Sunday, August 2, 2009

A Day in Washington with my friend Pasquale!


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Originally uploaded by Joe Ganci

Portsmouth, New Hampshire


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Originally uploaded by Joe Ganci
We made a quick stop in Portsmouth. It's a lovely town!

Portland, Maine


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Originally uploaded by Joe Ganci
We loved Portland! We want to go back!

Visiting Family in NYC


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Originally uploaded by Joe Ganci
My aunt and uncle talking on Video Skype with my mom and sister in Italy!

Hartford, Connecticut


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Originally uploaded by Joe Ganci
A real quick stop in Hartford on our Northeast trip!

In Boston


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Originally uploaded by Joe Ganci
We had a lovely time in Boston on our trip Northeast!

Sunday, July 19, 2009

From Here On In...

So it's been tough to find the time to post both here and on Facebook so I've decided that I'm going to post on my blog the following:

1) Links to my Flickr account for when a good set of new photos are there.
2) Stories from my life. I promise they'll be good!

So for everything else, you can look at my Facebook account:

www.facebook.com/joeganci

I hope to see you there too!

Love to all
Joe

Monday, July 13, 2009

The Mazzei Family


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Originally uploaded by Joe Ganci
A wonderful family!

Portillo's Hot Dogs


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Originally uploaded by Joe Ganci
A mighty good chain I had never heard of until now! As seen in Barlett, Illinois.

Jain Temple in Bartlett, Illinois


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Originally uploaded by Joe Ganci
Quite a remarkable site to find in the middle of a Chicago suburb!

Monday, July 6, 2009

DC Fireworks Finale


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Originally uploaded by Joe Ganci
The weather was gorgeous!

Evgenia and her Dad Vladimir


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Originally uploaded by Joe Ganci
We went to the Independence Day fireworks in DC!

Receiving a Sweet Kiss


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Originally uploaded by Joe Ganci
Either I'm doing something right, or Lauren-Claire is giving me a birthday kiss!

Walking in the Fairfax County Independence Day Parade!


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Originally uploaded by Joe Ganci
Dateline: July 4, 2009, Fairfax, Virginia

Joe Ganci once again walks in the Fairfax County Indpendence Day Parade as part of the Fairfax Sons of Italy Lodge. The crowds cheered....all for me, I'm sure!

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Two and a Half Months Later...

And it's still going on!

See http://joeganci.blogspot.com/2009/03/times-are-toughand-junk-mail-preys-on_01.html

Evgenia's Parents


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Originally uploaded by Joe Ganci
Last night our friend Evgenia's parents came to visit from the Ukraine. We ate a wonderful dinner at Sweetwater Tavern. Conversation was a mix of English, Italian, Russian and Ukrainian! It turns out that Ukrainians are terrifically nice people!

Sunday, June 7, 2009

Lovely Frederick, Maryland


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Originally uploaded by Joe Ganci
After all these years living outside Washington, D.C., I had never until today visited Frederick, MD, only 45 minutes North of where I live. I had read about an Arts Festival happening there and decided to go visit. What a beautiful town! I really enjoyed it.

Unfortunately, on the way up there was a section of road where headlight use was mandatory. Normally I use the automatic setting for the headlights and unfortunately my car doesn't warn me when I leave them on so when I got back to the car, the battery was as dead as it could be.

A lady who was sitting on her porch nearby offered to help. Thank you to Jessica for all her help today!

Monday, June 1, 2009

Sunday at Great Falls Park


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Originally uploaded by Joe Ganci
A beautiful day Sunday at Great Falls Park!

Sunday, May 24, 2009

Lots of Meat


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Originally uploaded by Joe Ganci
Viva Vienna today in Vienna, Virginia. I couldn't help but take this picture of a ton of meat and the man wearing a Big Fat Daddy's shirt. A carnivore's bliss, a heart surgeon's job security!

Saturday, May 23, 2009

The Fountains of Kansas City


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Originally uploaded by Joe Ganci
Nice 14-block area of fountains and shops. Did you know that Kansas City has more fountains than any other city except Florence, Italy? Also, many of the fountains in KC were sculpted by Italian artists. All this was due to the founder of Hallmark, who loved fountains and Italy.

Click the photo to see more photos.

Kansas City, Friends and Barbecue!








I met my old friends John and Jeanene Underwood and Chris Phillips at Jack Stack Barbecue while working in Kansas City. Yum - very good barbecue! Interestingly, when I was flying to KC, my seatmate was on her way there to visit her grandchildren and she told me that her niece works at Jack Stack and to ask for her, but her niece was still away on maternity leave. :-)

1960 Volkswagen Beetle



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Originally uploaded by Joe Ganci
I took this while visiting my client on the fourth floor of Audi / Volkswagen Headquarters. Pretty cool, huh? The other photo shows it from above and you can get a better idea of its actual size.

Friday, May 15, 2009

Bird in Garage



Bird in my garage. He just kept going back and forth on the top shelf in my garage, acting as if he were taunting me to shoot him down! I didn't know that birds really did the back and forth thing like in the videogames! Take a look at the video. BTW, I didn't shoot him down, I whisked him out of the garage with a rake. Yeah, I was out of ammo (haha).

