October 28
[Taken 16 April 2005 | Gravestone in a Country Cemetary | Ceaser Creek State Park, OH]
[Taken 27 October 2005 | Happy Pumpkin Lights | Fairborn, OH]
Just some stuff to help set the mood for Halloween...
When John and I were biking in Ceaser Creek State Park back in early spring, we went by an old cenetary that was by the side of a birt and gravel road on the outskirts of the park. Of course we had to go in, and look around, and find the stone with the oldest dates. This wasn't it by the way... the oldest was barely legible.
The happy pumpkin lights were in downtown Fairborn, just two doors down from Fairborn Camera and Video, where I went to get a replacement (and a spare) lens cap for my camera.
I love Halloween. I love dressing up in a costume and I love going to parties and above all I love the candy. Have a good holiday weekend.
October 26
[Taken 15 October 2005 | Yellow Hobnail | Cleveland, OH]
Last night was an informal Halloween tournament at fencing practice. Great fun. John and I won a couple of little prizes. He got a black candle that, according to the label, is supposed to smell like "bat's breath", but actually smells more like pumpkin. Which is a good thing, since the only distinctive smell that I can come up with in association with bats is guano... and no one wants a candle that smells like guano. We also both got an oversized garbage bag that looks like a jack-o-lantern, we may or may not actually use it for its intended purpose of lawn decorating... depending on a combination of how much we care about decorating for the holiday and how much time we have left over after getting ready for the camping trip. Though it would be some place to put all of those leaves on our front lawn, should we acquire a rack and clean them up.
I also brought home some impressive bruises, and the one right above and on my right knee makes it a bit painful to bend the joint and is the reason I skipped dance class tonight.
Oh, and a word about decorating for Halloween... the people in this neighborhood take their decorating very seriously. Very. I am talking halloween shaped strings of lights, and fake cobwebs, and huge blowup monsters, and wood cutout monsters, and scarecorws, and tombstones, and white ghosts hanging out of the trees, and giant spiders..... sometimes all of the above on a single lawn. If they are going to these sorts of lengths for Halloween, it will be interesting to see how far over-the-top they go for Christmas.
October 24
[Taken 22 October 2005 | Yellow Leaves | Yellow Springs, OH]
I think that this may be my favorite of all of the pictures that I took in Clifton Gorge on Saturday. I think, but am not at all sure, this this is an tree is an Osage Orange, and that is what the weird knobby fruit is - an osage orange. Any botanists out there want to corrent me if I am wrong?
The weather here has taken a turn for the late fall... I have been almost constantly stuffed up for the past couple of days and have been popping advil like candy for my headaches. I blame the low-pressure front that is currently moving through the area. Fortunately, it should be gone in another day or so.
October 23
[Taken 22 October 2005 | Scenes from Clifton Gorge | Yellow Springs, OH]
Yesterday since the weather was nice, John and I went out to Yellow Springs to tramp around Clifton Gorge for a while. It is a beautiful place, but I wish that it was a little more... natural. There were just too many fences and "keep out" and "stay on the path" and "don't climb on the rocks" signs. Took a bit of the fun out of it. Plus, I wanted to try to get a bit closer to the river, and was unable to because of the aforementioned fences and signs.
Also, I lost my lens cap. It figures, the one time I balance it on my knee when I crouch to get a shot rather then sliding it in my back pocket... I forgot where it was, stood up, and it was gone. Lost in the leaves or fallen down the ridge and into the water. At least it is something easy and cheap to replace. And I will get a lanyard along with the replacement cap, so that hopefully I won't have to replace it again.
The weather today wasn't quite so nice... a day for staying inside and doing chores rather then going for a walk.
Something I learned today: the YMCA does not open on Sundays until 1:00pm. Before that, it is apparently some kind of church... or at least church services are held there.
October 20
[Taken 4 September 2005 | The Martini | Ann Arbor, MI]
I am savoring one right now, as a matter of fact.
I am sure that there is a special place in purgatory saved just for people like me. There is a little coffee and bagel cafe on the first floor of my building at work. I like to stop in there when I come in, on my up the four flights of stairs to my cube, and buy my morning coffee. Since I do this frequently, I know exactly how much that cup of coffee costs. ($0.89, if you are curious.) Because I tend to be rather detail oriented, I like to have the exact change ready. However, there are days when the proportion of pennies in the handful of exact change that I give the nice lady at the counter is, shall we say, rather high. Yes, a penny is legal tender. But it is annoying legal tender. No one really wants a change jar that is mostly pennies... they are a pain in the neck to get rid of and no one really wants to sit there and stuff them into paper rolls. Personally, I think I would be perfectly happy if the penny was outlawed and all transactions were simply rounded to the nearest nickle. However, this has not happened yet, and I happen to have a change jar that has a lot of pennies in it. And I feel compelled to use those pennies.
I will say in my own defense that I try to never give the nice coffee lady a handful of exact change that contains more then 15 pennies.
October 19
[Taken 15 October 2005 | Depression glass | Cleveland, OH]
I wish that I could remember what this particular pattern/style of glass is called...
