Category: General Life

It feels like it has been days since any of my contacts on Flickr have posted anything. It seems like since I started my project I have been more interested in what others are doing and as a result I have managed to get into a state where I am looking for new content before anyone has a chance to produce it. I look for new content to inspire me, or just to occupy my time. Lately my own photos have been boring me, I suspect it’s just because there are so many of them. I push myself to experiment on things each day, but somehow I am not being interested in the results as much as I should be. I like for others to look at my images and give me feedback, and I have not been getting that lately. Everyone will respond positive comments about the images when prompted, but that’s not what I am looking for, I want to know if I am making mistakes, I want to know if I am doing something compositionally stupid and I want to know if there is something that someone feels is absent in my images. I don’t publish my photos for people to stroke my ego and tell me how good things are, I have a boyfriend for that. I need to know the reality of my work. There are things that others can see in my images that I cannot, and that information is very important to my ability to improve as a photographer.

Just got the annual Halloween costume e-mail from Amazon and decided to explore the selection a bit. I am seriously starting to miss when things were better done. I looked at a variety of costumes, from Halo 3 characters (I think I might be one of those this year) to more traditional things like cowboys and cops. I understand that it is difficult to affordably create costumes, but some of the stuff people are coming up with is absolute crap. The cop and the inmate are apparently supposed to carry either plastic or rubber handcuffs. Who is going to have a good time with some goofy plastic shit, wondering all night if it is going to break. I remember cheap stainless steel handcuffs that I used to have as a child, and they were not particularly expensive, but they were better suited for a night of trick-or-treating, or even a Halloween party than the stuff currently sold. Biggest letdown with the cuffs is the sound. Rubber and plastic don’t make the same sound and the effect is lost. Aside from the props, what about the costumes themselves? Fabrics used in their construction seem to be getting worse. I looked at some of the Star Trek costumes and discovered that many have communicators and pips that are merely screen printed. Is it really that expensive to add a few silver buttons for things like that? The costumes that are actually decent have a lot of pieces missing, such as the gunslinger, which I thought was kind of cool. To do that costume, I would have to get a hat, boot cut jeans, cowboy boots and a gun holster (it isn’t included). I would probably also need to obtain a big-ass belt buckle. Among the most interesting and complete is the firefighter, it includes everything except boots, and I already have a pair of tactical boots, not that it would stop me from considering a pair of fire boots (Morgan’s has them). Halloween just seems like it would be more fun if costumes were actually made decently. Anyone got any suggestions for what I should be?

About 7 minutes ago my step sister gave birth to a baby. The interesting thing about this is that with the empowerment of a BlackBerry, all of her friends and family have been kept in the loop on the events of the day since about 4am, when she happily announced that contractions suck, but epidurals rock. Since that initial announcement (which somehow I was awake for), there have been regular updates on dilation progress and other interesting facts as she progressed. It is interesting that she is in Massachusetts and I am NC, but yet, I still feel a little involved. Anyway, its pretty cool to have a nephew.

Jackson Xavier Stuart

I really don’t like that my family has started venturing to the realm of the Internet. It was more than ok with they found their way to Amazon.com to spend $1000s per year on books and other crap they don’t really need, and it was even ok when they began e-mailing me (once they figured out that the Internet is more than an electronic Walmart), I can deal with that. Now, we have reached the next phase. I decided to unhide myself on Facebook for a few weeks, just let myself be searchable instead of being stealth. I thought if there was anyone wanting to find me that didn’t know my e-mail address, it would make that easier. A few days into this whole being not hidden thing I get a notification that a cousin that I really don’t like would like to add me as a friend on Facebook, that one was simple enough, I just ignore the request. Now, my favorite aunt has decided to join the world of Facebook, and has requested to add me. This places me in a position where I really do not know the proper course of action. I like my family fine for the most part, but they have a tendency to ask questions about things and be overly nosey. If I let one of them in, then the rest will want in and as I was recently informed, my immediate family is now to a count of about 25 people (and apparently at least one more pending). There is info in there that would just be a little too much for my family to deal with, especially with things like this blog, and we all know how lovingly I have spoken of my family over the years in this blog. I guess this goes back to the old billboard metaphor, “Don’t post anything on the Interwebs that you wouldn’t want on a billboard”. Well, I don’t follow that too well, but usually I am bright enough to keep that type of shit under a different alias, but as of late I have been less interested in aliases, as they merely complicate things. I really don’t know why I have such a problem with my family, I guess I just feel like they don’t understand me, and giving them this level of access would only make things worse.

I am trying to figure out what this particular creature is. There was a group of about 10 or so on a grape leaf in the yard. They do not fly, swarm or even move particularly quickly. When in confinement, they do not look for a way out, they become really still, but once out, they tend to wander around aimlessly. They act a bit like ladybug beetles, but are a little bigger and have a more armored shell. They have 6 legs, 2 antennae, and 2 visible eyes. The body is black, but the thorax “panel”(?) is red with three large black markings and several smaller black markings around the edge at the midpoint. The underside is bright red.

With my graduation coming up in a few months, I am beginning to worry about my sanity. My time with no classes seems to be mostly disjointed days of looking for tasks to accomplish, usually resulting in some really lame pattern of existence. I do not like this existence and am looking forward to classes resuming on the 20^th, but I must face the fact that I shall only experience this anticipation twice more before my undergraduate career comes to an end and I am without classes nearly permanently. There is nothing to do during the summer around here. I have a membership to the museum and have visited several times, but it just isn’t that interesting. I am hoping to go with Chris to the NC Zoo sometime this week and maybe some other places next week. The biggest event of the summer, as usual, has been helping my aunt, which in the end is not that much fun (but it is something to do). Wandering aimlessly with no purpose is getting to me. I need tasks, orders or any form of a clue for my free time.

I haven’t blogged in a while, so I thought I would just post some recent pics and go from there. Below are some pictures that I took at the Schiele Museum of Natural History, which Chris and I are now members of. I enjoyed playing with my 35mm lens on the D60 in a flashless mode on the day I did this. Unfortunately, the 35mm was the only lens I took with me, and late on this day when there was a rocket launching demo, I greatly regretted not having my other lenses, and had lens envy over a professional photographer who seemed to be shooting with something that looked like a 500m f/1.8 static barrel lens, but I can’t be sure, as I never got close enough to him to examine his hardware.