OK.. so I was shopping with Santa when this Barbie furniture set just jumped off the shelf and screamed... GET ME!!! I refused to leave the store until Santa bought it for me... LOL... As we were walking through the mall, we stopped at the Dairy Queen for an ice cream... the girl behind the counter saw it and said "OH... that's awesome... how old is the girl that that is for?"... I happily replied... "I'm 44!" :)
If she didn't have a reason to be angry before, The Stupid Little Angry Dog™ has one now. LOL...
Even with 3 of the Stupid Little Angry Dog™ she's still no match for the amount of snow we've gotten in the past week.
Thanks so much for reading along this year!
My fingers are frozen. My arm is killing me. My harddrive is full of pictures of my empty hand. My camera battery is dead.
BUT IT WAS SO WORTH IT! :)
The ad for the d@ting service read:
Male celebrity seeking fem@le companion. I'm a warm, bouncy and cuddly 43 year old m@le who has starred in several made for TV movies and have found it difficult to meet women. I've recently been replaced at my job by a Dentist with a step ladder and am willing to relocate for the right wom@n.
Ok. So I knew that Jenny was probably gonna stink in the snow.
I knew that.
Really I did.
I mean she is rear wheel drive but I figured, we all used to drive rear wheel drive cars, and we all still made it where we needed to go, right? How bad can it be, I only have a 7 minute drive to work.
Enter the storm on Monday.
I managed to back out of my parking spot and thanks to gravity, made it down the hill through the woods that is my driveway. Stopping at the end of the driveway to check for traffic was my first mistake, however. Even tho it is perfectly flat, it took about 30 seconds of spinning my tires to get going again. OK. Not so good. But I DID get going again. Only to fishtail as I attempted the turn onto the road. Then it was more tire spinning as I tried for second gear. Followed by more fish tailing as the tires finally grabbed. Within 100 feet of the end of my driveway, I was looking for a spot to turn around. I found my spot, a nice flat side street. Downshifting back to first, however, resulted in yet more fish tailing, and apparently 3 miles an hour was still to fast for any application of the brakes as doing so simply sent me sideways and headed for the shrubbery rather than actually stopping. Luckily, tires aren't meant to be driven sideways so Jenny eventually did come to a full and complete stop and she even left me room to actually make the turn that I was attempting in the first place. Whew. Ok... so now it's a simple half circle at the end of the side street and I'll be headed back home. Thank goodness for her incredibly tiny turning radius. Another 30 seconds of tire spinning and a quick fishtail and I was on my way back home. Luckily there was no traffic coming now that I was back at the end of my driveway and I was able to just make my turn without anymore tire spinning delays and I was on the home stretch. Yay. Now there was nothing left to do but make it UP my driveway and the only way to do that was to gun it.
Faster and faster Jenny went with me hanging on for dear life.
Up and up we climbed.
We made it up the first little hill.
Negotiated that last little curve.
Up and up we went.
Up that last little hill.
Almost...
Just a little more...
Come on baby...
Come ON...
DOH!
And that was as far as she went.
We managed to stop in the middle of the top of the driveway. You know, exactly in the middle so that no one with a vehicle that is decent in the snow could make it past us in either direction.
Just. Freakin'. Perfect.
So now I was left with 2 choices. Either back all the way back down the driveway, or get my big strapping son out of bed and have him attempt to push me the rest of the way up the drive so other people could at least get past me.
Fifteen minutes later I'm driving Jenny again praying that she doesn't just get a mind of her own and take out the kid attached to my rear bumper. Oh. Wait. Did I say "driving". I meant spinning. Sorry.
Well. We did manage to get her out of the way and I even managed to make it to work. You know, in my son's little Ford Focus that frankly didn't fishtail or spin at all.
Not. Even. Once.
So. Basically. As bad as I knew Jenny was gonna stink in the snow, if I had taken that image and multiplied it by, oh, say, TEN. I might have been in the correct ball park.
Now, tell me this.
Anyone have a winter beater for sale?
The Stupid Little Angry Dog™ amazingly seems to really like her new coat. She will patiently wait while I apply it to her furry little body before going outside. I'm thinking if she didn't like it, it would:
A. Be impossible to find her when holding the coat.
B. Be a fight every time I try to apply it.
C. Be torn to shreds the second she is out of my sight.
D. All of the above.
And the winner is "D" "All of the above"... amazingly she really seems to like it. I know I do.. she looks hilarious out there running through the shrubbery. She doesn't even seem to notice that the barn cats are giggling at her behind her back.
A lovely trip through Rhode Island yesterday netted me 3 different lighthouses!
