I managed to dress myself properly today. This shirt has buttons near the top, providing both visual and tactile information on whether or not I have it on inside out.
Also, I wore pants.
Who knows what tomorrow may bring? I face it unafraid.
Category: General
I Shouldn’t Be Allowed To Dress Myself
I really shouldn’t.
At the end of the work day as I got ready to leave, I realized I had my shirt on inside out, and it had been that way the entire day. I thought back to how many people would have seen me like that, I’m sure some of my colleagues must think I’m a maroon, but fortunately I had worn another shirt over it most of the day to stay warm.
Still …
Which Way Forward, Part I: The Gathering Storm
I’m reading what is far and away my favorite book, Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird. A while back I decided to read it when I was ready to start writing again, and I’m about at that point.
I had started a novel back in November 2005 (for National Novel Writing Month). It’s a fantasy book, all animals, with the main characters loosely based off of pets I’ve had in my life, plus one animal to represent myself. Really all of the characters reflect who I think I am, wish I was, or am afraid I could be.
I shelved it for a while while I worked out some major plot points and decided what would happen after this part of their story (so I won’t have one of those “Oh wait, Vader should be his father” moments when writing the story that follows).
The characters have been daily companions of mine for the past couple of years, bouncing around in my head, and it’s time to put their story into words. The problem is, I love coming up with the story, but am not so fond of the writing itself. And I like editing even less. But this is something I want to try, as I don’t know how good (or bad) I will be, and there’s only one way to find out.
The biggest obstacle is time. What do I give up to find the time and energy to write? I had considered cutting back on wildlife watching and hiking, but I think that’s the wrong direction to go.
I may have stumbled across the right idea, which is to shut down my web site and use the time I spend writing it for real writing. I could move this blog to a hosted site, and a subset of my pictures to some place like Flickr. The money it takes to run the site could be funneled into photography gear or travel.
I’m a bit hesitant however as I’ve had the site in one form or another going all the way back to my grad school days. Ironically, it was a lot more fun in the early days, even though my photography was terrible and my scans of my negatives even worse. Yet the web was a smaller and friendlier place back then and I got a variety of nice emails from people in all walks of life.
A retired park ranger who was overjoyed to stumble across pictures of a park he used to manage. Couples from around the world who were reminded of places they had honeymooned years ago. Mothers and grandmothers who enjoyed the wildlife that they wouldn’t otherwise get to see. A police officer who liked to look at the images when she needed to relax from the stress of her job.
I rarely get email these days, and personal email even less. A quick search on Google and Yahoo revealed that there are some educational sites linking into mine, but I suspect that the number of visits is pretty small.
I haven’t tracked my site’s statistics in about 10 years, as I write the site for myself — it’s improved my photography by forcing me to organize and critique my pictures. And while that’s still true, some of the photography tools that have emerged the past few years can help with that with less effort.
I’m going to run Google’s analysis tools this month to see how the site is actually being utilized, and then I’ll make a decision on the best way forward. In the meantime, I’ll probably drop the “What’s New” page, to see how much that simplifies things.
Today’s title is a nod to one of my favorite Monty Python episodes, the Golden Age of Ballooning.
The Reason I Keep Band-aids in My Camera Bag
Saturday afternoon as soon as I got to Ridgefield, I cut my finger getting the big lens out of its case. There isn’t anything sharp in there so I’m not sure how I did it, but fortunately I keep a bag of band-aids in the front of my camera bag. It wasn’t a deep cut but was bleeding bright red blood, so I cleaned myself up before bleeding all over the lens.
I learned to keep the bandages in my camera bag a few years ago during my first visit to Yellowstone. On my first day on the first trail, as I got out of the car I reached into my camera bag and cut my finger. There wasn’t anything sharp in there so I’m not sure how I did it, but I had some band-aids in my first aid kit in my backpack. That night I bought a box of band-aids and have kept some in my camera bag ever since.
The thing is, I’ve not been able to figure out how I keep slicing my finger when there are no sharp objects to be seen. But on the way home from the refuge, it suddenly dawned on me. It’s so obvious I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before.
Invisible wolverines.
Wolverines!
This Year’s Contribution To The World of Modern Art
My whiteboard before I left for this year’s trip to Yellowstone and the Tetons.
Hurricane Boolie
Right after I posted the picture of Scout in my previous post, I took my headphones off and headed towards the dining room to close the windows and then go to bed. I stopped in the living room when I heard the sound of rushing water. It would have been a pleasing sound to lull me off to sleep had I been camping near a mountain stream, but it’s not the kind of thing you want to hear when you are standing in your house.
