The (Foggy) Day After Thanksgiving

There was a dense fog throughout Detroit when I woke-up yesterday morning. It was the day after Thanks- giving so there really wasn't much work to do.

I, therefore, convened a special meeting of the entire board of directors for Prince Igor Productions, Incorporated. We decided to close the office for the day so I could spend the day taking pictures and having fun.

(There are days when it really is a blessing to work for yourself!)

Anyway, I started with the streets near my house. Photographing them in a foggy condition with different exposures and different setting on my camera. After a little while, I decided to move on to River Rouge Park. That was where I shot this cool close-up of a cannon along with a bunch of photos of the baseball diamonds and trees.

You can see all of those photos over on Flickr.

Once I got those shots, I decided to head downtown so I could shoot some more photos along the Riverfront.

The fog was still fairly thick there, but slowly starting to lift. I thought it was so darn cool to snap this photo of a freighter just as it was coming out of the fog.

I snapped a few more photos of the Riverfront in the fog and then made a quick phone call to Amanda. We made plans for lunch and I discovered that her friend Rita was also heading downtown. She was doing the Motown's Downtowns tour that day and was bringing Andi (an exchange student from Germany) with her.

Anyway, I had a few minutes before everyone was ready for lunch so I stopped by the Compuware Building and checked out the Festival of Trees. It's a benefit for the Children's Hospital of Michigan and featured a couple dozen really cool Christmas trees.

Of course, I snapped more photos. (I swear, Flickr is becoming the new crack. You can find the Festival of Trees photos on this page.)

Anyway, the four of had lunch together. I only snapped one photo of everyone because, for the most part, we were too busy talking to even bother thinking about my camera. That's Amanda with her eyes closed, the back of Rita's head and a little corner of Andi's face. (Not one of my best photos, I know).

When we were done, Amanda had to go back to work. I would rag on her for having a boring corportate job, but there are moments when boring corporate jobs are things I dream about. Usually this is when one of my clients is taking longer than expected to pay me. But that's a subject for another post.

Oh, wait - I forgot. That was the subject of an earlier post.

Anyway - Rita, Andi and I had some time to kill after lunch so we went back to snap even more photos along the Riverfront. By now the fog had lifted. It was a bright and sunny afternoon so that made for an interesting contrast to the earlier set of photos that I had taken.

When then did some shopping. I picked up a cool "Cadillac" seatbelt belt at Pure Detroit. It's a seatbelt buckle from an old Cadillac that was reused as a regular belt. I thought it was kind of cool.

We checked out all of the cars inside the Ren Cen (GM's global headquarters - for all of you who read this thing, but don't live in the D.)

Yes, Darling, I was talking about you with that notation. LOL!

Anyway, the Saturn Skye is actually a pretty cool car. Too bad they wouldn't let me take it for a test drive around the building.

Oh!

And the three of us even managed to get out photos taken with Santa Claus. He was in the building. I suppose he was trying to give folks at GM a profitable fourth quarter or something.

Anway, when we were done shopping, eating and photographing - Rita and Andi headed back to Ferndale. I headed over to Southwest Detroit. Amanda mentioned that there was this market there where you could get Coca-Cola from Mexico.

Coca-Cola from Mexico is cool because they still use real sugar there instead of high-fructose corn syrup. I've heard a lot people rave about the difference and I've been wanting to try it.

Not badly enough that I'd head all the way to Mexico, but I still wanted to try it.

Anyway, I found the place. Honey Bee Market on Bagley.

And they did indeed have Coca-Cola from Mexico.

They even had it in old-fashioned 12 ounce glass bottles, no less.

I picked up a few bottles of it. I learned a couple of things in the process.

1. Coke really does taste better when it is made with real sugar instead of high-fructose corn syrup. Why the folks at Coca-Cola aren't making this stuff in the U.S., even as premium brand or something, is beyond me.
2. Because of it's longer, skinnier size - a glass bottle of Coke will not stay put in a conventional automobile cup holder, at least not when you make a turn.

FYI: I lost half a bottle of Coke learning that second lesson.

Oh, well - lesson learned. It was still a fantastic day.

Now, if everyone will excuse me. It's 7:30 p.m. so I have to figure out what I'm going to do this evening.