but the also SOUND GOOD. They are perfect for capturing and sharing some Christmas spirit without investing many hours, days, or even weeks mastering more fully harmonized performance pieces.

Cover of Christmas Songs for Easy Classical Guitar by Mark Pillips.
A great little book of arrangements that truly are easy and sound good.

Back cover of Christmas Songs for Easy Classical Guitar by Mark Pillips showing song list.

An inside peek of Christmas Songs for Easy Classical Guitar by Mark Pillips.
For copyrite reasons I have not shown full pages.

New business card with quilt art by Julie Dugas

I have just designed a new business card with background art by Julie Dugas of Asheville North Carolina. Julie is a very creative quilter. She utilizes her own hand dyed fabrics in her creations.

Original quilt art featuring hand dyed fabrics by
Julie Dugas, Asheville, NC. 

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The card I designed utilizing quilt art created by Julie Dugas of Asheville, NC. 

Friday January 4 2019: Grilling Jamaican Jerk chicken wings

Basting chicken wings with additional jerk sauce in January, Chaumont NY 

It was a sunny and warm day, hitting a high of 40 degrees, here in Chaumont NY. Pleasant for January 4. My brothers A & R came by in the evening and we grilled some chicken wings. The wings had been marinating in a Jamaican Jerk sauce for 3 days. The main ingredient being scotch bonnet peppers, or more properly, Habanero peppers. We also had some guacamole from my own recipe. The avocados were of high quality and the perfect degree of ripeness which made for a most delicious result. We washed it all down with Sierra Nevada Torpedo IPA which is probably my all time favorite beer. Brother R, the carpenter, however chose Pabst Blue Ribbon beer. The jerk sauce recipe came from a book by Dunstan Harris titled Island Barbecue with illustrations by Brooke Scudder. Published by Chronicle Books. It is a great little cookbook. Click the link for a good article by the Baltimore Sun about Jerk cooking that includes a jerk marinade recipe.

Brother R the carpenter at left, and myself in Chaumont NY. The Brinkman smoker/grill
is loaded with jerk chicken wings

My celebrity brother A, left, me in the middle, and the carpenter R enjoying wings in beer, Chaumont NY. 

Sierra Nevada Torpedo IPA beer, jerked chicken wings and guacamole made for a nice little munch out at our home
inChaumnt NY on a rather mild January evening. 

Sunset photos on the St. Lawrence River, Cape Vincent, NY December 29, 2018 Sony a6000 camera

Saturday, December 29, 2018, I take a drive to Cape Vincent, NY, a picturesque village on The St. Lawrence River, about 12 miles from our home in Chaumont. The tree photo was snapped with my iPhone 6 and then cropped and filtered with the Instagram app. The giant su setting on the water with some birds was taken with the Sony a6000 camera and a Minolta 500mm f8 auto focus reflex lens. The LAEA4 lens adapter was used to mount the lens to the camera.

Sunset on the St. Lawrence River, Cape Vincent, NY.                     iPhone 6 photo by Gary Walts

Sunset on the St. Lawrence River, Cape Vincent, NY.  Sony a6000 camera with Minola 500mm f8 lens.   photo by Gary Walts

Gary Walts log: New Years Day 2019

My whole life I hate to go to bed at night and hate to sleep in in the morning. As I have gotten older I have tempered that and realize the importance of proper rest for ones physical health and creativity. So last night, New Years Eve, I didn't get to bed until 12:30. We watched TV coverage of the ball dropping in Times Square, NY City. BTW, The Better Half's daughter B & her husband M were at Times Square. We saw no glimpses of them on TV. In bed I fall asleep reading. I awoke at6:00 and know that I need more sleep. I doze back off and experience a lot of weird dreams. The next thing I know it is 9:00 so I bounce out of bed. I rarely ever sleep that late. But I really needed it. I practice guitar for an hour or so. I have some fried eggs, sausage rolls and potato salad for breakfast. Then I fritter away my time trying to come up with and ad for guitar lessons. I have two vacant apartments that need to be spruced up so I cab get them rented. They have been unoccupied since September. My fault for procrastinating. As the day progresses I become very antsy. Finally I get outdoors for a couple of hours and tend to some odds & ends around the house. I did some target shooting with my air rifle ( a Gammo break barrel, 1000 foot per second) which is a most satisfying distraction. I enjoy shooting a lot, but do not often indulge in it. I found a block of ice about 4 inches thick in the bottem of a 5 gallon pail and set that up as a target. What fun it was to see the ice shatter and chip away bit by bit with every shot from the Gammo. By evening we have a dinner of pork chops and play a game of Trivial Pursuit. I ended the night watching a documentary on Netflix about Polish sculptor/artist Stanislaw Szukalski. Never heard of him before. Most interesting. I highly recommend learning about him. Amazing, weird, and strange. It's now 11:30. Good night.