Miscellany of a Cheshire Cat

It occured to me that I never posted the pictures of the dead jellyfish from Hilton Head Island I’d promised back in April. While I decide if that’s too morbid or not, here’s a seagull about to be hit by wave (well not really) from the same trip. He had quite the jaunty bounce to his step… probably because he was trying to avoid stepping on the dead and dying jellyfish.

The week continues to be an adventure at work. Someone wants me in a meeting at 8 a.m. tomorrow. Luckily, he didn’t specify I had to be happy about it. I really need to start work around 7, I suspect, given we’re leaving for the airport at 2.

Did I mention we’re going away for the weekend? Did I mention we’re going to Las Vegas? No, we are not getting married this weekend. Yes, we are visiting the lions and whoever else is in residence at the big cat habitat in the MGM Grand. Yes, we are seeing a Cirque show - Zumanity. There will also be pirates, blue men and ponchos, and funny men who are made funnier by one’s silence. It should be a fun weekend.

If I survive the weekend… I’ll be flying up to Connecticut for a quick work trip Monday eve through Wednesday eve. Quick, but useful.

tags: hilton head island, las vegas, meetings, ocean, photographs, photography, seagull, south carolina, travel, work

If you’re like me and only remember/care about the dream sequences from The Cell and though they were glorious, you might be interested in the interview with the director, Tarsem, up on the AV Club. Tarsem himself admits to only taking the job so he could do the dream scenes. He’s got a new film coming to theaters: The Fall. I’m curious to see it as it sounds fascinating. Take a look at the stills or watch the trailer. It just looks like such an awesome trip.

In other news, I have 3 rose blossoms going full force in the garden and I’m considering starting construction on an ark. It’s been gray and raining here for what feels like a couple weeks. The basement seems the perfect place to test prototypes too. I really wish the washer and dryer were on the drier side of the basement. I don’t mind a wet basement but I do mind not being able to do laundry!

tags: ark, house, movies, photography, phtographs, rain, tarsem, the cell, the fall, weather

Spring Passing / Summer Promising: A short series.
So often we celebrate spring or summer. But right now, in my garden, it’s the time when spring is starting to wan while summer is not yet ready to explode.

The flowers on the azaleas and the pink bush of doom are starting to lose their flowers. I’m really excited by the progress the peonies are making since being transplanted last Fall. They have settled in and taken off! I was concerned when I planted them that the soil was too low quality for them along the fence. Apparently I was wrong. I can’t wait until they start blooming! The two new rose bushes are in the ground and I’m hoping for flowers this summer but not holding my breath. The other rose bush is already budding up a storm and I’m not sure the new ones will catch up.

After a few chilly gray days I’ve been opening windows to try to get the house to warm up. Ah… the thermal glory of stone walls. I wish they went all the way up instead of just the first floor!

tags: azaleas, flowers, peonies, photographs, photography, roses, spring, summer

So I have several favorite quilts from the International Quilt Show as well as several I was heartbroken that I couldn’t capture about because they had “no photography” signs on them. I’m sure it comes as no surprise to most of you that one of my favorite quilts is a winter tree quilt. It’s a little quilt - 9×11 inches - and the stitches are very intricate! In the close-up version you can see the tiny stitches that make up the graceful snowflakes. I really love the shimmer of this quilt too. Just pretty… very pretty. :) I love that a lot of very careful work went into this small work of fabric art.

Happily, in other news, the week is half over! 2 more days then I go on a vacation with no firm plans other than our plane tickets! YAY! I have a huge list of things I want to edit or write not to mention a large pile of books to read on the trip. I will whittle down my lists and still not accomplish much on vacation I’m sure… which is probably how it should be. I still really need a vacation so I should take the time for a proper recharge.

I did get the Bernina embroidery software installed on my laptop last night. The delay was because I had to install Windows first. (Boo!) It all seems pretty stable so far. I opened a few designs that were pre-installed and decided I should probably go through the tutorial. That’s right… I’m going to do the tutorial for a piece of software. Why? Well, it’s essentially high-end graphic design software and that’s not something I’m very good at and the icons often make absolutely no sense so it’s hard to punt. I’ll figure it out probably half way through the tutorial, get bored, quit the tutorial and be off and running.

tags: bernina, chicago, embroidery software, international quilt show, quilts, snowflakes, vacation, winter

That’s right, folks! Scandalous photos of Spring-like things that will depress and exasperate my dear mother especially since they got 5 inches of snow on Friday. Shhh… don’t tell her.

