Ok, so there isn’t a ton of packing going on this week, especially since Chris got back on Friday and we are just kinda getting back into the swing of things.
Saturday we spent the day in the yard, cleaning it up and getting it ready for the plant sale. It was a big pain but it made the yard look so much better. A big pile formed at the end of the driveway for the trash man (and women if there are any). Sunday we held the plant sale, cloudy as it was. We had our first sale back in November and managed to sell a lot of the orchids. If we’d been as organized as we were this time, we’d of done even better back then.
The one thing we learned this time around was to have back up signs. Apparently the city has sign meanies out there who pick up yard sale signs in the medians. This time we came prepared and put new signs out after they’d picked the first round up! Score for the Aggies!
The best person to come by was a lady who told me to load her car up and give her a price. So, load her car up I did. Chris added the price up and knocked a bit off since she took a lot off our hands and then he even drove over to her house to help her deliver some of them!
The worst person was this guy who thought we must’ve been in a Latin American market somewhere and was trying to make a deal. I was peeved when Chris ok’d him taking a 7-8′ loquat tree and a spoonleaf plumeria for $10. And the loquat had fruit. We’d had the plumeria for $10 and the loquat for $15, which were steals to begin with. The guy came back later when we were about to leave to take a look and he wanted our cotton plant and then he was eyeing the ylang ylang. He wanted the 10′ ylang ylang for $35 (HELL NO) along with the cotton. I told him to take the cotton and we basically shamed him into leaving. Top Tropicals has a 3 gallon pot for $50. Ours is at least 10-15 gallons. This was one plant we weren’t cutting deals on. And some of the orchids, too.
Alas, the ylang ylang is still in the back yard and I’m hoping someone on Craigslist will bite; someone did email me but hasn’t responded to that email yet. Everything else will probably end up on Freecycle soon.
Tonight we put more furniture out on the bulk trash pile for the week since our bulk trash gets picked up this week. I’m pretty sure it’ll be gone tomorrow afternoon since we already had people drive by and take the grill and our porch swing.
Slowly, things will get packed. I can’t believe we have 8 days left at our jobs. The insanity! Our route back to Texas has been planned and tonight we were scouting how we were going to get to Amicalola Falls State Park in Georgia to start the trail. So much left to do: planning food drops, getting things at REI, mentally and physically continuing to prepare and well, moving!
It is fairly quiet in the garden these days. After the cold snap, everything took a hit. I like this time of year because it isn’t so overwhelming. The grass doesn’t grow 10′ in a day and the vines aren’t trying to suffocate each other. It’s more relaxing.
A little bit more reverse lens technique for some closeups:
Going through my old scrapbooks the other day I realized that blogging has become my scrapbook. I abandoned the hardcore scrapbooking phase I went through a few years ago and it seems that it has been reflected here on my blog instead.
It has changed for me over time, blogging. I remember the days of blogger and live journal and it was quite a different era. There weren’t any pro-bloggers, people who made money writing. These days it seems there are people making money at writing on their site, giving their opinions, and while all of that sounds great, I’m glad to just be here writing for myself.
I think the future of my scrapbooking will be writing here, sharing my photos—because I thought the other day that sharing photos is one of the reasons to blog. I love taking photos. Then, what happens when I download them and then they sit on my computer or hard drive and languish? Gone are the days of photo albums and sharing photos in that manner.
For Christmas we made books for our parents and my brother and SIL. It was nice to see them in print, some sort of validation if you will.
The other day, on the deadline date for the Stranger Photo Challenge, I rushed to a nearby park hoping to gather up my guts and ask someone to take their photo. It’s one thing to casually take photos, but to ask someone to take their photo—it was painfully difficult for me. And I couldn’t do it. I had many opportunities, but I just couldn’t. It seems so ridiculous to even say that. I think the part about it is that it is a bit weird, you know? Going up to someone and asking to take their photo. Meghan did it great, I think. At least she has a good excuse, she’s starting a photography business, something which I haven’t begun to even think about.
I much prefer taking photos of animals and landscapes, they don’t look at you strange.
CNN had an article the other day about Twitter, here. It really summed up how I felt about Twitter. I keep resisting the talk in the blogosphere about getting on Twitter and how it helps businesses and getting more readers, this and that. But, what about next year? MySpace was the rage, Facebook, now Twitter. I want people to come here to read, not read on Twitter. And I don’t want to be that connected to posting.
