Miscellaneous

Assorted Coins

We started working on the basement in my mom’s house today and will continue for the next few days. Don’t worry, I’m not going to show anyone “before” or even “after” pictures of the basement. No one wants that. These are some coins that were in one of the drawers in my dad’s desk. They vary considerably in age and are mostly English and French, although I see a few Austrian and one Finnish 10 markkaa piece from 1958 and two Belgian 5 franc pieces. There is also a medallion with a Delta Sigma (ΔΣ).

Lake Needwood

Another in my series of pictures to refute my own complaint that I don’t live in a pretty place. I don’t pass Lake Needwood in the middle of the day that often, usually going by on the way to work after dropping the carpool off at school or coming home late in the day. I was fortunate enough to be going by at about 11:00 today and stopped for some pictures. I has stayed cool and the sky has remained a wonderful clear blue that we don’t see in the sweltering heat of summer. This may not be the Rockies but it’s a pretty place, I think.

The Springs Farm

It was a wonderfully cool fall day today and I took full advantage of it. Dorothy was away on a church retreat. Cathy had her second soccer game of the fall season. I ran up to Germantown to the Lancaster County Dutch Market to buy a few things. From there I went out 118 to our friends’ farm outside of Poolesville. On the way I passed Springs Farm and stopped to take a few photographs. I complained here recently that we don’t live in an absurdly beautiful place, like some of our friends and relations. I don’t know if this qualifies as absurdly beautiful and it isn’t exactly on my daily commute, but it’s pretty nice. I love the yellowing soy beans in the foreground, the incredible blue of the sky and of course the red barn as a focal point.

Westat’s 50^th Anniversary

From the company website:

In 2013, Westat is celebrating 50 years of research and analysis, contributing to numerous advances in health, education, the environment, and public policy. We are commemorating this anniversary with a number of events throughout the year to recognize this milestone, and we have adopted the tagline “50 Years … Improving lives through research” to highlight the year.

One of the events mentioned was a big party under a tent in the parking lot. It was quite a party, actually, and the food was excellent. It would have been nicer if it wasn’t quite so hot, but that’s another matter. Earlier in the day I took this picture of the tent from the rooftop terrace.

Sushi

Dorothy was feeling like pizza this evening but by the time Kendra got here and we got going, it was nearly 9:00. By the time we got to Angelo’s, it was just about closing time. We decided to try Armand’s, instead, since they are open later. We ordered two pizzas and waited around outside while they were made and cooked. This picture is from Wasabi-Zen, the sushi place in the same building. Since the girls don’t really eat fish, we don’t do sushi much, unfortunately. Anyway, the pizza was terrific.

Wendy’s

I sometimes wish I lived in Colorado, or Northern California, or possibly Montana or New Mexico. Even West Virginia or the mountains of North Carolina or Tennessee. Don’t get me wrong, this part of Maryland has some pretty places. But Rockville doesn’t really stand out as a beautiful place. The route between work and home is mostly filled with commercial buildings — not exactly picturesque. Now and then I think about moving somewhere prettier but we have a lot of friends here. It would be hard to leave.

This evening I took Dorothy to her friend Kendra’s house. On the way home I was thinking about the scenery. While sitting at a light, I decided to get a picture of the Wendy’s with a blurred car in the foreground. So, here it is.

Diana of the Chase, by Anna Hyatt Huntington

Live Oak Allée

Cathy and I made Dorothy and Karlee come with us to Brookgreen Gardens today. I posted pictures from Brookgreen taken on August 2 of last year so I’ve tried to make this years pictures different from those. The first picture is of a circular pool with water lilies growing on it and with a sculpture called Diana of the Chase, by Anna Hyatt Huntington, in the center. The sign describing this bronze from 1922 says,

The Roman goddess of the hunt has just released her arrow as a hound leaps at her feet. Considered among Huntington’s finest works, and one of the few where the human figure is primary, Diana of the Chase was so popular that Huntington eventually created a second version some twenty years later to satisfy public demand. The example at Brookgreen was the sculptor’s own casting, originally located in the Huntington’s Fifth Avenue townhouse in New York City.

