Here are 3 pictures of fruits I have taken over several years.
Apples, from October, 2008. (In a Massachusetts apple orchard.)
Oranges, from September, 2009. (In Sevilla, Spain.)
Unknown type of berries¹, a few days ago. (In Massachusetts.)
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¹ I really wish I’d had recent access to a banana tree, since that would make a better set. The last time I saw one was probably in Brazil in 1991, and I didn’t get any photos. But I do like the berries.
Here’s a little bit about a BlogHer party that I mostly wrote on the train on my way back from NY, but it got out of hand to include in the post I put up that night.
I wasn’t really sure about going to parties at BlogHer this year, but I ended up checking out one of them. Mostly for Phoebe. You see, it was the party known as Sparklecorn. Where, as best I can tell, the “corn” stands for “unicorn,” and the “sparkle” stands for “sparkle.” I know that I have mentioned that Phoebe loves unicorns. Have I also mentioned that Phoebe, unlike most 6-year-old girls, loves sparkly things? So naturally I wanted to go to this so that I could lord it over her that I got to go to a cool party while she stayed home.
This party seems to be a BlogHer tradition, and many get into the spirit by dressing in sparkly things. I did not come equipped with sparkle, but they let me in anyhow. Happily, to aid the sparkle-deficient (and to augment the sparkling of the sparkle-prepared), there were approximately a gazillion glowsticks around. On every available surface, and every willing person.
A pile o’ glow.
I don’t know any of these people.
The tables were adorned thusly, with glowsticks, shiny unicorn confetti, and candy necklaces:
I snagged a few of these sparkly unicorn confetti bits to bring home for Phoebe.
I liked the way these wine glasses caught the light. The light was actually changing colors, but somehow I only got a decent shot when the light was white. But you can still see the reflected glints of a thousand glowsticks.
I did not snag any of these to bring home for Phoebe.
Chewbacca really got into the spirit. (He was actually just a cardboard cut-out.) Lady Gaga looks comparatively lackluster.
This woman (sighted on her way to the party, and who was not a cardboard cut-out) also really got into the spirit of things.
The pièce de résistance was definitely the cake.¹ I can only be glad that Phoebe did not know of the existence of such a thing before her 6th birthday.
I didn’t stick around long enough to see the dismemberment of this remarkable cyborg rainbow unicorn pony cake, so I can only guess as to how it was constructed. I submit to you that it was held together by magic, the magic of friendship. That and at least 40 pounds of fondant.³
¹ The cake took the cake. ²
² Should this be reflexive? The cake took itself?
³ I have since seen a diagram of the cake’s construction, which included a disappointingly large amount of styrofoam compared to the quantities of magic.
Here are 3 fallen leaves I’ve come across on outings in the last few weeks.
For the past 3 weeks or so, iPhoto, the application I use most for photo managing and editing has been broken. It had been buggy for who knows how long (Months? Years?), with weird things like the ghosts of deleted photos reappearing (beware the haunted thumbnails!), and tags running amok. An update became available, and I thought “yay, this should fix things!” But the result, instead, was that I could no longer open my iPhoto library. I kept getting an error message saying that my photo library was damaged, and to restore from a backup. Many things were tried, including restoring from a backup, which supposedly also was broken.
Given that I could see that my photos were still on my hard drive, and my back-up drive, I didn’t panic. However, it was very annoying that I was unable to access many years’ worth of sorting, tagging and rating. And given that my photo library was getting up over 50,000 items…holy crap, that’s an increase of about 16,000 since I wrote about my digital hoarding tendencies…but that was fairly early into my Project 365 year, and well before the photo binges of trips to Hong Kong and China… Wait, where was I? Oh, right, given that my photo library was freakin’ ginormous, it’s not like I wanted to start over with the tagging and sorting and rating.
In some ways, it was a bit of a relief. It broke me of some time-sucking habits, like looking through photos for things to post. Rating, tagging, and deleting here and there. It was almost a nervous tic to sit down at my laptop, and poke through piles of photos. Also on the bright side was that I got more comfortable at photo editing in Photoshop.
