March 31
[Taken 05.03.2005 | Yellow Crocus | Cox Arboretum, Centerville, OH]
It is a lovely warm and sunny day today... and I am going to be spending it in airports and on planes, as I am about to leave for Boston, where I have a full day of user testing lined up tomorow. I change planes at the Detroit Metro Airport. This will be the closest I have been to Ann Arbor since last October. Damn.
And I won't even be in Boston long enough to go out into the city and enjoy any of its fine restaurants. So I will be traveling without (a rarity!) my camera. Why haul it along if I won't have a chance to use it? Well, hopefully the weekend will be as nice as it has been all week, and I will have a chance to go out on my bike with the camera.
March 29
[Taken 29.03.05 | Memento Mori (again) | the woods behind the apartment, Centerville, OH]
The spooky skull returns! Look out, it's coming right for you!
Actually, this is a pretty good aproximation of how I feel right now, considering the amount of work/coding/prototyping that I need to do before oh, say... next Wednesday. I leave next Thursday for the event that said work/coding/prototyping needs to be completed and operational for. And between now and then I have another (albiet short) business trip. It is in times like these that I say that martinis are my friend. Drinking and coding being such natural companions.
At least the weather is getting nice. (in the 60s today... supposed to be in the 70s tomorrow) Not that I will have much time to enjoy it, mind you.
March 28
[Taken 29.03.05 | Memento Mori | the woods behind the apartment, Centerville, OH]
While John and I were tramping around in the wooded area behind our apartment over the weekend, I found this skull. No skeleton or any other bones - just the skull. We think that it may be a cat skull (or maybe a raccoon?) but there is no way either of us can tell for sure. It was pretty neat - the find of the day - and, of course, I could not resist taking several pictures of it. (Aren't I morbid?) John is displaying it here in a very Shakespearean manner. Alas, poor Yorick!
John has gone to St. Loius for the week. I will miss him, but considering that I am caught in the undertow of a project, that also means that I can bring work home in the evenings and not feel overly guilty about it.
I hit the evil stepmother of all potholes when I was taking him to the airport this morning, and knocked something out of alignment. Now my car has a very annoying little shimmy in the front end. Unfortunatly, I won't have a chance to take it in to get looked at until this weekend. Here's hoping that it won't fall to bits between now and then.
March 27
[Taken 18.03.05 | Flowers for Easter | my parents' house, Cleveland, OH]
Happy Easter to everyone who celebrates it.
If you live in southwest Ohio, and your plans for a Friday night are to make some martinis and watch a kung fu movie, then you shouldn’t wait until after 9pm to go to the liquor store to replenish your martini-mixing supplies. Because if you do, then you will find out that the good liquor store closes at 9pm ON A FRIDAY NIGHT! (Which is just ridiculous. Where do they think they are? The northern border of the Bible belt?) And then you will find yourself needing to go to Kroger to get your supplies, since that is the only store that you can think of that is both close by and likely to still be open.
You will feel a subtle sense of shame at having to stoop to replenishing your liquor stock from the shelves of Kroger. You will also find that the highest quality vodka at the Kroger’s you go to (if you try to equate cost with quality) is a no-name brand will set you back a mere $7 (rounding up) and is only a step or so up in both smell and taste from a cleaning solvent. They didn’t even have Absolute… quite a shock to those of us who have become accustomed to Grey Goose, Vox, and Skyy vodka in our mixers. $7 no-name vodkas do not make quality martinis. However, the pina colada mix we got was palatable. As were the
I’m just saying. Word of advice.
Anyway, John decided to run the $7 no-name vodka through activated charcoal several times to try to “improve” it. The jerry-rigged motor (cannibalized from a fish tank filter) burned out, and the vodka was left was grey with charcoal dust and almost completely unpotable. We tried unsuccessfully to set a cotton ball that had been soaked in the stuff on fire… it wasn’t even flammable enough for that.
Saturday night we finally got to go and try out the Therapy Café, which is a nifty little upscale martini/wine bar and eatery in a part of downtown Dayton that is being revitalized. It was a lot nicer then we expected from someplace in Dayton, frankly, though it was certainly no Café Felix. *sigh* I do miss the Ann Arbor scene… Therapy Café was pretty empty when we were there, which we attributed to a combination of it being both the night before Easter and the middle of spring break for both UD and Wright State.
This afternoon John and I spent some time mucking around in the little wooded area behind our apartment complex. We had both wanted to do a little exploring for a while, and decided that today was the perfect time.
Right now, there is a stuffed chicken in the oven (with potatoes, carrots, and parsnips to be added soon) that is making the apartment smell wonderful.
Our after dinner entertainment? The plans call for peep jousting.
All in all, a good way to spend Easter weekend? Oh yeah…I think so.
