Miscellaneous

Easter Eggs

I’m playing catch-up again, posting pictures well after the dates they were taken. I posted the Easter Flashback but of course, I need to post a picture taken on Easter of this year, as well. We went to the sunrise service at Fourth church, or at least we got there before it was over. I had started to set my alarm clock for 5:00 a.m. so we would be up in time to get to the 6:00 a.m. service. Then, thinking the girls might need a little longer to wake up, I set the alarm “back” ten minutes, changing the minutes to 50. Unfortunately, it was now set for 5:50, not 4:50, and we were lucky to get there before the service had finished completely. We went to the earliest of the regular services, as well, and then came back to our house for a lamb roast and the various fixings. Dorothy and Kendra dyed some eggs and later they were hidden in baskets in the yard.

Rainy Day Colors

Personally, I love a rainy day. We like to complain about rain, especially when it spoils our plans but it’s often quite beautiful when it rains. I won’t say this it an amazing photograph (it’s just the view from the third floor of my office building) but it does, I think, convey some of why I love the rain. The colors of most everything are made stronger and more beautiful by the rain. The browns and greens, in particular, benefit from being wet. Throw in a little brightness from spring blooms and it is even better. Yes, give me a good, wet, rainy day now and then. I won’t complain.

Bricks

It was a beautiful day and a good day for a drive. That’s fortunate, because I drove down to Richmond to pick up Dorothy. Traffic was heavy on 95 southbound but I didn’t have any real problems. Coming back was another matter. Interstate 95 is grossly inadequate for the traffic on the east coast. Anyway, I picked up Dorothy and we went to get her things before heading back north. This is a brick wall outside where she was staying. I like the warm color and rough texture of the bricks and may use this in an composite image at some point.

Fresh Guacamole

Cathy and I met our friend Collyn (see yesterday’s post) for dinner at Villa Maya Restaurant this evening. Two more friends were planning to join us but things came up (or had already been planned but temporarily forgotten, actually) and they had to cancel. No matter. Dinner was nice and we got to concentrate our attention on Collyn. Well, her and the food, which was very good. They have a cart with all the ingredients for guacamole and a young woman pushes it around from table to table, mixing up the luscious dip to order.

Chair and Coconut

I really don’t know what to write about this one. The title of this post says it, really. This is a chair, or two chairs, really, and a coconut. There’s a clipboard, as well, of course, and perhaps I should have given greater emphasis to that.

I like the fact that the darker floor tiles, the chairs, the coconut and the writing on the clipboard are all in basically the same color family. That certainly provides a unifying element to the picture.

I also like the strong lines of the chair, juxtaposed with the round nothingness and incongruity of the coconut. “Why a coconut and what is the connection between that and these chairs?” And what is the meaning of the cryptic sentence scrawled on the paper, “Where is my Fish spear?”

For now, it will remain a mystery.

Snow on Rose Branches

So, the rain that’s been falling since early Saturday turned to sleet and then to snow this afternoon. Perhaps that was predicted but I didn’t see it coming. I went out to the grocery store and when I got home it started coming down quite hard. At first it only accumulated on the car windscreen but then on the bushes and finally on the grass. I went out to take a few more pictures and like this one of a few brown leaves on the rose bush just outside our front door. This winter has been hard on the shrubs. The leaves on our boxwood has burned quite badly and I have a feeling that both Camellias that I planted last year have died. After so many mild winters, I thought it would be safe but I’m afraid this winter has been a test of their hardiness that they have not passed.

A River Runs Through It

It rained all day yesterday and everyone was glad it was rain and now snow. Today, people were starting to feel waterlogged and wished it would stop, even for a little while. Tomorrow the forecast is for “sunny, with a high near 59, and breezy.” Today, the lawn is about as wet as it can be. There is a little swale between our yard the the yard next door. When it rains like it has done for the last 36 hours or so, it turns into a bit of a stream. The stream was flowing today, as you can see.

Late March Snow

I feel like a broken record. I don’t know how many times we’ve had a snowfall and thought, well, at least this should be the last for the winter. Each time we are more sure that a snowfall this late is unusual, only to have one even later come along and make us forget the earlier one. I also don’t know how many times I’ve hear people say, “I’m really ready for spring!”

Of course, I don’t know any more than the next person whether this is the final snowfall of the year. I do know that there are a lot of people who seriously hope it is.

It was actually quite lovely out today and the snow came down fairly steadily for much of the day, starting at about 8:00 AM and not stopping until a little before I drove home in the evening. It didn’t really stick to the roads or other paved surfaces, so it wasn’t nearly the bother some previous snowfalls have been. This was the view out of my office window.

St. Patrick’s Day Snow

Well, the snow that started yesterday continued falling this morning, amounting to 8 or 9 inches before it stopped. I was up off the couch a bit today, going to see the doctor about my back (school and just about everything else was closed but the roads were actually fine). I didn’t take my camera with me, which explains why you aren’t seeing a picture of an x-ray machine or something else related to that visit.

