Kyle and I finished off the last of our wedding M&M’s on Wednesday. We’ve just kept refilling the smallest of our kitchen canisters and eating them. (I suppose now we’ll have to put in rice or something equally boring. Less tasty.)
You can see in the picture that some of them said “June 23, 2009,” but some also said “Kyle & Jess.” We had them special ordered to give away at the receptions, and Kyle’s mom and sisters put them into those super cute tins and tied the ribbons on them (which I bet was way fun). There were TONS, ‘cuz we originally ordered 15 pounds (5 pounds cream, 5 pounds blue, and 5 pounds mixed with the printing on them (because it is ridiculously and outrageously more expensive than just getting a custom color!)). But then they sent us the wrong color of blue, so by the time they sent us another bag of blue, we had 20 pounds of Om-Noms! We just mixed them all together and it was grand. But there was a lot.
And Tianna just told me she may still have some. We’re thinking about ordering more each year on our anniversary. They’re just such fun!
I had my first tai chi class tonight! Yep, like this:
Only, y’know, indoors at my doctor’s office. See, my neurologist recommended it. In her words, migraineurs “tend to be rather high-strung,” so anything that helps with stress will often help with migraines, too. I figured it’s worth exploring.
It’s a six-week class with one class a week. I was really hoping it would be full of old people recovering from hip-replacement surgery, but alas. Although I am the youngest one there, they’re mostly in their forties, I’d guess. Though one woman has had both her knees replaced, so that’s something!
The class was fun. The movement is very smooth and flowing, very low-effort. Actually, my knees were really hurting b/c it’s done with your knees bent the entire time (I don’t know how Knee Replacement Lady’s going to cope!), but maybe this will help strengthen them. We’ll see. Anyway, I had a good time. Now I just have to practice!
I did a search a moment ago and was surprised to discover that real-time searching is enabled for my account. This is apparently Google’s big announcement today. It’s kind of neat; no more hitting “Enter” or clicking “Search”.
It doesn’t seem to be active for everyone yet. I pulled up a different browser without logging in to my Google account and there was no real-time searching there.
The name they’re using is “Instant Search” there’s an option next to the search box to turn off instant search:
Kyle’s been wanting to get outside and do some hiking, so I agreed to go on a hike yesterday. Of course, then we had to pick a trail. Kyle wanted to hike Mount Diablo, but couldn’t understand why I balked at the 7-mile length. To explain briefly: I ruined my lower joints (ankles and knees) dancing by the time I was 17. Add in that I am in lousy physical condition, and I am not at all certain I can walk 7 miles. Of course, Kyle knows these things, but as we have never been on a hike together, he doesn’t fully understand them. I talked him down to a baby-level trail in nearby Sycamore Grove Park instead. We’ll work our way up to Mount Diablo.
We set out on the trail at 10:30 (foolishly late, as it was to be blisteringly hot), Kyle with the camera and me with my right knee and ankle all braced up. It actually wasn’t too bad in the shade, but there was precious little shade to be had. I practiced being larger than the local wildlife so it wouldn’t attack me. And it must have worked! We got home safely.
Here are some of the pics Kyle took. The first is just walking along the trail:
I loved the shape of the grass growing along the trail, and Kyle turned it into a cool silhouette:
We had to turn around early, though. On top of a hill, we came across a building foundation and stopped to rest for a bit. While Kyle was taking some pictures, I took my shoes off to assess the blister situation. My socks had been rubbing on my heels all along, and I knew my ankle brace was making the situation worse (I had already adjusted it once the best I could), so I was considering taking it off and seeing how that would work out for me. When Kyle finished up, he suggested we turn back rather than hiking another mile, considering the state my feet were in. I felt bad about cutting down his hiking experience even further, but agreed eventually that it was probably for the best. And I think it was—I have the biggest blisters on my heels I have ever had (and as a dancer, I’ve had some large ones). But who knows? Mebbe we would’ve seen something awesome in the next half mile that would’ve made it worth the pain!
The real question, of course, is why these exact same shoes didn’t cause me any problems walking around all day while we were in Florida. And we have no ideas. But it just reinforces our plan to get me some real hiking boots (at least, if I’m to accompany Kyle on these mad treks he wants to pursue!).