March 25
[Taken 13.02.05 | Merlin | at home, Centerville, OH]
This is Merlin, my loveable (sometimes, when she is not indulging in one of her little biting fits) and long suffering cat.
If she wants to you to pet her or to sit on your lap, she does so on her terms… and as soon as she has had enough affection, she will let you know. She can go from purring to biting in 3 seconds flat. (Just ask John.)
If she could talk, she would be saying “Get that damn camera out of my face already”.
She hates being photographed. She hates holding still. It has gotten to the point where she will run and hide if she sees me holding a camera. (Not that that has stopped me or anything. Far from it.) She has developed a sort of sixth sense for when I get out the camera - she can jump up from what seems to be a peaceful doze in the sunshine and run under the couch or off into a different room. You have no idea how much catnip I had to bribe her with to persuade her to hold still for this shot, and the only reason she is holding still at all is because she is so stoned out of her mind on the ‘nip that she can't move.
She may be a psycho little bitch, but I love my cat.
March 24
[Taken 19.03.05 | Fenton Bowl | Depression Glass show, Parma, OH]
Sarah cut her hair... Yesterday when we were talking at lunch, she mentioned that she was thinking of getting it cut shorter, thinking of trying something new, but as she had said similar things before and then never really done anything to follow up, I wasn't expecting any changes. I certainly wasn't expecting her to come by my cube this morning to grab me for a coffee run and show off her very short, very spiky, new haircut. It is cute. It is VERY different. It makes me think about my own hair, and how I have never done anything really wild and crazy with it. Well, okay, sure... I like to dye it occasionally. And there was that time I bleached it and dyed it in fuschia stripes the night before a job interview, but I have never really gotten it cut and styled. Mostly this is out of lazyness... I simply have no interest in putting out the effort it takes to maintain a style.
March 23
[Taken 19.03.05 | Twilight Glass | Depression Glass show, Parma, OH]
In Depression glass, this clear purple color (which can range from a very striking, light lavender to a rich violet) is called “twilight”, and is comparatively hard to find. This tends to translate as expensive. (We are talking stuff like a set of six wineglasses that are priced at $75 each.) Unfortunately, this is also one of my favorite colors of the glass – not that I actually own any twilight pieces. I have yet to see any pieces in this color that I both like and can afford.
March 22
[Taken 19.03.05 | Depression Glass - a selection of Opalescent Fentonware | Depression Glass show, Parma, OH]
Yesterday and today at work were taken up by a seminar on ASP that one of my group members was kind (and expert) enough to conduct. Since I had never really had a chance to actually learn ASP prior to applying it when I started work at my current locale, I was extremely pleased. Though it did suffer the propblem that seemed to plague every class on programming that I ever took - that problem being the huge and cavernous gulf between the example that the teacher shows you (look! We can loop the statement and make it count to ten!) and the exercises that the teacher gives the you to do (Now build a dynamic navigation system!). Ahh... I complain too much. It really built on the smatterings of ASP I had taught myself, and since I already know mysql, ColdFusion, and php, it was more of a refresher course then anything else. The best stuff was the dynamic stuff, the database stuff... querying and writing to the database... damn useful! Now I feel a desire to go out and prototype something before I forget everything that I learned over the past two days.
After class Monday we all (since UCD members had gathered from all three US locations - local, Philiadelphia, and St. Louis - for this class) went out to Dave & Busters for dinner and arcade games. Nothing builds a sense of team spririt like playing BattleMech and blowing each other up!
March 20
[Taken 19.03.05 | Depression Glass - Moonstone Pitcher | Depression Glass show, Parma, OH]
As this weekend was the bi-annual Depression Glass show that I like to go to with my Mom and Grandma, I was in Cleveland this weekend. John came along as well. My big fear was that he would look at the room full of glass, glass dealers, and glass aficionados, and be bored out of his mind. Which fear proved unfounded, fortunately. We ended up buying a large Rosepoint dish/platter because we needed a nice large serving tray.
After a while, when we had wandered by every booth at least twice, and were getting ready to go, one of the dealers stopped me and wanted to know why I was taking pictures of the glass. Well, some of the pieces I shot because I thought that they were very pretty and wanted to remember them for later, but most of it was because I just plain like photographing stuff. (On the lines of how are you going to improve on something if you don't work on it a lot?)Well, the dealer said, SHE didn't mind (no, not at all) if I took pictures of her stuff, but SOME people might not like it. Um, okay. I responded that no one had said anything to me, and no one really seemed to mind my photographing their stuff, but if someone had minded and asked me to stop, then I would have. She went on a few more minutes about how she didn't mind before John and I wandered off again. Does anyone think the lady doth protest too much? Maybe she did mind, but didn't want to come right out and say so. This is probably more likely then a coalition of dealers getting together and electing one of their number to tell me off.