Oh. Hi. If it’s any consolation, dear Mum, it was too chilly to work outside, at least given that I’m fighting off a cold or something.

This weekend was almost really incredibly productive! Instead it was just soft of productive. Yesterday the Fop woke up not feeling well at all and decided it was best not to go to Mudthaw. When he eventually felt more human we hit a movie. Superhero Movie falls squarely in a genre I really don’t care for but I hated Spiderman so much, I thought it would be fun to see the parody. Indeed, it was fun - it turned out to be a little better than a series of jokes and spoofs strung together by virtue of each skit involving the same characters and it was definitely far superior to Spiderman. Don’t get me wrong - it was still a dumb movie, but it was a parody of something I felt needed to be parodied and I enjoyed the silliness and stupidity. Leslie Nielson is still quite a crazy, dead-pan man. Pamela Anderson still has boobs that defy the laws of physics. (I’m surprised more physicists don’t try to give her a ticket for that as a pickup line. Then again, she probably doesn’t hang out in many locales populated by physicists.) I’m not saying you should go see this movie, but it didn’t suck. If you do go, stay through the credits because there are several more little skits in the final credits that look like they got cut from the movie.

Now that the Denny’s near us has improved its service AND eliminated its smoking section, we’ve gotten in the habit of having breakfast/brunch over there like once a weekend. So this “morning” involved Denny’s then a trip to Home Depot for indoor gardening supplies. I may or may not have over-purchased. After an afternoon of standing in the sun out on the enclosed porch, I have transplanted about a dozen plants and started seeds for 3 or 4 types of hot peppers, chives, parsley, basil, white echinacea flowers, columbine and 3 pots of oat grass for the kitties. I have a plan for a raised bed herb garden. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with the peppers yet.

In other spring news, again don’t tell my mother, the peonies that Janet gave me in October appear to have weathered the incredibly and depressingly mild winter quite well in their new beds. I can see the beginnings of new growth poking up through the rather clay-like ground I planted them in. Finally there will be flowers in the narrow strip between the driveway and the fence! Fierce peonies! The plum tree is budding, as seen here. The rose bush is starting to show new growth as well. The lilies have already popped up new growth and the lone tulip is deciding if it’s going to bud or not. It’s good that I have already given up on winter (despite the fact that my desktop image is a photo of a pink flamingo lawn ornament under snow), otherwise all this spring stuff would be hard to take.

Oh, and dear mother? Yes, this is revenge for all the photos of snow you sent me.

tags: buds, flowers, gardening, indoor gardening, photographs, photography, plum tree, snow, spring, weekend, winter

Bunnies bearing eggs are not to be trusted!

As appropriate, I had easter candy for breakfast. And that was the full extent of my observance of the holiday. Some traditions should not be broken.

All in all, this was not the most productive weekend in history, but it suited my mood. I could have used a little more sleep, but that was apparently not to be. I could have used a little more time with my brain functioning as well, but this was also not to be. Oh well.

We did go see 10,000 B.C. in which we saw some pretty ticked off giant arboreal attack chickens who were some ticked about that bunny stealing their eggs. Even after bracing ourselves for a fantasy movie, it was a pretty bad movie. Silly and amusing enough but bad. I don’t feel cheated out of time and money, but in hindsight I really didn’t need to see it.

The Bank Job would have benefited from skimpier costumes for Jason Statham. Alas, he was fully clothed most of the time. Despite this, it was a good, fun caper flick.

This weekend also involved looking at couches again as our current couch is rather … squished. We have confirmed that we are incredibly picky. We have also confirmed that we should probably carry around little cards that explain to sales people to leave us alone because they’re more likely to get a sale that way. However, I am at least somewhat optimistic that we will be able to find a couch we like when the time comes. Our current couch is probably about 10 years old and those years have not been easy. If all else fails, I’ll get it refurbished with new cushions and upholstery or maybe do that anyway and put it somewhere else in the house. I’d also like to put a comfy reading chair in my office where I currently have a bunch of crates and boxes for recycling. I need to stash my sewing machine boxes somewhere storage-like as well. And I should do something about bookshelves so I can get my books out of the Fop’s office… not that I can navigate through the boxes of comics to get to my books right now. *giggle* I do sense a trip to IKEA in my future though.

