February 27
[Taken 16 February 2006 | Stargazer Lily | Dayton, OH]
Ugh. Been too busy with various things lately... and I don't expect much of a reprieve for another couple of days at least. Both good busy and just plain busy busy.
However. Don your cheap sparkly beads and eat some paczki because tomorrow is Shrove Tuesday. They have already been doing their level best to celebrate for the past week and a half down in what is left of New Orleans. (good for them) If you have never had a paczki before, it is this Polish, fried, filled, donut thing... very very delicious and very bad for you. I love paczkis, especially the custard-filled ones.
Q: How many calories does a paczki have?
A1: <Carl Sagan voice> Billions and billions of calories! </Carl
Sagan voice>
A2: All of them
A3: You really don't want to know
A4: Who cares? I only eat them once a year!
A5: All of the above
I also have a new hat.
February 23
[Taken 2 February 2006 | Twisted | Dayton, OH]
I am reading a new Charles de Lint book that I found at the bookstore a little while ago - "The Blue Girl". Well, I was reading it. I started it this morning and just finished it. All 400 pages of it. And I put in a full day of work as well. Damn... I'm good.
Charles de Lint may be a kind of a one-trick pony of an author, but it is a very pretty pony, and it is a very nice trick. Sometimes I get tired of reading about the technical aspects of photography, or about coding, or even about history or forensic anthropology. Sometimes I just want escapist fantasy.
A lot of people have "comfort food". I don't, not really, not unless you count coffee or tea (black licorice or any type of mint). But I do have comfort books and comfort authors... ones that I can read over and over and over again.
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I got my girl scout cookies today.
One of my co-workers was pimping out his daughter's girl scout cookies (made from real girl scouts!) about a month ago, and I put in an order for some. (Some = 6 boxes, which will be devoured slowly over the next six months, or maybe all at once this weekend in an orgy of gluttony.) It made me feel old... I can remember when I was in the girl scouts and was hawking those overpriced cookies from door to door. And now I am the person who is buying the cookies... partly out of nostalgia, partly out of guilt (because it is a "good cause"), and partly because they are damn tasty.
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I have had the late-winter blues the past couple of days.
February 19
[Taken 11 February 2006 | Rachel Bryce | Centerville, OH]
I finished putting up the photos from last weekend's dance performance. Well, not of the performance, as cameras were banned during it, but shots that I took after the performance. They can be seen here on my flickr site.
February 18
[Taken 11 February 2006 | Rachel Bryce | Centerville, OH]
This afternoon I went to pick up my "rejected" photos from the Rosewood Gallery. I finally heard from them last weekend about the "Works on Paper" show. Of the three photographs I submitted, one of them got in. The one that got in was the one that Sarah and I agreed "if any of them get accepted, it will be this one", when I showed her the pieces I was going to enter last month. I am pleased that I got something in again.
The opening reception is February 26, from 2-4pm. The show runs from February 27 through March 31.
February 17
[Taken 11 February 2006 | Fire Girls | Centerville, OH]
Their names are KC and Elana, and they are part of a dance/poi group from Chicago called Ruby Hoop.
Basically they light things on fire and then dance with them. They are very talented and very fun to watch.
February 16
[Taken 11 February 2006 | Rachel Bryce | Centerville, OH]
Wow, I have been busy
The weekend was pretty non-stop for me. Kira had Rachel Bryce at the studio as as a special guest teacher for two days worth of yoga and tribal fusion dance workshops, both days of which I went to. The workshops were pretty heavy on the yoga, which was a heck of a lot more of a workout then I was expecting it to be. I admit that always thought of yoga as being a bit wishy-washy... good for stretching out, and good for relaxation, but not a "real" workout the way that running four miles on the elliptical machine and then doing sets on the weight machines at the gym is a real workout. And I can admit that I was dead wrong. The yoga really kicked my ass. (Not to self: figure out a way to add yoga to workout routine.) The dance portion of the workshop was a lot of refinement of moves we had already started to learn, as well as learning about multiple new and different ways to do some moves that we already knew. I learned a lot.
Saturday evening was a show, and a lot of local (and not so local... there were some dancers who came from Chicago and Ann Arbor to take the workshops and perform) solo dancers and troops performed, as well as Rachel. There was a general ban on cameras during the show, which was kind of a bummer in some ways... the dancing was really amazing... but I could understand. It was too dark to get good shots of people moving quickly without using a flash, and using a flash would have seriously distracted and pissed off the dancers. In addition, particularily in the case of the girls who were dancing with hula hoops that they had set on fire, it would have been downright dangerous. I got a lot of good shots after the show, when the camera bad was lifted, anyway.... most of which I am still processing. Plus, since I wasn't able to photograph the show (and I have to admit that I do tend toward a little bit of photo-obsession when I have a camera in my hands) I could actually sit back and watch and enjoy. You miss a lot when you only look at events through the viewfinder of a camera.
It was a good weekend. It was a great weekend.