The second photograph is of one of the huge live oaks (Quercus virginiana) that lines the allée that was the land-side approach to the original Brookgreen Plantation house, which is no longer standing. They were planted as early as the 18th century. The trees are decorated with Spanish moss (Tillandsia usneoides) and the branches have resurrection fern (Polypodium polypodioides) growing on them. This spring, 60,000 caladiums were planted under the live oaks and I must say it is a very impressive display.

Boat Reflections

One evening when we’re at the beach we all go to dinner at Dockside, a seafood restaurant in Calabash, almost into South Carolina. Because with a part of more than 20 people we generally have a pretty significant wait to get in, we all walk around on the nearby dock. This picture is of the reflection of a fishing boat.

Ocean Isle Beach, North Carolina

Our summer was mostly only busy for Dorothy up through this weekend. Cathy and I continued to work. On July 27, though, we began three weeks of vacation, which is something I’ve been looking forward to for a few months. We started with a week at the beach. The beach, for us, generally means Ocean Isle Beach in southern North Carolina. On the day we arrived it was cloudy but very pleasant out. We went for a short walk on the beach just before sunset and I took a couple pictures of the ocean. This one is nice because it has a few birds in it — Least Sandpipers (Calidris minutilla) and a Willet (Tringa semipalmata).

Cinnamon Toast Crunch

This isn’t exactly the breakfast of champions. Nor is it the most spectacular picture for reintroducing my blog after a month. It is, however, one of only a handful of photographs that I took on July 25. The others have a bit more color in them but aren’t much more interesting. I’m just hoping that I’ll be able to keep your interest. Don’t worry, though, because I have some travel pictures coming soon.

I was a few days behind in posting pictures here because I was at the beach, enjoying myself and not thinking too much about responsibilities. While I was in that mode, my server crashed. That actually happened sometime on August 1 or 2. Then, we returned from the beach and left about 36 hours later for two weeks in England. The server was down all that time. I have it mostly back up and running and will begin posting pictures from the missing days.

Rest assured that there are pictures for every day, although, as usual, I don’t promise that they are any good.

Phoropter

I went to the eye doctor today. All seems well and I did very well on the peripheral vision test. He said he doesn’t see a lot of perfect scores but I got one with one eye and only missed one dot with the other, so that’s good news. He’s following two issues but said that neither is causing any problem and I don’t need to come more than once a year. While I was waiting, though I took this picture of the phoropter, although he didn’t actually use it this visit. My eye sight hasn’t really changed since I got my glasses.

Wild Raspberries

The other day I mentioned that I picked and ate some wild raspberries and that I planned to go out to pick more when I had the chance. We’ll, I finally got out again today and picked a nice big tub of them. It was pretty hot out but fortunately I was working mostly in the shade rather in bright sun. Still, I worked for these. I think it was worth the effort, though. Don’t they look good? They aren’t huge but they are very tasty.

Fountain Splash

For those who don’t like pictures of the creepy crawlies, here’s a non-insect, non-spider photograph. It’s interesting that people who are given the willies by spiders or most insects often don’t have any problem with butterflies. They are pretty, to be sure, but they are still basically just bugs with big wings.

In any case, this is a picture I took in the evening after dinner. We went to Baskin-Robbins for ice cream and then sat watching the fountain. There were no children playing in the fountain, as there so often are, but Cathy and Dorothy at least put their feet in the spray.

This picture is of a spout of water against the darkening evening sky. It’s a photograph that makes me strangely happy.

Rockville Fireworks

We decided to walk with Albert and Brady to see the Rockville fireworks this year. As it turns out, we stopped walking a bit sooner that we probably should. Ralph and Tsai-Hong went on and saw them much more closely than we did, although we got a reasonable view. We were a bit surprised at the brevity fo the show. Well, it turns out that it was due to a technical fault. The City of Rockville put out the following notice:

Due to technical difficulties, the annual Rockville Independence Day fireworks show was shorter than anticipated.

The show, planned to be about 20 minutes, experienced technical difficulties about six minutes after it started.

