The View from the Hermitage, Day 224

Thirty-two weeks, and the livin' ain't easy? I don't think that's the case. We're at least getting by when it comes to some things, while others are easy. All I have to do is set my standards appropriately, and what comes after it what it is. 

My mom went from being one of three covid-positive residents at her facility to being one of 14. I told her I was sorry that she got demoted. One of three is clearly superior to being one of 14. She took the news well. I looped her Primary Care Physician in yesterday. He called her and they discussed options should she develop symptoms. I'm still comfortable with the care she's getting. They're doing another round of testing on Wednesday. If she then tests negative, the first result may have been a false positive. It could also be that the second result is a false negative. Either way, I expect they'll keep her in strict quarantine for the full 14 days from the first test.

I have to make another correction to something I said recently. I believe I said that the upcoming election would be the first one I'd missed since I started being an official in 2004. Nope! I skipped the June 2020 primary election for the same reason I'm sitting this one out, to protect against possible exposure to the novel coronavirus.

I mentioned yesterday having photos for the post. I've started carrying my iPhone to listen to music. That also gives me a handy camera should I see something meriting more attention, things such as this 

on the end of a branch on a small pine tree. If I look at it right, it turns into a strange creature possibly up to no good. Yesterday was foggy but strangely. Normally, it's foggiest in the low part of my walk where I go down one hill and up another. I took the shot below after coming out of that swale. There was more visibility lower down.

The fog is nice when walking in this direction. Otherwise the sun can be quite bright in my eyes. Before my previous eye doctor retired, she told me that my light-colored retinas likely mean cataract surgery earlier than normal, with one way to delay it being wearing sunglasses or a hat with a visor to keep the sun out of my eyes.

A few posts ago, I commented about never taking the annual first-day-of-school photos and other such traditional favorites. There is one shot I really wish I had started and continued taking. 

This shot doesn't  really show the base of the tree in the center, but it's growing out of what was once a pile of manure. The developer of our subdivision dumped it there in the spring of 1987, when I was pregnant with Son #1. I did not really have morning sickness as much as I had early evening sickness, but those aside, stepping out onto our porch and smelling the manure made me want to hurl. The developer never used the manure for anything, and eventually plants started growing out of it. The trunk of the tree is a fairly impressive size. I should try to remember to get a shot in December or January when the vegetation about it is gone. I wish that each year on Son #1's birthday, I'd taken a photo showing his growth and the tree's, side by side. 

I shall shortly go upstairs to inquire of The Professor just when he would like to dine this evening and whether he might be interested in watching Lesley Stahl's interview with The Orange Foolius on 60 Minutes. He probably will not, but I'm not going to assume that without asking. He'll probably prefer an old episode of Law and Order, but we'll see.

Uncle Joe is apparently hitting at The Foolius's handling of the pandemic in his stump speeches. I find it hard to understand how people can let him just dismiss it. Science may never recover if it has to fight The Foolius and friends for four more years. The Foolius keeps saying, incorrectly so far, that the virus in going away, will miraculously disappear, and so on. He at least acknowledges that it is real. I cannot understand the virus deniers who refuse to recognize its existence, nor can I understand the conspiracy theorists who see it as having been intentionally created and launched. If you know even a bit about science and/or medicine and a bit about history, you should have known another pandemic would eventually occur. You might have not predicted this one specifically, but you had to know one was coming. And, yes, there will be another one after this one, but hopefully not for another century or longer.

Tomorrow we start into the final week of the campaign. Fingers crossed that there are no final October surprises.

First Full Day Afloat

It turns out that our cabin, small though it may be,

does have a porthole. The view out said porthole is not too scenic, but the water can be mesmerizing.

It does not let in enough light to make it useful for awakening, though a big portion of that is that the sun does not rise here until close to 10:00 a.m.

Neither of us slept particularly well, it being the fist night in a strange bed and one that rocked a bit at that. We were up, dressed, and going into breakfast just about the time the ship entered the first “open stretch of sea.” There was a quite noticeable change in terms of balance. I was quite happy to have one of the servers pour my coffee rather than carrying it myself from a pot across the room. While my balance walking was definitely impaired, my stomach handled breakfast and after just fine. Perhaps the anti-seasickness wrist bands and doing the trick, though I’m certainly not going to take them off as a test.  

There are a couple of ways to tell how rough the sea might get. For one, the furniture is chained to the floor.

The dining room tables have frames that can be removed, flipped over, and put back on with a lip to keep things from sliding off. It is interesting to watch crew members walk as if everything is stock still. Even carrying bowls of cereal or cups of coffee, they walk as if the floor is totally stable. 

