Miscellaneous

Drowning Trumpet

Or maybe it’s just being washed, I’m not sure which. I thought about calling it “The Death of the Trumpet Marat” but that might be a bit too obscure.

Snow Storm?

You know how beautiful snow is on the branches of spruce trees? I look forward to that and though it’s better with a whole forest of trees, there is a Colorado spruce in our front yard and a Norway spruce outside my office window so I have something specific to look forward to. So when the forecast is for snow I get my hopes up. Not, perhaps, as much as a kid hoping to get out of school the next day but still up. Eventually we did get a little frozen precipitation but mostly this is what the “snow” looked like. Kind of a let down compared to snow, but liquid water is pretty nice, too.

Flag Through The Trees

I pass this flag going to and from work every day. Some days it’s hanging straight down while other days it’s stretched out in the wind. Today was a windy day and I took this picture through the trees waiting at the traffic light (I was waiting at the traffic light, not the trees, they were just standing there).

Cheeburger Cheeburger

Dinner at Cheeburger Cheeburger this evening. Green olives are not a hit with the girls so I get them. This is my three-eyed cheeburger monster. Yummy.

Obgarch, Pakistan

This isn’t a new picture. In fact, it’s from 1988, taken on Cathy and my great around-the-world adventure. I’m posting it because I’ve switched my banner for the site to use an edited version and thought you might enjoy the full frame. The banner has also been flipped horizontally so that the little note with my name on it doesn’t cover the mountain but this is the way the original looked. It was taken from a little village called Obgarch in far northern Pakistan. When I say little, I mean there were two or three people there. You can find it on Google Maps here:36° 38′ 15″ N, 74° 55′ 30″ E. We’re at about 9,000 feet in the Karakoram mountains which are really spectacular.

BUGSGON

Do you enjoy vanity license plates? I do and often think about having a collection of photographs of them but of course I usually see them while driving, which isn’t really the best time to be taking pictures. Here I was stopped at a traffic light.

Reflections

This is the back entrance to my building and the way I usually enter and exit. I like the changing reflections through the year. In the spring it’s a very green reflection. Some days blue is the predominant color. Today gray and brown were in force.

Traffic Lights

Traffic was a bit heavy coming home today and I took this picture in my rain spattered rear view mirror.

We each had a set of “Buckyballs” in our stocking this past Christmas and we’ve really enjoyed playing with them. One set was plain steel, another was darker (listed as black but as you can see, they aren’t, really), and the third was multicolored. Dorothy managed to get her colored set back into its cube configuration, which is how it came. Mostly we make a tube or sheet with them, though.

Skeletons

For Christmas I got a book of essays by G. K. Chesterton. I’ve only read a few of them, because I have a long shelf of books I’m trying to get through and I add to it faster than I can read them. I think this one is next on my list, though. The second essay in the book, and one which I have read (I sneak one now and then), is called A Defence of Skeletons, written in 1901. In it, he talks about the skeletons of trees, as well as our own skeletons. You can read the whole thing here. Anyway, I was thinking about that as I looked out the window of my office at the skeletons of trees outside. I think they are quite beautiful.

Piano and Hands

I’m working with a friend on the front and back cover for his upcoming CD. It’s piano music and we decided to go with the obvious “hands at the piano keys” for the back cover. This is the image we picked, with lots of room for white text.

These are just photos of four random items at Cathy’s mom’s. The two wood blocks were used to print their curtains, which I think is pretty cool.

Map Mosaic

I printed this map for a co-worker last week. In all there were 150 pages, although the pages that were only ocean were left off. She spent considerable time putting them together and even more time going over each marked location, categorizing them, grouping them, and figuring out what she needed to figure out.

Wallpaper

We started scraping wallpaper in Dorothy’s room last weekend. Actually, we started a long time ago but then didn’t work on it forever and we started again last weekend. We’re making good progress, as evidenced by the wallpaper that needs to be cleaned up.

