Pike Lake

A beautiful day at Pike Lake State Park was a refreshing break and reminder that spring is only, what . . . another month or two away? It's snowing as I post this.

Canon A1000is

I love my Nikon D70, but I don't drag it everywhere with me and sometimes I wish I had something to stuff in my pocket that could take decent photos on the fly. Well, I finally went out and bought a Canon A1000is - one of those PowerShot things - with 10 megapixels and image stabilization, just so I could carry it with me everywhere. Here is the first image I worked up, taken while a passenger in someone else's car. This is the car audio and security shop near the corner of 60th and Center.

Reflections on pond near Mud Lake, Palatka, FL

Florida Non-Florida Photos

Palatka, Palatka, St. Augustine, respectively. These are the vacation shots I love, though they could have been taken any number of places. Corky kept asking, "Why are you shooting that?"

Castillo de San Marcos

The Castillo de San Marcos in St. Augustine, Florida was built to protect and defend Spain's claims in the New World. It is now a national monument. This shows one of the walls inside the fort where you can see the beams for a ceiling showing through from an adjacent room. Construction began on this fort in 1672.

Reflections in the St. John River, Palatka, Florida

Slice of Lizard Back

Closer

I just wanted to show a closer look at this guy's eye. He is browner here, not having warmed up as much as the photo below. The colors were just amazing and they kept changing!

Lizard

This little guy was only about three inches long from his nose to the end of his broken tail. I found him hiding in a cold, dark corner in Corky's yard. He was plain brown until he sat in my warm hand for a while, and then all his colors came out. Isn't he good looking?
This is the first lizard I have ever seen "in the wild," let alone grabbed and held. Cool.

Florida

I just got back from a full week in Florida. What a wonderful time to escape Wisconsin, as our temperatures plunged to a depth affording the cancellation of school for two days in a row. Turns out Florida was entering its own cold snap. Whenever I think of flying, I can't help but start singing Alanis Morrisette's Ironic in my head, about the guy who waits all of his life to get on an airplane because he's afraid to fly, and, sure enough, his plane goes down. Well, my plane got there just fine (another one went down in the Hudson River on the same morning), but the weather sure sucked for a mid-winter trip intended to escape a cold clime. Thankfully, I had delightful company the entire time I was there, staying with a friend I met online. No lie. I flew down and stayed with strangers, at least real strangers, not virtual ones.
Corky and her husband Allan were very generous hosts, despite the fact that Allan is dying of cancer and Corky herself in remission. They instantly made me a part of the family, a large family which includes the two of them and their SIX miniature schnauzers: Bonnie, Sassy, Skeeter, Skippy, Libby and Zubee. My Lexie is in a "relationship" with their Zubee, which is partly how we met. See the profile from Dogster.com to the right of this page.
But it was a great time, the weather notwithstanding, and I am very glad I had the opportunity to visit with these new friends. We ate wonderful food, watched movies, played with the dogs, went shopping and sightseeing and even did a few geocaches. I loved it. I will be posting an assortment of photos as time allows, seeing as classes are again in session and I am already heaped with homework.
I shouldn't complain about having too much studying to do. It's so damn cold outside that I'm sitting tight and reading all day long anyway!

"If They Can Do It, What's Our Excuse?"

Domes Today

The Mitchell Park Conservatory, aka The Domes, has recently remodeled its lobby and today was the first time I went after the reopening. It was very crowded, so I left my tripod in the car and most of my lenses. I always regret that, but it was so crowded that I would have just gotten frustrated.

I will return on a "workday" and use the tripod next time.

Sibling Love, Two Perspectives, Part 1

Here are my good friend G's two kittens, cuddling on the couch.

Sibling Love, Two Perspectives, Part 2

Here are my two mini Schnauzers, "cuddling" on our bed.

The Pipe That Ate Our Van

This is the unassuming pipe that completely destroyed our 2002 Dodge Grand Caravan one dark and rainy night this past month. You can see that the surrounding pavement in this photo is about half-way filled in, but it wasn't that fateful night. The pipe is located just north of the intersection of 84th and Meinecke, on 84th street. There were cones and sawhorses set up to direct traffic around things such as this, but someone had moved the cone that should have been covering this pipe. Instead, the configuration of cones directed motorists right over the pipe. The road had been taken down to the gravel so this pipe stood up quite a bit, enough to rip the front cradle to bits, break the front axel and mess up the transmission, rendering the van a complete loss. Thankfully, the contractor working on this road for the city of Wauwatosa claimed full liability without a fight. We just bought a 2004 Toyota Sienna with the help of the contractor's insurance proceeds. Funny, the pipe looks completely unharmed!

