Archive for the ‘just for fun’ Category

I have taken first day of school pictures for a decade now. Wow!

Here are two of the three boys in their traditional first day of school picture. They were not willing to smile for me. I asked Richard to pose with them because their older brother was upstairs in the shower when they had to take their leave. Richard says he’ll photoshop G into the image later. We’ll see.

Now for the real one.

Richard and I went to Oregon with the boys. We visited some friends in Bend and spent time in Portland and on the Coast. Here are some of the photographs we took. A few are panoramas knitted together using photoshop and a few are high dynamic range images.

I can already see that these panoramas are not suited well to the size constraints of a blog.

We just returned from three carefree days on Pawleys Island, SC. We visited Uncle Jack and Aunt Kathy. Here are some photos.

Years ago my college roommate Sarita gave me a book of poems by Alice Walker called Horses Make a Landscape Look More Beautiful. A favorite from that collection is a poem called HOW POEMS ARE MADE/A DISCREDITED VIEW. I was reminded of the poem yesterday when someone talked about letting a lover go. I feel inspired to share it, but I’m not sure about the rules about posting entire poems. I’ll post the first two stanzas, and let you follow a link to the rest of it.

HOW POEMS ARE MADE: A DISCREDITED VIEW
by Alice Walker

Letting go
in order to hold on
I gradually understand
how poems are made.

There is a place the fear must go.
There is a place the choice must go.
There is a place the loss must go.
The leftover love.
The love that spills out
of the too full cup
and runs and hides
its too full self
in shame.

Click here to read the whole poem.

Julie and I spent some more time knitting today. We picked up the second side of gusset stitches and are beginning some decreases that involve some ssk’s. I love learning new jargon. Knitspeak. Julie said hers looked like little buntings so she asked her daughter to grab a nesting doll. Cool, huh?

Julie’s daughter was skeptical of our mirth.

Julie’s sock.

Sarah’s sock. I am making mine shorter because that’s how I like my socks. Imagine that? Custom-made socks.

Two friends and I are knitting two socks at a time on two sets of circular needles. The above photo shows Jennifer working on the first full row.

This is how mine look. (I had to start over after somehow getting things all cattywompus.)

These are Julie’s after no false starts and a long afternoon at the pool. Isn’t she cruising?
I’ll keep you posted on progress.

My middle and youngest sons spent the day Friday at the Mississippi Science Olympiad at the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg. They competed in events such as trajectory, elevated bridge, Wright stuff, pentathlon, and dynamic planet. I went along to chaperone and take pictures. The photography challenges were that most of the events we could watch were held in the gymnasium and the student union. I had to use a very long lens to get close enough, but my flash wasn’t effective at that distance. I propped the lens a lot to try to steady it. You can judge the results.

We awoke to a beautiful blanket of snow. And it’s still coming down. Though we’ve already had snow this year, it is still rare enough to prompt whoops of joy from my sons. Of course, the joy has something to do with the fact that school was called off. They don’t really have the proper gear for this kind of thing so they never stay out for long. I went along with my camera because I wanted to get some pictures of the snow and of them enjoying it. I thought about calling the grandparents, but I thought I’d better let them sleep in. Stomping around in the snow in my boots (the ones I bought a few years ago to attend Writing From Nature in Honesdale, PA, in April), reminded my of childhood trips to Cincinnati to visit my grandparents. We borrowed gear from cousins had lots of fun.

I promised I would post a photograph of this amaryllis blooming so here it is. In a post back in December, I showed what it looked like when it had just been planted. I love the bold color and bodacious blossom. Wow!

Richard and I added compost to our raised beds two weeks ago, and yesterday, we planted seeds. We planted lettuce, spinach, kale, swiss chard, beets, and leeks. Richard got a rain barrel for Christmas so some of our watering will be collected rainwater. We have plans to add a few raised beds this year. The zucchini and yellow squash need their own boxes.

Allow me a proud Mama moment. The Murrah High School Quiz Bowl team took second place today in a tournament organized at Madison Central. Here are the team members posing with their coach, Andrew Yoder, a Murrah math teacher, holding the trophy. My son, G, is on the left. I was awed at these kids’ knowledge and poise under pressure. I sat and quilted and bit my tongue when they missed the occasional one that I knew. In a lightning round about banned books, they didn’t know the Judy Blume title banned for its discussion of breasts, bras, and crises of faith. Anybody remember that one? (See, I did tie it in with children’s books.)

I saw the fine cut of the book trailer for Growing Patterns today. I really like it and I think you will, too. Just some tweaking to do and we’ll be ready to go live. I can’t wait.