The end is in sight

in a number of ways....

Feeling better, gotta love that z-pack

I noticed today that six months from today (26 weeks actually) will be August 1st. It will mark some serious freedom for me. My daughter will be OUT of the school, her big (OMG, she's already got 50 people on her mental guest list) graduation party will be over, and I will hopefully have typed up 95% of the school directory and be ready to pass that darling thing off to someone else. I am turning over the dance this year after I do it for the last time. I'm also hoping to rid myself of the super raffle (by chopping the ticket price in half and proving that we'll easily sell it out that way). And I am going to heartily recommend to whoever does yearbook next year that they NOT use the computer method for most of the pages. Oy.

LOST is working toward "an end" (I'm still suspicious that there will be a movie after the tv series ends, I hope that we don't have to wait for the movie to understand how it all ends, and I hope the movie doesn't suck...) and here is an interview on a very spoilerish website even mentions throwing in a shirtless sawyer for the first episode this season to placate fans who weren't into the time travel.

Oh, and football season's almost over. I wish basketball were, but hey, you can't have it all, right?

It's not even February

...and I have somehow used up 1/4 of my time off for the entire year. Oh, joy.

(edit -- wait... that includes time I planned through April. Neeeeeeeevermind.)

Another day, another Zpack

I am sick again, internet. Again the long drive to the oncall medical center. To see the German dr whose name has 12 syllables, because my "real" dr with the Russian name has the nerve to be out of town.

I bought this little friend in Target while waiting for my prescription. My teen asked if I was sure I didn't want "a dragon, raaarrr". Isn't she funny? This was $15 cheaper than the plain ones, and cuter than the dragon. Although the dragon would be funny with steam coming out his nostrils. Damn. She was right.

I am also concerned because at the highest setting, this guy gurgles an awful lot. Great. I have a peeing penguin on my nightstand. I will sleep well.

So for the next 3 days I will concentrate on getting healthy again (I slept until almost lunchtime today) and catch up on a few thousand things on the side. (No. I will rest. Really. I bought new batteries for the cable remote and everything. )

Which reminds me! Watch The Office. After that soccer game or table tennis playoff or whatever it is that's going on Sunday.


Carly(via Blackberry)

Do not get shot getting the shot

So.

The other day I admired the fog on the river on my way to work. I often admire the sunrise views I get while I slog down the highway to work at 7:30 every morning. (Oh, who am I kidding? I'm never on time, it's always "a few" minutes after that.)

My camera was in my purse but I couldn't get to it. So yesterday I made a point to have it within reach. No fog yesterday. Sigh.

This building is abandoned and for the last few days, the sun has been hitting it just right, streaming through the remnants of the windows and making the inside glow. (View it larger to try to see what I mean.)

I didn't do a great job of capturing it --but in my own defense you have to visualize how I actually took this shot --

I put my window down (this is on a highway running alongside the river, and it was about 20 yesterday, so enjoy that icy wind in your mind. )

I had the camera all set with the right mode, before I left my house. Yes, I planned this. It's winter. I have no life. OK ?

I put the camera up to my face... or more like, up to my jaw, resting it just below my left ear. Holding it only with my right hand, without looking at it, I just took about 6 shots in one continuous stream as I got close to where this building is. It was mainly just an experiment afforded by the ease of deleting unwanted digital frames.

:::official voice:::: At no time did my eyes leave the highway.

The traffic was pretty thin and I had a good buffer of empty space all around me, and I made damn sure I stayed in my lane and at the right speed. The clicking was a MUCH lower priority than anything else. I swear.

And yes, I know I'm absolutely nuts, but I was amused to have found at least one semi-usable shot.

After work I tried to go into the park that is up the river a bit from here. The gate was open and I had seen cars in the lot when I went by, so I pulled in, only to meet up with two police cars coming out. "The park is closed, Ma'am." ::::glares at me:::::

So I couldn't stay, which sucked because I could see that I would have been able to get some good shots of the ice on the river.

"Sorry officer" (insert other obsequiousness)

Conversations

So, I answered my phone yesterday at work by putting on my headset but hitting the speakerphone button. I answer my phone by saying my name, since my department name changes every time I get a new manager. SO it probably sounded odd. Muffled, maybe. But...