When I got home I took some pictures of the snow. It was a very beautiful day today and I enjoyed the snow. I cannot say that I don’t hope it is the last of the spring, but I did enjoy it.

The View From The Couch

As usual, I’m posting this a few days late. This is my picture from Sunday, March 16. As some of you know, I’ve been out of commission since Friday evening with significant back pain. Today I spent most of the day lying on the sofa. This is my view from there out the dining room windows and into the back yard as the snow started to fall this afternoon. From my warm, dry vantage point, it was quite pretty but I was just as glad not to have to be out in it.

Dorothy, Hannah, and Tim

Dorothy went downtown with a few of her friends today, visiting the National Gallery of Art. Since I spent much of the day on my back today, do to back pain, I took a picture from my comfortable position on the couch. In this picture, Dorothy, Hannah, and Tim pose for me.

I especially like it because of Cathy photobombing them from behind the railing.

Parking Lot Paint

The snow plows are rough on roads and parking lots, scraping up loose gravel as well as paint that’s marking parking spots and that’s on curbs to mark no parking zones. I was out around my building to take a short walk and took this pictures of paint and gravel on the grass. It had been in a pile of snow but as the snow melts, naturally, it is left behind as a quiet reminder of the weather we’ve had.

Actually, I just like the color.

Grease Bubbles

This is most definitely something to categorize under miscellaneous. I cooked a chicken curry this evening, experimenting with a few different combinations of ingredients. It wasn’t a resounding success but I think I learned a thing or two and the next version will be better. The chicken itself was wonderful, it was the sauce that suffered. Anyway, when I was done, I had a bit of grease in the pan and I filled the pan with water to loosen the bits that were stuck to the bottom. This is a picture of tiny bubbles of grease floating on the top of the water. Strange, I guess, but I thought it was pretty.

Ashes

On Monday, when we had snow, I thought it would be a nice day for a fire. In addition to logs, I burned some papers. I know shredding is probably adequate for disposing of old, paid bills (and better still for disposing of unpaid bills). I’ve been known to use shredded bills as the paper under the logs when I start a fire, and that works well. Sometimes, though, it’s nice just to burn unshredded papers. When I had the fire going nice and strong, I put a large stack of papers on top and let them go up. These are the remains and as you can see, they were not destroyed as thoroughly as if they had been shredded. Of course, once I move them about a little, they will finish falling apart and the job will be done. Then they will go out into the garden the raise the pH a little and to return to the soil.

Sausage Pizza

There isn’t a lot that can or should be said about this picture. It’s two-thirds of a sausage pizza from Papa John’s, one of five pizzas that we bought for WHAT, our youth gathering this evening (yes, we stole the name because we like it). I took a few pictures of the youth themselves but none of them are very good and, contrary to popular belief and with very notable exceptions, I don’t like to post unflattering photographs of people. Much better to post an unflattering photograph of a pizza.

Snow, Again

School for today was canceled before we went to bed last night, so we didn’t set our alarms for this morning. Of course, that means I woke up about three minutes before my alarm would have gone off and couldn’t get back to sleep. The snow had only accumulated to a depth of about two inches when I got up but it started snowing a bit more heavily after that and by midday we had six or seven inches on the ground. Since I can, I worked from home. I did go out to shovel the driveway and clear off the cars but otherwise enjoying the snow from the comfort of my castle.

Bombay Bistro

Have you ever eaten at Bombay Bistro? If not, and if you’re in the area, I highly recommend it. I’m not qualified to say whether or not the food is authentic for any particular part of the Indian sub-continent. What I am qualified to say is that it’s really good. The Chicken Tikka Makhani is one of our favorites and I don’t we’d ever consider not including that in an order. We like to try new things and this time we had Saag Ghost, which is “lamb cooked with mildly spiced spinach.” I’m a fan of cooked spinach and liked this one quite well. Anyway, as far as I can tell, it’s hard to go wrong. It isn’t a big place, but that’s part of its charm. Anyway, if you haven’t eaten there, you should.

Snow on Spruce Tree

It snowed fairly heavily much of the day today, although not much accumulated on the ground, at least not on the pavement. It was very pretty and gave me something to look at out the window. This is the spruce tree outside my office with snow starting to cover the branches. In addition to the return of the snow, the temperature has dropped again to well below freezing during the night and only a little above as the high for the day.

Colors

Dorothy was cleaning some dried paint off of her palette and thought it would make a good subject for some pictures. This is my favorite of those I took. I was using flash but bouncing it off the wall and ceiling so there wouldn’t be so many bright reflections, which worked pretty well.

I like the swirling blues the best but the yellow/orange in the middle adds a bit of a kick.