Neither

Neither writing nor photography, the following is a status update:

Good job, me!  Keep up the great work, and remember to reward myself!  (If I can stomach the recurring monthly expense, the reward may be an iPhone.)

Spring Break is Over

We were on vacation last week.  We went to a beach, we did a lot of nothing.  Really.  We didn't even do the touristy things except the beach and a couple restaurants.  Our last vacation was busy enough, that it was good to slow down for this one.  While I didn't do any writing, I did take lots of pictures.  Here are some of my favorites:

Early morning light on the water.

The boardwalk down from the dunes to the beach.

What a great model I found!!

I couldn't have asked for better light or a better background.

Or even a better model.

Pelicans flying in formation.  I wasted a lot of 1s and 0s trying to capture this shot.

There is something about transition points... again, I took a lot of pictures here, trying to get just the right perspective.

This little red boardwalk seems to have been an important place for me.

I called them "surf deer" but I'm sure they have a real name.

So much!

Have I mentioned my iPad 2?  It was a Valentine's gift from My Amazing Boyfriend.  A few weeks later, with the announcement of the upcoming iPad 3, the price dropped nearly $100, however MAB had already received a $40 Target giftcard for the purchase and he figures I've easily gotten $60 use out of the gizmo, so he's not disturbed by the price change.  Yes, I have gotten a TON of use from the thing.  It goes everywhere with me, and I more fully understand the obsession with iPhones.  I suspect that sometime in the future, MAB and I will be making the switch, but for now we're content with our less sophisticated devices.

One of the most fun apps I've gotten to play with is a game (of course).  Draw Something is a treat!  I get to practice my drawing and creativity, I get to see how other people see and present an item/concept, and I can connect with them on a new level, in some cases, making friends that weren't so close before (i.e., Anne, the keeper on Miss Boo's soccer team.  She's a great kid that I didn't know well before, but now we have our own connection, not just the one through Miss Boo). 

Another wonderful addition to my life is the Calendar in the iPad.  It connects to the Gmail calendar I was already using to some degree, but I couldn't take it with me.  Now it's with me all the time, and I can add to it from either the iPad or any internet accessible computer.  You can see a significant difference in the activity listed in February versus the activity now listed in March.  Either it's the accessibility of the calendar or life got REALLY busy ... or both.

With the addition of a free Kindle account and app, I can even get my class lecture notes, in the form of a PDF, onto my iPad.  The only drawback to that is that I can't highlight the electronic notes (yet), or add my own notes in the margins, though MAB says he can work around that.  I don't need it badly enough to jump through the hoops it will take, so I haven't pressed the issue.

So what have I done with photography lately?  Cool things!  I selected some of my favorite pictures from the Myriad Gardens shoot/walk MAB and I took a couple weeks ago, and had them printed out.  When I went back to the drug store to pick them up, the cashier was so cute!  I don't mean attractive cute, but nice cute.  When I gave him my name, he held his breath for a moment.  Then he reached for an envelope and asked me what kind of camera I use.  I told him the model and then told him it's obsolete (technically it's just a discontinued line... it's still a valid tool).  He said to me, and the two folks in line behind me, "These were not taken with an obsolete camera!"  And he pulled out two of my favorites to show the folks behind me!!  They were, of course, polite, but not interested.  Still, the cashier's enthusaism for my "work" was a real ego boost.  I did tell him these were some of my favorite pictures which was why they were being printed.   They have since been added to a collage frame and hang on the wall in my office.

Here's one of my favorites:

I also spent a bit of money to increase my photography/technology level.  I have a memory card that is it's own private MeFi network.  It will shoot images taken on my camera directly to my iPad... almost immediately!  Guess what's going to the beach with us for our next vacation?  Yes, I'll be very careful with my cameras around sand and water.  Scouts honor.  Not only does this technology look really spiffy, it has a functional capacity as well.  I don't have to drag my laptop along to upload and backup my photos.  They can be stored on the iPad and even uploaded to the "cloud" for safekeeping.  It's all so sophisticated and spiffy.

Okay, I'll stop trying to sell the iPad now.  It's just such a clever piece of technology.

Annuals

Once again, I didn't get here to write.  No apologies.  I could have found time, but I might have had to give up some of my precious down time.  I did get oodles done yesterday.  Work, some accounting homework, more work, real socialization, history class, electronic socialization, and some photography.  Okay, it's not nearly as impressive written down as it felt at the time.

