echodrift

Happy New Year!

I could sit here and write an entry about all of the things I did in 2008. Or I could write an entry about all the things I want to do in 2009, such as those pesky things called New Year’s Resolutions.

Instead, I’m going to go sleep. See, I’ve got some kind of bug. A cold. Something. I don’t know what it is. What I do know is that my head feels as if it is going to split out of my skull sometime very soon so I will be ringing in the new year while blissfully unaware.

Maybe tomorrow I will do a roundup of sorts and do some maintenance around here because I get the day off.

Photography

A short while ago I wrote a post and asked for suggestions on topics I could write about. Tessa suggested that I write about photography. She also suggested that I talk about photography on ANTM. Her suggestion opened up quite a bit for me to write about, though ANTM deserves its own post.

Today I’ve decided to talk about taking pictures for the fun of it. To me, photography doesn’t have to be all about the technical aspects like “Is the lighting exactly right?” or “Am I applying the rule of thirds?” or anything else. There are many times when I take pictures just so that I and others can later look back on them and remember what a fun time it was and not worry about how great or poor the pictures actually are.

Take last weekend. My friend decided that she was going to bake cookies and decorate them. By “baking cookies” I thought she meant 2 or 3 dozen. I was way off. I don’t know how many she did end up cooking but there were a lot.

That shows just a portion of the ones we decorated. We ended up not decorating them all because A) there were too many and B) the holes in our makeshift icing bags (made from ziploc bags) became too large and started spilling icing everywhere. Some of our decorating escapades gave birth to the story that unfolds below.

From a technical aspect there are probably multiple things wrong with the pictures. The angles could have been better, the cookies could have been positioned better, or something else. But for these pictures, that’s not what matters. What matters is that they exist and that they can remind us of what a fun time we had.

This is just one of the many aspects of photography that I enjoy. Later on I’ll be writing about some of the others… once I get ideas for them, anyway. By the way, I’m still on the lookout for more suggestions for topics to write about.

Judgment calls

I often find myself yelling “WHAT??” when watching or reading the news and it’s usually not in a good way. This afternoon two articles in particular caught my eye. Both are about people who apparently lack the ability to make good judgment calls.

• Cake request for 3-year-old Hitler namesake denied

  A New Jersey supermarket refused to put the child’s full name — Adolf Hitler Campbell — on his birthday cake. His father claims that people need to accept that “a name is a name” and is surprised that there were objections. Little Adolf has two siblings: JoyceLynn Aryan Nation and Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie.

  Response: Really? Really?? The father thinks there’s nothing wrong with naming his child after one of the most notorious figures in history? Someone who was responsible for the death of millions just because they weren’t part of the “pure” race? Apparently, in past years they had asked for a swastika to be included on a cake. I feel sorry for JoyceLynn Aryan Nation. That’s not racist or supremacist at all. Uh uh. Surely not.

• Drew Peterson engaged for the fifth time.

  Drew Peterson’s publicist has confirmed that Peterson is engaged to an unidentified woman. Peterson is still a suspect in the disappearance of his wife, Stacy Peterson. Peterson is still legally married to Stacy, who disappeared October 28, 2007. Drew Peterson has maintained that she ran off with another man, leaving him and their two children, aged 6 and 4. His new fiance is reported to be 23 years old, the same age Stacy was when she disappeared. Drew Peterson is 54.

  Response: I really have to question this woman’s intelligence. After Stacy Peterson disappeared, authorities exhumed the body of Kathy Peterson, Drew Peterson’s third wife. Her death had first been ruled as suicide. Officials have now classified her death as a homicide. This man has been married four times now, is a suspect in the disappearance of the fourth, and his third wife was apparently murdered. How does she think this story is going to end? I generally keep my nose out of people’s relationship choices but this seems beyond unwise.

Use caution

Note to self: use caution when handling hot materials, such as water that was boiling just moments before. Spilling even a little of it would have hurt but dousing your whole left hand? WHAT WERE YOU THINKING? At least you did manage to save the potatoes rather than dumping the whole pan on the floor. On the other hand, there aren’t so many things you can’t do now, like tie your shoe or hold a game controller. Be smarter next time.

Also, if you ever do anything like that to yourself again, take your rings off immediately. Trying to pull those suckers off later hurts even more and it’s not exactly pleasant to hear the ER staff tell you they may have to cut your engagement ring and wedding band off.

Speaking of the ER, stop being so stubborn about going to the doctor! You probably would have gotten more than 4 hours of sleep if you had gone to the clinic earlier in the day for them to give you some stronger pain medication so that you could sleep at night instead of shrieking in pain.

Despite all of this drama, at least you came out of it with only first degree burns and only one finger that will probably blister just a tiny bit.

Little Poe-Poe

The other day I was playing with a theme and arranged my tags by size. It hit me that I’ve posted more about Midna than about Poe. So for today I have some Poe pictures!

Poe is definitely the larger of our two cats. He’s not exactly fat though we have switched them off of kitty formula food. Whenever he runs up and down the hall (which he does for absolutely no reason) you can hear THUMP THA THUMP THA THUMP as he goes by. He also likes to lie on his back with limbs sprawled in all direction. In fact, that’s probably what he was doing when I tried to take his picture. Cats have a habit of not doing what you want, though.

Both of them like to sit by the window. At our old apartment all of the windows were higher up where they couldn’t see out. This place, though, has larger windows that are only about 2 feet above the floor. We usually raise the blinds for them so they can, such as in the background of this picture. If we don’t, they usually nose their way behind the blinds and try to sit in the narrow sills. Poe had been looking out the window here but he either heard my camera or saw the strap dangling and came to investigate. If he wasn’t so curious I could get more pictures of them but they usually want to find out what it is I’m doing.

Oh yeah, that expression on his face? That’s what he looks like most of the time: o__o. It’s as if he’s constantly startled by everything.

Michael likes to say that Poe is more dog-like than cat-like. He farts, he likes to get into the trash, he likes to have is belly rubbed, and he chases his tail. I think that he doesn’t realize that his tail is actually attached to his body. It’s like he just sees if flipping around and decides that it’s something he needs to chase. And it’s not just his own tail. If Midna happens to be walking by he’ll attack her tail sometimes too.

As for the title… Poe is a really short name. It’s much easier to call him using two syllables instead of one so I usually call him Poe-Poe. Of course, he’s not so little now but that’s why it’s funny.