Saturday, May 9, 2009


On a warm summer day a few years ago, six friends and neighbors gathered together in my home. Among them were Richard, Sabine and Ruth who, as flight attendants, had many stories to tell about flying the friendly skies. Also present were Tom and Kitty, the beautiful married couple who manage a large hotel. I videotaped the conversation and created a transcript of the conversation, editing for clarity.

I hope you enjoy it!

Here's the link:

www.joeganci.com/TalesFromLandAndSky.pdf

Friday, May 8, 2009

Today, these birds started to attack the screens of the windows in my home office. What gives? I added an audio track so you can hear a little of what I could hear.

Put The Kids to Work!

My friends Katya and Ian and I put their two kids to work on a scavenger hunt at the Atlanta Botanical Gardens to find all the frog statues! As a result, we all got a packet of wildflower seeds. Score! Make the kids work and reap the benefits!

Thursday, May 7, 2009

My new friend Pasquale and me. Pasquale is the first friend that I had previously met on Facebook and then met in real life! He is quite an awesome guy for many reasons, including being a great Italian cook!

The lovely couple, Pasquale and Colleen! Thank you for having me to your home for a wonderful Italian home cooked meal!

My Friend Lisa!

I saw my very good friend Lisa while in Minnesota recently. She married a great guy named Larry and that transplanted her from Corpus Christi, Texas to the frigid Minnesota! Now THAT is love!

My Minnesota Students


These were four of my students from the class I taught at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, in April. What a great group of people! In the second photo, from left to right, we have Scott and the married couple Ann and Jeff.

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

As Seen in Atlanta #2


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Originally uploaded by Joe Ganci
These are my wonderful friends in Atlanta: Ian and Katya and their two boys Ben and Nikki! Katya has her own blog which you can see here:

http://itinerant-oak.blogspot.com/

Also, to see all the photos of our outing at the Botanical Gardens, click the photo!

As seen in Atlanta #1


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Originally uploaded by Joe Ganci
This shows the windows that were damaged during the tornado of 2007 and have not yet been replaced because they are custom windows and are still on back order.

Click the photo to see more photos from this set!

Our Garden


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Originally uploaded by Joe Ganci
I love springtime! I wish someone would invent a perfume as good as the garden smells right now!

Click the photo to see all the photos I took of the garden at the end of March.

As Seen in Seattle #2


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Originally uploaded by Joe Ganci
Yep! I visited the very first Starbucks!

Click the photo to see all the photos I took in Seattle!

As Seen in Seattle #1


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Originally uploaded by Joe Ganci
Monkfish....looks ugly, tastes pretty good!

Click the photo to see all the photos I took in Seattle!

Everything is Relative....in Size

THIS is fascinating - it's rather dazzling to see it presented this way. (Click the photos to enlarge them.)






Antares is the 15th brightest star in the sky. It is more than 1000 light years away.

This is a Hubble telescope ultra deep field Infrared view of countless entire galaxies. Billions of light-years away.


Below is a close-up of one of the darkest regions of the photo above.

Monday, March 30, 2009

"Watch" This!

I am one of those people who is prone to lose a watch shortly after donning it, especially because I don't like wearing one when I'm typing on a keyboard. For this reason, I keep the nice watch locked up at home and use a cheap watch when traveling. While I was in Italy last time, I went to an outdoor market and found this watch (the one in the photo) for only 5 euros, about $7.50. It runs pretty well, no problems, but one look at the watch and you may see why it's so cheap. Any ideas? What do YOU think?

Saturday, March 14, 2009

One of My Favorite Bands

Several year ago I attended a conference in Nashville, Tennessee. While there, we went out one evening to Printer's Alley to a blues club. The house band playing was Stacy Mitchart and Blues You Can Use. To say that they rocked the place would be an understatement. We were all on our feet dancing. They were fantastic! Before going home, we went back. It was Halloween and the place was so much fun and once again Mitchart made it fantastic. I bought a couple of his CDs and have listened to them a lot since.

Last year I was back in Nashville and looked them up. They are now the house band at BB Kings, a step up. I got a seat near the stage and once again loved them. I got on their mailing list hoping to find that one day they would tour near DC.

While in Orlando this week, I got an email from them telling me where they were touring right now and lo and behold, they were going to be playing one night in Orlando the very next evening. I got five of my friends to join me and we went to see them at BB Kings in Pointe Orlando. All agreed that they were fantastic.

By the way, Stacy is a GUY! :-)

Here's his website: http://www.stacymitchhart.com/default.aspx?24

By the way, I spoke to Stacy during a break and he said he was going to be in DC in May to perform on XM Radio. He told me there'd be room for about 50 attendees. I hope to make it.

You can see my entries from when I saw Stacy and his band in Nashville:

http://joeganci.blogspot.com/2008/03/more-stacy-videos.html
http://joeganci.blogspot.com/2008/03/nashville.html