I like these. A lot.

I'm glad my son found a spare umbrella in the car and wanted to play with it while we waited at violin lessons. I'm also glad I had my camera in the car.

Happy Thanksgiving!!

How Things Work

[There's pentagons in my bokeh! (because the aperture is formed by the diaphragm which is composed of [so I've learned] five overlapping leaves and for some crazy reason, when light passes through it, somehow [but how?? Something is missing here] pentagons are made in the highlights in the unfocused areas)]

Leaves. And Pentagons.

it's a little-known fact that I took two plant biology classes on my way to a degree in economics. I loved the first one, and took the second without the highly recommended prerequisites because I just couldn't get enough of plant biology. These little diagrams of the cross-sections of leaves make me smile almost as much as the leaves themselves. As the chlorophyll degrades, it becomes colorless, and then you can see all the yellows and oranges, which were there all along. The reds and purples are made separately and appear at certain times in the tree's development...

choosing the foolish to confound the wise

some of the people entrusted with the task of decorating the church for the holidays.

Danjo's First Race

Today Danjo ran his first 5K race, and he was...MAGNIFICENT!!

We walked to a few places on the course and cheered.

Young Adventurer shouted out "encouraging" words to his dad. The exact content of those words was sort of not as encouraging as it could have been, which is why Danjo is smiling here.

About halfway...

Spectators:

the whole family came out to cheer Danjo on...

Very Cutest ponytail

(that's how she does her hair for cross-country team practice)

Best "I SEE You" face

Craziest angle

Most photographic/Least cameraless

Pinkest hair, most teen-like.

BEST.FINISH.EVER.

The (very)unofficial time

(calculated based on time stamps on the start and finish photos):

29:01

:-)

The goals for the next race

(since all the goals for this race were met or exceeded)

will include checking the official clock as he crosses the finish line.

The "Kids are Cooking Dinner" "diet"

The kids have done the cooking twice in the last week. This past weekend Adventurer Two made some fettucini alfredo from scratch. It was good. The trouble is, when it's made from scratch you know what goes into it. It's a very simple dish--just pasta, heavy cream, a cube of butter, and a bunch of parmesan cheese. No problem there. Right? Like I said, it was good. I had leftovers for lunch on Monday, along with some leftover bratwurst (I looked for leftover veggies, but they had all been swiped by lunch-makers that morning). So I made the best of what was available...

Tonight Venom has cooked dinner. I am very thankful, because I was unexpectedly out driving the car to various places and it's hard to cook when I'm doing that. Anyway, Venom searched the cookbooks and got a little frustrated. Too difficult; no time; missing critical ingredients---the usual. She finally settled on chocolate chip waffles topped with either peanut butter or maple syrup. It was good. Very good.

Tomorrow I'm teaching Young Adventurer to make salad.

Christmas before Thanksgiving

I really just wanted to post this youtube video that the piano teacher sent (as encouragement to Young Adventurer, who has started working on his Christmas music--before Thanksgiving), because it's funny, and it's guys singing, and it's Christmasy, and it's not Thanksgiving. But then I was thinking that actually Christmas did come before Thanksgiving, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

Anyway, here's that video:

Danjo the Magnificent transmitting from the game...

and his phone is so smart he can share photos with me. Sadly, my phone is not so capable of handling the data.

The rest of us are at home watching the Doctor speaking gibberish to the Rhino people and getting excited about finding the lost moon of Poosh.

Oh yeah...Go Suns!!

I just thought it would look good here

with the black background, you know....

Re-creativity, or "the blog post that almost wasn't"

Sometimes there's not much to say. Or there's so much that it's better just to be quiet...

Anyways, rather than blogging about a nice ordinary day--breakfast with a friend, lunch with a friend, daughter cooked dinner--stuff like that, I was browsing the internet and came across some cool stuff.

There were japanese manhole covers--they are art, not just an ugly round metal lid. Cool. Look them up. Google or Bing should work fine.

I also read about the LARGE hadron collider people. They say they're one step closer to producing the GOD PARTICLE. I'm glad God isn't really a hard-to-produce particle, to be completely honest. I also like the name I AM better than the name Higgs Boson. I bet Higgs is the name of the guy that postulated this godly particle. The god particle-named after the guy that invented it. How funny. If I invented a god, I would name her sidewalkdriver, if ya know what I mean...

Then came the interesting stuff--the blogworthy stuff. You see, (or you will if you click THIS LINK), there was this ART CONTEST. They asked people to take something that was usually computerized and recreate it in a natural medium. Go take a look--it's fun. The "ironic Mario painting" made me laugh out loud, and what people choose to recreate is creative in and of itself. :-)

You Shall Know the Truth and the Truth Will Set You Free

Hallelujah!

I've seen Improv Everywhere and it makes me smile. This just about made me cry.

All of these were taken for a photo class project regarding portraits. Highlights on the hair, reflected light, less vs more depth of field--there were lots of rules. All great fun. I learned that reflected light is my friend, and was glad that Venom likes to be photographed. Thanks Venom!