This week’s friday foto finder theme is “alone.” This lone chicken was somehow left out when her fellow chickens were penned up. And while she does look rather left out, it looks like the other chickens want out, themselves.
(I took this photo back in March at the nearby farm where usually we get our eggs. This was one of the rare wintery moments of last winter.)
I went to a conference last week in Portland, and while there is plenty to say about that trip, for now I will just share this moment from the start of my trip.
I flew out last Sunday evening, and I arrived at the airport a good 2 hours before my 7 p.m. flight. Boston Logan is, as major city airports go, a fairly moderate and manageable size. Airport security typically goes pretty fast (at least compared to some airports (Denver, I’m looking at you)), and I expected to have a good chunk of time before boarding. For whatever reason, though, things went really slowly in security that evening. I watched my cushion of extra time dwindle away such that it looked like I’d be getting to my gate only a few minutes before boarding. Having finally passed through security and reassembled myself and my luggage, I wasted no time heading to the gate, which naturally was as far from security as possible in that terminal wing.
With my gate just in view, I looked out the window. It had been raining earlier, and the clouds had parted a bit to provide a spectacular sunset.
What’s more, there was a rainbow.
Rainbows are big in our household. Phoebe and Theo both love color, and rainbows are a frequent subject of artwork. For that matter, rainbows are a frequent subject of conversation.
I confess that this love of rainbows in my children has been encouraged by me. I loved rainbows as a kid. I mean I *loved* rainbows as a kid. I had what might be considered a “rainbow phase.” And for someone who mostly wears gray and black, I still love color. I love that my children love color.
So imagine my excitement at seeing a rainbow. At an airport. (Because I also love airports.) My inner child was giddy.
My flight was scheduled to board in about 5 minutes, but I didn’t hesitate to stop to walk over to the window. I had my iPhone handy, and snapped a few shots. But they absolutely didn’t do it justice. I parked myself at some conveniently open seats at the gate closest to me (a gate which happily didn’t have a flight scheduled imminently). I unloaded my backpack, and dug out my camera with my telephoto lens.
What I found sort of hard to understand was that the vast majority of the people waiting around in the airport seemed to be completely indifferent to the stunning view. I say “vast majority” because I did overhear one guy on his phone nearby saying something about the rainbow and pretty sunset, but that may well have been in reaction to seeing me whip out my camera. (I think I made him look.) Nobody else appeared to be looking. I wanted to just stand at the window and stare.
But I also wanted to share, especially with my rainbow-loving children. I headed over to my gate, and found a seat. They hadn’t started the boarding process yet, so I figured I had time. I got out my laptop, and loaded the photos from my camera onto it. I sent an email to John with a photo, and posted it to Facebook as well. I may well have posted it here on my blog as well, but my row was called for boarding, so I had to pack up my laptop in a hurry.
I realized that if I hadn’t gotten stuck in security, I would likely have missed the rainbow. (I’d likely have settled down at my gate and buried my head in my electronics until called to board.) I wouldn’t have heard a peep about the rainbow from anyone around me.
Are most adults really so blasé about rainbows?
A photo taken with my iPhone. You can find the rainbow only if you know where to look. (It’s near the white rectangular structure near the horizon, about a third of the way from the left.)
Taken with the telephoto.
Rainbow and plane.
The scenery was beautiful even without the rainbow. This scene is to the left of the rainbow. The views of the sunset from the windows near my gate were also striking, but the crowds were too thick for me to get close enough to take pictures.
One last zoom of the windmills and big tanks just beyond the runways.
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These were the photos I was considering for the friday foto finder theme of “right.” To see a rainbow, conditions have to be just right. You have to be at the right place at the right time, with the weather conditions and the lighting just right such that the water droplets are in the right direction from the sun.
At some point between the hours of about 1 a.m. and 8 a.m., my blog reached 1,000,000 page views. By the time I went to bed, it was only about 50 hits away. I was sorely tempted to log out and visit my blog a few dozen times to push things along so I could witness the roll-over before going to sleep, but that just didn’t seem right. While there might have been a time in my life when I would have stayed up to watch it happen organically, this is not that time of my life. I went to bed. I awoke to the sound of the thumping of small children running around the house around quarter to 8. I reached for my iPad, and saw that the count was above a million. The roll-over was over. So I rolled over myself, and went back to sleep for a bit more. So much for fanfare. (Before 8 in the morning, I will invariably choose sleep over fanfare.)
I don’t remember the exact count at 7:45 this morning, but I think it was something around 1,000,016. So the roll-over probably happened around 6:30 or 7 in the morning, on Sunday, September 16th. So, Maria, your guess of the dieciseis was closest! (A few hours early, but it was around 16:00 somewhere in the world.) So, what fine prize will you choose?
A screenshot taken some time before I went to bed.
A screenshot taken some time after I got out of bed (and fed the kids breakfast and whatnot¹).
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¹ I regularly feed the kids whatnot.
This week’s friday¹ foto finder theme is “right.” I was all set to post a different photo, or possibly a set of photos, when my autocorrect² once again changed the “foto” in my post title to “foot.” I took this as a sign to change directions.³ I present to you a right foot that I found in my photo archives.
This is Theo’s right foot, pressed up against the inside of the car window, when he was about 2 and a half. You may note that the inside of the window bears not only finger prints, but toe prints.
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¹ Yes, I realize it is now Saturday, but I was travelling all week, and while expected to have time to post yesterday, it didn’t quite work out.
