Miscellaneous

Clementines

Getting Clementines to be associated with Christmas is something of a marketing coup, I guess. Christmas does coincide with their availability, of course, which certainly helps. I wish they would sell boxes that were about half the size, since the last few sometimes have gone bad by the time we get to them. Better yet would be bags so that you could see if the fruit on the bottom was bad. I find it interesting that I associate the red plastic mesh with Clementines, as well. When they are good, they are very, very good.

Creek Bed

It was a wonderfully warm day today. I’m posting this five days late and it’s gotten cold, but on the 21^st it was amazing for December. Cathy and I went for a nice, long walk in the park today, enjoying the quiet woods. I stopped for pictures now and then, naturally, and this is one that I like pretty well. This is one of the many creeks that drain into the small lake (which is actually a pond, of course), just northwest of our neighborhood. I love reflections, especially on water with ripples. I also like the colors of wet rocks.

Tori with Stained Glass`

Every year the group I’m in at work has a silent auction at our holiday party to benefit a local charity. This year, a coworker asked if I would mind if she made a stained glass window of a photograph that I took of a black-eyed Susan. I told her that I’d be delighted and so she did. She donated the artwork in our auction and it generated (I think) the most vigorous bidding of any item sold.

Here’s a picture of Tori, who ended up getting it. In addition to the stained glass window, which I think is lovely, she got a card with the source photograph. Kathy, you did a wonderful job with the glass. Thank you so much for letting me play a small part in its inspiration.

The original photograph can be seen on the HartleyPhoto web site here along with other photographs that I offer for sale (some of them will look familiar to anyone who follows this blog..

Christmas Lights Through Glass Bricks

I went to pick up Dorothy at her friends’ house this evening. Before I went in, I took some pictures of the Christmas lights they have on the front of their house. They were mostly out-of-focus pictures that turn colored lights into glowing orbs, overlapping to form a Euler diagram. They are something of a cliche picture, but pretty for all of that. I came in and visited with Maureen and Julia for a little while before it was time to leave and get Dorothy home.

As I was about to go out of the kitchen door, I noticed the colored lights shining through the glass blocks in the front wall and realized that made a much better photograph than the simple out-of-focus lights. I’d like to take more but of the few that I took, this one is my favorite. A few others have great patterns but are not as good for one reason or another. I may try again the next time I’m there.

This is definitely one you’re going to want to click on to see the larger version.

Sand Dollar

In 1982 I worked as a contractor at the National Weather Service, contributing in a small way to the forecasting of storm surges due to hurricanes. I was in Texas for a couple weeks surveying the coast in support of our forecast model for a few large sections of the coast, basically looking for situations where the coastal terrain was significantly different to what was recorded on topographic maps. We were on a barrier island at one point and came across a huge number of sand dollars, all washed up on the beach. I collected a few and they have been in a ceramic jar ever since. This is the sand dollar at the top of that jar.

Paprika

Obviously this isn’t really a picture of the surface of Mars. It’s just a little pile of Hungarian paprika on the counter. It’s almost the right color, though, for a Martian landscape. Actually, it was a bit hard to correct the color cast that my camera’s auto-white-balance set. There isn’t anything here that should be white, which is what I usually look for when correcting color shifts. Anyway, I thought I’d share the picture, even though it isn’t worth all that much, artistically or otherwise.

Dorothy and Trees

We went out this morning to cut Christmas trees for ourselves, my mom, and brother. We usually go to Pennsylvania for a tree and visit “the farm.” In the past we cut trees there but they are all to big at this point, so we go on from there to Seven Springs Tree Farm and cut our trees there. This year, we thought we’d head north, even though the forecast was for a significant snowfall. As we came down the hill into the Frederick Valley, the temperature dropped from 36°F to 31°F and the snowfall because significantly heavier. Since we still had a long way to go and it was getting steadily worse, we decided that discretion was the better part of valor and turned around. We ended up cutting the tree at Butlers, which isn’t nearly as much of an outing, but we got our trees.

Green, Red, and Yellow Peppers

I took a quick trip to the grocery store this evening to top up our supplies of milk, eggs, and bread, plus a few other things. I’ve been taking my camera with me everywhere I go for almost three years now and in general, I’ve gotten used to having it. The grocery store is one of those places I still feel a little self conscious about it but there are lots of things to photograph there, so once in a while I’ll take a picture. This evening’s is of green, red, and yellow bell peppers. One of the few things I don’t like the taste of and try to avoid if at all possible, but they sure are pretty.

Sashimi

Cathy and I went out to dinner this evening. Since she asked me to pick the restaurant, I opted for Niwano Hana, a Japanese restaurant in Rockville. Cathy had tempura and I went with the deluxe Sashimi Assortment. As you can see, it has a pretty wide selection of fish and was as good as it looks (or better, if you don’t like the look of raw fish). Anyway, I enjoyed it, as well as enjoying an evening out with my beautiful bride.

