I have long known that I cannot draw a straight line with a ruler. In recent years I’ve learned that whenever I mow my lawn, it looks like I went on a bender with my lawnmower. Today I discovered that I cannot shovel in a straight line, either.
(Project 365 | 2010: 11 February)
I mentioned last month that I was participating in a Photo 365 project organized by a friend (whom I know only from blogland and have yet to meet in person. So far it’s going well–I haven’t missed a day yet. The group rules state that a posted picture has to be taken that day (no raiding the photo library for good shots!), and I am really enjoying the reminder to try to “see” the world around me more mindfully every day.
My Flickr account is here, here’s my Project 365 project, and here’s a mosaic of the first thirty-six photos I’ve done. (There are actually forty pictures in my set so far, but the mosaic maker can handle only thirty-six at a time.)
1. Paperwhites, 2. Hello, 2010!, 3. Out with the old, 4. Anticipation, 5. Twelfth Night, 6. Ch-ch-ch-CHIA!, 7. Scooting, 8. Morning view, 9. How to save your sanity, 10. Simpsons on parade, 11. More paperwhites, 12. My friend Jim, 13. Hoot!, 14. Self-portrait, 15. Frolic, 16. No photos, please!, 17. Stylin’, 18. Possibilities, 19. Conversation, 20. Annual polar bear swim, 21. Close up, 22. Cactus, 23. Still life, 24. Dragon ‘do, 25. Posing, 26. Sideburns, 27. Snow on pavers, 28. Something fishy, 29. Totoro and the Catbus, 30. Snow falling on dogwoods, 31. Snowy day, 32. I beg to disagree, 33. End stage, 34. Snowmaggedon: the aftermath, 35. One of our customers, 36. I do, too
Most of these are nowhere near “art” photography, but I am enjoying focusing more documenting every day stuff than setting up an “ideal” shot. I’ve also been relying heavily on my new POS camera–it takes great pictures, and its size lets me have it with me at all times (and having a camera handy is 95% of getting a good shot!).
I’m going to start posting some of my Project 365 shots here–partly to share them with more people, and partly to give myself a space to write fuller commentary where warranted (the photo description section on Flickr can handle only so much before it looks unwieldy).
Sometimes a Netflix DVD will sit around here for quite some time before we get around to watching it. But for some reason, I’ve managed to watch four movies in the last few days. This is extraordinary because I usually don’t get around to watching four movies in an entire month.
Baby Mama: I like Tina Fey. I like Amy Pohler. And I really wanted to like this movie. But I didn’t. It has some funny moments (thanks to Pohler, mostly), but was surprisingly formulaic. After about ten minutes I realized that this movie is an extended/modified version of a storyline Fey used on 30 Rock. The ending of this movie just about made me throw up a little in my mouth. The woman who is told at the beginning of the movie that she has a “one in a million chance” of getting pregnant (i.e., she is infertile) has, by the end of the film, apparently met a guy with “one in a million” sperm ’cause, yup, she gets pregnant. Instead of using the ending of the film to say something about how “hey, not everyone needs to be a parent to be happy and fulfilled” or “maybe an unconventional route to parenthood is indeed viable here,” the writers succumb to worn-out cliches. Ugh.
The Wedding Crashers: I think this is one of the worst movies I have ever seen. Even the usually awesome Christopher Walken couldn’t save this one. Seventy-five percent fresh, Rotten Tomatoes? Really? What were you critics smoking when you watched this one?
Feast of Love: This is an artsy meditation on love, starring some not-usually-artsy big stars, including Morgan Freeman and Greg Kinnear. As we watched this, Jan pointed out the similarity between Kinnear and Alan Tudyck as Wash, so maybe part of the reason I don’t give this film a mega-high rating is because it seriously lacks the cowboys in space I kept expecting to see. Actually, I don’t give it a mega-high rating because it’s fairly predictable and has some annoying plot devices. It’s okay, though–not a total waste of time. One thing I liked a lot was seeing a black-white interracial couple on screen completely without comment–they’re just another married couple. Nice.
Run, Fat Boy, Fun: This stars Simon Pegg, and that’s enough reason for me to check out. Hank Azaria is in here, too, and does a nice job. But Pegg gets all the best moments. Another predictable plot, but there are plenty of laugh-out-loud moments, and I think this worked well as a watch-while-knitting film.
This is the most beautiful and effective PSAs I’ve ever seen. If you don’t already wear your seatbelt, this may convince you to start.