We got back home around 1, I think. Later on, Kyle made bread! And it was tasty.
I recently purchased a 50-200mm telephoto lens as well as Bryan Peterson’s Understanding Photography Field Guide. I’ve been learning a lot. I’ve been trying to apply the things I’ve been learning, so here are some pictures and commentary about what I’ve been up to. (Also, in case you are unaware you can click on each of these to see a larger version.)
When we were down near Monterey for our anniversary I took a whole bunch of pictures and posted a few to that post, but I wanted to do something a little more interesting with them. I went digging back through them and came back to one I posted previously mainly unedited. Here is my new version. I haven’t entered it in competition yet, but I think I’ll be titling it something like “Fading Memories.”
(f/32, 1/80 sec, 55 mm, ISO 400)
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Last weekend Jess had a campfire / pack meeting for Cub Scouts that we went to. I took a whole bunch of pictures, but only had one that I particularly liked. I used a tripod and took a 30-second exposure. The moon is completely overexposed, but I still like the idea.
(f/3.5, 30 sec, 18 mm, ISO 100)
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The camera club meets the first, third, and fifth Mondays of each month (if there is a 5th). The fifth Monday meetings are variable. This month we’ve been assigned categories to shoot pictures for. You aren’t allowed to use old pictures; you had to have taken the picture during the 2 weeks prior to the meeting. Two of the categories are “White” and “Reflection.” I came up with these shots:
(f/11, 1 sec, 30.6 mm, ISO 100)(f/8, 1/4 sec, 67.5 mm, ISO 400)
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This morning Jess had training for Cub Scouts so I got up as well and went out to take pictures. Unfortunately, the sky was heavily overcast all morning so I didn’t get any of the highly desirable, lower-angled, warm sunlight I was hoping for. I first drove up towards Del Valle where the aforementioned campfire had been. I had seen some S-curves in the road that I was hoping I could get some nice pictures along.
This one is a 4-second exposure.
(f/22, 4 sec, 50 mm, ISO 200)
As I was messing around with my settings a bicycler came riding up the hill, so I did my best to quickly set up something decent (I’m taking fully manual exposures to help me learn how each of the settings affects the exposure). I was able to get this shot.
(f/8, 1/80 sec, 200 mm, ISO 100)
After Del Valle, I drove back into town and stopped at Centennial Park where there’s a totem pole. I know this image would look better if I had some good sunlight; with the overcast sky it’s just kind of flat feeling.
(f/5.6, 1/125 sec, 200 mm, ISO 400)
There’s a little rose garden near a bagel shop where we like to grab a snack and read on the grass. There’s a statue there of three kids holding hands and twirling around in a circle. Sadly there’s not any good backdrop in the area (naturally occurring anyway, I’m not to the point of carrying around fabric to create impromptu backdrops). So I framed this up with a cement wall. The wall got overexposed, but that’s better than a car driving by, and I was able to just tone it down to a grey anyway which isn’t too bad.
(f/5.6, 1/125 sec, 200 mm, ISO 400)
I tried to take some pictures of the roses in the garden. Peterson recommends overcast days for flower close-ups because you can get nice uniform lighting. This doesn’t work very well, however, when the wind is blowing like crazy making the flower dance around. I tried some “artistic” shots of the blurry flower, but I didn’t like how any of them came out. However, there is a fountain there as well and the overcast sky (along with my neutral density filter and polarizing filter) allowed me to have great control over my exposure. I started with some long exposures, like this 3-second one (using the filters).
(f/5.6, 3 sec, 115 mm, ISO 100)
Then I cranked the shutter speed all the way up to 1/3200 of a second and removed the filters. I got some really fun stop-motion shots of the moving water.
(f/5.6, 1/3200 sec, 200 mm, ISO 800)
And this one:
(f/5.6, 1/3200 sec, 200 mm, ISO 800)
Those have been my photographic adventures for today. I’ll definitely be entering many of these into the camera club competitions. I’m having a ton of fun. I need to start learning how to take good portraits at some point, but Jess does not like the idea of modeling for me.
