Miscellaneous

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.

Blue Glass

I was looking around for things to photograph this evening, like I sometimes do when I haven’t been outside at all or if I have something going on right after work and don’t get much opportunity to take pictures. This is a close up of a portion of a blue glass vase that’s in our dining room. I like the abstract quality of the picture. One nice thing about pictures like this for my blog is that I could take a picture of this vase again in two months and it would probably a completely different image and it might not even be obvious that it was the same subject.

SR-71 Blackbird

As mentioned in yesterday’s post, we went to Richmond for the weekend. It was Dorothy who had things scheduled while Cathy and I were basically at liberty. Today we took a walk along the James river and saw a pair of bald eagles and also ran into someone we know, which is always surprising. We had a lovely lunch with the folks from Hillside and enjoyed getting to know them a little. When we left there, we went to Chimborazo Park, which has a nice view down onto the city. As we returned to our hotel near the airport, I spotted a black shape over to our right. It was this airplane, one of the hottest designs ever. Cathy was nice enough to let me pull into the parking lot of this small aviation museum and walk around a little. The SR-71 Blackbird is without a doubt the hottest hotrod to fly. It isn’t the fastest thing that’s ever been launched but among production aircraft propelled by jet engines, this two-seater is the king of the road, cruising at above mach 3 and flying up to about 80,000 feet (24,000 meters).

This image is a montage of six pictures that I took. It’s not perfectly stitched together but good enough, I think.

Colorful Fire

From the blog’s perspective, it’s still Friday, even though I’m actually writing this on Monday evening. This picture was taken the same day as the snow picture also posted on the 14th. While snow doesn’t really make a dull picture interesting, I find that I can stare at flames for a long time and not get bored. It was a good day for a fire and I enjoyed it this evening quite a bit. One log in particular seems to have had something in it that made the flames much more blue than they normally are, which was nice. The flames seemed more ethereal or something (I’m not sure what, really). Anyway, I thought they were pretty and I enjoyed finding shapes, patterns, and creatures in them.

Snow On The Ground

We had a little more snow overnight but it didn’t amount to much. As you can see, it was enough to cover the roads, which had been plowed yesterday at about 4:00 PM. One thing about snow in this area is that everyone takes pictures of it. I guess I’m no different (look, here’s a picture of snow!). But snow doesn’t usually make an otherwise dull picture interesting. Perhaps it can make a good picture better and a great picture better still, but a boring scene is usually not much less boring for there being snow in it. So, this is a somewhat boring picture, but with snow. It was actually a beautiful day today, with the sun out (melting the snow on the roads) and a fairly comfortable temperature (for me, anyway—a long-sleeved t-shirt was enough).

Llama In The Snow

Well, the forecasters got this one reasonably well. We got about as much snow as they were initially forecasting, even though the later forecasts eased up a bit (so I guess they should have stuck to their earlier predictions). Anyway, about 14 inches here, which isn’t a record or anything but it’s enough to cover everything pretty thoroughly. Outside our front door is a concrete bench and Cathy uses that as a place for potted plants. One pot has a llama on the side and this is the llama, looking out from under a pile of snow. Probably reminds him of the Andes.

Winter

There is snow in the forecast but as I came home from work today it hadn’t started. It seems that a lot of people are getting a bit tired of winter. This year’s winter has certainly been colder, snowier, and longer than most that we’ve had here in recent years. On my drive home, I was looking at the trees and the slate-grey sky and thinking about winter. While stopped at a traffic light as I neared home, I saw this, which is today’s picture of winter.

Needlepoint

I took some pictures of Cathy this evening looking at the world through rose colored glasses. Literally. Dorothy bought them at a thrift store but since they are actually prescriptions lenses, she doesn’t actually wear them much. Cathy decided she should, now and then, rather than worrying about things so much. Those of you who know where my pictures are can find them there.

For my picture here, however, I’ve decided to post this piece of needlepoint. It’s actually a little clutch purse that came from who-knows-where (actually, Cathy and Dorothy probably know). I think the colors are really nice and it’s a simple yet striking pattern. Enjoy.

Fountain

I had lunch at the Rio today and afterwards I walked around a little and took a few pictures. The fountain in the lake was going and I stopped for pictures of that. It was a very bright day and even with the ISO set to 100 and the aperture at f/32 the longest exposure I could get was 1/15 second. That gave a little blur but I wanted more. I happen to have a neutral density filter that removed nine stops worth of light. With that on, I was able to get this exposure at 1/3 second at f/6.4. Of course, the difficulty was aiming and focusing because I could barely see anything through the viewfinder.

Snow on Buddleia

We had a little snowfall today. I must admit that I didn’t expect it. Then again, I haven’t really paid attention to the weather reports lately. It isn’t like I can really change what’s coming and a little snow isn’t going to make much difference. This afternoon the snow was welcome enough, it was a very pretty snowfall and because it’s pretty cold, it was a clean, pristine snow, not all slushy and messy.

Great Falls of the Potomac

Cathy and I went for a walk at Great Falls early this afternoon. The water wasn’t as high as it’s been but it was still rather high (the reading was 6.4 feet, we’ve been there when it was over 9, 10 is flood stage). It was quite muddy, as it tends to be when it’s high. It was also fairly cold, so there was a bit of ice. In fact. rocks and branches near the water were coated with ice from the spray, which was pretty but hard to photograph well. The first picture here is from Olmsted Island, looking upstream at the main part of the river.

Chairmaker’s Bulrush (Schoenoplectus americanus)

From the overlook, we walked back to the C&O Canal and walked about a mile south. The canal was mostly frozen over, although in the areas where the canal was not filled the running water remained mostly ice free. Obviously this time of year, particularly on an overcast day, there wasn’t a lot of color about the place. This bulrush (chairmaker’s bulrush, Schoenoplectus americanus) was a welcome point of color, even if it was just brown against more brown.

Ice Crystals

It was chilly this morning and there was frost on the windscreen of the car. While the car was warming up enough to melt the ice so I could get to work, I took pictures of the ice on the side windows. I think ice crystals are pretty cool (as in neat, although as in low temperature, as well). These were taken without a tripod or anything, because I was just sitting in the car, so it isn’t as sharp as it could be. Oh, well.

Masks

These are hanging on the wall in Dorothy’s bedroom, which, if you recall, is very brightly painted in purple and yellow. These are on one of the yellow walls, obviously. The cat mask is from Venice, bought on our trip there in 2000. The other mask is from last year’s prom. the gold leaved wreath is the laurel wreath that Dorothy made and which was featured here a week ago (see Not Resting On Her Laurels).