Satan or Science?

My 16-year old has a friend named James who is quite intelligent and charming (yes, James, I am talking about you) and he told us a story of Halloween at his house this past weekend. He said that some Jehovah's Witnesses came by during the trick-or-treat period and criticized his jack-o-lanterns, saying that they were symbols of Satan.

James replied that no, actually they were carved pumpkins into which he had poured liquid paraffin and copper sulfate and then set on fire to produce a green flame and charred interior. He got all excited and asked them to wait so he could go get his supplies and show them.

He returned (they had politely waited) and took a small packet of copper sulfate and dropped it into a hollowed out pumpkin, poured the lantern oil/paraffin over it and then struck a match and dropped it in - Pouuuuf! It flamed up green and remained lit, like a torch.

"See? That's not Satan. It's science."

What Is It?

Time to play "What Is It?" again. I did filter it a bit, but not very much. This was in my house.

Guess I'm Just Naive

My 9-year-old son came home from school one day this week and began discussing politics. He asked me who I was going to vote for in the election next week. I told him and then he told me that at school that day his friend Seth (not his real name) said he did not want a black guy to be president. My son asked him why, and Seth replied that he didn't like black people.

My son then asked Seth if he was a racist. "What's a racist?" Seth asked.
"A racist is someone who doesn't like people of other races or colors," my son said.
"Oh. Yeah, I'm a racist," Seth replied, as if it were just another way to talk about yourself. Why yes, now that I know what a numismatist is, I do enjoy coin collecting!

My son went on to explain that this was not a good thing and asked Seth why he was a racist. Seth told my son, matter-of-factly, that he just did not like black people. Gibby and I had a conversation about this and he knew already that it wasn't right. What was worse to me was that I know kids his age really are still expressing the views of their parents, so Seth's parents are almost surely feeding this attitude to their children. It just blew my mind.

Race is not an issue for me in this election, but maybe it should be. If electing a black president does anything positive to change the opinions of people like this, it can only be a good thing. Then again, the darker color of our president's skin would probably precede anything good Obama might do in office in the mind of a racist. Such is the preset lens of racism.

Famine . . . Then Feast

So I ignore this blog for a long while and then suddenly want to post a whole slew of things - go figure. This is a photo of my oldest daughter's wrists covered in bracelets made out of colorful plastic beads. She held still, but I moved the camera (on purpose) to get this effect.

Blue Jean Mural

This painting is done on several pairs of blue jeans and it hangs in Cafe Lulu in Bayview on KK. I would give credit to the artist, but I don't know who did it. Anyone know? There are a few of them like this hanging in there. Great cafe, by the way, right next to Broad Vocabulary.

Lake Michigan

A few views of the lakeshore last week when my daughter was running in a race down there. She came in third, by the way - woohoo!

Sorry for Talking Politics

I am very uncomfortable talking about politics. I HATE it when a Christian friend comes up to me and starts talking to me about how this economy is all Clinton's fault and how of course he or she is voting for McCain because he is "pro-life."

After I commented on how fellow Christians so often just assume you are going to vote for the Republican candidate because they espouse pro-life views, a good friend responded, "Who would make such an assumption??!! Until we can find a "pro-life" candidate who is as protective of lives after birth as before, there's no assumption to be made." How refreshing, and she is also a Christian. There are plenty of good people on both sides of the political debate, just please, please, please don't assume that Jesus would vote Republican.

http://tinyurl.com/45u4h9

New Stuff

This is a garbage bin on the street in Seattle, seen from behind a chainlink fence with blue slats.

I took this photo while on a field trip with my daughter's class at the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry. This is part of the Petroleum Planet exhibit and features multicolored tubes of bubbling crude oil, which is going down in price, by the way. I bought gasoline at $2.99/gal. today. Never thought I'd get excited about getting gasoline for three dollars a gallon!

Bad News . . . Good News! . . . Bad News?

I had a strange day, emotionally. I heard of this really tragic accident involving a child. It was just awful and I felt sick when I heard about it. But the story has a twist. The child in this story was described to me as a three-year old Ethiopian boy. A very good friend of mine just recently adopted a three-year old Ethiopian boy. How many of those are in the area? Then I really got sick. I called my good friend immediately, but could not get a hold of her. It wasn't until hours later that she called me back and I found out that her children were fine. I was SO relieved. Then shortly afterwards, like a couple seconds later, I felt bad again just knowing that this horrible thing had happened to some family and I was relieved it didn't happen to MY friend's family, yet whoever this happened to was certainly suffering in ways that most people cannot even begin to imagine. I won't go into what happened to this child, but it was so awful in so many ways. Now I am praying that this unknown family can get through this somehow.

