The dark side

So I did it, I crossed over. I opened a twitter account.

I'd been resisting for a long time, I really didn't need yet another thing to obsess about, but a couple things perpetuated my decision to cross over to the dark twitter side.

First, my husband seemed to be having too much fun reading his feed, laughing at the funny ones, and occasionally quoting to me the best.
I want to have fun too!

Second, the author of The art of iPhoneography, the book I just bought, talked about posting photos to extend your creativity. She suggests twitter.

I created my twitter account, and picked some folks to follow. Then came the old tree-in-the-forest question: If you tweet with no followers, is it a tweet at all? Then a strange thing happened, I got followers, people I didn't know, and not the folks I followed. It is kinda creepy.

Last night I set up another account on Instagram. It's a social network for photographers mentioned in the iPhoneography book, a place where I can post pictures and have them exported as tweets. Already, I have a couple followers and I'm ok with that. I'm not sure what the difference is, why one is creepy and one isn't, I'm still trying to identify what it is.

Anyway, here I am, exploring the dark side.

A Few Vacation Pics - The Netherlands

A working windmill near Zuiderzee

A view of many bridges over a canal (forgot which one) in Amsterdam

Another canal bridge

Tulips at the flower market in Amsterdam

What I did on My Birthday

I'll just skip right to the end of the day: Dan took me to a Wizards' game, floor seats, row C behind the bench. This is what I saw:





Javale MaGee in the top two, Gilbert Arenas in the bottom one.

I ended up taking 160+ pictures of the game. It was fun to be that close, the game seemed to fly by faster than when I'm in Dan's usual upper level seats.

I gotta get ready for work, maybe I'll get to post more later.


 

Picture of the Day

Curaçao

 

Mid-week Rambling

I'm so behind in blogging. I'm still doing the single mom thing, Dan doesn't come home until tomorrow night late. I'm kinda caught up on laundry, maybe just one regular load and one utility load to do and the hampers will be empty. I can't get too excited about that though, Dan'll be bringing home a suitcase full of more laundry.

The local power company has been doing work in our town to improve the reliability of the power supply. That means they are ripping down the trees within twenty feet of the lines.

Here's our backyard before:



Here's our backyard after:



Entrance to the neighborhood before:



After:


Depressing, isn't it?

We're getting $100 per tree they took out. They call them vouchers, but really we have to pay for any new trees out-of-pocket and they will pay us back up to the limit with proof we've installed trees from the approved list. Nobody bothered to mention to us the value of ten full-grown trees is about $10,000 and $1000 in vouchers won't even come close to providing shade and a privacy barrier like we had before. Furthermore, the price of the tree does not include installation. I went to one nursery to check out what they had in stock and their labor charges. I calculated each tree installed will be about 175% of the original price.

I've envisioned filling that space with a row of pink crape myrtles. They grow pretty fast and are so pretty in the summer. Two problems: the smallest size starts at $150 ($262 installed) and I'd need/want seven for a total of about $1840 which is way over our allowance, and they are out of pink ones and I don't like the white or purple crape myrtles.

I started considering other options, different varieties of trees and large shrubs. I started poking around on the 'Net and one click lead to another and I found a coupon offered by the state of Maryland for $25 if you plant a tree on their list. Many of trees on the state's list match the trees on the power company's approved list.

There is a nursery, one with a more expensive reputation, that takes the state coupons. I poke around on their site. Well, they have plenty of the pink crape myrtles in stock, which start at $130, are on sale and can be installed for about 128% of the original price. It looks like I can go back to my original plan, or at least start planning based on my original idea.

Maybe I should look into fruit trees while I'm at it....

I usually don't go for sappy, sorry

Patrick Swayze died last night from pancreatic cancer. I know he made other movies but I remember him mostly from Ghost and Dirty Dancing.

A couple weeks before school started this fall we were in southwest Virginia for Dan's family reunion. As part of that trip we drove past Mountain Lake, the resort what was used for some of the exterior shots of Dirty Dancing.

At the time Dan suggested I write a post appealing to my women readers who all have that movie in their wheelhouse. He suggested I post pictures of the resort from the movie along with the ones I took that day. I hadn't gotten around to finding the "before" pictures but in light of Mr. Swayze's death, I'll post the two I have now.



