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Most of our junk mail heads to the recycle bin without a second glance. But every once and a while something like this comes along:
Yes, this is a letter from a charitable organization containing a real nickle. A nickle it's own envelope is telling me can help save these children:
So then why, Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, did you give me a nickle, then pay postage to send that nickle to me?Giving away money seems like a strange way to raise money, but maybe that's just me.
I wish everyone a wonderful holiday season! Enjoy our eco-friendly Christmas card:
How well can you descriminate between similarly hued colors? Test your color I.Q. to find out.
They give you a score from 0-100, with zero being a perfect score. I knew this was one of my strengths, so I was happy with my score of 6.
If only color differentiation were part of the SAT ...
One could almost call the TV battles between Joe and I epic. Tonight I was watching Top Chef and we had this conversation in which Joe explains why he hates top chef.
Joe: "They take the food way too seriously. Food is one of the few things in the life that is not confrontational and they make food confrontational."
Me: ...
Joe: "Food doesn't have to taste like the Eiffel Tower."
Me: "I think the Eiffel tower would taste pretty crappy, literally."
Joe: "I didn't mean taste like the Eiffel tower tastes, I meant taste like the Eiffel tower looks."
Here's to hoping your next meal tastes like the Eiffel tower looks.
If when I say I'm a huge fan of Battle Star Galactica and Dr. Who you think of this or this, you should do yourself a favor and check out the modern incarnations of these shows.
We actually started watching Dr. Who because it came on SciFi right before Battle Star Galactica; so they're kind of a pair in my mind.
If you're already a fan, then you'll understand this post. Over on Cake Wrecks they posted pictures of some terribly constructed Dalek-shaped cakes.
Too bad the Daleks aren't made of cake in the show, then maybe we wouldn't have to watch them invade twice a season.
We spend our lives trying to make sense of an infiltration of information. From birth, we're assaulted with sounds, sights, smells, tastes and emotions. Then later, thoughts, theories, stories and complex explanations. A big chunk of what makes us who we are is how we put together these pieces, creating our outlook of the world and the way in which we reverberate back what we see.
This reverberation is an artist's work. Some concepts can be manifested simply — love, laughter, friendship, marriage, joy, the kinds of ideas that bind us together on a basic emotional level — through symbolic images or even simple phrases. We can do this with everyday language both verbal and non-verbal. Doing so allows us to create order among the chaos of bombardment.
But there are tons of ideas that bombard us that can't be ordered using conventional methods. It's these ideas — and a longing inside myself to find a way to order them — that drive me to create. And I think that is why art exists — to create an order to the pieces of our lives that seem impossible to order using conventional methods.
Both Joe and I are heavily engrossed in The Raw Shark Texts , which fits right between magical realism and science fiction along a book shelf organized by genre. It's a sort of text-obsessed psychological thriller that evolves by unraveling the mystery of the main character's identity, which was lost along with his memories and personal contacts before the book begins.
The book seems heavily engrossed in trying to create order from the fragments of reality that exist outside of order. It spurred these thoughts in me and is inspiring me to write more.
I've been growing increasingly fond of black and whites recently. I love vibrant color so much that I am always looking for it when I take photographs. In that way, I'm usually shooting to produce color images. But I love the way black and whites turn the focus of the photograph back to how it is lit. And, in cases where the lighting is nearly divine there is something much more beautiful about black and white photograhs. They look almost instantly classic.
Part of me thinks this is just a trick our minds play on us because old photographs have no choice but to be in black and white. Therefore, a black and white image is "classic." But I think there is something more to the medium that forces the modern photographer, with all the technology in the world at their fingertips, to pause and take notice of the fact that sometimes it's not technology, or even color, that improves an image. Black and white photography takes you back to the basics — back to lighting, back to focusing on the moment.
Although I posted this photograph of my son and his aunt in color on my baby blog, I couldn't resist sharing it in black and white, as well.
This is the first in a series of blog posts about our Aug. 2007 trip to Iceland. All posts can be found by typing "Iceland" in the search bar.
I figured it was about time I blogged about Iceland.
We tried to sleep on the flight to Iceland because we knew when we arrived it would be morning and several hours off of our schedule of when morning was, so we wanted to be as rested as possible. But, honestly, it was hard to sleep beyond all the normal reasons it's hard to sleep on a plane. I was excited.
We picked up our rental car at the airport and headed to Reykjavik, where we had breakfast. It was the most expensive meal of our entire trip and consisted of what we'd consider a pretty normal breakfast buffet of eggs, sausage, potatoes, breads, jams, butter, milk, juice, cereal and apples and oranges. Iceland, you have a beautiful country, but your food, frankly, stinks. It isn't really your fault, though, because only 1% of your land is tillable soil and you're far away from everything else.
As we left Reykjavik we wandered down a long street that bordered the bleak sea, dark rocks and road made from those dark rocks separated us from the sea. We realized we weren't going the right way and Joe stopped to ask this woman walking her dog for directions. They chatted for quite some time. I think because she really didn't know which way to tell us to go.
We headed out but quickly grew tired, so pulled onto a large gravel parking area and took a nap in the car. Finally, we headed to Geysir, the geyser after which all others are named. Now elderly, Geysir erupts only about twice a day and sits watching over the much more regular, Strokkur.
(view large for full effect)
Then, with little sun left to light our way we headed to Gullfoss, a large nearby waterfall.
There was a long path to a visitor center where we found this diagram that explains how the falls was made:
We used the final shards of sunlight to find Storinupur, the farm where we were staying. Though it was only one family's farm it had its own road sign, just like larger towns. There was also a church nestled into the short hillside with it.
We ate something, pushed our twin beds together and went to sleep.
The photography website is now up and running at www.spellboundjungle.com. Enjoy!I suppose this means my maternity leave has official ended.
Believe it or not, this was not staged. Truman simply wanted to nurse and there I was in front of the dairy barn at the State Fair. It seemed intensely appropriate, so I asked Joe to take this picture.
This is a continuation of the saga of Clocky, the mascot of the newspaper I used to work for. If it sounds crazy, try reading the first post.
When two mascots fall in love they sometimes create a baby mascot. That baby is Clocky. Today, I met Clocky's father, Mr. Minuteman in St. Cloud. He was casual, as usual:
He was representing an extremely small copy shop (there were only two copiers in the place) and leaning against the M in the shop's sign as if to say:
"Oh, Clocky, what have you gotten yourself into now?"
You see, he let me in on a little secret. Clocky is a little slow.
Oddly enough, Mr. Minuteman has a tag line as awkward as Clocky's:
I guess the gear doesn't fall very far from the clockface.
We've relocated to Princeton, Mn and I look forward photographing people and places in the area. I caught this dragon fly snuggled against the screen outside my office.
We spotted these turtles on a walk a few days ago all lined up, sunning themselves on this log. I was excited to see the little one standing between two bigger ones on the right. A few weeks ago this lake was still frozen and Joe and I were walking along it trying to get labor going. When we saw these turtles it was our first time taking the walk with Truman out and able to look around and feel the breeze.
I love spring.
