Clouds at Night

Clouds at Night

Clouds at Night

Dorothy got home late last night. Well, technically she got home early this morning, at about 1:30 AM. She slept in today and I went to work. Before I left work it rained very hard and my car is having problems when I drive through deep puddles, so I had to be careful getting home. After I did get home, we went out to run some errands and as we left the house, this storm cloud was billowing up above us. The photo, taken at 1/25 second at f/2.8 at an ISO of 6,400, doesn’t really do it justice, but it’s the picture I have for today. You’ll have to trust me when I say it looked really cool in real life. The noise produced by the camera sensor wasn’t something we saw in real time.

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Christmas Lights

Christmas Lights

Christmas Lights

I went out and drove around the neighborhood late this evening to get some pictures. It was raining lightly when I went out but started raining quite hard before I got back. Mostly I took pictures of Christmas lights, sometimes holding the camera steady and other times moving it about a little during a longish exposure. This one was not blurred by movement but is focused on the driver-side window with the lights themselves out of focus, but brought somewhat into focus in the drops of rain on the glass. I also took pictures of the large, old, house in our neighborhood that was built in 1914, predating the major development by more than 50 years. Those look a bit spooky, which I like, although the house isn’t haunted, as far as I know.

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Coral and Shells

Coral and Shells

Coral and Shells

When we are at the beach, Cathy like to look for shells and coral. She is especially fond of coral, and probably collects more of that than all types of shells combined. There is a small bowl in our bathroom with some of her finds, which, as you can see, have included some pretty nice coral samples. I don’t really know a lot about the corals found in the western Atlantic so I’d just be making a totally uninformed guess if I were to venture an opinion on genus or even family. I’d be interested if anyone who knows about these things were to offer more information. I’m more a shell gatherer, partly because I haven’t the patience to look for coral, although I’ve found a piece or two over the years. The two pointy shells here are from snails and the one between them is a bivalve, but that’s as specific as I’m going to get. For anyone interested, this Marine Species Identification Portal looks pretty helpful.

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Marsha and Ivon

Marsha and Ivon

Marsha and Ivon

We had our annual holiday party today. It was a bit different to recent years. When I worked for Mike and his group had diminished in size, we began going to the holiday party with the project group we worked with. That is a bit group and while I know a small fraction of the people in it, many of the people I know and work with here are in that group. I generally sat with the same people each year. This year, the various teams of technical workers who are under her in the corporate organizational structure were asked to come to a holiday party together, instead of either a smaller party of their own or the project area party. I know a reasonable number of folk in that larger group, but it was a change, none the less. Still, we had a good time, eating and bowling. This is Marsha (on the left) and her right hand, Ivonzetta. I can’t say I know either of them very well but Marsha sat at our table during the meal and I spoke with them both more today than I have in total up to this point.

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Theresa, Cathy, and Susan

Theresa, Cathy, and Susan

Theresa, Cathy, and Susan

Many of us are not fond of pictures of ourselves. I know that’s true for me and it’s a bit hypocritical of me to insist that others pose for pictures and allow me to post them while I’m not particularly comfortable posing for pictures myself. Nevertheless, I do it. We had a really nice and long overdue dinner with two friends this evening, Theresa (a.k.a. Reeree) and Susan (a.k.a. Susan). It was really goot to get a bit caught up with them, although it’s been so long and so much has been going on that we didn’t really get completely caught up. But it was a start. We also had a really good Thai meal, which was a bonus. Shortly after this photo was taken, I knocked over my water glass and it shattered. A nice way to end the evening.

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Christmas Tree Lights

Christmas Tree Lights

Christmas Tree Lights

These are either Christmas tree lights or we’re making the jump to hyperspace. I’m not entirely sure which. Well I am, actually. I haven’t knowingly been in hyperspace, in months, at the very least. This is our Christmas tree. Technically it’s my mother-in-law’s tree but it’s up in our house, because she lives here now and we weren’t up to getting a live tree. We made room for it by moving the sofa over and pushing the eagle lectern against the wall. The tree has lights already on it, all white, as you can see. Also, we don’t have to keep it watered and won’t have to sweep up the needles that inevitably fall.

It doesn’t have any other decorations or ornaments on it, and that’s fine by me. I’m really not very big on decorations and the fact that the tree is up and there is a nativity scene set up on the piano is pretty radical for me. I don’t dislike Christmas, in particular. It’s more that I don’t associate the colors and decorations with the actual event being celebrated. That goes double for all the “winter holiday” type items and at least triple for anything Santa (especially red-Santa, who traditionally wears white).

