Miscellaneous

Senior Crossing

We were up in Baltimore this afternoon and as we were leaving, driving south on Broadway towards Fells Point, I took this picture while stopped at a traffic light. It’s a good thing this sign is illustrated, because at first I thought it was a crossing of many years, a venerable, old pedestrian crossing. The illustration, of course changes the sense of the phrase “senior crossing” to something very different, a crossing for seniors.

I’ve seen a lot of ‘crossing’ signs in my day, ranging from deer to armadillo and tractor to horse cart. I’ve seen signs for deaf child and even slow children (now that I think about it, “Slow Children” may be another where an illustration could change the meaning). This is the first Senior Crossing sign I’ve seen and I like the addition of the cane. I also like the way this senior’s head is floating above his shoulders. Like they do.

Disk Harrow

It was a lovely day and Cathy and I went for a walk at the Montgomery County Agricultural Farm Park today. They have a garden that we often like to visit but it’s a bit early in the year for that to be of much interest. We walked around in the woods an near the former sites of the three Newman houses. There are some old farm machines lining a part of the road where we walked including this disk harrow and a chain harrow that looked like a giant version of one of those puzzles where you are supposed to separate two twisted pieces of metal.

Check With Your Doctor

I picked up a prescription this afternoon on the way home. It’s one I’ve taken for a long while and I have to admit I don’t read everything on the bottle every time. After all, it doesn’t change much and I know how I react to it (which is not very much except for what it’s meant to do). I couldn’t swear that this notice has been on previous bottles, although I assume so. Anyway, I’m pretty sure I’m not going to become pregnant, so that’s one less thing to worry about.

Johns Hopkins Hospital

Cathy and I went up to Baltimore to see Ralph and Tsai-Hong this afternoon and it was such a beautiful day that we took a walk around the block where Johns Hopkins Hospital sits. It’s a largish block and including a bit of wandering in an urban garden and into the front of the hospital itself, we walked almost a mile. On the left in this picture is the Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Building, the cancer center. The curved, glass-front building at the right is the Bloomberg Children’s Center. You can just see the top corner of the main hospital building, the Sheikh Zayed Tower, above the right hand corner of the Weinberg building.

A Fairly Light Snowfall

When I got up this morning I didn’t realize at first that it had snowed overnight. I glanced out the kitchen door but didn’t see it at first. A little later I saw that there was something white scattered on parts of the patio table and it was only on closer inspection that I realized that it was snow. I decided I should document our winter weather, even if it was only a light dusting. The snow seems to have formed clumps or pellets and they were evenly scattered over the lawn (but not enough that it didn’t still look green at a glance). Where oak leaves were lying in the garden, the pellets of snow gathered into larger amounts, and that’s what you see here. So, winter, we’re still waiting.

Emergency and Trauma

Sometimes I think if I had twins I’d name them Emergency and Trauma. Maybe not. But if I had two dogs I could probably get away with it. I’m not sure what nicknames I’d come up with for them, though. I suppose Emergency could be shortened to Em. May Uma for the other one. But all seriousness aside, Cathy and I were here for a little while with Cathy’s mom. She’s fine and is home again. She probably didn’t even need to go, but better safe than sorry, we always say (always, some people find it a little annoying). As I was leaving I stopped to take a few pictures of the outside of the hospital. It isn’t the most inviting place in the world, but then, when you need it, you’re glad to have it. And this is a good one.

Soap Bubbles

I think bubbles are cool. Of course some are more cool than others (to paraphrase George Orwell). These are fairly simple soap bubbles in a backing dish that’s been soaking to loosen the grease that was baked on it from a 10 pound pork shoulder roast. We’re all familiar with the rainbow colors sometimes seen in larger soap bubbles. None of that here. I recently saw a video of a soap bubble slowly freezing, and that was very cool (in every sense of the word). But these are nice in an understated way.

Lighting

We were at Upper Rock Circle again this evening and I took some more pictures of the decor in one of the public rooms of the building. This is a meeting room with a kitchen area and these lights are above the bar that has the stove top and also serves as an eating area.

It’s been quite warm the last couple days, with high temperatures above 70°F yesterday and today. The forecast is for snow tomorrow, and then colder weather for a little while, so perhaps we’ll have some winter for a change. I don’t mind a balmy day in midwinter but 70°F is overdoing it.

Ohio Scientific Superboard II

In 1978 (or thereabouts), when I was in college, my dad bought this computer. It was made by Ohio Scientific and is a Superboard II, a.k.a., model 600 single-board computer. It came by default with 4k of RAM but dad knew that he’d need more than that so he doubled it to 8k. He initially built a power supply for it but the power wasn’t clean enough so he bought one. The computer was connected to a small black-and-white television set and a portable cassette player for program and data storage. I actually did more BASIC programming on this machine than on any subsequent computer I’ve owned, moving on to Pascal in 1984 when I bought my own NEC computer. Although this was the family’s first computer, Ralph had one sooner. I believe he bought it with a friend at school and it was a more powerful thing, using an Intel 8008 processor, if I remember correctly.

Wooden Chandelier

This isn’t technically a chandelier, because the formal definition includes branching structure to hold multiple lights. The word chandelier comes through the French from the Latin candelabrum or candle holder. Of course we apply it to those that hold electric lights but this only has a single light, as far as I can tell. Still, it’s a pretty, hanging light fixture and the term is fluid enough that it might encompass it. We were at a place on Upper Rock Circle this evening and this is in their lobby above a simple but effective fountain.

