More of Finding the Beauty

After shoveling as much snow as I have this past week, I very much enjoyed the beauty along the lake on my way to John's house. He spent Friday night at my house, so when he was on his way back to Auburn so he could take his son to work, he noticed the awesome number of waterfowl along Route 38 near Auburn. He called me to let me know so I could drive that route as well in getting to his house for the rest of the weekend. Luckily they were still there when I came through. Awesome. There were Canada geese, Trumpeter and Royal White Mute swans and ducks also. Not a really good place to park, however, to get pics, but I managed to get a few shots anyway.

Finding the Beauty

Since I can't go to Costa Rica for awhile, I have to find some beauty in this ccccccold area of Upstate New York. I looked out my window a little while ago and could see the beginnings of the sunset and decided to brave the cold to go outside and capture it with my camera. It wasn't nearly as cold as it was on Sunday, luckily. I can't wait to complain of the heat!

Cold and Blustery Photo Day

Today was beautiful from the perspective of seeing--not so beautiful for taking pictures without gloves on! But I did get some good shots. I used the polarizing lens and I think it gives the pics too much of a brownish tinge. However, it is a learning experience. What do you think?

Photo Manipulation

I've been playing again with photo manipulation. Check out this pic of my grandson, Matthew, and his sister Jaden.

OK. I think I'll go take a nap now. I have been up all night just playing with photos in PhotoShop.

G'night, er g'day, all.

Always Learning Something New

I'm still busy with my camera, but also with my scanner and old photos and enhancing photos. This is a picture I took a few months ago. I was just trying to capture the glimmer of the water in the little creek in the woods--so imagine my surprise and happiness to see what I had captured in those woods. The woods are on the edge of property owned by friends Heather and Jack in Niles, NY. John's shadow played a part in the ability to capture this view. I see many faces in this photo, but the two that really jump out at me are the "panther face" and the man's partial face tucked into the left side of the panther. "I see faces..." hmm, where have I heard that before? LOL

See if you see more faces (monsters have faces too)--and the head of a bird--in the same picture turned upside down.

Working on my photos helps me forget for awhile the cold that is on the other side of the walls of my house. My fingers get a bit cold even inside though because I keep the thermostat set to 62 degrees F. Even though this has been a very unusual and mild winter, I am thoroughly looking forward to the warm sunshine of spring.

Reminiscing with Old Photos

Hi, everyone. I've been having fun scanning old photos--makes you think back to life during the era the photo was taken. I'm not old enough to have been alive at the time all the photos were taken though, LOL. Photos of my ancestors are kind of fun to see. The first picture is of my mother's fraternal grandparents. You can see I didn't take the time to remove the crack in the photo.

The second picture is my oldest (half-) brother. He died in a car accident when he was 27. His son was six months old at the time and my son was a newborn. My son will be 37 this year! The second picture (obviously not really an "old photo") is of my grandson during one of his hare scramble races last year or maybe the year before. He's been racing since he was 5 years old. He will be 11 this summer.

The next photo is, to me, the most perfect Santa picture. Look at those rosy cheeks! How could anyone doubt that this guy is the REAL Santa. He is being hugged by one of my great nephews (David) when he was a little guy.

This photo is my mother, father, oldest brother and oldest sister. It makes me feel ancient that they are all deceased now.

I love this computer age (at least most of the time).

Sharing Christmas Morning

Just thought I'd share a couple of pictures from Christmas morning. This is my granddaughter, Jaden, and my son's dog that Jaden named Clifford. (So far, my son has not been able to rename him.)

Hooray, It's a New Year!

I had another nice weekend with John. I always take my portable toolbox with me because there is a good chance I can use some of them at his house. I love that we can work on projects together. Of course, it is always a learning experience as well! This weekend we laid new linoleum in his second bathroom--operative word being "second". As beginners on a project like this, it took us a good part of three days to complete. John had previously removed the old floor tiles, so we didn't have to deal with that also. We had to fix the water shut-off valve to the toilet first of all because it leaked when we tried to shut off the water. That turned out to be the easiest fix--we replaced the gasket. We had several places to cut around to make the flooring fit. We didn't have a grease pencil, so we used a felt-tip pen on the reverse side (which meant we had to "reverse" everything) so that took a bit of studying, measuring, re-measuring, and re-cutting (because I figured it was better to have to cut out more later, rather than cutting too much). That process paid off. The floor ended up fitting pretty well. Before we could cut out for the toilet area, we had to remove the toilet. So after all that and glueing the linoleum down, we had to rebuild the toilet! It was so old, all the bolts and nuts were rusted and the gaskets were hardened and misshapen. The jury is still out on how well that turned out. When I left today, the water was not leaking from around the tank to toilet gasket, but the water would not shut off in the tank when it got full. John is going to get new guts for the tank now sometime this week. We're beginning to feel like "John" experts now. Who knew a toilet had all those gaskets or that I would ever be part of replacing the "wax seal"? One of our next projects will probably be removing the rust and repainting the heat venting in the bathroom.



On my way home today, I stopped and took another picture of a tree that fascinates me. I've taken pictures of it before, but the sun wasn't shining and they didn't turn out that great. The sun cooperated today. I love the way the shadows show on some of the branches and I also love the way the branches seem to reach out like welcoming arms.

I also got a great shot of the moon this afternoon. I manipulated the shadow lighting so that the texture shows through a little better.

That's all for now, folks....

Whew, It's Over!