But, first on my list is to play with fabric. I need some sort of carrier for my laptop accessories and cables. I keep seeing the neoprene ones for sale and thinking “cool but I could make that” so I guess I should get off my butt, right?

I know the photo is not very Spring-ly, but I really like it. I hadn’t posted a non-monster cat photo in a while and wanted to post something. It would also make an excellent location to hide easter eggs. In fact, maybe this is an easter photo and you should find the easter egg hidden in this picture!

tags: 10,000 b.c., easter, movie reviews, movies, photographs, projects, shopping, the bank job, weekend

I think I will blame my fuzzy brain on both the “Spring ahead” beginning of Daylight Savings time and the fact that I was up at 5:30 EDT this morning to run the Fop to the airport. At least it was quick. And cold - it’s still chilly and windy here today. My pajamas were still warm when I got home and put them on to go back to sleep. I then proceeded to sleep until almost 2 pm. The house was so beautifully peacefully this morning that apparently I couldn’t help myself.

I have successfully gone grocery shopping today and picked up some seeds to get started out on the sun porch. I need to make a list for transplanting so that I can get supplies for starting seeds and making the houseplants happy. I still need to find some hot pepper seeds too. I did find more seeds for cat grass so the cats will benefit from my planting glee as well. Monster Cat is a lawnmower. Tenny’s taste for greenery is one of the reasons the doors to the sun porch remain closed. Other reasons include the leaky windows and the intense heat when the sun is hitting those windows.

Yeah, I had such high hopes for today’s productivity levels but I have been thwarted.

However, all is not lost! I have been randomly wandering the web for my amusement and yours!

Today I have learned that coffee is the number one source of antioxidants in the American diet. So, while that cute little girl in the commercial puts her glasses of grape juice in front of her closet to protect her from monsters (”My antioxidants will protect me, Daddy.”), I’ll be brewing up a big french press full of coffee to keep the boogie man at bay. Well, if he’s nice maybe I’ll offer him some coffee too.

I also found a neat new idea for a flash diffuser on the cheap. I’ve been using a 3×5 card to bounce the flash up lately. The only thing I’m worried about with the film container idea linked above is heat. If taking a lot of photos in quick succession, it might get a little warm in there. But I like the effect shown in the examples - subjects are still brightly lit without the obvious glare of a compact flash. For my next trick I’ll find a white film container to try it out with.

Monster Hoodies… cute, toothy, googly-eyed sweatshirts.

A presidential candidate I could get behind… (and lots of cute Mac-head t-shirts are over there too…)

tags: antioxidants, coffee, daylight savings time, flash diffuser, indoor gardening, photography, random, sleep, weather

More moon photos! I cropped the first one and played a bit with the color for fun. The second is cropped to show off the various other objects visible around the moon during the eclipse. I love how the light changed as the eclipse progressed and regressed. Just amazing really. I’m also still incredibly happy that I was inspired to find my tripod… (I blame Mike.) More cool night photos may happen now.

The green reflection in some of the photos? It was caused by my UV filter. It didn’t occur to me to take it off. Apparently this is a common side-effect of leaving on the UV filter when taking photographs of points of light. The earlier photos didn’t have as intense a light source as the last bunch I took of the moon emerging out of the eclipse. I admit it, I’m lame and use my UV filter primarily as a protective shield for my lens.

Oh, Very Happy Friday to all of you! Buon Weekend! Hurray! I think I may have lost Thursday this week but I’m not sure. Hopefully it won’t reappear in the future to make another week longer… that is unless it picks a week I’m on vacation.

I did survive the week though and for that I thank my lucky stars. And my unlucky ones too because they weren’t too horrible this week. I did make the big french press of coffee this morning instead of the little single-serve press but I think it was a good decision. I *know* that it was good coffee. I felt vaguely on top of things when I shut down the work laptop this evening. Monster Cat was later rather than earlier (in the day that is) most of the week but I have some ideas that I want to play with this weekend so that next week’s Monster Cat episodes are posted first thing in the morning instead of at lunch.

Most importantly, at least to me, is that it snowed today. We got about 2 inches of accumulation then a bunch of misty wet in the afternoon. We might get a little more snow overnight and tomorrow but the radar isn’t promising. Still, it was fun to shovel the walks this afternoon and the world is a better place when it’s covered with snow.