The caller was someone who I have done work for recently, and immediately went on the offensive with "You don't sound happy to hear from me". Well, no, not if that's your idea of a hello. Geez

We then were talking about some Notes server moves and he said something that I thought was dumb (that the Notes applications I worked on would be down while the servers are moved... which is WHY we have the notes servers "clustered", the main servers will "fail over" to other servers, and that's almost transparent to the users.... you don't have to understand that much, just go with me....) and I said "well why wouldn't they fail over to the backup servers here, like they normally would if the ones there were down?"

He then said "Wait... where are you?" As a reminder, HE CALLED ME. Using a different area code from his own, for a different state from his own, and thus (one could argue) he should know EXACTLY where I was.

Sigh.

On your mark

Last week the only person on my treadmill was my 18 month old nephew (tm was OFF thank you) as previously noted.

So I decided I had to either start running on it, or just surrender and use it as a laundry rack. Yesterday I blasted some iTunes (like Hope it Gives You Hell) and ran a measly 3/4 mile at a blazing 3MPH pace (Just Dance, by Lady Gaga, is perfect tempo. Just saying. Having to share a music library with a teen has its benefits.) Not exactly a marathon but hey... It's a start.

Of course then I went and had deeelicious chicken parm at Suzy's. So maybe I broke even. Sort of? Whatever. :-)

Carly(via Blackberry)

Heard over dinner

My son: "aunt Suzy, have you ever heard of a REALLY old band, called Aerosmith?"

Cue the adults laughing hysterically.

By the way, really good wine. Especially with homemade chicken parm. (And even more so since I didn't have to cook).

Carly(via Blackberry)

Look up

Like my new header? My friend did it. Awesome, yes? All of the photos are mine and have appeared in the blog previously. (Except the glass of wine, which is a stock photo).

Happy Monday. The local newscasters were talking about the gloomyiest day of winter (when you've broken your resolutions, your credit card bills come, and it's cold and dark and so on....) . Way to be cheerful for your viewers, you guys. At least they didn't say "it's TODAY." Apparently we've gotten past it.

So things are going to get better now, right? :::::taps foot, waiting::::::

The Call

Your song lyrics for today....

Just because everything's changing
Doesn't mean it's never been this way before
All you can do is try to know who your friends are
As you head off to the war


and also....


Now (I'm) back to the beginning
It's just a feeling and no one knows yet
But just because they can't feel it too
Doesn't mean that (I) have to forget


(sung by Regina Spector)

you can watch this to hear the song (from oneof the Narnia movies) performed by the PS22 chorus. Love it.

or you can watch this Tori Amos song, sung by the same kids

Too Funny

Oh, oh OH.

My day

It was a rather exhausting day, I have to tell you

Up at 7pm. ok, 7:14. Once I was dressed, breakfast, etc, I dialed in to do some work. Then the PTO president whom I abandoned this year (not.... still running 3 or four things....helping with the web page, and so on....) called to discuss lunch stuff.

Left house at 8:30. Mission: buy 3 quarts of buttermilk, then head over to the school. I know. Seriously. Buttermilk.

9:00 am - met "my team".... we will do food prep once a month for the school. Today we made ranch dressing (with the buttermilk) and then made ziti for 60. Not hard, but it took 3 hours to do the cooking and cleanup. This was the first day I met the other people; they were pretty nice so it was good. I felt a little guilty because I was the only one who had done this before, so I was directing the 3 of them, more than doing any of the work. The kitchen is tiny and I was trying to stay one step ahead of them to keep everything moving along so we could just get out of there. And I pulled out the wrong foil prep pans. Dummy! But they all think on their feet, and said "Um, no, this doesn't work", so actually it was a good trial for them and now I know they're smart and will really make this work. I made a point to send them each an individual email tonight thanking them, so I hope that it's cool.

12:05 - take photograph of the front of the school, because the one I had for the yearbook sucked and was way too grainy when I enlarged it for the first page. Brrr. Did I mention it was about 20 degrees? IT"S SO COLD HERE. AAAAAAAAAAAGH.