Reading: Monkey Girl: Evolution, Education, Religion, and the Battle for America’s Soul, by Edward Humes. This book is about the 2005 decision by the school board in Dover, Pennsylvania, to force biology classes to teach about intelligent design and how this decision tore apart a small community and eventually led to a civil lawsuit. I loved this book. It is meticulously researched, mostly even-handed (though it’s clear where the author’s sympathies lie), and engagingly written. Not once did I feel like I was slogging through these 400 pages. While reading this I found myself repeatedly shocked that people could stoop to name-calling, hate-mongering, and fear-fostering supposedly in the name of religious belief. The thought that occurred to me is that such belief must rest on shaky ground indeed for people to feel so threatened by any challenge to them.
Watching: Lost in Austen. Once I convinced myself to suspend my disbelief about some points (e.g., a woman who gets transported from 21st-century London to the world of Pride and Prejudice still has her makeup fully intact every morning when she wakes up in early-19th-century England?), I found this movie to be lots of fun. At first I thought it was going to follow formula: “Oh, she’s messed up something that’s supposed to happen in the book, and now she has to fix it.” But I was pleasantly surprised to see the mess-ups pile on top of each other and get so unwieldy that it seems impossible for her to fix them. Now that’s a challenge! And if you want to know how it all turns out, you’ll have to watch it yourself.
Eating: Homemade spinach pakora. Even Sylvia likes them, which surprises me to no end. She calls them “chewies.”
It’s been a while since I blogged about my knitting here. I just haven’t had any big news. A Baktus scarf in sockweight yarn is my current portable knitting project (I’ve been off socks for a few months ago), and I’ve been plugging away at it slowly but surely for three months now.
About two weeks ago, I decided it was finally time to knit a Wonderful Wallaby for myself. I’ve knit one for Jan and two for Sylvia, and now it’s my turn. After dutifully swatching I knit up one sleeve and tried it on. It seemed to fit all right, so I knit up the other sleeve. But then I realized last night that the sleeves fit just perfectly on bare arms but feel a little Michelin-man-esque over long sleeves. So I need to reknit them.
I dare one of you to knit this. Then put it on your cat. And then photograph your cat.
The last two steps will probably require you to execute the “run like hell” maneuver immediately afterwards.
I’m still working on my photography. Although I enjoy using my DSLR, sometimes I do miss my Pentax K-1000 days. That camera was fully manual, and the pictures it produced were based more on what I did before releasing the shutter than on anything that happened afterward. These days, so much of the discourse surrounding photography focuses on gear and post-processing. I expect those conversations among professionals, but among amateurs it seems just a bit too much for me.
So as you can imagine, I do have a fairly limited gear setup. I built my own soft-light box last winter (it comes apart and stores flat, too!) and have been experimenting with it whenever I have the time and space to set it up.
Right before Christmas, Sylvia helped me take some pictures with it. This was her first experience using a tripod and a remote shutter release–how exciting!
One of my Christmas gifts was a Canon PowerShot camera. My old POS, a Kodak EasyShare, was given to Sylvia last year, and I’ve been on the lookout for a replacement ever since. It’s hard to find a POS camera that takes bad pictures these days, so with that being a given my top priority was size. I wanted a POS that was small enough that I would have no excuse not to have it with me at all times. And this one fits the bill perfectly. It actually fits in my pocket.
True, this camera isn’t ideal for photography when you want a lot of control over the image it produces. But it’s just right for those spur-of-the-moment and I-don’t-want-to-schlep-the-DSLR-around times.
Here’s the icing on the cake: my friend JD organized a Photo 365 | 2010 group on Flickr and invited me to join it. Perfect timing, too, because I had already been planning to do this sort of project on my own; playing along with others is making it lots more fun.
If you’re interested, you can see my Photo 365 | 2010 pictures here. This is one that I took the other day, after Sylvia had arranged the pieces of our Simpsons chess set (yes, we have a Simpsons chess set–doesn’t everybody?) into a “parade” on the coffee table in the living room.
I just found out that something truly wonderful exists in this world: deep-fried cupcakes. This involves two of my favorite food groups (the baked-stuff group and the deep-fried group)–what’s not to like?
I love how that post begins:
First things first. The title of this recipe has probably brought up a serious question, and I’d like to answer it straightaway.
The answer is yes, I am trying to kill you, Paula Deen style.
I am SO making these one day.