At noon, I took several photos from the upper deck using the automatic setting of my camera (a Canon EOS 60D). Here's one of them.

I looked up the settings that the automatic function used. Tomorrow, I will go to the same deck at the same time and take a photo using the same settings. I plan to do that every day with the exception of the day will be on the "Into the Ice" excursion at noon. I'm hoping to get a nice sequence of shots getting darker and darker then lighter and lighter. We'll see how that turns out.

When it's light enough to see, the scenery is pretty incredible.

The towns themselves are quite photogenic as well. The ship docked in Alesund for three hours. We did the walk-around-town excursion here in 2015, so we just went on our own little walk. 

  

In Southeast Asia, we got accustomed to seeing beggars. It's a bit more out-of-place here.

One way to know you're not in the States any longer is playground equipment that kids big and little would love but that could possibly be deemed "unsafe." My kids would have loved this one as children and would even go crazy with it as adults.

Some shots I just have to take for inspiration. Both of these could make pretty nice quilts.

The ship's program director has told us that New Year's Eve can get quite raucous and that Tromso, where we will be that night, has quite the fireworks display. In the meantime, though it's still Christmas and will be until January 6.

The Trees Have Faces

A quiet day here in Northam, Western Australia. The husband went for a run, and I went for a walk downtown with our hostess once we'd hung the laundry out to dry. Here are my favorites from the 18 photos I took.

Web Winnings

Mail in an entry form or a winning bottle cap, and who knows how many hundreds of thousands of other people are doing the same thing in the same contest. The odds are against your winning anything substantial, though you just might. I won a trip to Hong Kong once, which is why I never expect to win anything like that ever again. Follow the right people or businesses on Twitter, though, or like the right people or businesses on Facebook, and your odds might be better. In the last six months, I've won seven books (six in one contest and one in another) merely by re-tweeting an item or commenting on a Facebook post. I also won this image which looks like this on my wall by relating one of my crazy dreams on Facebook. The first image looks much better, because that's a thumbnail taken by the professional photographer from whom I won the print. I took the bottom photo, and I'm a rank amateur.

How I managed to win the print makes a moderately good story. When the husband and I decided to go to Iceland for our 25th wedding anniversary and try to see the Northern Lights, I decided I wanted not only to see them but also to try to photograph them. I asked one of our master kendo instructors who freelances in photography if he had any pointers. He didn't but suggested I look at the Facebook page of Karl Johnston, a photographer in the Northwest Territories. "Friend him and ask him how he does it," my kendo friend said. "He's pretty amazing." He is, as you can see here. Basically shy person that I am (blogging is really pretty anonymous when it comes right down to it), I couldn't just ask this person how he took such great photos. Instead, I called on my friend Google and read various posts that were out there, and while I in no way came up with anything jaw-dropping, I think I did okay for a rank amateur first-timer using a cheap tripod and an entry-level DSLR camera and lens. I blogged about one of the shots here.

Anyway, I kept following Karl on Facebook and checked his blog and website regularly. I probably would have purchased a print from Karl at some point as a gift for my dad; unfortunately, Dad passed away before I could do that. At one point, Karl invited people to comment with dream stories, offering three of his prints as prizes. I posted several of my dreams and lo and behold, won one of the prints. As you can see, it's pretty darn gorgeous, and it has a place of honour (Canadian spelling) in the living room. I look at it often, especially as I enter various web contests offering trips to Iceland as prizes. If I make it back, I think I might feel comfortable asking Karl for advice this time.

Deadlines

If my blog had deadlines, I would probably be much better about posting things. If I had faithful readers and paid ads down the side instead of a list of the other blogs I read and the Daily Puppy, I would feel more of an obligation, I'm sure, and make the time for it. As it is, I put items I want to blog about on a list which then carries over to the daily list of things to do not all of which ever get done.

The day after tomorrow, though, is the deadline to enter photos in the photo contest being held by the Charlottesville Photography Meetup Group, which I recently joined. Each paid member can enter up to three photos. The top 10 photos will be mounted as 20 x 24 prints for the fancy reception on July 23, and the people who took the top three photos will win prizes that I imagine will be awesome. I'll actually be at a wedding in Chicago that weekend so will miss the party and the announcement of the winners. That's okay, because I don't really expect to win anything. I don't consider myself a serious photographer; I have enough other time- and money-consuming hobbies already to start taking photography as seriously as most of the other meetup group members do. The photos I entered, for example, have not been post-processed or put through software such as Adobe Photoshop or Gimp. They are as they were taken; I haven't tweaked anything. There are people in the group who will not show other people even one photo that has not been post-processed and who would likely be appalled that I am about to post three here. I just like these pictures and hope that other people might, too. Taking them made me happy, and sharing them with other people makes me happy. Would I be happier if I put in the time tweaking and fine-tuning them? Maybe, but I doubt the difference in happiness would be enough to justify the time it would take, especially on the up-side of the learning curve.

