I posted a second batch of pictures on Flickr. Search the photostream by the keyword Ireland and they all should come up.
Walking up the hill from our parking garage to the building this morning, I spotted a flash of blue in the grass next to me. When I bent down and read it, I felt like I was suddenly overhearing a private phone conversation and looked around to see if anybody was near me. Something about the scratchy writing and pleading tone of the note struck me, so I took a picture of it.
Jen, her father and I visited the Udvar-Hazy museum this weekend to look at the planes. It’s absolutely incredible. The planes they have are just beautiful, and they’ve done a ton of work to restore everything on display. I was kind of hoping they’d let us closer to the exhibits, but considering most of them are the only ones left in existence, I’m happy they’re taking good care of them all.
This morning I popped the macro lens on the Canon and went outside to shoot some of the local flowers before the forecasted rain beats them all up.
Jen and I stopped before work and took a bunch of pictures of the tulip tree out front again, which is in solid bloom. I also traipsed through the daffodil patch to shoot some of the new blooms, which are the two-color variety. The front yard is filled with the scent from the tree, and it’s beginning to slowly shed the pink petals onto the lawn.
This morning I took some shots of the tulip tree in our front yard, which opened last night, and the daffodils in our neighbor’s flowerbed. It’s great to have spring finally here (rumor has it the temperature is going to be in the 80’s this afternoon.)
I’m testing out another Flickr post format. I’ve been reading a ton of CSS information in preparation for a new freelance project, and I’m trying to nail this one problem down. I have a bunch of great ideas from just one day’s reading.
I added four pictures of the doctor’s office bathroom this morning, in an attempt to resume picture taking regularly. I’m going to try the picture-a-day thing again and see if I can stir some creativity.
There are four classic cars for sale across the street from our office. This BelAir is easily the most photogenic of the four (a pea-green late 70’s Olds, a red ’63 Corvette, and a red ’68 Camaro) and in remarkable shape. They’re all for sale, by the way!
I’ve not been using my camera these days for anything besides some random shots of the hallway which never seems to progress; it’s a real shame because there are things out there to photograph, but I’ve just not been seeing them. Today, through one place to another, I visited heather’s site (she’s also responsible for the mirror project) and through hers another good photography site. I started thinking about pictures again. I remember when I first got my digital camera and was shooting everything I saw—living in a photogenic area of the city made finding subjects easy. Nowadays, I commute blindly by highway, rarely stopping to search for interesting shots. Instead of just carrying my camera around with me, I need to start using it again. Additionally: How to rig an old digital to take a picture a minute for the old Kodak sitting on the shelf.
Continuing on another thread, I’m rooting for Jay to win tonight, but thinking that Kara will probably take the whole thing.
Helpful Design Link: Fontleech, a site chronicling free fonts for poor designers.
painted hallway, 2.23.04
This morning my neck is a solid chunk of concrete, thanks to the hibernation-mode sleep I got last night. The good news is that the hallway is primed upstairs and 95% ready for a final coat of bright white paint; the bad news is that the entire house is covered in white dust again. Meanwhile Penn has suddenly developed that wierd eye swelling thing where the inside of the eyelid blows up like a balloon and makes him look like a post-match Rocky. This means I’ll have to squirt medicine into his mouth (twice) and his eye once every 12 hours for the next week or so—I think the poor cat is ready to run away from home by now.
I think that’s my old guitar…but I don’t know the girl.
In the winter of 1986, my Dad drove me out to Mt. Kisco to look at a bass guitar listed in the classifieds. I’d just picked up electric bass after playing upright for three years, and it was time to find a beginner’s instrument. We walked up a flight of stairs to a dark apartment building and met with a longhaired, half-stoned dude who took us into his practice room. He had several guitars lined up and handed us the largest of them all, a survivor from the late 1970’s: an Ibanez Blazer, woodgrain with a black pickguard. It had the longest neck of any guitar I’ve ever seen (21 frets), it weighed more than a car, and it had deeper sound than a foghorn. I tried it out with a rudimentary blues line, feeling sheepish and embarrassed, and it sounded good. I don’t know what my Dad paid for it, but we lugged it back to the Rabbit and took it home. On this bass I learned to play, finding it was easier learn jazz than keep up with Geddy Lee (not that I didn’t try.) Later, I bought a Steinberger from my friend, finding its portability and size easier for college, and the Ibanez became second fiddle (pun intended.) Eventually, in the post-graduate purge, I “sold” it to a friend so that his wacky girlfriend could join an all-grrl punk band, and it passed out of my hands. I think the bass in this Microsoft ad could be mine, only because the pickups are white—we had the original pickups pulled and replaced by the music store in town, and for some dumb reason they gave us white—we never bothered to have them switched out. I heard that girl moved to Philadelphia and took it with her years ago, so imagine my surprise when I saw it again. It’s nice to think that maybe one of us got famous. (And thanks, Dad.)