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Roast Pork Shoulder

Roast Pork Shoulder

Roast Pork Shoulder

A while back the local supermarket had pork roasts on sale for $0.98 per pound. That’s about half what they normally run (and even $1.99 is a pretty decent deal). I bought three and froze them. This is one of those, thawed over about four days in the refrigerator, and the roasted. It’s about 12 pounds and so cost about $12 and will feed us for a few days, at least. There are bones, of course, but it’s still a bargain price. After slicing the skin and rubbing in some salt and a fair amount of pepper, I roasted it for about four hours. The first 45 minutes are at 450°F and then I turned it down to 325°F for the rest. That was just about perfect. Of course, the best part are the strips of crispy, salty, peppery skin, but the meat was pretty juicy and tasty, too. A little mustard and some cabbage cooked with apples and mushrooms rounded out the meal (although the cabbage didn’t turn out as well as it sometimes does—I used the wrong apples).

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Peruvian Nativity Scene

Peruvian Nativity Scene

Peruvian Nativity Scene

I posted a picture of this Peruvian nativity scene last year (see: Saturday, December 23, 2017) but that was at my mother-in-law’s house. This year it’s in our living room, on top of the piano. Also, this year I confined myself to just the people and animals that actually go with the set. Last year I included two water buffaloes (one with a boy on its back), three parrots, a llama, a cow-shaped milk-pitcher, three brass monkeys (of the speak, hear, and see no evil variety), as well as various other figures. As you can see, the Pakistani Doll I photographed and posted a few weeks ago (see: Tuesday, November 27, 2018) is still on the piano.

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Sunset

Sunset

Sunset

I went over to my mom’s this evening to see what was wrong with her computer. When I got there, I took a little time before going in to take some sunset pictures. I had a hard time finding a good spot to see the sky, but this spot worked out reasonably well, overlooking a shopping mall. It’s in the foreground, hidden by the dark trees, though, so that doesn’t really matter, so you can’t really tell. The color was mostly along the lower part of the sky and I took some pictures with the short telephoto lens and others with the 24mm, which on my camera is equivalent to a 35mm, more or less. This is one from the wide angle.

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Safety Pins

Safety Pins

Safety Pins

This is a small box of sefety pins in our bedroom. I really like the stark, hard lines and the different colored pins, as well as the slight variations of color in the metal within each one. It’s also nice that the pins vary in size. I am thinking about making this into a jigsaw puzzle. Or maybe I’ll take another photo with more pins covering more area. I think it would be a pretty challenging puzzle, especially with our tradition of not looking at the box top once you have started the puzzle. Do you do that? We consider it cheating, but apparently a lot of folk look at the photo on the box as a matter of course. To each his own, I suppose. But in our house we follow the rules.

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Frost

Frost

Frost

It was chilly out this morning and everything was covered with frost. I started my car and while it was warming up a little, I took some photos of frost on the leaves in the yard. Once the sun began to hit them, the frost started to melt but I wanted to get them with the sun shining on them, so I moved around the yard as the sun moved to new leaves. I really like looking at frost and don’t mind the cold too much. It wasn’t all that cold, in any case, only for or five degrees below freezing. Colder days are almost certainly ahead for us, as winter is only just starting and doesn’t get into full swing until next month.

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Meat and Potatoes

Meat and Potatoes

Meat and Potatoes

I confess to being a meat and potatoes sort of man. I like to cook meat, as well, but of course I’m not cooking for myself only, so I cook try to prepare a balanced meal with vegetables and some sort of starch, at last most of the time. I’m trying to eat fewer carbs myself and have lost 20 pounds or so since late spring, which is a good start, anyway. Cathy and her mom took me out for dinner this evening, though, and wanted to treat me. We went to Outback and I ordered a rib-eye steak and baked potato with a bloomin’ onion on the side. As you can see, we’ve already made a pretty good dent in the onion. It’s good but since it’s mostly batter, not really all that healthy. But, you have to live once in a while and I really enjoyed this meal.

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Cookbooks

Cookbooks

Cookbooks

I know these “shelfies” aren’t really all that interesting but it’s an easy out when I haven’t taken a picture. Work continues to e quite busy and I’m finding it hard to get out during the day. That means I have to take a picture somewhere around the house in the evening, unless I happen to get a nice sunrise or sunset. This is (almost) one third of a large bookcase that I built when Cathy and I were first married and we had it in our apartment in Bethesda. Ralph had it in his basement while we lived in Alaska and while we were traveling. After we got back, I had it in our apartment and then in our two houses. It’s very sturdy, with 2×4 supports sandwiched between heavy plywood for the uprights. The shelves are fixed in terms of their location, although the whole thing comes apart for transporting. There is one more tall shelf space below the five shown here and the other two sections are basically the same as this one.

The books on all but the bottom shelf in this photo are cookery books of one sort or another. Some I use a lot, others almost never. I have pulled out some to give away and will probably get rid of some that are still here. I refer to some of these books quite regularly and others quite infrequently but most of the books have contributed at least something to my cooking know how.