But it was also really irritating. I mean, I still do want to post photos from my trip to China, and I’d already spent a fair amount of time sorting through those. Plus all those Hong Kong and Macau photos I have yet to post. Plus, you know, I like looking at my photos.
So, I’m happy to say that after performing a series of dark rituals, unmentionable incantations, and database rebuilding (I think that last bit may have involved chicken blood) iPhoto is now mysteriously functional again.
In marginally related news, I also have increased facility to share photos of my eye.
After the initial shock (and a number of subsequent shocks each time I caught a glimpse of my eye in the mirror from the wrong angle over the next couple of days), I got fairly used to the eye. And a few days ago (a week after the subconjunctival hemorrhage first appeared), I noticed that the red areas were noticeably shrinking.
I actually had a really great time on my trip last weekend, which was only slightly affected by my eye. I was a bit self-conscious about it at the wedding, but not a soul ran away screaming. (It was almost disappointing.)
In this photo, with me squinting in the bright light, you have to look to see the red.¹
I did wear some sunglasses for part of the time, especially during the outdoor cocktail reception. (The late afternoon sun was very bright.) John has quite a few nice pairs of sunglasses he got a few years back when he had contact lenses. I had many options to choose from, but was taken with these vintage-looking ones with blue lenses. (I chose my dress to match them.)
Seeing this photo, though, leads me to believe that my messy hair may also have deflected attention from my eye. As it turned out, my friend and I were almost late for the wedding, due to getting stuck in traffic in New Jersey. Our preparations were somewhat frenzied.
And for those of you who were voting for me to go in the pirate costume, this is for you:
Aye, photo.
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¹ For those those of you (or perhaps that would be for that one of you) who would like to see what my eye looked like up close, here is that photo that John talked me out of sharing. And here is that same photo with the red of the pupil fixed with “red eye reduction.” Just because I could.
No, I’m not pulling the plug on the blog. It’s this little guy whose days are over:
Yes, my sad, tired little Motorola flip phone is finally getting retired.
I remember well the day I got this phone. Not so much because it was an exciting phone, but because I got it at the same time as John got his first iPhone. As in the day the *first* iPhones came out. I wasn’t ready yet to commit to such an expensive phone, but since we were getting a new plan, I got my new phone.
That was a little more than 5 years ago. I know this because I posted this on that day:
So, 5 years old. The phone is a good year older than my second born, who is just starting pre-K. If my phone were a human, it would be getting ready to start kindergarten in the fall. It might be learning to read and write its name.
As a gadget, though, it is ancient. Its memory is failing. (It can’t always find its sim card.) It tires easily. (It won’t hold a charge.) It’s looking dated and is showing its years. (The case is frayed and they don’t even make accessories for it anymore.) And I’m pretty sure the thing is on a daily regimen of metamucil. (Really, I have no phone-related analogy for that one.)
Yesterday, John brought me home a shiny new iPhone. I used it to take the photo above of my old phone. Of course, then I thought I should have a photo of the new phone, so I used my old phone to take a photo of the new phone.
Naturally, I thought I should get another shot with my new phone of the old phone with the photo of the new phone with the photo of the old phone.
How could I then resist taking a photo with the new phone of the old phone showing a photo of the new phone with a photo of the old phone?
And yet another photo with the new phone, showing the old phone with a photo of the new phone with the photo of the old phone with the photo of the new phone showing that first photo of the old phone.
It’s really not clear to me how long I would have continued in this vein if Phoebe had not pointed out to me that it was well past lunch time, and that she was hungry.
So now it’s time to let the phone run out of battery one last time, and pack up the old phone and its less-than-fully-functional accessories.
Rest in peace, once trusty flip phone. May you forever hold your charge in the afterworld. (Send me a text when you get there.)
We drove down to my in-laws’ yesterday evening, arriving a bit after 8, with the light just barely fading. After we unloaded the car and spent a little time with Grammy and Grampa, we headed to the back yard, lured by the twinkling flashes of light. In the the deep twilight, the lawn was sparkling with the light of dozens of fireflies. John grabbed a few empty jars (my mother-in-law is always one to have a good supply of empty containers handy), and I grabbed my camera.