Valentine's Day was pretty great as well. It was very low-key, which is honestly how I prefer to have it. John got me a bouquet of roses and stargazer lilies. I got him a nice bottle of dry red zinfandel. (Renwood 2002 Old Vine ... highly recommended. Very tasty.) John had to work late, otherwise we would have gone to fencing practice, and then on to dinner and drinks at Tank's as usual. As it was, I just went to the gym and then made a chicken, rice, and veggie stir-fry for dinner.
The flowers smell wonderful... you can smell them all over the entire first floor of the house. I love them.
Thank you, John.
February 15
[Taken 11 February 2006 | Backlit | Centerville, OH]
February 9
[Taken 4 February 2006 | Water Droplets | Dayton, OH]
Drops of water and melting snow on the windscreen of my car, as seen from the driver's seat on a cold and snowy afternoon.
February 8
[Taken 4 February 2006 | Thistles during a snowfall | Dayton, OH]
While registering for the CHI conference in April, I found (and reported) an error on one of the technical program schedule pages in their site.
Do I get a prize? I think that I ought to get a prize. Especially since the error meant that the two courses that I wanted to take, and that were displayed on the schedule as being sequential, were actually running concurrently. D'oh.
February 6
[Taken 4 February 2006 | Ice | Dayton, OH]
I spent a lot of time this weekend getting some photos ready to enter in the Works on Paper show at the Rosewood Gallery. I entered three photos last year (the maximum entries allowed) and one was accepted into the show. This year I am again entering three photos, and will be keeping my fingers crossed for the next couple of weeks while the entries are being judged.
Looking around at some of the other entries while I was dropping off mine during lunch I was pretty impressed by some of the stuff... some really good photography, some good prints, and some nice pen and ink stuff. Of course, there was also a bunch of stuff that I consider (apologies just crap. Collages (cutting pictures out of magazines and gluing it onto paper is not original art), a million and one mediocre pencil-sketch portraits, paper-mache stuff, huge abstract oil pastel things... eh. Not my taste and not always what I consider to be art. But art is in the eye of the beholder. There was plenty of stuff that got into last years show that frankly had me scratching my head, going "huh?" and wondering what the judges were smoking. It all depends on who is judging the show and what their tastes are.
I actually kind of felt like I did a bit of a half-assed job this year... not with the photographs themselves, as I had a bunch of good stuff to choose from (hard to narrow my selection down to just three) and basically just had to print, mat, and frame stuff... but because I found out about the entry dates a bit late and felt like I was doing everything a bit last minute. If I had had more time I would have done some stuff differently. For instance, I wish that I had time to get a larger print of one of the photos then I could handle on my photo printer, 11x14 or larger instead of 8x10, and then get a mat custom cut, instead of going with the out-of-the-box options. Eh. Stuff to keep in mind for next year...
February 5
[Taken 15 January 2006 | Bird, with Moon and Trees | Dayton, OH]
We finally have some wintry goodness here. A light dusting of snow is still snow. I know that the weather here lately has been beautiful, and I appreciated it, but I still missed the normal winter.
Yesterday I was running some errands when it actually started to snow quite hard. One of my stops was at the mall... I feel that sometimes there is not better place for people watching then at a mall. For example. I saw a girl who was in deep denial of the sudden turn of the weather and who was wearing a tank top, itty-bitty little skirt, platform sandles, and no jacket. She was getting out of a car in the parking lot and was kind of hopping around and trying to keep the snow from landing on her bare skin. I also saw a gaggle of young punks, who were declairing their individuality by all dressing alike, and who had so many chains hanging off of their pants that there was practicly more chain then fabric. One poor lad had to keep hitching up his pants, as the weight of his chains kept threatening to pull them down. Heh heh.
Not that I plan on watching the Super Bowl, as John and I have a selection of movies from the library instead, but we are still planning on eating nachos and drinking beer in honor of the day. I also have the latest book of essays by David Foster Wallace, Consider the Lobster, that I am looking forward to starting.
February 3
[Taken 2 February 2006 | Sunrise | Dayton, OH]
February 2
[Taken 1 February 2006 | Sunrise | Dayton, OH]
We have been having some gorgeous sunrises here lately. This is the second morning in a row where I have run out of the house in the early morning, barefoot, with wet hair, and camera in hand, so that I could stand in the middle of the front yard and take pictures of the trees and sky.
I wonder if my neighbors think that I am crazy yet?
February 1
[Taken 19 December 2005 | Withered Leaves | Dayton, OH]
No, I did not watch the State of the Union address last night. Not really interested, despite my keen interest in national and world affairs. I doubted that G Dubya would say anything that would surprise me. Irritate me, certainly, but not surprise me.
John and I went to fencing as usual. Then we all went to Tank's for late dinner and drinks afterward as usual. The address was being shown on a couple of the televisions at Tank's, but as the sound was turned off (or turned way way down) and I was too far from any of the sets to be able to read any of the closed captioning, it was easy to ignore.