This is one of those days when all I want to do after getting home from work and dance class is sit on the couch and read... and you know, I think that I am going to go and do just that.
After I putter around and take care of some chores first, of course.
October 18
[Taken 15 October 2005 | St. Martinsburg Festival cake stand | Cleveland, OH]
This pattern is called St. Martinsburg Festival. Why? Well, presumably the pattern originated in a town called St. Martinsburg. And was debuted during some sort of town festival. Maybe... maybe not. I doubt that anyone knows for sure, and my explaination is as good as any.
October 17
[Taken 15 October 2005 | Etched glass | Cleveland, OH]
This weekend was the bi-annual Depression Glass show in Cleveland, so I drove up so that I could go to it with my Mom and Grandma. I enjoy going up to visit, and occasionally wish that I had more time... this business of driving up Friday night right after work, spedning Saturday there, and then driving back after brunch on Sunday doesn't leave very much time for just hanging around and relaxing. Since Saturday is the only day to really do stuff, it always ends up packed full of... stuff. Like this time. I like to go to the West Side Market because Ohio City Pasta (which does not, unfortunately, sell online) makes all of these different kinds of stuffed ravioli that I am addicted to. But the West Side Market is not open Sundays, otherwise I would stop by on my way out of town. So Mom and I went there before the glass show. From there to the glass show, where we met my Grandma, walked around looking at stuff, and had lunch. Then to visit Granny and Gramps. After dinner, Mom, Dad and I went out to see a play. Don't get me wrong, it was a great day and I had a great time. But everything felt a little... rushed. Ah well. It was still good.
Sunday after I got home, I went to Barnes and Noble to pick up a copy of Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife by Mary Roach. I hadn't even known that she had a new book out until Mom mentioned it to me. And then, of course, I had to go out to get a copy, especially since I really loved her previous book, Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers. So far I don't like Spook quite as much. Frankly, I find dead bodies a lot more interesting then scientific pokings at trying to determine the existance or non-existance of something that no one can see, smell, or touch anyway... namely, the soul. It is still a good book and an entertaining read. I just think that I would have liked it more if I had read it first, and it didn't have to stand up to the extremely high bar that Stiff set.
October 14
[Taken 26 February 2005 | A river runs through it... | Hueston Woods, OH]
I took occupation of my new cube at work Wednesday morning. As of the end of the day today, people from facilities have yet to show up and do little things like, say, set up a security cable for my laptop. (My entire group is in this same situation.) I emailed the person who was (supposedly) coordinating the move to express my concerns, and the only reply I ever got was along the lines of "they will get there when they get there" and "they are pretty busy". Given the problems that work has apparently been having with laptop thefts lately, and given the fact that my (prior) laptop was one of the ones stolen, I am pretty surprised and pissed off at the cavalier attitude toward security.
Argh.
Anyway, as I am going to be hitting the road in mere minutes so that I can see my folks in Cleveland for the weekend, I would like to take this opportunity to give a shout out to Jeff Huo, who successfully defended his PhD thesis this week, and whose congratulatory party in Ann Arbor I will unfortunately be missing. (Congratulations, Dr. Jeff!)
All right. I'm off.
October 13
[Taken 15 November 2004 | Petals | Dayton, OH]
Just because I love macro shots and black and white shots...
Been one of those days... I gotta say though, walking up and down the four flights of stairs to my new cube several times a day has gotta be good for me in the long run. I didn't get to go to the gym after work liked I had planned to, because I forgot my d*&^ tennis shoes at home, and by the time I got home to get the shoes, I didn't feel like turning around and driving all of the way back to the gym. Turned out for the best, I suppose, since I had a ton of stuff I needed to get done at home this evening.
October 12
[Taken 15 November 2004 | Weeds and plank fence | Dayton, OH]
Today was moving day. My group at work all moved from our cubes in one building to cubes in another building. This was accompanied by the usual sharp drop in productivity as we pack all of our stuff in boxes and slap moving labels on it, wait for the facilities people to get around to physically moving the boxes, and then unpack and dispose of the boxes. Eh. Bleh. This marks the third time that I mave moved to a new cube in just over a year. Eh. Going by that, whether or not the new cubes are in a more "desirable location" then our previous cubes, we will probably be moved again in six months. Just sayin'. Eh. Heh.
Unusual event of the day:
Right before dance class was supposed to start, a big, rainbow striped, hot-air
balloon swept over the building and landed in the parking lot of the building
right behind the studio. I really wished that I had my camera... Now added
to my list of goals is to have a ride in a hot-air balloon. Those things just
look so cool.
October 11
[Taken 25 September 2005 | Spiderweb | Dayton, OH]
It never fails... every time I wear a white shirt to work, I manage to spill coffee or tea on myself. Or maybe...maybe I only ever notice that I spill coffee on myself when I wear white? Hmmm...
I just realized that I have almost 50G of photographs stored on my computer... and of all of those hundreds of photos that I have taken, there very few that have actually been printed out, framed, and hung on the walls of my house. Despite the fact that the house has many walls which are thus far relatively bare of art. (While I may have had sufficient art to cover the walls of a two bedroom apartment, this falls a little bit short when it comes to decorating an entire house.) This must be rectified.