I went outside and water was gushing out of the faucet in front of the house. I turned the water off but there was already a pool of water outside the basement window. I grabbed a bucket and scooped out as much water as I could, then ran down to the basement where water was everywhere. I put towels down and spent the next couple of hours soaking up water from a couple of rooms, and then the next couple of hours soaking up water from the one carpeted room. I had a couple of fans running to try and dry out what I couldn’t soak up.
I eventually was so tired I couldn’t even stand and fell asleep right on the carpet. My wife woke me a few minutes later and I went upstairs for an hour of sleep before having to get up for work. I had a conference call with one of our partners in the morning so I couldn’t come in late.
Unfortunately, this sad tale doesn’t end there. My wife discovered this morning that another section of the carpet had gotten soaked, which meant it had been wet for over three days. I blotted up as much water as I could during the day but it may be a lost cause, it may have mildewed already. There are times I have a love-hate relationship with plumbing, but I’d have a hard timing giving it up. I enjoy my hot showers a little too much, not to mention laundry machines and dishwashers.
I suppose it’s home ownership that I really have a love-hate relationship with. The thing I hated about apartment living is hearing the TV of your neighbor because of the shared walls, hearing them walk around their apartment. Just hearing them — I like my quiet. And pet restrictions are a bother too. On the other hand, I hate the amount of time you spend in upkeep inside and outside a house, and would much prefer to spend more time on the trails and less time on the house. It is nice to let the cats run around in the fenced backyard, and perhaps one day I’ll be able to attract a decent variety of birds, so maybe I just need to replace our living plants with carefree plastic ones 😉
As for the cause of Hurricane Boolie, it turns out when I had attempted to power wash the front steps a week or so ago, I had left the spigot turned on — it was connected to a hose and nozzle so I wasn’t too worried about it. But the hose literally just fell apart and that’s when the water started pouring out.
Lesson learned.
It Was Bound To Happen
While riding the train to work this morning, I was adding a couple of pictures to my website. After getting the second picture ready, I looked out the window and realized I had stumbled into a rift in the space-time continuum. Out the right window was a lush forest, which I don’t normally see on the ride in. A quick glance out the left showed a train platform, which would explain why we were stopped. It slowly dawned on me that I had actually missed my stop and gone one train station too far. It was too late to get out so I waited until the next station before hopping on the next train back towards work. Fortunately I didn’t have any urgent appointments, I’ll have to be more on my toes tomorrow.
It’s the first time it’s happened since we moved here years ago. I’ve come close before when I fall asleep, but I was wide awake this morning, but apparently too in awe of my own photography.
The Fruit of My Labors
When we moved here a few years ago, the backyard was ringed by grape vines. Underneath those grape vines, as tall as I am, were a jungle of weeds. That’s not an exaggeration, it was a mess. As I spent the summer(s) pulling up the weeds, I came across a few small strawberry plants on one side of the yard, either escapees or a mostly forgotten remnant of a previous garden. I decided to save the strawberry plants and they offered up the occasional berry, although the bugs and birds and slugs got most of them. When I removed the grapes, though, the strawberries came into their own. They got bigger and produced more fruit last year, and this year they’ve propagated quite a few new plants (several times what we had a couple of years ago), and the older plants are producing some absolutely delicious berries.
The coneflower bloomed like crazy although they’re drying out, so I’ve started watering them on occasion. I suppose I’ll have to divide one of them before next year as it’s just gone insane with several dozen big blossoms. It’s my favorite flower so I’m happy to see them thriving after they were moved to the backyard. I cut back some of the daisies, they were overrun with aphids in the early summer and didn’t look too good, but hopefully the new batch will fare better now that the invasion is past. Some of the roses are doing great and some are on death’s door, we’ll see how they do.
A hummingbird has visited the back each of the past two evenings, so I suppose I should put up the feeder. I need to get an ant guard for it but for now I’ll put it up without one as I’d like to attract the ferocious little birds. The hummer certainly got the attention of the cats right away, even more than the neighborhood squirrels.
And now it’s getting dark enough back here that it’s hard to see Templeton as he moves about the yard, so it’s time to head inside. Scout has enough white that she sticks out like a sore thumb, but Templeton can really disappear in the dim light when he wants to.
The New Picasso
The art world is abuzz over the discovery of what many are calling This Generation’s Picasso.
I drew this on my whiteboard at work last fall to inform my group I was leaving for Yellowstone and the Tetons.
It’s OK to weep.
Feelings
Do you know that wonderful feeling when you wake up and realize it’s Saturday and you have the day to yourself? Do you know that miserable feeling when you realize it isn’t Saturday, it’s Friday, and you have to get up and go to work?
At least Scout climbed on top of me this morning when I woke up and tried to soften the blow.
Boolie 