365 Days — 2011

Today I’ve been reminded of a valuable lesson I’d forgotten. Take a safety shot.

I had a planned photograph for today. It got cancelled and I was left without a picture. I sat and scratched my head. I discarded the idea of a picture of me holding the letter from Bass Pro I received today. It told me I was in the top 10% of its retail store customers. I think we may need to cut down on our visits to Bass Pro. It was too late for another picture of the me doing my coursework, or sitting in class tonight, and the school run is long done. I could have re-enacted putting air in the van’s tire, but it’s cold and cramped for space in the garage.

So I closed my eyes and tried to think of a suitable picture to illustrate my day.

Last night I fell asleep with a pair of woolly socks in my hand.

Not, you understand, because I was cold. No, it was because Rotters a.k.a. Tubby was wandering around the house yowling, and I was waiting for an opportunity to throw the socks at him. I had the misguided hope that if the socks found their target he might shut up or least go somewhere else with his infernal racket. Luckily for Rotters sleep overtook me before he came in range. 

Well I had a productive morning. I did some voluntary work on the Church website, I wrote a letter, sent some e-mails and I replied to an enquiry as to how we’d fixed my dry box and fishing tackle box into my kayak. Somewhere along the way there I must have lost steam, which was fine as I had to get out on the school run. I even made a start on this week’s homework, I’m secretly hoping there isn’t anywhere near as much to do as last week.

After fixing the laptop power cable for Ginger, dinner, the dishes and flipping Sprinky to keep her quiet (a task that requires putting her on her back and rubbing her tummy until she gets fed up), I was running out of things I could be bothered to do. That’s when I decided to put away my washing and make the event into a photo opportunity. As we have little cupboard space and lots of stuff and people around here, my wardrobe has been relegated to the hall closet, and that’s where you see me hanging up a shirt. There were other pictures but Ginger castigated me for having the hanger the wrong way around. And they think I’m anal.

To round the day off I decided to try again for a Lomo effect in my picture post-processing, this time with a little more success and I even discovered a ‘new’ feature in my editing software while I was at it. Hopefully that will save me some time in the future.

Not a lot happened today.

Alarm at seven, Church, Sunday School, Naptime, Star Wars Episode 1, Internets, hiking plans and bed.

I settled for the cliché self-portrait against a wall, and I didn’t put a lot of effort into it either. A tripod would have helped with the blur and lens distortion as I could have had the camera further away. As it was I had to hold the camera in both hands to minimize camera shake. A tripod would have also left a hand free to hold a reflector to fill in the light a bit. I’ll be able to try that another night.   

We woke to a 6am ‘phone call. Not good.

Springfield public schools declared yet another snow day today. We had an inch or so of snow overnight and it kept lightly snowing for most of the day. Having the kids around makes doing things like studying harder than it is already. There’s always noise and distractions. So I wasted most of my day in front of the computer. I didn’t even use the time to take a picture. 

Come kid curfew time (9 pm) I was ready for a movie and a beer. I wasn’t sure that the beer bottle picture had worked so I also took a quick arm’s length self portrait shot before bed just to be sure.

Today was much better.

I did some more of my coursework, tended my blog garden, made up my Mark II huaraches, which are much better. I now have to adjust the sole template to leave a bit more room for foot movement and invest in some better materials for the soles. Before I do that some testing out on the trails is required just to make sure everything is okay. At around 4oz for the pair carrying them backpacking will not be an issue.

Wednesday this week is Choir, Youth Group, and KfC evening. I spent the time in conversation with some of the other dads in the parish hall. The lighting in the hall is quite poor, otherwise, I would have been tempted to take my daily shot there. Instead, I had the idea of capturing our regular evening activity of lighting incense. We have several different types, sticks, solid blocks, and even some frankincense and blends of incense resins. Those should provide a few more photo opportunities.

We enjoyed the incense while listening to Rhapsody, studying topo maps, and making plans for this coming weekend’s hike. We managed to find some pictures of the wilderness area and some fairly good maps, so we now have a reasonable idea of what to expect and some initial ideas of where we’ll go. What we actually do will depend on the weather and how many other people are on the trails.