For people who do use Twitter, what do you think? I just found Posterous today, via another blog, but I wonder about it, too. Again, it’s taking you away from the main site of a persons blog. It’s great for people who don’t have their own blog or their own space, but what about everyone else?
I’m a little lonely today. It’s cloudy outside, the sun hasn’t peaked out and said hello, the cats are curled up, and everyone is out somewhere, doing something and I’m not.
Reviewing the rest of the Cayo Costa photos make me a little depressed. Call it two weekends of not getting outside, that’s probably my problem.
So, I’m savoring the washed up fauna that found its way onto the shore…
Oystercatchers…the first time I’ve seen these birds.
A gannett…not sure if it was injured or feigning injury, but it was nice to see the bird up close.
I’m going through some older photos from the past years. No tomatoes this year. But, they make me happy. They are the perfect plant, I think. They smell divine, their fruit is delicious and they are just so pretty.
We still have tomato sauce from last year. Not a jar of spaghetti sauce bought in this house all year!
My mind is wound up these days.
I follow Chris Guillebeau in my email and have been for awhile. He said something in a recent blog post that stuck with me:
“The road not taken.
The destination not explored.
The adventure not pursued.
The life unlived.
If we’re going to lose sleep over something, it seems to me that those are the things that should keep us awake.
Life is dangerous. It’s risky. It’s worth it. ” via this post.
My mind isn’t here, for various reasons but one of them is because my sister in law, Stephanie, is in the hospital right now. I’m getting my information second hand from my parents, but from what I understand she went in for a check up and found out the baby hadn’t grown in the past three weeks. She’s 26 weeks. After some tests they found out not enough blood was getting to the baby and well, there are various things going on, but the important thing is that it is possible this baby may be premature. Possibly as early as the next few weeks or six weeks from now, that is unless they can get everything on track and keep on a good progress.
So, my thoughts are over in Texas at the moment and if you are so inclined, send good thoughts and prayers their way. We don’t want little Ashleigh to be born too early! And we need her momma to rest up and stay healthy.
Think about the Samson, too, he went to the vet for a dental cleaning and he’s still all woozy and funny acting. I’ve gotta play nurse with him and shoot him up with pain meds and antibiotics. They had to extract an infected tooth. Poor fella.
I think this is a chocolate in bed while watching tv kind a night.
I’ve been procrastinating making a blanket for my new niece who is due sometime in April. I was going to crochet something but sometimes my heart just isn’t into crochet, especially blankets these days. They’ve worn out their welcome after years of being on a blanket making frenzy. So, this time I went with a quilt first. Now, I am not a great sewer by any means so there are tiny blemishes on this that I wish I could fix but it will have to do. It turned out pretty good, but I am still in love with the one I made Zoe for her first Christmas last year, seen here…and can you believe she was ever that small?
This is the front, though either side could really be the front. I bought this fabric at Joann’s and went back and forth with the pattern and settled on this. I liked the variety of colors.
The back. I had the blue satin already in my stash and decided it was great to start with, soft and very bright. I ended up hand sewing the ribbon on because, again, my sewing isn’t perfect and the thread was sticking occasionally, probably my machine needs to be aligned somehow.
On the nine corner on the front I put a bit of embroider thread for accents.
Close up of the edging.
Working on cleaning up around here today.
I’m thinking of doing some TTV experimenting even though I lambasted is a few months ago. I was/am mostly annoyed the insane amounts of posts of only TTV on blogs. But, it has grown on me a bit and I am interested in trying it out at least once. My only question is that I wonder if I need one of the types of cameras that they are talking about or if I can use a regular 35mm type camera and build my light blocker differently?
I still need to take my Stranger Photo Challenge photo, but I am being a big weenie and don’t know how to approach it. Oh, I should mention—it was my idea to make strangers the subject! Go figure…see, I’m a weenie.
We were at Dinner Island WMA on Sunday afternoon, driving around with our friends Randy and Kathy, when through the cattle pasture we heard this high pitched noise. Eventually we came up to the two bulls making the noise, in the midst of what seemed like a territory war of some sort, or maybe one was miffed the other took his gal. Who knows, but it was hilarious to watch them! Check out the puffs of steam coming out of his mouth—see it was cold here! Lots of throwing of dirt…it was great entertainment!
