utenzi

Yesterday after work, in the 100 degree heat, I decided to go over to Sarah Duke Garden and take some pictures of the grounds. Foolish? Hell yeah. The walking at Duke wasn't nearly as bad as sitting in the car at all the stop lights though. Going from Chapel Hill to Durham is a real pain in the patootie. How do you like that picture? I just happened to get the bee leaving the flower. Just lucky. After I got all hot and sweaty, I went to the Nasher Museum. I'd never been there before and the admission is free on Thursday. Damn good thing. That's one weenie little museum. I can't believe they charge money to go there the other days of the week. The museum is only a few hundred yards from Sarah Duke so it's an easy 2 for 1 and parking is free at the Garden after 5pm. How do you like that bridge? It used to be white and now it's BRIGHT red. It's very noticeable but I think I liked it better before. It might not be paint though. When I got closer, the bridge actu

A couple pictures from Sarah Duke Garden that I took yesterday with a white theme to them.

It's been a rainy and windy day on this side of RTP but over by Durham it was considerably nicer. As a result meeting up with a few folk at Sarah Duke Garden turned out to be a great idea. Because of the cold winter we've had, the flowers are a week or so behind schedule so not much was out but I did get some nice pictures of flowering trees and early bloomers like daffodils. After wandering around the SD Gardens for 90 minutes some of the group hit the cafe for lunch when it opened at noon. I, being the sociable creature that I am, instead took off for Eno River Park and did the Cox Mountain Loop. Cloudy and overcast but it never rained until I got back home at 3pm.

Here's 5 pictures that I took at Sarah Duke Garden on Sunday. I took over 170 pictures there that day and well over half of them are very good. The light was really good that day. Hard to believe people were complaining at the start because of the gray overcast skies. A pretty yellow flower. If you like that sorta thing... This guy looked way too serious. Get a load of that incredible camera setup---and all just to get some pictures of ducks. And if you look carefully, you can see he's got his dog hitched to his back end. The bridge in the Asian section of the Garden. Nice reflections on the water. And this was a rather nice tree in the parking lot. Only 165 pictures left to go...

After the hike that I mentioned yesterday, I stopped at a Sports Bar down in Pittsboro to get something to eat. The UNC game was just starting so I watched the first half there. It was kinda nice to watch the game with people around making appreciative noises. Particularly since UNC advanced to the Sweet 16 by rolling over the LSU Tigers. If anyone wants to watch the game with me this coming Friday I'll make the munchies. I'd invite Julie but she doesn't want to stay up that late. Spoilsport! On the other hand, the game isn't slated to even start until 10pm EST. And it could start late since the number 2 and 3 seeds are playing at 7:30pm and there's a half hour between the end of that game and the start of the UNC game against the 4 seed, Gonzaga. If the first game goes over, then UNC will start late and the game could easily last until 1am!!! So I doubt anyone will come and watch with me. *pout* The picture above and the one on the left are from Sarah Duke Ga

Here's three pictures I took at Sarah Duke Garden yesterday. The first is a picture of a family of ducks that were sheltering behind a cluster of iris plants. Very sweet and rated G. But for some reason, when I look at pictures of iris blooms close up--I get a very different impression. Maybe it's just me, but they look quite naughty. Now, while not as extreme as those Georgia Okeefe paintings could be, they definitely give me an impression of... something else entirely. If you ever saw that Pink Floyd movie "The Wall", thematically based on the album of the same name, you know what I mean. *whew* That was a movie with some extreme imagery. Adding to the theme of the iris petals was all the matrimony in the air. There were at least 3 weddings going on while we were at Duke--maybe more. The Chapel had one happening while we there, and it looked like the security guard was piling up folk from another wedding scheduled later, and there were several groups down in the ga

Lee and I stayed busy today. While we got off to a late start--don't ask--once we got in motion we managed to take a hike in Eno River Park, wandered the lovely Sarah Duke Garden at Duke University, and had a tasty and somewhat fattening repast at Bullocks, a Durham institution. These turtles were near a waterfall at Eno River. They don't seem to see eye-to-eye. It was funny to see them perched on that log like that, butt to butt (do turtles really have butts?). That one on the left is balanced on its belly with all 4 feet just moving away. I think it was dreaming about swimming. What a silly turtle. Just a few hundred feet down the trail from the turtles was that fellow below. He didn't seem to mind resting on my finger at all. It was kinda weird 'cause usually snakes don't like being held at first, but then settle down. This guy took to it right from the get go and really didn't seem to want to leave when I put him down. He was kinda cute too. Lee almost adopt

I took some pictures of turtles last week when I was walking along the paths at Sarah Duke. Most didn't turn out well due to my inability to focus on the little suckers while they were in the water but here's 5 that are mostly in focus:

I came across this Cowboy Act a couple of weeks ago at Sarah Duke Gardens. The bug was on a cluster of flowers well off the path so I held out my camera, all zoomed out, and hit the shutter a few times and hoped for the best. I was amazed to find that I actually had a shot with a fairly good focus on the bug. To me, this picture reminds me of the album cover of some 80s hair band. Or maybe something that Meatloaf would have liked to have on one of his covers. LOL Ride 'em Cowbug!

You might remember this picture from yesterday. The subject's name is Chris and it was taken at Duke University in the Sarah Duke Gardens on the Eastern edge of the campus. I've received two Emails asking how I achieved the affect in this picture and a few comments on the blog as well. Even Chris wondered how much Photoshop magic was involved. Well, none to be exact. The picture to the left has been shrunk down a little to fit on the page--the original file size was 2 meg and was 2200 something pixels across--but that's the only adjustment I made. The affect was actually the result of clumsy happenstance. I had been taking a few pictures in a shaded glen of small blue flowers so I was using the flash to light them up. I then decided to take a closeup of Chris' face with the glen as a backdrop. I kept the camera setting on macro but forgot to shut down the flash--so when I took the picture Chris' face was extremely overexposed. It was an oversight--I simply forgot to

I did a lot of Spring Cleaning on Saturday. I had forgotten how rough cleaning is on the body--and getting older (and fatter) doesn't help in the least. *whew* I was doing a lot of de-cluttering as well as plenty of mopping and vacuuming with cleaning two of my bathrooms to cap it all off. This place was a disgrace! And there's still so much to be done--but at least it's started. While the house is still quite cluttered, it's a great deal better than it was last week. My body is frickin' pissed off though. My hamstrings are just yelling themselves hoarse in little jabs of pain every time I stand up or bend over. It's quite sad that a little bending over to pick things up or scrub out a tub could make me this uncomfortable. How do people that do this every day--as in tidy folk that don't live in the midst of clutter and dust like I do--cope with the strain on their muscles? And the allergy attacks that all that disturbed dust creates? Oy! I rewarded myself

I'm watching the Day 5 season of 24 on TV, which is being shown on A&E Network 5 times a week, and recording the current season, Day 6, on FOX so I can watch it when I'm finished with the 5th Season. *whew* Anyway, the reason I mention this is that I just finished watching this past week's episodes and the tension is really mounting. That Jack Bauer is just something else. LOL I'm sure it's no coincidence that both Season 5 on A&E and Season 6 on FOX are both ending on the same day, Monday May 21. Season 6, which started with two double-episodes last Fall is also ending with a double episode. So I guess I'll be spending all that week catching up on the 24 hours I've recorded of Season 6. 3 episodes a night during the week and then 9 hours on the weekend. Perfect! It really is quite a show though two people have told me that Season 6 isn't as good as Season 5. Damn. I'm operating solo this weekend since Ren is bonding with her kids what w