² I typically compose my posts in my email application on my laptop, and a recent upgrade brought the joys of autocorrect (once known to me only from my iPad) to my laptop.
³ By making a right turn?
This week’s friday foto finder theme is “evocative.” I took this photo at the deCordova sculpture garden, a beautiful place full of intriguing and thought-provoking works of art.
Here are 3 unrelated white birds I’ve come across in the last few years.
A white dove at Alcazar in Sevilla, Spain.¹ (Photo taken in September, 2009)
A white rooster at a Massachusetts farm. (Photo taken in June, 2011)
A white peacock at a Massachusetts zoo. (Photo taken last Friday. And sadly not totally in focus.⁴)
I came across the first two photos last week when considering what to post for the friday foto finder theme of white. (I opted to post snow, instead.) On Friday, Phoebe had the day off school, so we went to the zoo, and came across the white peacock. And so my trio of white birds was complete.
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¹ This pigeon-holed dove is also part of my collection of visual representations of idioms.²
² Perhaps someone can come up with expressions for the other two?
⁴ Should I just pretend it’s an artistic choice?
Before I got my beloved Mini¹, I used to drive a Toyota Corolla. We bought it used, but only slightly used. It had only about 35,000 miles on it, and was only a couple of years old. It was a great car. Almost totally unremarkable, with its 4 doors and gray-blue paint, you’d see cars just like it every day. It was barebones: no bells or whistles (it did have a horn), nondescript upholstery, casette player, manual roll-up windows. But that car got really amazing mileage. Typically 36 miles to the gallon. It was very reliable, not counting a couple of incidents with dud alternators. I loved that car.
I remember the day it rolled over to 100,000 miles. Well, I remember noting at some point that it was going to do so that day, and then later that day noticing that it had. I missed the actual moment of rollover. Probably because I was driving.
Would you believe that this blog is getting quite close to rolling over on the odometer? At some point soon, almost certainly this month, it will break a million pageviews. Quite remarkable for a little not-quite-six-year-old blog with a fairly small number of regular readers.
I’m hoping to catch the roll-over, and I wondered if anyone out there wanted to play a game with me to guess what day. As of right now, at 9:46 p.m. on Monday, September 3rd, the pageviews are at 994,985. (You can check what they are yourself, as I have the pageviews in my sidebar. Just scroll down a bit to see the section called “blog stats.” Unless you are reading this on a mobile version, in which case, I don’t know if you can see it.)
To help you estimate how quickly the roll-over will come, here are some details about my pageviews:
Here are some screenshots of my blog stats from a few days ago. (I noticed that my pageviews were at 993,333, and I liked that number)
Pageviews by day:
Pageviews by week:
Pageviews by month:
(As you can see, things have slowed down in the last couple of years. This is probably partly due to people reading blogs less, but also because Google doesn’t seem to like me as much anymore. Maybe because I stopped sending it flowers?)
I did a lazy calculation, and estimating that I’ll continue to get around 300 pageviews a day, the remaining 5000 or pageviews should take a bit over 16 days. So that would put us around September 20th. I’m going to guess noon on September 20th for the rollover.
So, does anyone else want to play? Guess the day (and a time, too, if you like) that my blog will hit 1,000,000 pageviews. Whoever gets closest will win a choice of one of the following:
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¹ Did I ever mention that I had a Mini Cooper? Before I had a baby, I called it my baby.
² Very, very delayed.
³ Really I have no idea what this would be, so I would get to be surprised, too.⁴
⁴ It will almost definitely not be one million dollars. But I was really tempted to write that in as a prize, because I hear it in my head now, as spoken by Dr. Evil in Austin Powers.
When snow falls in big cities like Boston, everything is magically transformed into a world of white. For a moment.
Before long, exhaust from the traffic and the spray of sand and dirt turn it all brown and gray. The mounds of snow from the plows sometimes look more like mounds of sand and dirt. The sidewalks become soupy with gray slush. Winter wonderland it is not.
Out here where I live, though, we don’t have so much traffic. The snow, for the most part, stays white until it melts away.
This was some snow by the side of our driveway, the remnants of the pile from shoveling after some partial melting and refreezing. I liked the way the elements had sculpted these interesting forms, and how the low angle of the winter sun illuminated them.
This week’s friday foto finder prompt is “white.” Given that the other regular participants represent warmer climes, I thought it was my duty as a New England resident to offer up this more wintery interpretation.
On Friday night, into Saturday morning, I stayed up far too late. I was looking back through my photo library, getting a little teary looking at photos of the Theos that were. Newborn Theo. Crawling Theo. Toddling Theo. So many Theos, all of them cute. From the wrinkly little bald man phase, to the mop-headed toddler heart-throb, to the alternately silly and earnest preschooler, all these Theos just made my heart melt with their big round eyes, their ridiculously long eyelashes, their big goofy grins. Even more potent were those little videos. Man, that kid has The Cute thing going. It’s surprising that I haven’t posted more here of the cuteness that is Theo, but as with so many things, I have too much to say, so I say too little. All those moments I’ve wanted to record. Things Theo has said, things Theo has learned, things Theo has taught me.
At least I have the photos.
Here are some photos from Saturday, Theo’s 4th birthday.
Waiting for the ferris wheel.
Driving.
Flying.
Crashing a bit.
Second wind provided by Italian ice.
The “birthday cake.” (This role was played by 2 Little Debbie cakes purchased late Saturday night from a convenience store.)
Theo tears into his presents in our hotel room.
Theo settles down to try out his new set of markers.
Theo’s drawing, finished.
collecting tokens 