Truth is, only about half of the pictures I took in the exhibition hall
came out. The lighting was very spotty and uneven, and I did not want to
use my flash. Two reasons behind the anti-flash stance: first, a flash (even
one bounced off of the ceiling) would have blown out all of the etching
and other details in the glass, and, second, nothing says "look at
the person taking pictures!" quite like a flash, and I wanted to try
and be as unobtrusive as possible. So I just opened up my aperture as wide
as it would go and crossed my fingers. Looking back, I probably should have
dialed up my ISO as well, but it didn't occur to me to do so at the time.
March 18
[Taken 06.03.05 | Last fall's weeds | Centerville, OH]
As good an example as any of why I need a macro lens (or at least a good telephoto/zoom lens). These little dried out flowers were about the size of the tip of my little finger, and this was as close as I could get to them and still be in some sort of focus.
Sometimes when I am editing in Photoshop, I will get very lazy, especially when I have an image that I think will not need a lot of tweaks when it comes to color and level correction, and I will just hit "Auto Levels" (or "Auto Color") and see what comes out. In this case the hazy greyish/blueish/tanish background turned bright blue, and the flower itself really started to glow. Not quite what I actually saw... but a very stunning effect.
And an appropriate image when you consider that this Sunday is the official first day of spring.
March 17
[Taken 06.03.05 | Fence in a weedy field | Centerville, OH]
Happy Saint Paddy's Day.
Of all of the color-coded holidays, I think that St. Patrick's Day trumps even Valentine's Day (red, pink, and white) when it comes to fashion compliance. When I went down to the cafeteria at work this morning for my coffee, it was green shirts (and ties, and shamrock buttons, and various and sundry accessories) as far as the eye could see. Heck, even I wore a green shirt.
I may not be planning on bar-hopping for mugs of green beer tonight, but I am looking foward to a nice feast of corned beef, potatoes and vegetables, and soda bread when I get home.
Éire go brách!
March 16
[Taken 06.03.05 | Tree with rough bark | Centerville, OH]
I have been swamped with work at work, and most of my "free" time in the evenings has been pretty activity-filled as well... Right now I am recovering from the amazing abdominal workout that was my bellydance class. I am also eating a late dinner of quiche. When I am done eating will I do something useful and productive, or will I flop down on the couch with a book? Personally, I am leaning toward the latter option.
March 13
[Taken 05.03.05 | Shots with the Brownie Six-20 at Cox Arboretum | Centerville, OH]
Two photos today.
The Brownie six-20 works just fine. I picked up the developed film this afternoon, and shown here are my two favorite shots from the test roll. Not bad for a camera that is probably as old as my Grandfather. I know that I have a film negative holder for my snanner somewhere, but I seem to have mislaid it, so these are scans of the enlarged prints. I am already looking forward to taking the Brownie out again. Maybe next time I will try a color roll...
March 11
[Taken 26.02.05 | Spillway | Hueston Woods State Park]
One end of the lake at the Hueston Woods State Park had this fabulous, decaying, old concrete spillway for overflow water. It came complete with a rotting old dock and a station with corroded water-level-monitoring equipment that can't have been checked or maintained for decades. Great fun to climb around on.
Anyway. It is Friday (hooray!) and there is a hafla (an open dance/party) at the studio where I have been taking bellydance lessons. I plan on having some fun dancing this evening, and maybe even getting some good shots in when I get tired of dancing.
March 10
[Taken 05.03.05 | Snowfall near the end of winter | Centerville, OH]
March 9
[Taken 26.02.05 | Closeup of a bolt in the old dock | Hueston Woods State Park, College Corner, OH]
I thought that this would be kind of appropriate, since last night I had some problems with the nuts and bolts (ha ha) of the Brownie six-20.
I want to see (obviously) how the first roll of film that I took with the Brownie six-20 came out, so last night I took myself to my darkened bathroom to unload it. And immediately ran into a snag. You need to turn the winder to the position where you can pull it out a bit to unlatch the camera body before you can pull off the back of the camera to get to the film. The winder was stuck. Totally, totally stuck. I could not turn it. So I went to John and had him…um… force it. (Hey, when in doubt, force it, right?) It was so stuck that John had to resort to tools in order to turn it. Eventually it gave, the winder turned freely, and I took the camera back into the bathroom. The rest of the in-total-darkness unloading went smoothly. After I wrapped the used film roll in tinfoil to protect it, I flipped on the light to see what the problem had been. Well, one of the (cheap plastic) film spools had a little crack in it that must have gotten snagged on the (sturdy metal) setting… I could see where the spool had given way when I had John force the winder. So that had to be tossed, but it didn't look like anything else in the camera had been damaged. (Let's hear it for sturdy pre-WWII construction.)