I guess you can tell I'm glad Christmas is over. I'm kind of a bah humbug person. I do not decorate or put up a tree. Christmas is way too commercialized and really turns me off for the season. I bought presents for my grandchildren and my son and daughter-in-law, and I went to their place for Christmas morning. As soon as gifts were opened and they had to leave to go to my daughter-in-law's mother's house, I went home (I was home before 10:00 a.m.) and took a long nap and just vegged out until 6:00 p.m. I then left to go to John's house for the night.

I guess I pretty much veg most of the time since I am not working. I need to get more active and find another part-time job. I haven't found homes for my cats yet, so I haven't made the move to John's full-time. I guess I'm spoiled. I have no objection to service jobs except that I'm afraid they will want me to work weekends. I could go back to work for Subway, but that would require me to drive too far and over the back roads to get to Dryden, and I just don't feel it's worth the hourly wage. I'd rather work from home with my computer, but I don't want to get into any kind of sales or marketing gigs, or sending voluminous unwanted emails to people. I want to do creative work with my computer. I got to do some fun creative work this week--fun work. I scanned several old family photos for a project my niece wants to do with her scrapbooking. I will share a few with you.

These pictures are of my deceased sister and deceased brother, as well as my two living brothers and another sister when they were children. The boys pictures were taken in 1966. My sister's picture was taken the year she died--I'm not sure what year, but somewhere around 1949. She was 5 years old when she died. According to my mother, she died from spinal meningitis, and I also had it. The doctors told my mother I survived it because I was a baby and babies have stronger immune systems than 5 year olds and I was better able to fight it off. Her name was Evelyn, and she was named after my grandmother--and it turns out my grandmother's real first name was Agnes and Evelyn was actually her middle name. Harvey is my deceased brother. He died a year ago on December 17th. My mother died on December 17th also, in 1995. The brother with the bolo tie is Elwin, named after my father's brother. The last boy pictured is my youngest brother. He lives in Kuwait now. And this last picture is my sister, Pat. She is two years older than me.

Guess I'll go get dressed now so I can head back to John's house. I'll try not to be so long in updating next time. No promises, however, even if New Year's is coming up!

Time Flies

It's hard for me to believe it's been so long since my last post. Guess I'm getting lazier. I'm still taking pictures with my new camera, but I still have so much to learn. I don't get the results I'm looking for when I take the pictures. I tried to take some pictures last night of my son's new dog. I had a lot of difficulty because three grandchildren were too rambunctious and kept getting in the way or getting the attention of the dog so it kept turning its back to me. The ones I did get were not focused as clearly as I would have liked. Nevertheless, here are a few pics. The parakeets are my grandson's Christmas present. I don't know the birds' names, but the dog is named "Clifford" (named by my 3 and a half year old granddaughter). The dog belongs to my son, so I'm not sure it will remain named "Clifford."

Earlier today I wanted to print some photos on my inkjet printer, but I got a message that the paper wasn't loaded properly. Upon investigating I discovered the reason the paper didn't load correctly...there was a dead mouse in the paper load area. Guess my cat, Mrs. Whiggins, must've tossed it in there when she was playing with it. (See photo.)

I took a lot of pictures of windmills and other scenic areas over the weekend also. Sunday was a beautiful day in the high country around Niles.

Photos and Paintings

A few weeks ago, I captured some images on my way to John's house in Auburn. One shows a prism in the sky, taken from the parking lot of the Ford garage in Ithaca. I took the sunset pics between Genoa and Scipio Center. It took me at least a half hour longer to get to Auburn because of my frequent stops to take pictures. The sky and the clouds fascinate me.




I spent this past weekend with John and his family, beginning Thanksgiving day. I went to John's house and he and his two sons and I went to John's brother's house in Fairport to have dinner with a houseful of relatives. It was very nice. The following day was bright and sunny, so we took some of John's art collection outdoors to get photos of them because I didn't want to have to use the flash because it washes out parts of the pictures. The only problem with that is the sun sparkled on the paintings and makes them look like there are small white spots on them.

Sunday, we drove around and found some cool scenes to capture. I am still learning about the camera. I have found that some of the ones that look fantastic on the camera screen don't translate as well onto the computer screen and also don't print as well as they look on the camera. I hope to get better with trial and error--in addition to reading. I think the lighting has a lot to do with it. I hope you can see the "two faces in the water" in the pictures posted here. I just wanted to take a picture of the water in the creek; but the lighting and shadows ended up forming a "sleepy-eyed jaguar" and also a man's face to the left and kind of tucked into the jaguar face. I often "see faces" (Oooooooo Oooo Ooooooooooooooooo!) in other images and textures.


This next picture is at 12X optical zoom. For some reason, the pictures I take at extreme zoom look hazy to me. Maybe it is the filters on the camera that cause it. I will try taking the filters off next time. These other pictures were taken around Owasco area. Hope you enjoy looking at them. Maybe tomorrow I will post some more art by John's artist friend "Jak WRobel".

Second Entry Today

I decided to come back and post some additional photos. This is my motorcycle; and it is for sale. It's a 1997 800cc Honda (Pacific Coast). As you can see by the photo, it has 24,242 miles on it. It has been garage-kept except when it was parked outside motels when I took it to places like Prescott, AZ, Athens, GA, Canaan Valley, WV and other places I've traveled. I need to sell it to pay back the loan I had to take out to pay my property taxes--one of the not-so-fun realities of living in New York State!




Be sure and check out my previous entry for today (below).