More than anything I want more free time… specifically free time when I’m not already mentally spent and exhausted. Seriously.

tags: lunar eclipse, moon, photographs, photography

I might be perhaps a little crazy… but here’s a link to a set of lunar eclipse photos I took. I was excited to get to see the eclipse at all given that it was snowing (hurray) earlier this afternoon! I went outside 3 different times - I found my tripod for the 2nd and 3rd. So, my tripod is aluminum or stainless steel or something equally shiny and silver. It’s sturdy, not terribly light but not too heavy and is “on loan” from my dad. (Hi Dad, um… yeah, I still have your tripod.) It also gets cold very quickly. Very very quickly. And it stays cold. Plus it’s 25° out there tonight. The first time I went out, I didn’t wear mittens or gloves - after that I took my fingerless gloves
(thanks so much again, Violet! They continue to be perfect!) and wore a more wind-resistant coat. Yes, it’s windy tonight too!

Mike’s night photos (specifically his mooning) inspired me to actually find my tripod and use it for a change as opposed to just thinking about it. His eclipse photos are also full of awesome.

The third time out I realized that my tripod-fu is indeed lacking. The moon was almost directly overhead. I wanted to be able to look through my viewfinder and my back was not exactly thrilled with the contortions I’d already done. So… I ended up kneeling on the sidewalk to look up through my viewfinder.

Did I mention that it had snowed earlier today? Snow rocks. I love snow!

Yeah.

A dusting isn’t much unless you’re kneeling on a frozen sidewalk. Luckily, I didn’t mind. My knees were a little less happy though.

Ultimately though, I’m not the brightest girl on the planet tonight.

But I have awesome photos!

Finally… what is up with this green shadow/reflection? I think it has something to do with the length of the lens? I used a 300mm zoom with a UV filter to take these shots. (Juli’s Google-fu points at the UV filter as the culprit.) Of course, it only happened the 3rd time I went out so it could have been some of my electronics telling me it was too cold and could I please stop taking them in and out of the house. (Note: the tripod didn’t care. Nor did it warm up much in the house between shoots.) I’m too tired right now to go research it so if anyone knows, please share!

So, in short, I had a lovely evening. It was cold, clear, brisk and fun. And it was the last chance to play with a full lunar eclipse until December, 2010!

tags: , cold, lunar eclipse, moon, photographs, photography, snow, weather

This older photo of Tenny really sums up what I feel like at the end of the week lately.

My week was long and rather bothersome at times as you might have guessed from my lack of posts or commentary on Monster Cat. The trip to New London was productive but kind of intense. One of the teams I work with clued in to some important stuff and wanted to absorb it all at once… always fun. Wednesday, I got to clean snow off my rental car! Okay, it was kind of icy and more like accumulated freezing rain, but I think of it fondly as snow. That same day, I attempted to fly home on a mid-afternoon flight and ended up hanging out in the airport until that night. Why? Because Philadelphia still can’t handle landing planes in the rain. We had our plane at the gate in Providence but Philly kept us on a ground hold until 8 pm. I did eventually get home, and only 5 hours later than expected, so I guess that’s not horrible just bothersome. I think I was in bed less than 45 minutes after I got home. Happy, warm, snuggly blankets improved my day immensely.

Thursday was, of course, V-day. I am so lucky I planned ahead this year on the whole gift thing because I’ve had so little sane time the past couple weeks. I had a call run past 5 pm which made us late for our dinner reservation but luckily it didn’t matter. Dinner was fabulous. The rub on my steak included coffee beans - a subtle addition yet delicious. I foolishly ordered hazelnut chocolate cake for dessert. I say foolishly because the slice that came out was bigger than my head. We took home 3 meals worth of left-overs and I am stretching the cake 4 meals or so.

Friday was another day of crazy work. I feel like I’m going to need Monday to catch up on stuff I was too frantic to address yesterday.

Today is much more relaxed. I woke up earlier than I wanted to and gave up on going back to sleep. I cleaned my desk before lunchtime though I’m still contemplating how I can rearrange things better. I’ve got some throws in the washer - I bought them to turn into curtains… if I can get them to smell like something other than diesel that is. The dishwasher is running, a round of trash has gone out, and I’m getting a handle on the paper recycling in my office. I like visible progress. And I like being able to slow down and take the time to breathe.

tags: airports, busy, home, rain, snow, travel, weather, work