12:15 hungry. Eat bad food because I have to head to a store 20 minutes away to get my new glasses... Hmmph

12:30 Get to glasses store. Walk from parking space to mall in horrific winds which make me whimper. The closer I get to the mall door, the harder the icy wind blew. Eff. Me.

Friendly clerk takes my name, gets optician, who comes with pink cat's eye frames which Are Not Mine. (insert silent internal cussing) I'm not sure why I totally didn't get stressed by this. I simply said almost conversationally, "um, those are the wrong frames"... optician went and checked them out, and said the professional, polished equivalent of "we really effed up and put your lenses in the wrong frames and we're really really sorry because these are cheap and ugly so we know you don't want them and we'll put a rush on the right frames and new lenses"

1:10 get home and eat some cheese danish in frustration. With milk. I know. But damn, it was good.

1:14 rinse the black fibers out of my eyes. Ever since I washed that black scarf, I swear to (whoever you choose) that it has magical powers of regeneration. It sheds TINY black fibers constantly. All over my coat, every sweater and shirt I have, holy effing crap those fibers are EVERYWHERE. I can't get over it. And they are in my eyes, and uh, (gross) on tissues

And no, I can't bring myself to get rid of the damn thing. It's REALLY soft, and it's REALLY effing damn cold now so I just can't part with it even though I mentally compare it to asbestos every time I have to rinse a fiber of its fuzz out of my eye.

1:3o leave for basketball game I don't want to go to, but I am a good Mom. Sorta. Because I did go. But I didn't want to. I wanted to lie on the couch and watch Top Chef.

2:30 another mom said to me "I found minnows in my laundry.... A was fishing and left them in his pockets. "

1) that is SO funny. Washed AND dried minnows. Were they medium rare or well done?
2) it's winter - where was he fishing????

Are you tired yet? because I was, by this point

3:00 playing with camera, shooting black and white at ISO 400. Happy.

3:30 - we lose, by about 3 points. Sigh.

4:30 - headed up to go to dinner with our friends (their son is on same team.... the boys plotted all through dinner for a sleepover. I won! It wasn't at my house! Bonus - eggplant parm. Nummy. And low carb.

6:00 - came home to do more yearbook work. AKA "can I get five minutes in a conference room with these developers to just kill them for not making an easy way to scale a photo to a new size without cropping off kids' heads?"

7:45 find the easy way. Sigh.

8:14 Brother in law calls.... yes, that one. Husband gives excuse to keep them from visiting but when I realize they are 3 blocks away I make him call back to invite them over.

8:30 frantic tidying up. How relaxing. Clean stove because it is A Thing, ever since SIL mentioned how she hates cleaning her flat top stove Mr. Carly wants mine to be spotless when she comes to visit, because It's Not That Hard. Petty. Small. Cleaned.

9:15 BIL comes with toddlers... who I love dearly, but OMG they are like pinballs bouncing around my house. Nephew is in stage where he screams "Mama" if anyone else dares to breathe in his general direction. Happy times.

9:45 nephew is more or less playing on my treadmill, which is fine if it's off, he just wants to climb up on it. He is one year old. His mother says "Do you want to see what it does when it's on? " Ummmm. No.

10:30 Relatives leave. Open another mini bottle of wine (one glass)

11:20 hit post and wonder why anyone would want to read this lonnnnnnng entry.

Clicked

*

In these shoes, Stanley played Ave Maria on the church organ for me, when I converted. (I was raised Lutheran and joined the Catholic church a few years after meeting my husband.)

In these shoes, he played for the baptisms of each of my children, at a Sunday mass... and thousands of other babies, over his 55 (and counting!) years of service at our church.

In these shoes, he played on the Christmas Eve that my son was carried up the aisle, representing the Baby Jesus.

He has played for so many girls in tiny white dresses and boys in white ties, as they receive their sacrament of First Holy Communion. And yes, that includes my children.

He played for my friend's wedding. When her husband tragically died a year later, and we were all heartbroken, and the entire community came together to grieve with her, Stanley wore these shoes.