The upshot of all of this is that I need to make sure that whoever I find to develop the roll of film returns the spool, as I cannot load another roll of film into the camera unless I have an empty uptake spool. (Note to self: maybe try to get hold of a couple of spare 620 film spools?)
March 8
[Taken 26.02.05 | Reflection | Hueston Woods State Park, College Corner, OH]
Just a picture today... the sun shining through tree branches reflected in running water.
When I was in junior high and for a while in high school, my Mom took some classes in working with stained glass, and made some really lovely panels that are still hanging in my parents' home. This reminds me of some of the antique glass she would use - very heavy, dark, and rippled. She showed me how to do some simple things with glass... how to cut and grind the pieces of glass to get them ready to be soldered together. It was a lot of fun, and is yet another entry on the long list of things that I would like to pick up again someday.
March 5
[Taken 26.02.05 | Stones in the River | Hueston Woods State Park, College Corner, OH]
This morning when I got up, it was snowing. By the time noon rolled around, the sun had come out, and it warned up to around 40 degrees, melting all of the snow. So I took the Brownie six-20 out for a walk... first to downtown Centerville, and then out to one of the many parks in the area. I managed to get 8 shots out of the roll. (120 film rolls seem to average between 8 and 10 shots per roll.) All that remains now is to find some place that will process 120 film and send it out. Failing that, I can, I suppose do it myself. Black and white 120 film can't be that much different from black and white 35mm film, at least when it comes to developing. I would need bigger film spools and developing canisters, of course. And I would need to restock my chemicals. But it is not out of the question for me to do it myself... Well, I guess in the end it will come down to whatever is easier to find... the equipment to do it myself or a place that will take medium format film.
March 3
[Taken 26.02.05 | Across the River | Hueston Woods State Park, College Corner, OH]
I posted a black and white version of this photo yesterday. I like the muted colors in this one.
In other photographic news... I finally loaded up my Brownie six-20. I think I loaded the film correctly, but since this is my first time using a medium format camera (albiet one from before WWII) and since I had to load the camera in total darkness (which was accomplished by sitting in the bathroom with all of the lights off and towels stuffed under the door) I will have no idea if everything is A-OK until I have turned the roll in for processing and gotten back the results. And for the curious, I had to do the total darkness thing because I needed to load the camera with 120 film unspooled and re-rolled onto a 620 spindle, because 620 film is no longer made, and re-spooled 120 film is as close as you can get. Hm. Note to self: next time you buy a vintage camera, make sure that it doesn't need vintage film, as well. I have asked around, and the recommendations have included the Ansco Shur Shot and the Agfa Ansco B-2 Cadet (both pre-WWII box cameras). I have also been told that I ought to try a Holga.
Hopefully the weather this weekend will be nice, so I can take the Brownie out for a test run.
March 2
[Taken 26.02.05 | Across the River | Hueston Woods State Park, College Corner, OH]
It sold. My photo that was accepted into the Works on Paper show at the Rosewood Gallery... it sold. Someone liked it enough to spend actual money on it. That is unbelievably thrilling. And very tangible incentive to keep on working on the photography. I got the voice mail from the gallery coordinator, and the first thing I did (even before I called her back) was call John and Sarah and my folks to tell them about it.
It feels like being back in school (high school, undergrad, grad... take your pick) and getting unexpected praise from a professor on an assignment that you worked really hard on.
Woo-hoo! I sold my first photo. I mean, WOO-HOO! Can you tell I am happy?
This is me drinking a celebratory cocktail.
March 1
[Taken 26.02.05 | Into the Woods | Hueston Woods State Park, College Corner, OH]
Oh, the weekend was great. I think that getting out of Dayton for a weekend was exactly what I needed to do.
The cabins we stayed in were really only cabins by name. Most "cabins", I am sure, do not come equipped with cable TV, DVD players, comfy beds, and gadget-filled kitchens. And don't even let me get started about the wonders of the gas fireplaces in the living rooms of the cabins - fireplaces that could be turned on and off with the simple flick of a wall switch. Yeah, we were really roughing it, let me tell you...
And the park was just gorgeous. I think my favorite part of the weekend was wandering along the river toward the lake and looking for fossils. John's Mom is quite a rock-hound. Once I started looking, I found a lot of really neat fossils - mostly coral, clams, and some snails. I (and John) stuffed our pockets full. Most of the fossils we found are now decorating the fish tank. It was a great weekend.
I took a whole flash card full of photos, of course, and I anticipate spending a bunch of time this week and weekend editing them. I will also have to burn a CD of photos for John's folks, since I have a lot of good pictures of them.
John and I agree that we need to go there again over some weekend in the
summer. And next time I would also like to take some time to explore Oxford
as well.