The fireflies were remarkably easy to catch. One had to do little more than reach out a cupped hand towards a low-flying nearby flash. When I did this, more often than not, the firefly would land on my hand. The kids enjoyed running around catching and collecting them in the jars.
I tried to catch the sparkling with my camera.
The little buggers turned out to be remarkably hard to catch flashing. I aimed my camera at one of the rapidly populated jars. Click. Click. (Nada.) Click. Click. (Zilch.) I’d take a dozen shots, with nary a flash. Then stop, look up. (Flash!) Click! (Too late.) Using manual focus, and the setting for rapid-fire shooting, I squatted low to the grass. Click-click-click-click. Click-click-click. (Score!) Several hundred shots later caught me fewer than 2 dozen moments of flash. (But it was fun.)
The kids and I went for a walk around the neighborhood this morning, to see some of the youngsters. This cute little girl is one of our neighbors.
Things have been crazy busy, mostly in a good way. There have been lots of year-end events for Phoebe’s school, and I found myself spending many hours last week cooking and baking for a couple of them. (My diet has such complicated restrictions that if I don’t bring food to such events, I will not be guaranteed to find anything that I can eat. Also, I am slightly insane.) Yesterday was the kindergarten field trip to the zoo. I went as a chaperone. For Phoebe’s class, there ended up being a high chaperone-to-kid ratio, but that turned out well. I had charge of Phoebe plus one other kid. It’s actually rather challenging to take charge of a 6-year-old you don’t really know at a public place full of lots of other small children you don’t know at all. I’m quite pleased to say that I did not lose any children. I am also pleased to say that I refrained from volunteering at one final school event, as I really need to spend some quality time with my work. In the 2+ weeks that I’ve been back from China, I have really only had a couple of days that have not been packed with meetings, childcare or other commitments. (I guess that may be why I’m rather tired today. On the bright side, I think I am squarely over my jetlag! This tiredness can be attributed to fatigue from overactivity.)
I have had so many things to share, a head full of thoughts and a hard drive full of photos. Sometimes, when there is too much, I have trouble posting much of anything at all. So this post is meant to help push me over that hump. (I thought about doing a Wordless Wednesday post, but who am I kidding? I like words.)
If I had to describe my trip to China in one word, that word would have to be ohmygoditwasabsolutelyamazingholycrapthatwasanamazingtripdidimentionitwasama-zingbutdamndoihavejetlagnowandistillhavetoomuchtodoleftfrombeforemytrip. Or something like that. Let me check the thesaurus, and I’ll get back to you.
As you might imagine, I have lots of photos. Well over 2000 of them, in fact. Some of them are basically duplicates, as I had my camera set to produce both raw format and jpg for the Great Wall visit, but I still have to sort through them to decide which to keep and post-process. I have spent a little time looking through them, and so far have selected a conservative 200 or so to share. Sometime.
I also have plenty of tales to tell. (You might, for example, enjoy the story of how I killed my iPod. Or how I won an award, which was not for the most creative murder of an iPod. Or about how I seemingly got a small group of us kicked out of a restaurant, which turned out to be a good thing.)
But remember that staggering to-do list I posted before my trip? Unfortunately, I do. And there are things left that still haven’t been done, and still need to be done. So I need to do some of them (the work-related ones) soon. Also, I really really really need a nap. (I fell asleep last night around 9 while trying to post this, but then woke up at two in the morning and couldn’t get back to sleep. I’m not quite adjusted to this time zone.)
Since I don’t know where to start in on my photos, here is one I took from the plane during my flight back. Once again, my choice of window seat paid off. I happened to glance out the window about an hour or two into the flight, and saw a rather dramatic looking mountain peeking through the clouds. I grabbed for my camera, and managed to snap a few shots before the mountain left my view. I probably would have gotten a clearer shot with my telephoto lens, but fortunately I correctly assessed that I wouldn’t have had time to dig it out from my bag and change lenses in time. Once the mountain was behind me, I looked at the live flight map on the individual monitor to see where we were: roughly over Tokyo. Further investigations once I got home confirmed my suspicions: this was Mount Fuji.
collecting tokens 
