Monthly Archives: July 2016

Charcoal Embers

I know that on the Fourth of July I should be able to come up with a better picture than this. In years past I’ve had pictures of fireworks or of people celebrating Independence Day in various ways. This year we stayed home and had a pretty low key celebration. I marinated flank steak and grilled it, along with some slices of fresh pineapple and we had our two moms over for an early dinner. It rained pretty hard and we never really even considered going out to see fireworks. After dinner, I took some pictures of the leftover ashes and embers in the hibachi, but that’s about it. Maybe we’ll do something more exciting next year (but you won’t put any money on it, if you are wise).

Shadows Of The Past

With David and Maggie in town and having had our fun outing yesterday, today was more work than play. That’s not to say we had no fun together, but we spent much of the day going through Cathy and David’s mom’s shed and throwing away old, sometimes mouse eaten papers, among many other things. There was a metal cabinet outside her kitchen door that at one time had gardening tools, a few buckets of paint, and some small bottles of pesticide, among other things. Many other things, actually. As is often the case with cabinets of this sort, it eventually became a little less organized and there were things there that were long since forgotten and which needed to be tossed. In fact, we decided that the entire cabinet was ready for the county’s metal recycling program. This is the top of one shelf. You can clearly see that there was a can of something brown, viscous, and oily, which leaked out and held some other items in place, including two small packs of fasteners, which still remain firmly attached.

I took two trips to the dump plus one before this, with some yard waste that I had loaded into the van last week. In the evening we came back to our house and I fixed grandma’s famous chicken and pilau recipes, which turned out pretty well. At least no one pushed their plates away in disgust.

Glitter

It was a slow day photographically. That happens fairly often, I suppose. This take-a-picture-a-day thing is great in theory. If I didn’t work or was able to get outdoors to different places every day, it would be a lot easier. As it is, my life isn’t all that interesting. Nine days out of ten there’s nothing of any note to photograph. Oh, taking pictures of flowers, insects, and the occasional sunset is all well and good but some days, even that doesn’t happen. So, I look around the house for something a little different. There was some glitter on the dining room table, left over from a recent baby shower (well, the ‘baby’ is 8, but whatever). So, that’s what I photographed. I like the fact that this one star-shaped piece is standing point down in the tablecloth. You can also make out the reflection of the tablecloth pattern in the center of the star.

Reflections

We had a nice long weekend away, tracking down some of Cathy’s family history. We also got to see some pretty sights, including the Delaware Water Gap, the Quiet Valley Living Historical Farm, three very different cemeteries, a train museum, and we even went to a coal mining museum. The Lackawanna Coal Mine Tour and Anthracite Heritage Museum were closed by the time we got there but we were able to walk around a little and saw such things as a 13,000 pound chuck of anthracite and the adit where tours go down into the old mine workings. If we’re ever back in Scranton, particularly if it’s as hot as it’s been this weekend, that should be high on our list of things to do.

This morning, I went down to breakfast early and then was back in our hotel room, doing a little writing in my journal. I opened the curtain just enough to give me a little light to work by and these four stripes appeared on the wall. The sun was reflecting off the windscreens of four cars parked outside and shining up through the hotel room window, which was covered with condensation, giving the light the speckled appearance you see here. I took this picture as an abstract, really. It has no real meaning, but I think it’s a pretty pattern.

A Small Basket’s Lid

I’m sorry to say that today’s photograph is mostly filler. I’m tempted to say all filler, because it’s not really much of a photograph. We have this little basket that’s been sitting on our mantle for a while now. I’m not entirely sure where it came from (and Cathy isn’t here right now for me to ask). Anyway, I took some close up pictures of it today and that’s all I have. This is the lid from the basket (which is also woven).

Actually, when I went to get them off my camera, I got a bit worried. I take the pictures from my camera and put them into directories with the date as part of their name. When I went to get pictures for July 22, there were none. I panicked briefly thinking I hadn’t taken any for today. But my computer and my camera don’t seem to be on the same page in terms of daylight saving time and the computer thought they were taken at 12:05 tomorrow morning. The time recorded by the camera within the image was correct, however, showing up as 11:05 PM today.