I rarely go anywhere without a camera these days, whether it’s my phone or my lovely Nikon D3200. I’ve had a passion for photography ever since I was thirteen, when my grandparents gave me my very first camera for Christmas. My grandpa always had his camera with him; so did my mom, and my aunt, and their cousin and her mother…Well, you get the idea. Shutterbug-ism runs in my family. I may not be able to draw to save my soul, but I’m not too shabby with a camera, if I do say so myself.
Tag: A bit of fun
Blogging U. rocks my face off
Over the last twelve days, I’ve been participating in WordPress’s Blogging 201 course (no, I did not grab the badge – I don’t know why). It’s been an absolute blast, and it’s also what prompted the recent design changes you may (or, if you’re like me and real observant, you may not) have noticed. Today is Day Twelve, and today’s assignment is to create a poll or survey to gather more in-depth feedback about what readers like and dislike about my blog.
I’ve been toying with the idea of adding a poll recently, anyway, so the timing of this seems like a great big hint to go ahead and do it. If you’re a regular reader here…
How Star Trek improved my confidence in my writing skills
Seymour and I have been rewatching all things Star Trek since we were dating; we’ve taken care of the original series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and all the movies (although we’re not big fans of the reboot and I haven’t yet seen Into Darkness). We’re halfway through our Enterprise rewatch at the moment (which is great because it means I’m that much closer to a rewatch of my beloved Voyager), having started Season 3 the other night. Seymour’s been telling me about how awful the third season is; he’s not a big fan of the temporal cold war story arc or the Xindi story arc and frankly, I kind of agree with him on the temporal cold war thing.
Anyway, the point of this is that the season premiere of Season 3 had me laughing. And facepalming. The words, “What the hell?!” kept running through my head. Sure, it started off okay – recap of the season finale, Xindi council meeting, theme song (which sucks now – they completely ruined it by jazzing it up). But then they unveil the new command center, and that’s where it all went wrong:
And now…
Full sprawl. How feline. 🙂
…further proof that my son is a bipedal cat:
This morning I was awakened by the sound of Thumper taking down the baby gate from his bedroom doorway. (I really don’t know why I bother putting it up anymore since he knows how to take it down, but I do. Maybe it’s for those extra few seconds I gain in which to prepare myself for battle with a two-year-old.) He tiptoed through the hall, barged into our room, and climbed into bed next to me, where he sat on all fours and stared at me, grinning from ear to ear, his nose about an inch from mine.
When I finally opened my eyes to acknowledge his presence, he whispered, “Time to get up!”
If cats could talk, surely they’d say something similar. And this, my friends, is why I am on my second 2L bottle of Diet Dr. Pepper. The first one was gone by noon.
If you’ve got a cute kid story, share it below! I could use a little cuteness on this dreary Friday afternoon.
(c) 2014. All rights reserved.
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Camera skills
Apparently, I’m not too shabby with a camera. I’ve been an amateur photographer for a good decade and a half now (a little over that, actually), ever since I got my first camera for Christmas, and it’s something I love. Most of the pictures that accompany my poems are ones that I’ve taken (unless otherwise noted). It’s so much fun; I can’t imagine not having a camera to play around with. And, while I do miss my old film cameras, it’s nice that with my DSLR, I can take as many pictures as I want without having to worry about paying to have bad pictures developed. Of course, this has also made me a little more careless, I think, in my composition, but such is life.
But I digress. When I post something new here, I usually head over to Facebook and share the link in a couple of groups I’m in. Last week, my post “Lonesome Call” gathered a bit of attention there, as someone found my photo of a lone tree in a field near my hometown particularly inspiring. She crafted a whole poem around the image, which I was quite flattered to read. Apparently it’s been making its way around the web via Facebook, from what I can tell. If you’d like to take a look for yourself, you can find it here.
If you decide to check it out, I hope you’ll enjoy. 🙂
(c) 2014. All rights reserved.
Cop out
Mosaic image of Mars as seen by Viking 1, 22 February 1980 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
There’s a game going around Facebook today, wherein someone tags you to share a passage from page 7 of your current work in progress. I was tagged, but I had a little trouble deciding what to post – I’m working on three things at the moment (well, sort of). I’m still working on that short sci-fi piece that I started back in May, in addition to mulling over revision possibilities for The Lokana Chronicles, and since my short been getting a lot of my time lately, I finally decided to go with that.
And now, because I’m too tired to come up with something better, I’m going to post it here. (It was a long weekend; I’m still in recovery.) From my story, The Colony, I give you a conversation between Lynn Treadwell, the protagonist, and Mr. Edward Barrington III, an executive with the Company, who’ve sent Lynn’s husband to Mars as part of a colony expedition:
Still hungover
So I haven’t posted in a few days. Kind of unusual. Okay, wow, so it’s been more than a few days – it’s been a week. I’ve been doing a lot of writing, though, and a crap ton of rewriting, and I think it’s going well. But I’m still dealing with that book hangover. I just can’t get those books out of my head.
I’ve spent far too much time the last couple days on Tumblr and ogling all the pretty pictures and listening to pi while thinking about The Hunger Games and America and analyzing the series and thinking about how I can’t remember being stuck on a book like this ever and I finally decided something:
Apology
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Please excuse my lack of presence over the last couple of days. I’ve become lost in Panem and hope to return shortly. Meanwhile, have a great rest of the weekend!
(c) 2013. All rights reserved.
A bit of fun
One of my friends did a fun little quiz about one’s internal nationality. I thought it sounded like fun, so I tried my hand at it, and this is what I got:
Apparently, I identify with Turkey. Who knew?
Next, there was a link to a quiz about what part of Russia you would live in. A woman in my childhood church used to travel to Russia quite a lot back in the late ’80s and early ’90s, and when she came back, she would give talks on her travels. She sparked my interest in this country (and a variety of other things, too), so I thought, why not? And this was my result:
I’d live in Kaluga Oblast!
Wanna take these quizzes yourself? You can do so here and here. Have fun! 🙂
(c) 2013. All rights reserved.
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- My First Blog: Russia (akphotogallery.wordpress.com)
¡Hace calor!
Well, it’s late and I’m exhausted after a long day. I hope you’ve all been enjoying the poetry! Most of them were written on our last camping trip. We spent two hours waiting for our boat to get fixed and, after my phone battery died, I whipped out my handy little purse notebook and started writing. (If I’d have had The Lokana Chronicles with me, I’d have started revising, but that didn’t work out.)
Anyway, I’ve got loads to tell when I’m less tired and more coherent, so for tonight, I’ll just leave you with this. It hit 105° today at work, and in Des Moines, apparently it hit 108°. I heard that was a record, but I don’t know for sure.
What I do know for sure is that when it’s this flippin’ hot out, there’s only one thought that runs through my mind, and it goes like this:
Suddenly they all died. The end. 