So many weddings, so many funerals, he has played, wearing these shoes.

He has played Lenten music, Tenebrae services, Easter Vigils and Easter mornings, Advent Sundays (four weeks, year after year after year) and Christmas carols at Midnight Mass, in these shoes.

In the choir loft, there are file cabinets brimming with frayed yellow sheets of paper, worn at the edges by many before me -- all songs which Stanley has played, in these shoes.

Latin masses-- I never dreamed there were so many variations.

We sing Bach, Beethoven, Schubert. German music, Russian music. Polish music, to honor the homeland of Stanley's ancestors. And, something that always amuses me, gospel music that would be very familiar in a Baptist church far south of where we stand to sing.

Yes, he has played the Hallelujah chorus. MANY times.

In these shoes, he plays Stars and Stripes Forever, and God Bless America, every Fourth of July.

May he wear them for many, many years to come.

Aretha's hat

the hat is everywhere... this page has some yawners but a few that make it all worthwhile.

Unclicked

I am starting to think about not only the photo opportunites that I have missed not only for lack of a camera in my hand, but also those images I have been reluctant to capture.

Someone remarked to me last week "Oh, it's always easy to tell how you feel." It was kind and lighthearted, and there is some truth to it. Always? No. I am certainly bossy and outspoken about some things, but like anyone else I have moments when I clam up and don't have the guts to say what I'm thinking or ask for what I want.

Sunday at church I had my camera in my purse. I got to the choir loft first, followed up the stairs by a sweet older Tenor who reminds me in some ways of my own father. He's very nice, and yet his presence made me too shy to take an opportunity to get a shot I've been wanting.

Stanley has a pair of shoes, which rest by the organ when he is not playing. They are beautifully aged leather men's dress shoes -- faded and distressed, literally cracked through on one side. The soles are worn thin. They are surely twenty years old, at least, and serve as tangible evidence that this man has been playing for years and years and years. I'm quite sure he can FEEL the pedals in these shoes.

I want to capture them, to do the image justice, and I am not sure a hastily snapped shot will ever succeed. Black and white? Sepia? Will the congregation below see my flash? Can I shoot at a different ISO? WHAT will Stanley say if he catches me photographing his shoes? Will he understand? I think he might.

I am quite fond of Stanley. My own grandfather (the only one I ever met; the other died long before I was born) had the same quick wit and conspiratorial smile. Somehow for me a photo of the shoes would be almost as much a portrait of Stanley as if I were able to take a shot of him smiling at me over his music rack.

No doubt about it

Drew delivers. I tell you no lies.

Not only did he call Smokey Bones to find out exactly what the waiter's t-shirt said, he also found the complete transcript of Rev Lowery's prayer.

(Yes. He called the restaurant and asked whoever answered, let's call them SB, about the shirt. SB must have noticed our particular waiter standing right nearby because he said "hey, turn around let me read your shirt". I think some people who sit near my cubicle are annoyed about how loudly I laughed at him for doing that)

Back to the prayer, we were walking out of the restaurant to get back to work, and I stopped to see a bit more, and we watched the prayer, the end of which is right about now:

"Lord, in the memory of all the saints who from their labors rest, and in the joy of a new beginning, we ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get back, when brown can stick around -- (laughter) -- when yellow will be mellow -- (laughter) -- when the red man can get ahead, man -- (laughter) -- and when white will embrace what is right. Let all those who do justice and love mercy say amen."
AUDIENCE: Amen! REV. LOWERY: Say amen -- AUDIENCE: Amen! REV. LOWERY: -- and amen. AUDIENCE: Amen! (Cheers, applause.)




Carly(via Blackberry)

I just have to add

edit - my bad... I know the full story now! but isn't this a good photo?

... as wonderful as the ceremony was otherwise, I laughed when Barack mixed up his words, trying to repeat the oath ... I mean, you haven't been practicing it in your pajamas in front of the bathroom mirror for WEEEEEEKS?????

a fine hat

So I convinced Drew that we needed to sneak out to lunch early to get to our local Smokey Bones (a bbq restaurant, for my friends in England) and watch the inauguration.

