what i did on my mini vacation

week 6 self portrait

Spent the weekend kind of feeling like a class A jerk.  Although I did very little of this, I kind of felt like just hanging out in bed all day and doing nothing.  Hope this week the funk wears off.

macro monday: holes

I got in on this one late, so it was whatever I could find in a hurry around my house.

saltine

small elbow macaroni

hmmm…I took one more but cannot find it now.  oh well.

week 5 self portrait

One of these was taken on the Tuesday in which these should have been posted, but I simply could not resist the temptation to squeeze in a picture from FLA.  So, on the left is a photo right before I walked out the door in STL the one on the right is the following day in FLA with bikini and coverup on.   Both were taken from my phone, hence the poorer quality and obvious shake to the photos.

Hopefully I will get back to my regular blogging schedule in the near future.  I think I was pretty caught up in the pre-vacation/vacation/post-vacation buzz, but it is beginning to wear off now..which is both good and bad.  Also, blogging has been inhibited as of late due to the new what I call Big Brother system at the office.  Formerly I would write my blogs at lunchtime at the office then have them post the following day…no can do now. 

thoughts of spring…

…as more winter weather approaches.

I took this photo last spring and I keep holding onto it, hoarding it away, thinking that there will be a perfect time to post it, but I never really found that time.

So, here it is:

Not only do I enjoy the composition, but notice that the delicate egg is situated on a fractured concrete roadway.  The rest of the story is that I found it in a very old industrial park in North St. Louis City while on a reconnaissance for work.  It was such a startling contrast to the late 1800s/early 1900s era industrial complex surrounding it: like a small sign of life struggling in a dirty, but necessary area.  I caught it as the sun was just starting to rise over the industrial buildings and casting its light down onto the roadway below.

This was one of the first photos I took using the default macro setting on my camera, in which I was actually pleased with the result. 

Testing

This is a test of blogging from my iPhone.

Let’s try a picture too, shall we?
Last night we went out to dinner and these greatly amused Freya: red monsters!

week 4 self portrait

We have been very slowly re-watching Wyatt Earp for several weeks now, which was the inspiration for this photo.  I get inspiration in the strangest of places, but hey, this weekly challenge is about me exploring…stuff…about me.  And I am really starting to wish I had gone to a high school that had a real drama club…because this is kind of fun.

I was trying to go for a look of slight abandonment and the mix of colorful lady with dishevelement (is that even a word?!) that you might see at an old western brothel.  Odd, but that is what I was thinking.  So, I donned yet another corset (seriously, apparently I have a lot of these) and what my husband and I refer to as my Disney Goth skirt, and my tall boots (but not zipped all the way) and started shooting on the stairs.  I thought a stairs shot gave the impression of being abandoned afterwards, and you couple that with a look of trying to cover up with the extra folds of the skirt…Maybe.

So basically, my inspiration is Maddie, Wyatts woman.

I had these grand plans of switching it over to Sephia, but as you can see, the sephia processing left large gaping holes in the photo, so I have included the black and white one as well.

 

 

I am also now thinking that a tighter cropping of the photo would be better so as to do away with the texture difference of wood and carpet in the background.

yay?  nay?

macro monday 1/25: paper thin

Some of these are a little more along the lines of you need to think about it, some are obvious.

not an unusual scene at my house…

…ponies having a tea party

more about the weather….

and if snow looked like THIS at my house, I would be all for a long winter…but it doesnt. 

We go from a pretty few inches to a sheet of 6-inch thick ice overnight.  Not fun.

on the flip side…

…pictures to keep me plugging away at the office until my trip to FLA.

These are from our trip to Hawaii several years ago:

(these past several days worth of blog posts brought to you by my writing/art block)

combatting SAD

Although I probably am not considered to officially fit in the category of those suffering from Seasonal Affective Disorder, I will readily admit that I need some sun!  Even sun with snow on the ground is great…so long as the sun is part of the equation (waits for the husband to get irritated about using the word equation in that way).  I am pretty sure that a taste of SAD is why I disliked living very far north for several years, where the sun did not shine at all between October 15 and May 15. 

Anyhow, here are some pretty winter pictures that I took several years ago…when we went to New Hampshire  for my 30th birthday (so, yeah, it has been awhile now).  Anyway, when I look at THESE pictures, I cannot imagine not liking winter, so here they are to cheer me up…and hopefully some of you as well.

My favorite B&B: The Christmas Farm Inn, where it is always festive (and yes, I have been there in the summer and there is no snow on the ground then)

The view from above B&B to Mt. Washington.  Can you see the observatory up there at the top?  When reading last months book club book, I was rooting for Mt. Washington and not the author, but you probably already knew that.

This next sequence of nature photos are some of my favorite photos that I have ever taken, even though they were taken with my old Olympus.  Can you see the stilled babbling brook (that I nearly fell into while cross-country skiing past it)

And finally, that quaint red bridge…and yes, we cross-country skiied across it as well.