The photo challenge is up over at Meghan’s blog: Strangers on the Street. I know there are at least two people who read that I could persuade to participate….Robin and Eliana. ooh, and Shelly. There really aren’t any rules other than to break out of a rut and try something new. I’d say use whatever camera you’ve got and try being creative. We’re trying to put together something weekly, so hopefully it’ll work out.
I’ve got more reverse lens stuff to post later today…stay tuned!
I got a wild hair last night. I decided to try reversing my lens. Chris actually bought a mount for this awhile back and has played around with it, but I never did. I wasn’t even taking photos last night, was actually working on an uber large quilt (more on that in a minute), but I saw these…
And decided I had to give it a whirl. I mean, itty, bitty quilting pins??? Perfect!
You really need a lot of light for this so I put some lights on it and turned my ISO to 1600. If you have a mount, you could probably get away with it being lower or if you had a tripod, but the depth of field is so tight in this, you really can’t shake all that much.
What I did:Used this link on MCP Actions, that I saw a few months ago. It’s like instant macro without a good macro lens. And the bokeh is groovy, too. I tried it on the cats but they moved too much, but the ones that I did get showed some awesome, tiny hairs! My goal is to get a closeup of one of their eyes.
Good Things for Today
-Meghan is going to be hosting a little photo critique/contest of sorts very, very soon. In fact, you should actually subscribe to her blog because I have a feeling it will be a great up and coming photography blog. She’s got a fire lit under her—good things are coming her way! She also has a little giveaway that is super simple to enter. Try it!
-More photographic experimentation over at Kern Photo. Excellent bokeh!
-An interview with a photographer that is new to me, Rebekka Guðleifsdóttir. Yeah, I can’t pronounce that, but it is a great 30 minute bit.
As for the sewing thing, I am on a mission to finish a massive t-shirt quilt of all of my college shirts. Or the ones I salvaged. Sewing large quilts is probably not the best idea; I don’t know why I came up with it. It’s going to be hard! I also have to work on another quilt for the new niece, who’s new name I am resisting because she was Abigail in my head for almost two months before I was told they changed it. The tiny, unborn person already had a name and identity and now I’m having a hard time thinking of her any other way. I wonder if the only aunt has any persuasion in that matter? I doubt it! hah! Don’t forget—->only aunt!!! The one who will spoil her rotten and let her stay up late and eat all the junk food in the world and go on shopping sprees…!!!
Still working through others photos but I am in the midst of some things around here, too, so here’s to hoping for more writing this week.
Chris had found some old wood during a hike awhile back, probably at least a year ago if not more, and it had been laying around. Before Christmas we decided we were going to buy ourselves a Christmas present in the form of a photograph from a local photographer we both like, Paul Marcellini. We ordered the photo and he picked it up from him on Christmas Day, but we didn’t have the frame yet.
The past few weeks Chris has been working away, making a mess, too, and made a really awesome frame for the photo. He bought some acrylic and foam board from our friend Kathy who works at a framing shop and finished up the frame the other night.
It isn’t the best photo, but you get the idea. He says it weighs about 40 lbs…we’re gonna need some heavy wire to hang it!
On Thursday we went to the dentist and while Chris was in the chair I ran to the post office to mail something. On the way back I was listening to NPR and the Diane Rehm show, which I don’t usually get to catch because I’m in the office, but she had Elizabeth Gilbert on the air. If you haven’t read Eat, Pray, Love, you should. She has a new book out Committed a follow up to EPL about her second marriage and about marriage in general. Anyway, I found the whole Diane Rehm show fascinating because of everything they were talking about around the culture of marriage.
It was on par with a discussion I had with my carpool the other day after we heard something on the radio where a listener was upset that his fiance didn’t want to take his name. I carpool with two guys so I’m the lone voice in that argument, but I could see the fiance’s side of things. When I got married I didn’t want to change my name. I did and it doesn’t seem like as big of a deal now, but it was an identity change of sorts. I don’t know if men could even understand that; maybe some do. The whole tradition of changing the name—it’s just weird.
Alas, the hour long talk can be found here and scroll down to Elizabeth Gilbert “Committed” and hit play. I’m excited to read her book. She had a lot of good insight into marriage failures and the culture of thinking someone completes them, ie: the Jerry Maguire syndrome, she called it.
Listen to it while you are making dinner or surfing the ‘net. I’m up for a discussion if you are.