Didelphis marsupialis

Awwww, isn't he cute? He is in our elderberry bush at this very moment.

Great Place to Crash

I don't believe anyone was seriously injured in this accident. If they were, I apologize. A friend called me to let me know about this scene in front of the Confidence Driving School on 76th and Locust.

Taliesin and Environs

I spent my weekend in Spring Green with a friend and we climbed the hill up to Frank Lloyd Wright's design school at Taliesin. There were these kinda rusty, mod looking chairs scattered around on top of a hill, behind which you could see Taliesin itself in the distance. Of course this is where one of Frank's servants went nutso and locked all the exits to the house, save one, before lighting the place on fire and bludgeoning everyone he could as they fled through the one door he left open, including Frank's then-wife with whom he had run away from Chicago, leaving his first wife and their six children behind. His architectural skills aside, maybe you can tell that I don't have much admiration for Mr. Wright, the man. Mr. Wrong in my book. But I digress. Isn't the surrounding prairie beautiful? Rather belies the grisly story.

More Sky

More exotic weather today, including three sudden downpours out of blue skies. The last one started near 8pm and we finally saw a rainbow. I got a few shots of the rainbow, one even with a bit of lightning under the bow, but they were all taken through our bedroom window and not very high quality. This one was taken the same way, through a wet window, but I think it's pretty.

Summer is Here!

Time to break out all your heavy black clothing and knee-high boots! Sheeeesh.

My girls, ages 15 and 12, made a trip to our local Hot Topic this past week and came home with black, lace-up, knee-high "pole climber" boots, black "skinny" jeans, fresh fishnets and glovelets, all just in time for marching around in the hot summer sun. That same night the older girl and I went over to our local park for the first in a series of free summer concerts. She wore a black short-sleeve t-shirt, an extremely short and flouncy (at least not tight) black skirt, her fresh fishnets (just flown in - ha!), her new boots and, to finish off the look with panache, a bright yellow belt creatively fashioned from a length of plastic police tape, tied in a neat little bow over her right hip.

I met some other parents from our kids' school at the park. One woman who doesn't know my kids asked if any of mine had come along with me. I described Laura and she had this funny look on her face. "Oh, I saw her." Uh-huh. That is mine. And I am very proud of her.

Three Skies Over Our House Today

These three photos were taken within about a half hour this evening. Lots of violent and wet weather lately. At least there is some beauty in it as well.

Second Child Completes Middle School

I never thought I would be posting photos of my children online, but here goes. This is my son receiving his diploma from the principal of his school while his homebase teacher is at the microphone announcing names on the right. I am so proud of him, even though he needs a haircut. After the ceremony, out on the front lawn of the school, my son informed me that he had peeled the gold seal sticker off of his diploma and crumpled it up. His friend then tossed it onto the school roof. I frowned, having hoped to frame the thing seeing as it may be the last diploma he ever gets. LOL!

Lambs Ears

Iris

Blue iris, private parts, our back yard. Same flower was pummeled to the ground the next day during a severe thunderstorm mixed with tornado and flash flood warnings. Live on, big blue!

Pasque Flower

This is the underside of a pasque flower, weighed down with tiny droplets of mist. It was in our front yard.

I'm Back

I actually had two people comment on the blog today, one in person and one via email from the Philippines. Then I felt a little guilty as I haven't been posting on here in a long time, giving my dogs their daily diary entries and photos instead. What a life. But here I am on this misty, foggy Wisconsin spring day and I was so amazed by the water droplets on the fresh new flowers that I just had to get my new Jamie Lee Curtis/Ted Danson haircut all wet and flat by taking the tripod outside and my macro lens to try and capture some of this stuff. Here is one to start us off. More will follow when I have a chance to work them up. This particular image is of dewdrops on an Iris fall, those three petals that literally fall down, while the other three, the standards, stand up.

Loverly Bug

I first noticed this bug on our bedroom wall a couple days ago. Looked harmless and, unlike how I would react to a centipede, I forgot about it. Then it was on the window above my desk. Then it was in the upstairs bathroom. This afternoon I went into this bathroom to, well, you know, and there it was, floating in the toilet bowl that had been left open! Oh, dear! I gently lifted her out (I am guessing it's a female because there appears to be a little ovipositor on its back end, but who knows?) and let her crawl up my sleeve a bit. I then transferred her to the bathroom window and ran to get my camera and macro lens. She's about 3/4-inch long, not including her antennae. Now I need to go to Whatsthatbug.com and find out what she is and how she came to be in our house at the tail end of a long, cold winter.