Unable to diagnose the problem, the fireworks technician made the decision to move directly to the show’s three minute finale, which was unaffected.

Thank you to everyone who attended. We will be working with our fireworks vendor to do everything possible to avoid this from occurring in the future.

Still, considering how little effort we went to, the show was fine and we were with family and good friends. You really cannot ask for much more than that.

Leather Tiles

I happened to be in Bethesda this evening and ran some errands before finding a place to get a quick dinner. There are lots of choices in terms of eating establishments but most of them would probably have taken longer than I had time for. Nando’s Peri Peri looked like it was just what I wanted. It’s name is a misspelling (I assume intentional for trademark purposes) of piri piri, the Portuguese hot sauce made with African bird’s eye chilis (Capsicum frutescens) and often containing some or all of the following: citrus peel, onion, garlic, coriander leaves (cilantro), salt, pepper, lemon or lime juice, paprika, pimiento, basil, oregano, and tarragon.

I found the decor of the place interesting and I took a few photographs with my camera sitting on top of my camera bag to hold it steady in the dim light of evening (and it was raining outside). This column in the middle of the restaurant is covered with beautiful, brightly colored tiles. It turns out, though, that they are not ceramic, as I first thought. They are made of colored leather. I also liked the assortment of incandescent light bulbs. Somehow, compact fluorescent lamps wouldn’t have given the same feel. I wonder where you have to go to get those. They’ll probably be a black market item, soon.

The chicken was delicious, by the way. I got it “hot,” which I recommend.

Raining Cats and Dogs

Downed Tree, Near Miss

Since most of my followers are reasonably local, most of you probably already know of the severe storm we had here. For those of you seeing this from further afield (I know there are a few folks in Alaska and England, to name a few places) we had a small tornado touch down about a mile and a half from our house.

We had little or no damage to our trees. The cap blew off the top of our furnace chimney. That chimney isn’t actually used any more, so except for keeping water out, it’s not that bit a deal. There were a lot of trees down in the neighborhood, though. Around the corner the road was blocked and in the evening crews were working. Up at the end of a court a tree was down on a van, but thankfully no one was hurt. Our friends had a tree fall between their house and the neighbors’ house, doing only minimal damage and barely missing one of their cars. Yes, this one could have been a lot worse. To add great news to the good news of it missing their house and cars, it turns out the tree belongs to the county so they won’t even have to pay to cut it down.

Some people were not so fortunate, of course, and our prayers go out for them.

My Hand with IV Tube

Sort of unexpected turn of events. I had hernia surgery just over a month ago. It wasn’t healing well and seemed to be infected. I went to see the doctor yesterday and we decided he should get in and clean things up. So, I’m back in the O.R. to be reopened. Would have been better if he put a zipper in me so he didn’t have to use a knife this time, but that’s the way it goes. The nurses got a kick out of me taking pictures of the pre-op area and of my hand with an I.V. tube going into it. I didn’t know if I would feel up to taking pictures later in the day, so I figured I better get something done before they put me out. As it turned out, I didn’t take any more pictures, so you’re stuck with this one. The surgery went well and I’m home, recovering.

Rain On My Window

We had a bit of rain today. I hadn’t realized it was coming because my desk is situated so that I’m facing away from my window most of the time. I also have a fan running most of the time because it’s always pretty hot in my office. A particularly strong gust of wind blew the rain against the window loudly enough that I noticed, so I pulled out the camera and took a few pictures. Rain on a window isn’t all that interesting, I suppose, but it represents today pretty well. If you happen to like water on glass, as I do, then you might enjoy the work of this painter. I have to keep reminding myself that these are oil paintings, not photographs. http://www.gregorythielker.com/Under/unmindingsky.html

Headless Rabbit

I took a fairly wide variety of pictures today, as well as some video and I wasn’t sure what I should post but in the end I decided to go with something a little off beat. Dorothy and I were coming home from a church meeting and decided to take the scenic route. It doesn’t exactly cross the moors or go through mountain passes but it’s different to our normal route. This picture is something we spotted on the way. I don’t really have any explanation for it or comment on it, though. It is what it is.