Awake

Zoo Lights

fter work on Friday, I called Tall Brother #1 and asked, "What's your twenty?" to which he replied, "Zoo Lights! We're in line for the train!" By the time I went home, bundled up, grabbed the camera, and made it to the train station, their train arrived and I met them as they disembarked. We walked around with the gazillion other people that were there and tried to find some animals that were actually awake. (The fishies were. :)

Took a few pictures. It was a little tricky to get into "the zone" with all the people, plus keeping up with the group, but here they are...

Happy Zoo Lights!

Éncore: The Middlest One

he nieces did another little mini-show tonight before bed and I finally got some pics of the "middlest" one (that's how she described herself tonight). :)

Happy Saturday!

Trying out the new lens on Thanksgiving Day

he nieces like to "do a show" as they say, when they have a bit of an audience (and I imagine also when they don't). We were treated to a choreographed Hannah Montana Hoedown Throwdown, storytelling, musical numbers from Annie, Puck-like commentating, and other delightful silliness. As for me, I was finally getting a chance to play with my new fixed 50mm/f1.4 lens (mmm...bokeh!). I've posted the set on flickr but here are some of my favorites. (Need to get more of Kylia, she was a little elusive tonight.)

By the way, the full set of pics is here: Nieces (and their Mama, too)

Happy Thanksgiving.

Link roundup: this week's tweets with links

New post theme! Just thought I'd share my tweets containing links from this past week. Hey, maybe I'll do this every week. We'll see. :) First, a...

Glossary

#someword

Called a "hashtag" in twitterland, this can be a way to add a tweet to a common (or uncommon) topic, or a snarky way to add commentary or disclaimer language to a tweet, among other things.

RT

ReTweet. This is a way to pass a tweet along to my followers, with or without comment.

bit.ly

bit.ly is a web address shortening service. The bit.ly link will redirect to the actual link. Used to keep URLs short and sweet and clickable. Additionally, if you sign up with bit.ly, you can track how many people click on the links you shortened. (The ".ly" is basically equivalent to ".com" It's used instead of ".com" to be clever, taking advantage of special country coded domain name postfixes.)

Tweeted Links!

• I wanna learn Spanish just so I can read Tormentas Severas En Argentina. Cool pics, tho. http://bit.ly/84wq5E #weather #tornadoes #argentina
• An "olde" but it still makes me smile. Happy Friday. ::: Blind Date ::: http://bit.ly/8Zc5U8
• Diggin' those GirlsWhoWearGlasses.com fonts... RT @sitepointdotcom: 16 High Quality Retro And Vintage Fonts http://bit.ly/8wg35n
• So if the State is in the black, recession is "over"?? :/ RT @oregonian: Oregon state economist declares recession over http://bit.ly/uCwYG
• Not understanding the shock. @BarackObama is a brand, not the man. RT @GuyKawasaki: Shocker: Obama has never used Twitter http://om.ly/cCwQ
• Nice. RT @nobleviola: Thanks Badbeard's Microroastery! Symphony Blend in support of the Oregon Symphony Orchestra http://bit.ly/2WZyTd
• How awesome is this? :: Amazon Frustration-Free Packaging Certification :: http://bit.ly/3lEIir
• Photography outing turns into cart rescue mission :: http://bit.ly/4FVyFB :: (Luckily the Sports Authority store was only 2 blocks away.)
• RT @dsouzajds: 100 Million Missing Women? http://tinyurl.com/y9hujdr
• Love! RT @google: http://twitpic.com/oz3dh - Happy 40th birthday Sesame Street! http://bit.ly/2LnRCb

Ok, the last two weeks. Oh well, you get the picture. Happy clicking.

It's called a Stream of Consciousness. It's Therapeutic.

Had I realized that the bandages I took out of a purse not used since 2006 would soon be revealed as a sort of symbolic foreshadowing to the act of ripping a nearly-year-old bandage off of my apparently still bleeding heart, I would have never opened that envelop. Why that envelop was purposed for such self-inflicted time-lapsed wounding is quite beyond me at the moment, but I am certainly thankful that at the time I did open it, aka, 10 minutes ago (its contents sending a shock wave through my soul, knocking me backward against the kitchen counter like a kick in the gut, a punch in the face) I had a working shredder ready and waiting to dispose of the lies, lies, and more lies told in the contents therein. The author of the lies, lies, and more lies actually was not aware of the face that he was writing lies, lies, and more lies, but even so there they were, in that unassuming envelop, kept by me, my own worst enemy.

Word of advice. When you get dumped. Burn it. Burn it all. Dispose of every scrap of sentimental meaningless dribble you can get your hands on. Then burn it again. Then bury the fire and walk away. There are many public beaches where this is a viable option. If you are landlocked, you have my geographical sympathy. As an alternative, you should unceremoniously shred the sentimental meaningless dribble. A year later. This is Plan B. (You should really go with Plan A. Trust me.)

It's better that I tell you this instead of making you look at pictures of ducks from the pond next door. Hiding behind a lens is well and good, and pretty neat actually, but if I don't eradicate this root soon, it will wedge itself into the very fabric of my still bleeding heart and I just won't heal properly. So excuse the mess, pardon the attitude, and don't worry. It's all just a journey. And sometimes on that journey you get captured by a band of Orcs and Uruk-hai and have to crawl on the ground into the forest to get away, only to be picked up by a talking tree who just won't shut up. True story.

Happy Wednesday.

Under the St Johns Bridge

It was a damp and drizzly day in North Portland, but nevertheless me, my second cousin, and my first cousin once removed in-law were determined to have our photo outing that we've been talking about since the summer. I used a Chico shopping bag to cover my camera from the rain (and a nearby fir tree to cover me). I would retreat to the shelter of the fir tree to chamois away raindrops from my lens, then dash out to capture an image (then dash back under the tree again). We finally decided that it wasn't worth getting our cameras wet (even though one of us (not me!) had a weather-proof camera) and on our way up and out of the park, turned to find this beautiful view of the arches all lined up, that we missed on the way down because there was a portrait shoot going on and we had gone around it when we arrived. Just then, the rain pretty much ceased, except for a few monster drops, falling from the bridge above, and we were able to pause at the top of the stairs and take a few shots of the archways beneath the great St Johns Bridge. A wet trip, but a memorable one.

The end.