Completely by chance I found an awesome new shooting ground--the old "AO", American Optical in Southbridge. Although we've driven past the area hundreds of times, today was the first day we decided to side track and drive through. Definitely worth it and I'll definitely be back.
We had my brother's 50th birthday party last nite. Apparently when your 50 people force you to dress like Fred Flintstone and then video tape you for posterities sake. I've got some time before I have to worry about it, but I think I'll just stop at 49 birthdays if it's all the same to you. LOL
I really love the starkness of this shot. It just really speaks to me. If you wanna see it as it's best check it out by clicking on it and going to Flickr and then under the picture hit "View on Black".
HA! It's not the clearest shot I got.. but it's certainly the funniest... Who knew that this wild beautiful graceful creature of the forest could be a klutz at times!
Another 6 inches or so of snow again today.
It's getting really hard to not just wither up right along with my lovely tulips...
Although they have had to double up their shifts due to the massive amounts of Ibuprofen that I've been single-handedly consuming. Sorry guys!
The Stupid Little Angry Dog™ is gonna sleep good tonite! :)
Ok.. so the goal was to take this lovely old tank of a camera, the Canon A1 - run a roll of film through her for demonstration purposes - and put the whole shebang up on eBay for sale.
Then I got the roll developed.
I think I need to rethink the "for sale" part.
btw... These were the lovely roses my husband got me for Valentine's day... They are not only beautiful.. but they are lasting forever!
I'm half frozen... but it was really cool and well worth it...
Yes. Yes, this was my day yesterday. Of course this is just a re-enactment. With Barbie playing the role of myself and Tanner standing in for Gretchen... Yup... It was a banner day...
Why, yes. I did take some toys to the Boston Aquarium.
Breakfast with the Chickadees can be a noisy affair.
I'm just coming off of a 7 day stretch of working every day. It's hard to know what to do first with a whole day to myself. Today I decided to go up and have breakfast with the birds. It's exciting and calming all at once, a really good start to free day.
Inside of Quincy Market. I'm still working my way through tons and tons of photos I took over the weekend. Boston is nothing if not photogenic!
I love the stairs in Faneuil Hall, they so reminded me of an Escher print...
We spent a lovely weekend in Boston... ok.. so it was FREEZING but we made the best of it and dressed for the weather... This is where we stayed, the Harborside Inn of Boston.. It was the perfect place to stay... the people were very nice... the room was huge, lovely and spotless.. and the location couldn't be beat... one block over and there was Quincy Market... two blocks to the left and your at the Aquarium... just step out the door and pick up the T to everywhere else... all for a very reasonable 125 bucks complete with taxes... We definitely will be back when it's MUCH warmer! I'm telling you tho... we can't go anywhere anymore without running into someone that my husband knows... we parked the car and headed directly to the hotel, opened the door, walked in, and promptly ran directly into a guy that Mike works with hanging out in the lobby! Freaky.
Check out my set of photo's from Boston, don't forget to come back again as I've got a ton more to add!
Just hanging out on the couch with a couple of my buddies trying to keep warm in our fuzzy striped sweaters...
I spent a good hour and half down my driveway the other day waiting for the UPS man. He had thrown my brand new battery grip into a snow banking at the end of my driveway and I needed to meet him to keep him from throwing my new scanner into the same snowbanking. It worked, I was down there shooting and being entertained by these lovely bluejays when he showed up. He was backing into the drive which means that, yes, he fully intended to 'deliver' this package in the same manner he did the battery grip. As I approached the truck he said "Wow.. what timing!" so I replied "Not really, I was waiting for you to keep you from throwing THIS delivery into a snow banking as well." His brilliant response....
"OH.. I would have put this one in a plastic bag for you."
pfft.
can be an adventure... She never seems to want to go in the same direction as you do... She's already almost too big to control, add a few more months and it may be too late to train her properly.
By special request of the owner of these lovely eyes. I hope I did them justice!
If Burl Ives had really lived life to the fullest... kicked @ss and took names... he'd have ended up looking just like Charles... and I suspect he would have had alot more fun as well!
Charles comes off as gruff and tough, which works great for keeping the customers off his back... Half of them are afraid of him and the other half are terrified of him. LOL... In reality he's a hilarious teddy bear! He showed up at work in the long leather coat and the bowler hat and announced that he wore them just for me because he knew I would love it! He could not have been more right, and I'm extremely honored that he did this for me. What a guy! :)
Seems we never set out to photograph the covered bridges of the area but stumble upon them by accident. By happy, happy accident!
More shots from Tuesday's ride through the blizzard. I'm in the process of combining these shots with the red barn shots into a single 6 paned black photo frame. The combination of the black, white and red has always been one of my favorites. I'll be sure to shoot the final product and post it here!
We lucked out and both of us had the day off today, so of course, we packed up the camera gear and headed out for the day. First west, then north to Vermont, then east to New Hampshire and then back south to home. It started snowing somewhere around Brattleboro and didn't stop till we got back home. It was a great day.
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