All that said, here are the photos I entered. The first comes from our month in Hue and actually made its debut on my trip blog accompanying some musings about how I used to be a better photographer than I am now. I like the depth of field in this shot, though I achieved it only by accident. Having just gotten a basic lesson in digital photography from the same friend who introduced me to the CPMG, I could probably do this shot now intending for it to come out as it did, but that doesn't mean I like this accidental shot less.

The second photo is from our hotel in Reykjavik, Iceland, in February. It was one of those quickie things as I walked up to the room and looked down at the spiral the stairs were making. Somewhere, I have a film print of the spiral stairs at the Vatican, and they're much more glamorous. What can I say? These stairs may not be glamorous, but they're fun to me.

The final photo I entered is one that appears in this blog just a post or two back, when I wrote about my trip to New Mexico in April. The hand sits on a shelf in one of the huge prop rooms maintained for In Plain Sight. I took several shots of the hand, but this is my favorite. It's a simple shot, not much color and not many things to see save for the hand and the rolls of paper beside it. Simple but somewhat elegant? Maybe that's what drew me to it.

If you want to check out the competition, all the photos entered can be seen here. I think mine are photos 61-63. Younger son will probably add three of his to the collection tonight or tomorrow; I expect they'll be better than mine. Still, you never win if you don't play the game, so I might as well play. Stay tuned for a month, and I'll post the outcome sometime after July 23.

Lots of Little Things and Snow

Snowpocalypse. SnowMG. Snowmageddon. We've heard them all this winter. The latest "significant snow event" wasn't quite as significant as it could have been, but it was still a doozy. The University of Virginia canceled classes yesterday; the last time they did that was in 2003. What was different this time was that they made the announcement the day before, telling all non-essential employees just to stay home the next day. I've been here 31 years, and I can't remember their ever doing that before. It was a good decision. We didn't get the three feet of snow that some of the forecasts said was possible, but we got enough. It started snowing in the 6:00 to 7:00 range yesterday morning, and it's still coming down, though barely, 34 hours later. Here's the view up our driveway this morning. And here's a shot I took of our deck railing through the window on the back door. We've been luckier than some folks in that our power has stayed on despite blinking off and on several times. As you can see here, the trees have a lot of snow on them, and that snow is wet and heavy. We've heard numerous cracks from the woods around the house, and we actually cut back a tree that had fallen across our road while we were walking. We'll be cleaning up quite a few branches from the yard when the snow finally melts, but so far no trees are down in the area around the house.

I've been taking advantage of the snow days (it's not clear if tomorrow will be a third one, since if the gym is open, we'll be there to do kendo and/or karate) to play with something from a great new book I got. I refuse to buy a knitting or other craft book just for one pattern or the instructions to make one item. Skimming through a book called AwareKnits at the local Barnes & Noble, I found eight things I wanted to try, the first of which is crocheting a lunch bag out of plarn. Plarn = Plastic + Yarn, or "yarn" made by cutting up plastic shopping bags. On the left is the strip made by cutting up a plastic grocery bag. After cutting the handles off, I cut the bottom of the bag off then cut the body of the bag into a spiral. On the right is a ball of plarn. In the center, in front of the book, is the bottom of the lunch bag. You can see some of the different color bags in there; you may recognize the green ones as being from Barnes & Noble. I don't think I have enough plarn to finish the bag, but at least won't feel guilty for a while if I stop into a store without one of the canvas bags I carry in the car for my weekly grocery shopping.

From crocheting to knitting, I finished a felted mohair bag to donate to an auction being held to help send a group of high school students to the Galapagos. Felted things are so much fun! For example, here's the bag before it was felted. Here's the bag after I felted it. It's a bit frightening to put something I made out there and up for sale. I once gave two small quilts to a school's silent auction and was downright depressed by how little they went for, well under the cost of the materials in them. I tried not to take the low prices as a comment on the workmanship, but it was kind of hard. This bag actually cost me nothing but the time it took to make it; I used yarn that I accepted in payment for working at a fiber festival. So we'll see how much it goes for; at least I know that whatever amount it generates will go to a good cause.