Our waiter was very cute and wore a shirt with "a good dry rub enhances our meat" on the back. Below that it said "stop laughing". I asked him if he had to wear that particular shirt (there are several variations of funny shirts, like "beer: it makes you do cool things". ) So he pretended not to know "which one" he had on and immediately started flirting with me for the rest of lunch.

That, or he was really NOT straight and just appreciated my sense of humour. I could not tell.

I got him to change the channel, because we could SEE nbc but HEAR cnn, and it looked like a subtitled kung foo movie or something because the audio was not in synch.

But the true point of this post... Aretha's hat is the single most awesome hat I have ever seen in my life. Diamonds and all. You know those were NOT rhinestones, not for the Queen to sing for Barack on this day. Oh no.

The other best part was the preacher and his black man, red man closing prayer. Amen. Well worth the price of admission.


Carly(via Blackberry)

Irving Berlin

said it best....

While the storm clouds gather far across the sea,
Let us swear allegiance to a land that's free,
Let us all be grateful for a land so fair,
As we raise our voices in a solemn prayer:

God Bless America
Land that I love
Stand beside her, and guide her
Thru the night with a light from above.

From the mountains, to the prairies,
To the oceans, white with foam
God bless America
My home sweet home.

Killing me dead

I am exhausted right now. Today I had a yearbook meeting at my house. All day.

Alllllllllllll daaaaaaaaaay, 9 am to 4 pm.

All day, after two of the kids slept over. At 1:30 a.m. this morning, I went out to the family room where they were watching a movie and chatting, and pointed out to my offspring that "you're stressing me out... we have SO much work to do tomorrow, and you guys aren't getting any sleep... you won't want to do anything." Hrmppph. Yes, Mommy is a grouch. Life sucks.

It's not bad enough that it's my day off today, (yay holiday!) and there was no relaxing with bonbons in my future, but to feel like I was going to have to struggle to keep tired cranky teens working with me all day made me VERY frustrated.

That deadline is coming, kids. We can't seem to ever get into the computer room at school. (The teacher has to be present, but she is part time and has another job after school. She's lovely and it's not HER fault that we can't seem to meet at a convenient time, but there it is. We're getting nowhere fast.)

All in all, it went MUCH better than I'd feared. We got 12 collage pages done and I finally figured out how to "flow" portraits, and did most of the grades. The kids used scissor and actual photos for the collages but the FLOW process is online, with digital portraits, and it's great once you figure out how the hell to use it.

Go to the library, find a class, count how many portraits there are (after you figure out how to hide the 2nd best shot of each kid) Pick a template that will hold that many kids, edit that grade's page, add the template, set the border, go back to the portrait library, and find the LITTLE, TINY word "flow" off to the side and click on it. Go BACK to the page, and check the names. Easy peasy, right???? Now I have to kill you. You know too much.

**I could have a field day with their developers. The workflow on this thing SUCKS.

Oh, and do this with "A New Day" playing 1,000 times on the crappy speaker of an iPod touch. I dare you. At one point my right eye was twitching savagely. I had a headache from lack of sleep and just wanted to make will.i.am go away, far away, forever. To to Madagascar, even though I tend to feel Big and Chunky, and he apparently likes them that way. Oh, go check the soundtrack. It's a very funny song.

So now I have some scanning and editing to do (which actually easy) and I still have 3 weeks until the deadline (shhhh, don't tell them). I am feeling much better. But still exhausted.

Sunday art - the Oh, Not Again edition

So my friend "Drew" and I have been sort of reminding each other to try to carve out time to work on photography skills, (for me, it's because I'm thinking the way to cope with the arctic blast is to do things I find INTERESTING and not just required.) He is doing a "take a shot every day" type project, and also mentioned HDR to me.

There are some images and an explanation here and also here --the 2nd one is the better link with more examples, because it's also an ad for a utility that takes one digital photo and makes it look HDR. (Usually you merge multiple exposures taken using a tripod, to make an HDR image)

Here is my "tree" again, and you have to admit, it's definitely different. To me these (HDR) images look like someone painted them with pastels / oil/ acrylic

Cool, eh? Intense.