This is the front exterior of Mountain Lake resort, complete with Kevin romping on the grounds.

This is the gazebo that used to be at the lake shore where Johnny and Baby were shown practicing the famous dance lift. Jennifer Gray was quoted this morning on the news about what a great guy he was and how cold the water was. The lake has been losing water for the past several years, though, the current level is as high as it is because of the winter melts and spring rains this year.

As it happened, Dirty Dancing was on TV a week or two later and Fern got to experience what every girl my age did back then, except this time I knew all the words to all the songs. She thought it was lame. I guess teenagers nowadays don't go for nice stories with hunky guys?

Rest in peace, Patrick Swayze.

Photos from the Weekend

Abstract: Fern skating



Humpback Rocks, Blue Ridge Parkway, Va



The puzzle is coming along
It looked like this last week.

Quick Weekend Roundup

Kevin doesn't have day camp this week, therefore Dan and I are splitting the workdays this week; school starts next Monday so I might be back on a "normal" blogging schedule then, if I ever was on a normal blogging schedule.

This past weekend we went to Dan's family reunion down near Blacksburg, VA at Claytor Lake. Sunday the four of us hiked up to the Cascades. It was two miles each way and I am so bummed I didn't have my "walkometer" with me to record the hike's distance and elevation. I took pictures instead:








 

Ta Daa!

If you like photo sequences, here's two more in the old work building deconstruction project I can see from my office window. I haven't posted any in a while because it just looks like the same big pile of rocks to me every day, but they are making progress, I think. Yesterday:



Today:


Here is a earlier post that showed many shots of the deconstruction.

I picked up some of the ceramic pieces Fern and I made in our class. The rest of my pieces got fired in the high fire kiln and they're not ready yet. They only fire it up at the higher temperature once a month or so. It was scheduled to go on Saturday with a cool-down Sunday and Monday, but I heard they had trouble with the gas Saturday and may not have gotten the kiln fired. I'm anxious to see my pieces.



This is a close-up of one of the corner blocks I designed with all the partial seams on the quilt I'm making for my mom.



Here's the whole thing. I spent about an hour last night trimming up some of the seams that I'd missed. And, in the process, un-sewed and re-sewed several seams that didn't meet my momentary high standards.

Happy

I'm sitting here at my computer at work surrounded by sounds of clanging and thumping. My neighbors are packing for the move, I'm not. I get to stay put, read blogs and "play" on my lunch hour.

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I took some pictures of Fern at her ice skating competition on Sunday. My Dad came out to see her skate too and took lots of shots with his Nikon D3 and 200mm lens. I always knew the light in our ice arena is horrid and despite my camera my pictures are never that good, but I didn't see the evidence until I saw Dad's photos. He fired off about 100 shots before Fern even took the ice to get all his settings set. The pictures taken in some areas of the rink had a pink cast, other areas had a blue cast. He put a couple of the best ones up on his blog. I used an 85mm lens on my Nikon D50, did not correct for the conditions and got these:









Those ribbons are for first place in freestyle 4 program, freestyle 4 compulsories, second place in team jump and spin, and production team, and a third place in freestyle 4 interpretive.



Dad brought his 300mm lens for me to use. I found it too long for the rink, but I get to keep and play with it to experiment with different DOFs (depth of fields). Or is it "depths of field"?


 

More Pictures from the Cruise

Kevin at dinner

The view of the harbor in the rain from Seven Mile Beach, Grand Cayman.

Fern on the tender back to the ship at Grand Cayman

Fern's artsy shot at the resort on Roatan

Looking back at the new dock area at Roatan Island, Honduras getting ready to sail.

Christmas morning in Belize

Fern and me kayaking Barrister Caye, Belize

The Carnival Valor

A little-known spot. Most folks flock to the open decks above and forget about the quiet Main deck under the lifeboats.

Photos for Friday

Last week Lorraine honored me in her weekly Jukebox Friday post because of my birthday. She posted a picture of me taking a picture of the grapes her daughter had just harvested. I promised to post it here. This was taken with the Nikon and the built-in flash. I wasn't really as happy with the grape pictures as I had been with those of the apples I had taken at her house, as well. But I promised, and a promise is a promise, so here you go:



This one's better. It was from a passel of pictures I took back in August while in Chincoteague, VA. I like the narrow DOF.