Snow on Black-eyed Susans

On Sunday it snowed, then yesterday we had freezing rain, covering everything with a coating of ice. This morning, just after I got up (to find that school was canceled again) it started snowing. I don’t think they needed to cancel school today—late opening would have been enough, but then that’s not up to me. I went out into the yard and took pictures of the snow. I’d say we had between two and three inches. These are black-eyed Susans growing in our front garden, with a little bit of snow added.

Snowfall

We had our first real snowfall today. The forecast was possibly a little more dire than the reality but it actually did snow and it make the roads quite slick for a little while. I heard of two people that I know who had accidents and we saw another. We came home by a less windy road than normal and didn’t have any trouble but on at least one occasion I had to rely on my anti-lock breaks to get the car stopped in time. It wasn’t terribly cold, right around freezing, which is when snow is the most slick, of course. Beautiful, too, of course.

Christmas Balls

We helped Cathy’s mom get Christmas decorations out this evening and I took a few pictures. I’ve always loved reflections. Hold on, I’m going to stop and think about that for a minute.

Alright, I’m done. This is a picture of one of those shiny, mirrored Christmas balls, with more Christmas balls reflected in it (as well as the photographer. As you can see, I bounced the flash off the ceiling, which made a bright spot, but not so bright as if I had aimed it straight at the balls.

Potatoes and Kale

I went to the grocery store this evening to buy a few things. Included on my shopping list were potatoes and kale, both of which are ingredients in caldo verde, a Portuguese soup that I plan to make for Sunday. When I was younger, I didn’t care for cooked greens but now I like them quite well. The soup is good, being thickened by the potatoes, which are cooked until they basically fall apart. Unfortunately, I have to make it ahead, and that means that by the time it is served, the kale will have lost its bright green color. It will still taste the same, but won’t be quite so appetizing a color.

Cracked Crackers

I don’t have a lot to say about this photograph. We had cheese and crackers out this evening, as we often (almost always) do when people come over. Some crackers were broken so they didn’t get put out. Don’t you hate it when you open a box of crackers and they’re all smashed up? But what can you do? Anyway, there were plenty that were not, in this case. Those that were got left in the kitchen and I took this picture after everyone had left. Even little pieces of cracker are fine, though, for some types of cheese, so they got eaten.

Dorothy at Wonder Books

Dorothy needed a copy of Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut, for book club in her literature class. She wanted to be able to annotate it, so we went to the local used book store to buy a copy she could write in. We found that and browsed a little while, coming home with about a dozen books. I love a good, used book store. There are actually two in our area, Wonder Books (which used to be the Book Alcove) on Shady Grove Road and Second Story Books on Parklawn Drive. I can spend a lot of time in either of them, but really, I shouldn’t be buying books when I have so many already waiting to be read.

Thanksgiving Pizza

We had something of a non-standard Thanksgiving today. We usually go to Cathy’s mother’s on Thursday and then to my mom’s on Friday. This year was a little different. I made a casserole with acorn squash, which turned out to be really, really good. The other thing I made was pizza dough. We each made a personal pizza with the toppings we each wanted. This is my pizza, fully cooked and ready for our Thanksgiving meal. Sausage, pepperoni, and anchovies isn’t everyone’s idea of a good pizza, but it works for me.

Tail Light Reflections

I hope you aren’t tired of reflections. I really like them so perhaps they show up here more than you’d like. Well, I suppose you could start your own photo blog and take the pictures you want to see online and I’ll keep taking the pictures I enjoy. It rained heavily most of the day today and the lights were reflecting more than normal off of the very wet roads.

There’s a portion of my not-too-long commute where the traffic almost always slows down to a crawl and often stops for a few moments. It isn’t took great a distance so I don’t mind it terribly and it does, on occasion, give me the opportunity to snap a few reflection pictures while I’m waiting. I took a few that show more cars but I like this one, which is mostly reflections.

Water On a Windshield

We had a little rain today. There was talk of more than just rain but it was never cold enough that it was going to happen. School opened on time and there wasn’t really any problem out on the roads today. When I left work, I noticed the patterns that the water was making on the windscreen and decided to take a few pictures. This is the one I like the best. I think the patterns are cool. I also like the organic shapes and shades of color made by the various thicknesses of water. Maybe I’m just easily entertained.

Erasers, Pens, and Pencils

I was looking around the house again for things to photograph. Dorothy’s vast collection of colored pencils, pens, markers, and paints often catches my eye in such circumstances. This time, instead of focusing on the pens and pencils themselves, I looked at the erasers.

Something new and with its own set of colors, muted and transferred in the process or removing colors from drawings.