Glinda of Oz

We were over at Cathy’s mom’s Saturday a week ago and then Cathy was there with our dear friend Julia again twice last week. It was mostly going through boxes of papers and separating those that needed to be shredded and those that could simply be recycled. We also went through some books, although there are a lot more to look at. We only pulled out a few to bring home. One was this copy of Glinda of Oz, by L. Frank Baum. It is the fourteenth book in the Land of Oz series and was published on July 10, 1920.

Rotary Dial Wall Phone

A week or two ago I got a call from Ben, our pastor, asking if by any chance I had an oldish phone, preferably one with a rotary dial. I’m not sure why he called me in particular. He wasn’t even sure why he called me. It’s true that we’re in the upper quintile or ages at church and younger people were less likely to have such a thing. And of course I do have a rotary dial phone.

This isn’t the exact phone I grew up with but it’s exactly like two phones we had in our house when I was in high school, when I started using the phone regularly. There was a white version of this same phone in the kitchen and a black one, just like this, in the basement. We also had a regular table-top version, also rotary dial, in the hall. The one in the basement is still there.

The challenge for this photograph was to get the dial in motion. I used the flash to freeze it but also a long exposure so that it’s a bit blurred. It was 1/3 second at f/3.5 with the camera on a delay timer so I could press the shutter and then dial the phone and get my hand out of the way just in time.

Running Water

I managed to get out of the office for a little while early this afternoon. It’s been a really busy month and of course January often isn’t the best month for walks in the woods. But today was nice and mild, the rain has stopped, and I took a break from work to spend a little time outdoors. I took a bunch of pictures of moving water. I really enjoy the lines of water in a stream or river, especially where the water meets partially submerged rocks. It’s a simple thing and easily found but in my eyes, it’s one of the beauties of nature. Sure, Yosemite and the Tetons are awesome, to say nothing of the Himalayas or the Rift Valley in Africa, but beauty can be found in a stream in an unused building lot, right next door.

St. Mary’s Church and Graveyard

Two weeks ago, on January 3rd, I posted a picture of St. Mary’s Church and Graveyard. This evening it was a little foggy and I thought I’d stop there again to try to get a better picture. This time I also had my tripod, which made it considerably easier and gave me a lot more options in terms of camera location (I wasn’t limited to using the fence as a support). As it turned out, the fog was less of a factor than I thought and it barely shows up in this picture, beyond the overall haze in the sky. Still, I’m reasonably pleased with how it turned out. But that doesn’t mean I won’t be back when it’s foggier to try again.

My &Pizza Pizza

I may have mentioned that I’m quite busy at work. That is still going on and I really don’t mind the business so much as the changes on changes that undo previous changes. That can be a little tedious, but it’s a living, I guess. I’m also not so busy that I couldn’t go to lunch with a few co-workers and my retired, former boss. We try to get together ever few months and I really look forward to those days. There were only four of us this time and we went to &Pizza in Downtown Crown. I had a slightly modified Maverick, which ironically is their take on the ubiquitous meat-lover’s pizza. Still, it was good and I’d have it again.

The Stars and Stripes

On the way home this evening I stopped at St. Mary’s Church again. Last week I posted a picture of their graveyard and the church taken at night. This time, the photo was taken from the edge of their property but of a flag flying across the street in the triangular Veterans Park. The flag is well-lit, as the nation’s flag should be when flown around the clock, and it was quite breezy, making it easier to get a shot with the flag mostly unfurled. This was a 1/8 second exposure at f/2.8 and ISO 500, taken with a 100mm macro lens and with the camera mounted on a tripod.

Colored Pencils

It was back to work again today and a busy day it was. I barely left my desk all day and didn’t go outside at all. Cathy and I went to work together because we have a car in the shop and by the time we left for home it was after 6:00 and quite dark. After dinner I took some pictures of bunches of colored pencils. There are quite a few floating about the house. Actually, they aren’t as scatted as they have been at times in the past. Most of them are in a bin in my computer room.

I took some pictures looking at the pencils end-on but then decided to take a few with them standing in rank. These were just a bunch held in my hand with the yellow wall beyond them. Maybe I should have sharpened them all before I took the picture, or at least the orangish one in the upper right, but I don’t suppose it really matters.

Fjord

We had more snow this morning. Still not what I’d call a snow storm but more than yesterday. Also, temperatures have been below freezing for a day and the snow stuck to streets and other paved surfaces this time. When I got up in was 29°F but by noon the temperature had dropped to just above 20°F. In the early afternoon I went out back and took a few pictures. This one reminds me of a coastal valley in Alaska or Norway, with inlets and islands. Of course the entire scene is only a foot across, but nature tends to make similar shapes, whether large or small.

First Snow of 2017

It was something short of a blizzard but we had our first snowfall of 2017 this morning. It started before I got up but had mostly stopped by the time I got to work. The roads were all perfectly clear, so it had no real effect on my relatively short commute. It’s suppose to snow again tomorrow and it’s gotten colder, so it may stick a bit more, but for today, it was just a light dusting on the grass and in the woods. Quite pretty, actually.

Cracked Bowl

It was a busy day at work today and I didn’t really get out of my office, much less the building to take pictures. When I got home, I fixed dinner and then sort of crashed for a while. Late in the evening I started looking around for things to photograph. There are some little Greek ceramic buildings on a glass-front cabinet in our dining room and I took some pictures of those, as well as a Cloisonne egg, but those were not very satisfying. I took a few pictures of this bowl, which I made back in the late 1970s, probably 1979. The crack makes it pretty unsuitable for anything liquid but it works well for holding chips or popcorn. I kind of like the crack, which was not intentional. That combined with the darker glaze around the crack gives it some character.