I could barely contain my excitement when I saw him... Standing like a giant blinking beacon outside the Ware Public Library... I love him... and if I thought I wouldn't get caught... or that he would even come close to fitting in my Miata... He would be MINE.. MINE I TELL YOU!!!
My son and his girlfriend had to have their dog Sasha put down last nite. She had been sick for a couple of weeks now but yesterday she couldn't even stand for any length of time on her own. An emergency room vet visit revealed that she was highly anemic.
The cause.
ONIONS.
I had made a beef stew loaded with onions a few weeks back and my son's girlfriend, not liking onions, had given her leftovers to the dog not realizing that onions are highly toxic to dogs. Frankly, we're all shocked. We knew about the usual chocolate issues but had no idea that onions (and to a lesser degree garlic) were harmful. It was a sad way to learn such a lesson, and Sasha will be missed.
Please, if you know of anyone that feeds table scraps to their beloved pets, pass along this bit of information. I just wish someone had let us know about it quite some time ago.
It came to my attention at Thanksgiving dinner that some in the family may not realize that I actually have a second blog. The one your reading right now is my original and more personal, but I also do one for the local newspaper website. It's called appropriately enough:
Bay Road Photo
In fact, if you Google Bay Road Photo, anything image related that comes up should be me, including the Masslive blog and my Etsy store. So, yeah, I'm pretty much everywhere... up and down and all around this great big interweb... It really is a good thing there is actually 4 of me!
I shot some family portraits... How Mike ended up escaping the camera, I'm not sure, but I'll grab him tomorrow!
Just a quick note to wish you all a very happy Thanksgiving. Gotta run.. I've got 8 hungry mouths to feed for the holiday, including my own. I'm sure there will be photos.. lots and lots of photos!
Gretchen has just gone through a HUGE growth spurt and is now 4 times her original size. Ok.. not really.. this is my 'house guest dog'... Sasha... She came back home to live in my cellar along with my son and his girlfriend... now if we could just get the 2 dogs to get along maybe I can get a shot of them together where they aren't trying to kill each other... they are getting somewhat better so hopefully it'll happen eventually.
We still have an amazing amount of leaves on the trees for November but off in the distance there's snow on the top of Mount Monadnock. I even spotted a few flakes falling from those grey storm clouds this afternoon but not nearly enough to show up in a photograph. I can't wait for the first really good snow shower.
So busy these days I haven't had time to shoot much of anything. I find that if I don't get 2 days off in a row I just get tired. You know tired. The kind of tired that only a day of sitting on the couch and watching old movies can cure it, tired. So, here's one from the archives that never got posted from the trip to Cape Cod. I'm glad I looked back at these, I really like this one and the little crane hanging out in the water under the dock is just a little extra bonus!
Luckily this week I'm back to 2 days off in a row. So I should be able to get back on track. I hope. I also gave up a couple of my mornings that I usually go out shooting so that I could get my Etsy store back up and running. I missed going out and about with the camera's but it was worth it, within a couple of days I had another sale. I've still got more work to do, I've got to get my Christmas card selections up there, but that shouldn't take too long. Gah... busy.. busy.. busy...
It doesn't get any fresher than this. When I got home from work last night my husband had a little gift for me. He had spent the day down at the ocean out fishing on his father's boat and apparently shopping in some pretty cool gift shops. As soon as I walked in the door he presented me with a plastic take-out container with this rather sad looking oyster in it. Cracking it open and fishing through the slime for a good minute or two eventually produced this beautiful pearl! The gift even came with a pretty twin dolphin pearl cage necklace to put my new treasure in and wear. Now how COOL is that!! All I know is my husband now has a license to go off fishing with his Dad any time he wants.. provided he brings me more plastic take-out containers full of pearls! :)
I'm not sure if I've posted this to the blog off the top of my head (apologies if it has been) but there is an update on it... I entered it into the Masslive.com Fall Foliage Photo Contest and it was published a couple of days ago as an "Honorable Mention".. Yup... I'm Honored as well... :)
I noticed this new banner while I was out on break... say it isn't so Santa!
I don't usually (read never) post pictures of strange children but this one was just too cute... It was trick or treat at the Wally world last night and the kid on the right, dressed as an organ grinder monkey was just adorable... till I downloaded the shots and realized what the kid was doing with his finger... Which of course.. made the shot cuter than EVER! LOL
Yes. Captain Copyright! That lesser known super hero!
Defender of Artists everywhere!
Your weapons shall not deter me from my task!
Tell me the Photographer is dead and I shall scoff at you!
Try and sneak Little Jimmies School Portrait in between stacks of snapshots from last Christmas and I shall route it out of the pile and destroy it!
