half a year, illustrated

i'm uploading something like half a year's worth of photos today. not that i've had my camera out all that much. and it shows -- most of the ones i took toward the end of 2008 are extra-super-blurry. i still hate using my flash, but i've gotten worse at making things come out clear anyway. while i'm waiting on the rest to get to flickr, i'll post a few random shots...

in honor of the inauguration tomorrow, here's the photo i meant to post on election day, of people lined up outside the polling place in the rain:


the battleship across the street from my office:


at least the current apartment clutter is a little bit better than this, from when we'd moved in most things but unpacked almost nothing:


a heron in the park a few miles from here where i liked to go running back when it was warmer:


jaredan and davenne dancing in the park when michael q. and i took the crazy road trip down for chatta-atl-nash-knox-nooga-ville:


joanna, airborne during the charleston comp at lindy focus:


the roanoke star! (from the week i spent there training for my job in september):


husband and johnny in the interlude between nicci's wedding and the reception:


bush sr. speaking during the commissioning for the ship named after him:

tulips and moving boxes: a still life

i was on my way out the door to get a lock for the cube in the last post when i ran into the UPS deliveryman.

i really do have the best boyfriend.

i'd never gotten flowers via UPS before. that part's a little strange.

looking forward to seeing what the purple ones look like when they bloom...

cubed

this is the contraption into which all my earthly possessions (well, except the ones that are still hanging out chez les parents a decade after i went away to college) need to fit by monday.

wish me luck.

forget smart cars...

i want a custer car.

awesome vintage pants

shorpy's just posted this 1938 photo, and i just felt the need to share. because three of the women truckin' across the scene are wearing pants in just the sort of style that, when stocked now, causes people to come up to me and say, "suchandso store has kait pants! you should go check them out!" (yes, this has happened. plaid and/or sufficiently wide-legged will usually do the trick.) i'm particularly enamored with the pair on the far left.

monster cat

mom's cat ramona, who's normally pretty cute, caught mid-yawn.

photos!

i finally caught up on posting photos from, oh, the last three months or so. avs and lindy focus and the mentor reunion. nothing like a new camera to inspire a little enthusiasm! however, those latter two sets are off the new camera -- so there's a lot more playing around with settings and making friends with the camera than actually watching to get good shots. jesse picked it largely based on how i like to shoot -- dark and blurry's my specialty since i can't stand the harsh point&shoot flash. so now i have a camera with image stabilization built in. it comes out... a little interesting. more is in focus, but some of the "ghosting" is a little odd. like here:

featuring gina & todd in the invitational jack & jill at lindy focus. check how todd's foot got disconnected from his leg!

anyway, hoping to finish reading the camera manual and play around some with the fun new features today... it's cool, but i wanna be able to control it!

(oh, oh, and john, the other person playing around with cameras at the mentor reunion, told me about a point&shoot flash diffuser. i have one on order... we'll see if it helps me overcome my dark and blurry fixation.)

i'm not an engineer...

uploading some old photos that've been hanging out on the laptop. this one's from halloween... the latch on my car door got stuck... just after i'd opened the door. i was leaving work a little late, wearing slippers and pajamas (my friend alice's awesome idea for a "costume" -- when, days before halloween, we decided we didn't have a hope of winning the group costume contest, we went for comfy...), hoping to get to a dance in knoxville, and didn't want to wait around for help... after ten or fifteen times closing the door and being disappointed when it once again fell open, i went back in the office and started scavenging for tools... car keys, a flashlight, a screwdriver... none of them made the door shuttable. i called my dad, because that's what i do when i get stuck. he, being an engineer, had a brilliant idea:

duct tape to the rescue!

(fortunately, once i got to the dance, my friend mark was able to show me how to unstick the latch.)

'twas the night before christmas...

since we couldn't actually go to new york city last night (boyfriend's working again today), we did our best with albany. first, to sub in for ice skating at the rockefeller center, home of the really big christmas tree, we attempted ice skating in the empire state plaza, home of the huge egg, seen as it appeared in september, along with the reflecting pool that is currently a skating rink.

don't you wish your city had an egg?

skate rentals were closed, so alas, it was but an attempt. instead, we wandered around the plaza a bit, played on a frozen-over snow bank, and took some scary photos of ourselves.

merry xmas... really, we don't eat small children

initially, i accused jesse of doing something very strange to my camera's exposure settings (for he has professional photographer skillz and very easily could have), but when i turned around, the sky was actually that color.

then, instead of a broadway musical, we went to see the one musical playing in albany -- sweeney todd, the movie. as dark as you could want for a christmas eve. and i was sitting next to one of very few audience members who hadn't heard a story synopsis before buying a ticket, there was the extra fun of surprise reactions.

here's a link to the 1846 penny dreadful text, thanks to robin who posted it a couple weeks ago; i dug it out when we got back to jesse's.