The weather here has been getting nice and crisp, but I do wish that we could still have some blue skies and sun with the crisp fall days. This unrelenting grey is starting to get me down.
Your little piece of random for the day:
Do you like bacon? I like bacon. John thinks that this
is frightening. I think that it is wonderful. Mmmmm.... bacon.....
October 10
[Taken 9 May 2005 | White Iris | Dayton, OH]
October 9
[Taken 17 April 2005 | Japanese Maple | Dayton, OH]
It is heavily misting outside, which makes me very glad that I am inside. John is making chili and I have a mug of hot cocoa.
Apparently, the "purple puffball plant" that I posted on October 7 is from the genus allium, which includes onions and garlic. (Thanks for the info, Parsla!) Had I known, I would have saved it for yesterday when I went to the Garlic Festival. Heh. Guess I really should start to pay more attention to those handy little signs that the arboretum has posted near all of their plants.
October 8
[Taken 28 May 2005 | Close up | Dayton, OH]
The Dayton Garlic Festival is going on at the Cox Arboretum this weekend. John and I wandered over around lunchtime to check it out. There wasn't really too much to see... it was a typical Dayton "festival" in that aspect... and we were mainly there for the food. I love garlic. One of my favorite kitchen-smells is garlic being sauteed in butter. Garlic ice cream is always good, and I had a roasted garlic soup that was pretty tasty. If the weather had been better, we might have stayed at the arboretum a little longer to wander around, but it was (and still is) pretty gloomy and chilly out.
I think that it is time to retire to the living room couch with a book and a mug of tea...
October 7
[Taken 28 May 2005 | Some kind of purple puffball plant | Dayton, OH]
Burn, baby, burn.
Signs that you may be a geek - you spend Friday evening at the computer organizing your files and carefully creating backups of everything. I just burned backup DVDs of all of my photos. I also burned a DVD of all of the files I wanted to archive from college and grad school. All of that came to 12 DVDs, at 4.7G per DVD. Damn. That's a whole lotta data.
I sure do live the wild life.
October 5
[Taken 6 May 2005 | Not such a common weed | Dayton, OH]
Today is the 100th anniversary of the Wright Brothers' flight at Kittyhawk. Hooray airplanes! Apparently someone here in Dayton built a replica of the Wright Brothers' plane (according to what I heard on NPR) and then flew it several times in a field somewhere around here in celebration.
I locked myself in the bathroom this afternoon when I went home for lunch. Apparently the doorknob on the downstairs bath was in backwards so that the little button you push in to lock and ensure that you will have some privacy was on the outside of the door rather then on the inside, as is customary. I never noticed this before today. Neither had John, his parents, my parents, our friends, the realtor, or the home inspector. None of us had noticed this little defect. Indeed, it wasn't even an issue until this afternoon when I must have bumped the little button on my way into the bathroom and inadvertently locked myself in. I spent several fruitless minutes banging on the door to try to jar it open and trying to force the knob to twist before I popped the screen out of the window, climbed out that way, and walked back in through the garage. Kinda funny. Kinda embarrassing. I warned John about the treacherous door, and he had the doorknob fixed (he pulled it out and then put it back in the correct way) by the time I got home from dance class.
Right now I am watching a show on TLC called "Miami Ink", which is about tattooing, and a tattoo parlor in Miami, Fl. On this episode, there is a guy who is getting a picture of himself in drag tattooed on his arm. How narcissistic is that?!
Other then the whole getting locked in the bathroom episode, this was a good day.
October 4
[Taken 6 May 2005 | Canadian Goose | Minneapolis, MN]
It is October? It is a hot and humid 88 degrees right now... sure doesn't feel like October.
October 3
[Taken 7 April 2005 | Waiting for the bus | Minneapolis, MN]
All day today I felt like I was waiting for something to happen so I guess
that this is an appropriate photo.
In other words... it was a typical Monday.
My folks were up to visit yesterday, and we all went to the Oktoberfest at the Dayton Art Institute. I try not to always compare the festivals that happen around Dayton to similar festivals in Ann Arbor. I really try. But I just cannot help that instant where I think, "It is nice... but not quite as good as..." And the Oktober fest was nice. Good brats, good (imported German) beer, some decent craft/art stuff, some bands... but it still wasn't entertaining for more then a couple of hours.
October 1
[Taken 14 April 2005 | Windchime | Centerville, OH]
First a recap of last night. Serenity = wow.
I love the smell of latex paint in the morning. It smells like... home improvement. The first floor half-bath is now painted a nice, warm shade of blue that goes very well with the white cabinets and white curtain.
On a completely unrelated note, when John and I went to the market to pick up a few essentials on the way home from the gym, we got to gawk at the Oscar Meyer Wienermobile, which had taken up temporary residance in the parking lot and was hosting a small hot dog roast. John had a hot dog. I had a bite of his hot dog. I have never seen the Oscar Meyer Wienermobile before, so this was like a mini celebrity sighting.