When you hear Yanke Candle you think candles, obviously. But Yankee Candle Village in South Deerfield, MA makes you realize what a huge empire this compnay has built. You could (and we did) spend the better part of a day wandering through the many sections of the village. The slightly imperfect candles of the discount room are a great deal at half off. OK, so maybe you don’t want an Apple Cider scented candle that red on one side and pitch black on the other, but a tangerine candle that’s filled just a tiny bit too high is a great deal!

My personal favorite was the Bavarian room. $6000 giant German stein anyone? And who wouldn’t love the Black Forrest room where it snows all year long?

The Fall Decorations and events of the Fall Festival made it that much more fun. As usual I took plenty of photos. You can see them right here.

Mount Snow is a ski resort in Vermont, but before the ski season starts German beer, food, music and events take over. I am, of course, describing Oktoberfest. They also had an arts & crafts show and scenic ski lift rides to the top of the mountain. Despite rain on Saturday, Sunday turned out to be a very nice cold day. As expected, the Fall foliage was impressive to say the least. It also gave me a chance to really test out my new camera. It turns out that shooting photos while hanging on for dear life to the ski lift isn’t easy. But that’s what a love for photography and a terrible fear of heights will get you!

The photos are posted in my Photos section.

I just added 2 new albums to my Photos section. The first is from Orange County Choppers in Newburgh, NY. You probably recognize the name from the Discovery show American Chopper. I stopped by the Teutels new “world headquarters” on the way to Vermont last week. They have a retail store which is fairly over-priced, but I did shell out for a keychain anyway. The best part of it is the bikes that are on display. They have many of the theme bikes they built on the show on display. There’s also a viewing area where you can see into the shop area.

I also added a small album of photos from the Bordentown, NJ Cranberry festival. Thrown in with that album are also a few shots from the Blackwood Pumpkin Festival in Gloucester Township and my backyard all from the same day.

Another important note… these are the first photos I’ve posted that were taken with my new Nikon D90!

Check out them all out here.

I was scheduled to be in Newport for a week on business but the trip wound up being unexpectedly extended into a second week. I used the opportunity to do a little bit of sightseeing on the weekend. Besides walking about 10 miles, I took tours of two mansions (The Breakers & Marble House), toured the Breaker’s stables & carriage house, walked part of the Cliff Walk and did some shopping. If you have to unexpectedly get stuck somewhere, Newport is a good choice!

Check out the photos here.

I just added 3 new photo albums. They are all from my trip to Western Maryland and West Virginia. We visited the Spruce Forest Artisan Village & Penn Alps restaurant. The bulk of our trip was spent in Frostburg & Cumberland, where we took a ride on the Western maryland Scenic Railroad. On the way home we spent 2 days in Charles Town and Harper’s Ferry. It was a fun couple of days. It was nice to send time in some very old, very small towns for a change and Harper’s Ferry National Historical Park is one of the most interesting NPS sites I’ve been to.

I post hundreds of photos on the site and usually don’t know if they are getting noticed by anyone or not. However, lately, besides all of the dozens of contacts I get regarding my genealogy work, I’ve been seeing more comments on my photos. It makes me glad that I take the time to post them. A pro photographer in Virginia commented on my Hampton Roads photos, a model builder used one of my photos as reference for a model and last week I granted license for use of one of my photos by a company in a case study. You can check that out at Lencore.com.

If you are interested in acquiring or licensing any of my photos, please feel free to get in touch with me.

I finally posted my photos from my week in Jacksonville, Florida. As i say on the photo album page, I spent most of the week indoors at a conference, but did get outside to take a few quick photos.

Check them out here.

Over the past few days you probably have seen posts that consist of any “tweets” I’ve posted to twittered on a given day. Obviously, this means I’ve caught up with the bandwagon and joined Twitter. You can find me at twitter.com/megatti. I got the idea to have my tweets automatically cross posted to my blog from Leo Laporte. Like him, I don’t like the idea having anything I create hosted solely on a service that I don’t control. So, the result is that you can catch up with my tweets on twitter, but you can also check them out on my blog. That way they’re all saved for posterity. (Don’t take that to mean that you can expect anything profound from me! )

Happy New Year! Here’s to a happy, healthy and prosperous year! I’ll be spending today recovering from all the cooking and eating I did yesterday and watching the mummers parade. Hopefully, the parade will go on again next year despite the city’s budget problems.

I wish you and your family a very Merry Christmas!