Continuing with the theme of lots of little things I haven't written about, I bought myself a new little toy back before Christmas, a lomographic fisheye camera. Lomography is not about high-end photographs; it's more about point-and-shoot snapshots. And yes, it's film, which means you can't correct on the spot but have to wait to see the results. The fisheye just adds to the fun, as in this shot of the husband or this one of older son's feet. And sometimes you can even end up with some nice photographs.

Finally, two weeks from today the husband and I will be in Reykjavik, Iceland, and possibly have seen whales and puffins. At least we're scheduled to go on a whale watching cruise our first afternoon there. I've been reading various resources on photographing the Northern Lights as well as a series of mysteries set in Reykjavik. I've been breaking in the hiking boots I bought for the trip, and I tried out a friend's snow pants on today's walk. It's becoming very real that we're actually going. I can't promise to put up long posts daily, but I'll try to get the highlights up while we're still there as opposed to several weeks after we get back. That's the plan at least.

Doing (County) Fairly Well

I'm not even sure we had county fairs when I was a kid, probably because the Montana State Fair was held in the city in which I grew up (Great Falls). I remember going to the state fair every year, riding the rides, seeing the animals, playing some games, but I don't recall that either we kids or our parents ever entered anything in the various competitions. Several years ago, I entered a quilted jacket in the Quilted Clothing category at the Albemarle County Fair and won a blue ribbon. It was the only item entered in the Quilted Clothing category, but since the fair rules state that "Classes with only one exhibit will be awarded ribbons at the judges' discretion" I know that I didn't get the blue ribbon by default.

This year being an outstanding one for photography, both sons and I entered various of the Photography categories. Younger son entered 13 photographs; elder son entered seven; and I entered four. We each won about one ribbon for each four photographs entered. Younger son won three red or white ribbons in the Floral-Color, Floral-B&W, and Animals-B&W categories. Elder son won red or white ribbons in the Animals-Color and Human Interest-B&W categories. I only one won ribbon, but it was a blue one, for the photograph below, in the Humor category. I took the photo at Madurodam in the Netherlands, described here for readers who might have missed it on the blog of our Grand Adventure. This photo did not happen accidentally; I suggested that an interesting photo might result if we all shot photos of the reflection at the same time. Success! One interesting and, now, award-winning photograph.

As if I needed another hobby ...

Look3, the third annual Festival of the Photograph, is going on here right now. It's a pretty amazing event that I haven't really taken part in before. Actually, I'm not really taking part in it in a big way this year, but if there's a Look4 next year, I just might. Today I took in one exhibit, World Press Photo '09. World Press Photo is an independent nonprofit supporting and promoting the work of professional press photographers. For 2009, 5,508 photographers from 124 countries entered a total of 96,268 images. The exhibit is of the 200 winning pictures in 10 theme categories such as nature photography, sports news, etc. I was blown away by the exhibit. There were several images, one in particular of a soldier with the most penetrating stare, that kept calling me back for one more look.

There is another exhibit called YourSpace to which anyone can submit a photo to be professionally printed by Canon and then put on exhibit. You don't need to be registered for the festival to take advantage of this, so I took a photo in today. Had I known that the limit for non-festival folks was one photo per day rather than one for the whole festival, I'd have taken another one in yesterday. As it is, I'll try to get another one printed tomorrow. The range of works displayed in the YourSpace exhibit is pretty amazing. Some are by professional photographers. Others are by very serious amateurs. A few are by people like me. I must admit that I got a bit of a rush seeing my photo hanging up there with the others. It almost looked as if it belonged.

So what photo did I take in? Readers of my Sail A-Hue, my trip blog, might think it was the photo that I said blew me away when I first saw it. It wasn't because there was a photo I took later that, like the one of the soldier I mentioned above, has continued to call me back to it. Interestingly, it was not one I put up on Sail A-Hue since the posts at the end were sort of rushed. It was one of the first shots I took early one morning in Trondheim, Norway, as we walked around the harbor area. Seeing the photo last night, the husband commented that it showed the color of Norway (many of the houses are the shade of red shown in the photo) as well as the darkness. That's an interesting interpretation, but I don't know if that's why I keep going back to the photo. You tell me. As for the title of this post, I must admit to several moments of thinking that I really should get back to taking photography seriously, working at the shots I take both before, in terms of conscious thought about the composition, lighting, etc., and after, in terms of touching up things like the slight angle the photo above is off by. But do I really need another hobby that can require nontrivial amounts of time and money? Probably not, but then that hasn't necessarily stopped me in the past. I'll just have to wait and see if the urge passes or persists, and then take it from there.