Even your most strongest weapon of "I intend to tell a member of Management what a rude woman you are." is no weapon that can defeat the all mighty Captain Copyright it shall simply show Management that I am indeed doing the tasks for which I am employed and shall instead of getting Captain Copyright in trouble it will get Captain Copyright a raise for actually doing her job.
So. Go ahead. Make my day... Pull that professional portrait of dear dead Grandma off the wall and attempt to make a copy of it. For I shall laugh as I send Grandma through the shredder...
MMWWAAAAAHA HA HA>>...
so.. what else are you gonna do with free film but make sure you get your moneys worth... 4 shots per frame should do it... This was really fun.. but hard... by the time I reset the self timer I had forgotten where I was standing in the previous frame... I really got get someone to hit the freakin' button for me!
I grew up right next to this barn. For 20 years I looked out on this view, it's funny that I never thought to photograph it until now, as it is I almost drove straight past without stopping before I thought better of it.
This is one that I did for a "Dictionary Group".. where you pick a word, shoot a photo to illustrate it and include the definition in the photo... So of course, I picked "Vice"...
Ok.. so this is a somewhat oldie... it's from back in September... but I needed a pic with a finger in it... Why, you ask? Well.. you know how I love to illustrate my posts with a pertinent picture to describe whatever it is I'm yappin' about at that particular moment and today I'm yappin' about fingers.
Yes.
Fingers.
As in those appendages that you find on the ends of your hands. You know the ones. The ones that people just LOVE to photograph. How do I know that people love to photograph their fingers? Because I develop at least one finger photo every day at work. I even had a streak going. I had developed a finger-shot every shift that I worked for over 3 weeks.
EVERY day!
Fingers...
Then... one day... it was really really slow during my shift and I only developed 3 rolls of film for the entire 4 hour shift. No fingers. I was SO disappointed. I shouldn't have worried though, like clockwork, the finger-shots were back again the next night, and have continued every single day since then. I've even considered making a game out of it. You know, for every finger shot I develop during the day's shift, I get to have the same number of fingers of Ketel One Vodka that night when I get home. Then I realized that that particular Sunday I had had an 8 finger day.
Yes.
EIGHT.
I quickly realized that my little game could only result in a couple of things:
1. Really bad hangovers as I try to develop more fingershots the next day.
2. A habit that could be really hard to stop.
3. Spending my entire paycheck on more bottles of Ketel One.
4. Death by finger poisoning.
So I've rejected the idea of my Finger-shot game. Too bad really. But I still keep track of things. Why just the other day, I beat my own record of eight with a banner "Nine Finger Day". I'll be sure to keep you posted, after all, as the Holidays approach I expect to see lots of "Kids (and is that Santa there behind Mommies Finger?)" shots. Time will tell... Eventually I'm sure I will have developed photo's of every finger in town.
Hey...
Maybe that's the coffee table book idea that I've been looking for...
"The Finger - Illustrated"
I love this barn... I shot the Spring one first back in May and then last week I shot the Fall version... I'm gonna have to go back when the snow flies to get some snow on the barn and then again in the full green bloom of summer...
An experiment with my new film camera. Yup.. the old 1981 Minolta finally has started giving up the ghost.. all over my shots... it seems to have developed a light leak which leaves bleached out streaks across every 4th or 5th frame... I'll still try and salvage her and see if I can find where the problem is with the seal but in the meantime I've picked up a Canon Rebel K2... not necessarily what I would have chosen as a 35mm but the fact that all my Digital Lenses will fit on this body won the day. I am loving it.. the tiny electronic click of the digital can't compare with the lovely "click.. slap.. whirr" of the film camera... it's just so satisfying... this is a shot from the first roll of test film that I sent thru her... Not bad... not bad at all... I even shot the same scene on both the digital and the new film and the quality of the shot is amazing... I have a feeling that your gonna see alot more film shots from me...
Boy.. did I pick the right day to visit Old Deerfield. I ran smack into an antique (pre 1914) car meetup. A great group of people from "The Snappers Automobile Club" in some of the most amazing cars!
Looking OH so like an advertisement for Mazda.. LOL... That's the Mount Washington Hotel in the background... I'm finally getting around to processing all the pics I took up in New Hampshire during the "Great Annual Leaf Peeping Traffic Jam" that we attended a couple of weekends ago... More to come.. or check my Flickr Account to see 'em all..
A little Halloween fun goin' on... :) I didn't get a chance to carve the pumpkin the proper way before he developed a soggy bottom so this was the best I could come up with... I really like him actually... definitely not your typical Jack... I may still pickup a new pumpkin and do a traditional lighted one... we'll see...