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Kai

Kai

Kai

We had a family dinner night and I took a bunch of pictures of Kai. In some of them he is being held by his great aunt Cathy and in others by his grandma, Tsai-Hong. Those are grandma’s hands in this picture. The wheel in front of Kai is actually spinning but to get that with some blur would have required a tripod and a little more planning, so just imagine it spinning and catching Kai’s attention. He’s a pretty easy going little boy, at least from what I’ve seen of him Maybe his parents would say otherwise, but he doesn’t really fuss much when we’re together or if he does, he’s easily satisfied.

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Watts Branch Tributary

Watts Branch Tributary

Watts Branch Tributary

This is a small tributary of Watts Branch, which comes through a culvert under West Montgomery Avenue (before it becomes Key West Avenue). On the other side of the road is a small drainage pond build for storm water management and in which there were beavers living until a few years ago. It joins a larger creek that flows through another storm water management pond between my cuilding and the rest of our company’s campus. It goes back under West Montgomery Avenue again before draining into Watts Branch near the Interstate 270 interchange.

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Eagle Reflections

Eagle Reflections

Eagle Reflections

It was getting late and I hadn’t taken any pictures today. I was in the living room a looking at the reflections in the corner cupboard. I posted a picture in August (see Sunday, August 26, 2018) but I thought I’d try to get a shot with a reflection of the eagle lectern this time. The lighting was the tricky part, getting enough light on the very dark wood of the eagle without getting too much on the glass itself. This one works pretty well. It doesn’t show as much of the waviness in the glass as I’d have liked, but some, anyway. I also with the wooden door frame had been in better focus. I took some with a smaller aperture but they were not as good for other reasons. It’s hard to judge these things completely on the small display screen on the back of the camera. Still, it’s better than the old days, when we had to wait to get the film back from Kodak before we knew if we had anything useful.

Also, with the cost of film and processing coming to somewhere around 20¢ per shot, we tended to be a little more careful how many photos we took. The nominal cost for a photograph now is pretty small. Od course, there’s the cost of the hard drive divided by how many photos there are but with a six terabyte drive selling for under $200, even when you consider multiple copies of a file (you do back up your files, don’t you?), the cost is less than 1¢ per photo. If you delete your bad photos, the cost goes down, of course, because the won’t have cost you anything.

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Dot’s Plate

Dot's Plate

Dot’s Plate

This is a plate that my mom made in 1955 and I’ve always loved it. She was at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. She insists it wasn’t graduate school because she didn’t get a degree, but I still think of it as grad school. She had finished college and was in art school. Ceramics wasn’t her main thing, but they did a little of everything including painting and sculpture, as well. Her interests were in textiles and she did a lot of silk screening. I still have the curtains that she made and which we now use as drop cloths for painting. But this plate is, I think, really nice. I wish we had some clue about the composition of the glaze, which is lovely. We have her wheel and kiln and would really like to get around to using them again.

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Turkey Soup

Turkey Soup

Turkey Soup

I’m not a huge fan of turkey, as a meat. If cooked right, in can be tender and juicy but the white meat generally has little to no flavor even at it’s best. The dark meat is better but there is relatively little of it. We eat turkey on Thanksgiving, nevertheless, and (I guess because we hosted and I cooked it) we ended up with a significant amount of leftover turkey. I pulled just about every scrap of meat off the bones, from the back, the wings, and the rest of the carcase, and made soup. It turned out well and we had that for three nights. Then I made this batch with the leftovers from what had been carved from the bird, mostly white meat but a little from the legs. Instead of pasta I put barley in this batch, and also mushrooms. It turned out quite well and was a hit with the fam.

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Sunset

Sunset

Sunset

Another sunset photo today. I’ve been leaving work around the sunset hour lately (or later but getting sunset pictures from my office or from a conference room one floor up. There isn’t anything particularly special about this sunset but it’s the best of the few pictures I took today. I’m nearing 2,900 consecutive days (and 8 yeas) taking at least one photograph each day. I think one or possibly two of those days the photo was taken on my phone but the rest were taken on my Canon SLR. In that time I have taken over 160,000 photos, which is starting to get up there. A few of them are, I think, quite good.

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Cathy and Bear

Cathy and Bear

Cathy and Bear

I thought I’d post a second picture from our walk at Lake Needwood this afternoon. In the woods, behind the boat house, is this sculpture of a bear. It’s a cool, laid back sort of bear, wearing flip-flops and sun glasses. Cathy figured it was a good day to kick back and watch the world go by, so that’s what she did. There wasn’t a lot of world going by, as it happened. There were occasional walkers but not really enough to keep you interested for long. So, we continued our walk, crossing the dam and walking on a smaller trail around to the Gude Trail before returning to out car.

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