No. 1, The Larch

Let’s face it, you’re either going to get this or you aren’t. If you do, you may find it hilarious. If not, well, then you almost certainly will not. This is an original drawing by Kendra on the white board in our kitchen. Spoiler alert! No. 3 is the Horse Chestnut.

Major Simone Chhutney

Many of us are familiar with Major Grey Mango Chutney. Well, who knew they made this? Major Simone Chhutney!

Ice

It’s gotten cold again and was a beautiful winter day today. Cathy and I went for a walk in the neighborhood this afternoon. We talked mostly about the things that are bugging us at work, but you certainly don’t want to hear about that. I stopped a few times to take pictures of ice.

Contemplating A Navel

I had to run a few errands at lunchtime today and when I went out to my car, there was this orange in the parking lot, just sitting there. Contemplating its navel, I assume.

I took Dorothy to her art class today. I enjoyed a little time at nearby Montpelier Mansion. I haven’t actually been inside but I’ve walked around the grounds a few times. Here is a sampling of the pictures I took.

Late Christmas Lights

Most of the Christmas lights in our neighborhood are down. There are still some white lights out but all the elaborate decorations have come down, with the exception of one house that still has them all up. I don’t mind, actually. Lights don’t really convey Christmas to me as much as winter, anyway, so what’s the big deal. This yard has lots of color and they are pretty intense, bright colors, too.

Rainy Night

Cold and snowy on Monday, a pretty beautiful day on Tuesday, then rainy and gray on Wednesday. Typical winter weather, actually. The rain was light most of the day but it started raining pretty hard in the evening.

Stop

I didn’t have a chance to get out and take any pictures today so when Dorothy went out to run an errand this evening I brought my camera along. We stopped on the way home to take a few photos and this is our favorite.

Snow

We had our first real snowfall of 2012 today. It snowed quite hard back on the third but none of that really stuck on the ground. This evening the snow covered grassy areas and certainly made the rush hour traffic a little crazier, as the slightest suggestion of snow tends to do here. We thought about going to the grocery store to buy enough food for a week. Then we decided we would try to survive until tomorrow on what we already have. Tomorrow it’s forecast to be in the fifties, so our mini-winter is destined to be short-lived.

Nagoya Guitar

This is my old Nagoya guitar. I don’t play it much any more but it gets use when some of Dorothy’s friends pick it up.

Teeth

It has finally gotten a bit chilly here. The temperature was in the teens, although the upper teens, yesterday morning.

At lunch time I went out to the empty lot next to my office building and came across a jawbone with a few teeth still in it.

Fire

Our Christmas tree being returned to its constituent parts.

International Banking

Dorothy and I were in Baltimore this afternoon with friends Nancy and Lyla and I took this, my penultimate Project 365 photo, of the BB&T building reflected in a window with flags behind the window superimposed on the building. Obviously I flipped the photo to make the text the right way round.

Oh, I don’t know, maybe I’ll call it quits and stop now. I don’t know that I can take any more pictures…

Gannets at Cape St. Mary's

Welcome to my new blog. I’ve been online in one way or another for quite a while but not this publicly before. I’m just finishing a Project 365 on Facebook where I post a photo a day for a year. I don’t plan to continue that, at least not in a formal way, but I do expect to continue taking pictures. This blog is where I’ll be posting them. If you’re a friend from Facebook, I look forward to keeping up the conversation. If you found me some other way, then you are welcome, also.

I can’t promise that this will only be photographs but that’s likely to be the emphasis. I’m not a word person, in general, although I do like reading. I’ve been known, on rare occasions, to be able to explain things using words but in general, if I have anything original to say, it will be an image.

I expect to be changing the banner image from time to time, as well. Currently the image is one I took in 1993 at Cape St. Mary’s in Newfoundland, Canada. Cathy and I enjoyed an afternoon there watching these gannets as well as auks and guillemots and the occasional razorbill.

Bus Stop After the Rain

As the sun set this evening, a break in the clouds opened up and it lit, among other things, this bus shelter.