Accounting homework SUCKS!  Actually, the homework itself is alright.  It's the interface that really sucks.  It's inefficient to move around in.  Really.  It's worse than if we had to use those lovely green columnar papers.  Yeah, the ones I am young enough to never have had to use.  The homework, practice test, and a few other exercises are all done through an online interface on the computer, and typically, you get a big chunk of information at the beginning and then you scroll down to enter numbers and accounts based on the information provided.  In some cases, you can "pop out" the information so you can see it while you're entering.  In others, you have to scroll back and forth.  At some times, the "popped out" information you can drag and drop to a slightly better location, allowing you to SEE where you're entering answers.  Other times, it's not mobile.  The inconsistency of the interface adds to my frustration with it.  Sadly, the teacher is kind of the same.  Sometimes she's really  helpful, but when we students were reporting problems with this interface (ex. a question repeated 2-3 times in an exercise), she merely offered to remove the exercise.  I think she was offended.  Also, her communication methods are about as inconsistent as our homework interface is.  Don't get me wrong, she's probably a great accountant, but I've been less than satisfied with my experience with her as a teacher.

One of my gal friends at work asked me to take a picture of these pretty little flowers growing in a bed outside our building.  Last night I got the chance.  I know the yellow one is a pansy (or at least I think it is), but I don't know what the purple ones are called.  They smell good.  And I meant to get some for My Amazing Boyfriend for Valentines day, but I couldn't find any of the bulbs.  He ended up with what will hopefully be cala lilies.  While I was shooting these pictures, I got caught.  Another lady from upstairs suddenly calls out, "What are you doing?"   Because I was sitting on the ground with my bright pink Pentax camera pointing a giant lens at the flower bed.  (I thought it was kind of obvious.)  So we had a brief discussion about getting into photography.  She liked Pinky.  And here's one of the results from last night's little shoot!

Some observations about what might make this a better photo:  light for one thing.  There just wasn't much available at the time as the sun was going down and it was a bit overcast.  I had the aperture ALL the way open so I could get more light in there, which affected my depth of field significantly.  Two technical aspects would have helped this "session".  A tripod (even a monopod would have made some difference), and/or a speedlight with a diffuser.  I don't like to use the incamera flash as it is harsh and glaring.  Some times that's appropriate, but I didn't think this was one of them.  Yes, I have speedlight and diffuser on my wish list.  Maybe I should do something about that wish list!  I did just get my tax return and a portion of that money is supposed to go towards the wish list.  Amazon, here I come!!

Busy Day

I don't know if I'll really have time to write today, so I stopped in to say simply this:  Today's wind is typical of Oklahoma.

That is all.

(and if I can get back I'll say more stuff)

Sgt. Pepper and Snow Leopard

Our zoo is a great place for photo opportunities.  On a brief Saturday visit to the Oklahoma City Zoo, we were able to go behind the scenes in the hooved mammal area to visit my oldest daughter, Radley.  She volunteers her Saturdays to help take care of her passion:  giraffes.  My Amazing Boyfriend and I were allowed to come into the giraffe barn to hand feed Bogey, daddy to one of the zoo's newest additions, Sgt. Pepper.  Following are some pics from our visit.

Sgt. Pepper with his momma, Ellie.  She kept a close eye on the curious little fellow.

Bogey, aka Daddy

You really don't get how BIG these graceful guys are until you are up close and personal with them.  Bogey's head is probably a good three feet in length from lips to those nobby things up top.  Enormous jaws, useful for ripping small branches off of trees, I guess.  It was a real treat for us.

This is a snow leopard who was practically posing for us, and while I could have gotten a little closer in hopes of more effectively blurring out  the fence wires, I generally like this photo best of those I took in this visit.

Snow Leopard

But then again... on a second third look, I really like this one too, even though he blends in with his background, and everything's a little overexposed.  Again, there are fence wires intefering somewhat, but this one just strikes me better somehow.