We managed to visit not one but two lighthouses during our visit to the Cape... The Chatham Light and this one, the Nauset Light.. they are twins that used to stand together in Chatham until they moved this one up to Eastham.
I've shot so much lately I'm having a hard time find time to edit and process... Here's one from last week that I'm just getting around to working with now... More of that great Great Blue Heron...
I'm lovin' it... The shore fisherman didn't catch a single one... I keep finding more and more stripers in my pics...
I know.. the posting has been a bit sparse... but I've been traveling... Mike has been on vacation this week and what with not having a day job combined with taking the weekend off of the photo job we've actually had time to get out and about... We went down to Natick, pictures posted below and here.... then up to New Hampshire, pictures still to come.. and then Wednesday and Thursday were spent on the Cape... This is one of my favorites from that trip... You can find a few more here.
So many photos.. so little time to get them all posted...
Of course when you go to a photography meetup you get a ton of photo's of people taking pictures.
No pressure here... just take a portrait of a ton of the most awesome photogs.. nope... no pressure!
I've never had my picture taken this much. Ever. Not even when I start doing some of those "self portraits" that I know you all love so much, but that's what happens when you spend the day down in Sherborn with a group of 20 or so photographers.
Saturday was the 1st (annual hopefully) Meetup of the online group that I belong to known as "Utata". That's right... those insane photo's that I take for "Iron Photographer" and "Title This".. that group. It was a little scary. Meeting all those people for the first time, even tho with most of them I can tell you who their spouses are, how many children they have, what kind of cars they drive, where they live and in alot of cases, what they had for dinner last nite because they've photographed it and posted it to Flickr.
The intimidation factor was huge as well. These are some of the BEST photographers that, whether they realize it or not, have become mentors to me. I learn so much from looking at their stuff. So there was no way I could pass up the chance to meet these people in the flesh... So.. it was off to Natick/Sherborn and I'm SO glad we went. It was a total blast. It really was amazing how 20 very different people, that have never met before, can all just show up and instantly have a connection and gel so well together. It felt more like a group of 'old friends' getting together than a group of strangers. I just wish I had had more time to talk one on one with some of them, but I guess that's what follow-up visits are for. I'd love to take the day and meet Tracy Lee from New Hampshire and pick her brain. Patrick from Revere for his awesome portraiture and Jody from LA, I swear, carries around her own portable "early evening light" and uses it just OH so freakin' well.
Anyway... it was really wonderful and I'm sure you'll see some more photo's from the meetup. Or... if you can't wait for me to post some you can surf through these here. These are all the photo's from the Meetup from everyone that was there. We all put the same descriptive tag on the photo's "That cow is a bull"... Long story.. let's just say there were alot of "city folk" there... LOL
Here's your photo to go with the entry below... shot just for you!
It was a wonderful day yesterday. I found this guy standing on his log at the edge of the Ware River. He's probably still standing there. I know he outlasted me. I shot a full 2 Gig card of him and part of another and when I left, he was still standing there. Outlasted by a Blue Heron. Wonderful.
So many pictures... SO many... :)
So far it's just been an awesome week. My first week of no day job. WOOHOO... We went to the Big E.. well.. ok.. that was last week but close enough...
Monday I went shooting with my friend Sandra out to Shelburne Falls and the Bridge of Flowers...
Tuesday Sasha and I hopped in my little car and took a wonderful foggy tour up through Hardwick and into Petersham (I haven't even posted those pictures to Flickr as yet - I'm still working on posting the ones from Monday!)
And right now I'm downloading over 2 gigs of photo's from this mornings ride. A quick toot up to West Brookfield, across to Gilbertville and down through Grenville Park where a very accommodating Blue Heron sat on a branch and posed for me until I ran out of chip space!
Awesome...
I'm loving it!
A tribute to "Young Frankenstein" (perhaps THE best movie ever) shot for another of Utata Iron Photographer's that just make me crazy! :)
This one had to have:
1. Something from the bathroom
2. Something from the fridge
3. Shot in the bedroom
WHEW!! This one was really hard!
Spent an awesome day out shooting with Sandra.. Where this one was taken will remain a secret.. LOL ps... I stayed back in case SOMEONE needed bail money or an ambulance! ;)
I spent a lovely day out in Shelbourne Falls, Mass shooting with my friend Sandra... I came back with a ton of shots and will upload them over the next couple of days... right now I'm just too damn tired from all that fresh air and sunshine.. oh.. and did I mention the freakin' MOUNTAIN she decided we needed to climb...
It was an amazing sight watching all the horse teams flying through the midway at the Big E.
