My dad spent most of his career as a water engineer with USAID. After they phased him out and gave him early retirement, he bought some swamp land from his old vocational agriculture teacher and now just plays around all day. Here he is operating his self designed and manufactured stairmaster/positive displacement pump to take water from his well (hand-dug using "appropriate" technology adapted from Bangladesh) and put it on his garden. I don't have the technical specs right here, but I seem to remember 2.5 liters/sec at 3 meters of head- I can definitely vouch for the fact that it puts a garden hose to shame... Notice the collard greens in the foreground- yummy!
A recent
addition to my dad's life is my step-mother Terry. I'm not a good enough storyteller
to relate the Dickensian tale of her life so far, but it's a pretty good one.
My favorite thing about her is her cooking- she is from Sri Lanka and makes
wonderful curries. Here is a picture of her with her son Roshi, who is now a
successful investment analyst back in Colombo.
Here's
another recent picture of my dad which perfectly illustrates what a sporting
old chap he is. Unfortunately, the no shirt no shoes thing prevents him from
being admitted to any of the more prestigious hunt clubs around, but he seems
content to occasionally pick off a rabbit or two which shares of the fruits
of his garden.
Another picture I have of my dad is of his case of the shingles which he recently recovered from. Since I have already abused the limits of good taste on this page, I decided not to post it, but I have submitted the picture to the American Council of Dermatology for inclusion in the next edition of "An illustrated handbook of disgusting skin disorders".