Bright and dirty

I was leaving the office yesterday evening and as I often do, I admired the bright clusters of berries on a tree I pass.  And then I stopped.  Literally, just stopped there on the sidewalk.  For about a half a minute.  Thankfully, I was leaving later than most folks and I wasn't holding up traffic.  Some of the ladies in the building will trample anyone standing still between 4:58 and 5:02.  I thought to myself, why don't you take a picture?  So I did.  And the berries are very much dirtier than I'd have expected!

For now, I'm really enjoying photographing the flowers and berries... things that stand still.  I have some soccer pictures I took the other night, but it was my PnS camera (that's point and shoot) instead of Pinky (the digital SLR--with the pink body--why are you laughing?), and it was dark outside and I was at the top of the bleachers and the girls were always moving and they were fairly terrible pictures.  Next time, I'll try to take Pinky and see if I can do better.

But this, these moments where I stop and ask myself why I'm not taking a picture... this is one of the reasons for taking on this discipline for Lent.  One habit I need to break is not taking that moment to at least TRY to capture some of the things I enjoy seeing.

Summer Recap

We're a full week into Lent as of yesterday.  I've taken some photos, and I've done some writing.  I've been relatively consistent about this, but I've also missed a couple days.  I won't make excuses or apologize because this is more for me than anyone else, and I'm okay with it.  I have a lot of other disciplines going on in my life, and missing a couple spots here and there is acceptable.

What other things are going on?  Work and school are probably the biggest deals.  40-some hours geared towards making a livable income certainly takes a chunk out of anyone's week.  Thankfully, I like my job, my employer (most days), my boss and the folks I work with.  School is a mixed bag time-wise.  I have one class on campus, and it's easy-peasy!  If I really want to solidify what we've discussed in class, I retype the lecture notes, but as I currently have 130% in this class, I'm not feeling highly motivated to push very hard.  The other class is an online class, and while I feel like the time/work ratio is pretty generous, I still find myself occasionally scrambling for time.

Add in family time, social time, household maintenance (that catbox doesn't clean itself!)--oh yes, and we can't forget personal time--I sometimes feel like I run out of time.  So we must accept that dropping a ball now and then is going to happen, and it's just not stress-worthy.  I don't have time for stress!

Speaking of stress, I had so much this last summer--and lived to tell about it--that it's almost worth a post by itself.  But I'll tell it now anyway. 

1. It was my first time to take an online class, and it was a math class to boot.  I've had "issues" with math since about the first grade.  Condense sixteen weeks of math class into eight weeks and remove the instructor from the picture for a sufferer of math anxiety.  Yeah, it wasn't the best choice and it wasn't very fun, but I passed the class and took home some valuable experience. 
2. My Amazing Boyfriend and I took our first ever vacation together right after class started, so I spent a lot of our vacation time at the computer trying not to pull my hair out.  We survived the vacation and learned a few things about each other.  (A subsequent vacation went MUCH more smoothly!)
3. I took on a new position at work.  Unfortunately, we didn't have a replacement for my old position for a few months, and while most days were fairly manageable, two or three really big projects thrown in the mix didn't help.  Once we found a replacement, there was lots of training to do along with my new job.
4. My youngest daughter, Miss Boo, was out of the country for five weeks, dealt with a bout of homesickness, and then nearly got stuck in Argentina due to volcanic ash grounding flights in Buenos Aires at the time she was supposed to leave.
5. A beloved uncle passed away while Miss Boo was still in South America.  I was sad she was unable to see him a final time or attend the funeral service.  Fortunately, a memorial service was held after she returned, so she (and I) were able to connect with lots of extended family.  His passing was very peaceful, and we (as a family) did a good job of support and closure for each other.  While it was a sad thing and I still miss him very much, it was also a really beautiful time.
6. I had to move from my home of two years.  This was another blessing/curse situation.  My landlady's daughter wanted to move back home, and as we had no contract in place, I was asked to resituate myself.  Househunting and moving really sucked, but I'm so glad Anj was able to come back home, and it's been a joy to see her.  I ended up moving in with my Amazing Boyfriend, and that has had it's own slightly stressful adjustment period, but overall it's been a Good Thing.

That was my summer.  Good things came out of every stress there was, and as I mentioned, I survived.  But a lot of it was gross and yucky at the time, and I'm glad summers like that don't come along very often.

Now that summer is over and Christmas is wrapped up, we're through Epiphany and got our ashes.  How are you doing so far with your chosen Lenten disclipline(s)?