Change Is Hard

…but change is certain.

Tag Archives: fun stuff


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In a land far away

Early morning at the lake.

I am back from four days ‘away’ and it feels like I was gone a week.  That’s a good thing.
It’s hard to describe what it’s like to go from stressful work filled ‘here’ to sunny shiny watered ‘there.’ (Click the photos to see the details.)

Calm

There is always the underlying sadness that very special people are no longer there.  But still it was very good to be South.

Magical

We visited wonderful places, ate wonderful food, played wonderful music and slept until we woke up.

Yum

I couldn’t ask for more.  Except to have Mom and Dad there too.

Missing


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I did not do it!

Sunday I cleaned – cleaned lots of stuff, including the front of the dishwasher, removing drips and fingerprints, dried on stuff of undetermined origin.

Monday night I got home from work and found this.

Katie says she is not responsible.  But if she didn’t do it that only leaves husband.  Who was, admittedly very hungry when I got home.

Still…


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November blues

I went out on a cold rainy grey November day to find something for Scott’s color composition challenge.  The day before had been warm and sunny but I didn’t venture out with the camera.  Too obvious and too sensible.

One of the articles Scott provided for reference talked about the meaning of color, how you can sometimes use color to set a mood for a photo.  I guess I’ve been feeling kind of sad that the summer has ended and winter is right around the corner, because every bit of color I found that day was blue.   I’m not saying that the blue in each photo set the mood for the photo…just that it was what I noticed on this day.  (Click on the picture to see the details.)

My first stop was at a historic church.  I pass this church every Tuesday on my to and from band rehearsal and I’ve never noticed it.  At our last rehearsal I saw with shock that someone had painted the front door and knew I had to come back with a camera.

The color composition challenge was a perfect excuse to stop and get  that shot. I started out focusing on the door itself, then tried to get the steeple and the door in the frame.  But as I walked back to the car I looked back and knew the whole church needed to be included – because the transformation of the door only worked when it was shown against the disrepair of the entire building.  I placed the door near the intersection of the rule of thirds lines.

Historic Presbyterian Church gets a small facelift.

Continuing on with my errands I passed an old schoolhouse that has been painted many many times.  Long after the last schoolchild left it was run as a restaurant and catering business, but that closed years ago and now it sits empty.  Through the rain I noticed the bell tower with it’s multiple layers of paint showing a bit of it’s history.  Again the blue caught my eye, and I tried to have it take up 2/3rds of the image.

Years of schoolhouse colors.

And as I made my way home I noticed the local ski hill.  No snow yet, but there was more blue.  I had to climb down a muddy hill and ruined a pair of shoes to get this.  But I really enjoyed the way the blue ski lift moves from the lower left and climbs up to the upper right of the shot, reflecting the angle of the hill.

Ready for the ski season.

Yep, it was a blue kind of day.  But I can’t say that was all due to fall moving into winter.  After all I found this blue last spring at my local nursery.

Blue pots


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Color composition photo challenge.

Scott has issued his latest challenge…to work color into a photo as a composition element.  I think back to a summer challenge from Karma that was all about color, but now here it is November in Michigan.  Where to find that pop of color that deliberately pulls the eye?

I could go into the archives and see what there is.  Surely in the Albuquerque photos there would be something.

Or along our great lakes?

Anything?

But no, this is about challenging us to consciously use color in a composition.  I need to look around and see what I can find.   The assignment is due Wednesday the 21st of November.  Go read more at Scott’s blog right away!

Jump on in…the color’s wonderful!


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Rally report

Mom! Can we get to work yet?

Katie and I survived and she’s pretty full of herself too.  Cause she has a pretty red ribbon to add to her collection.  She thinks she looks particularly good with red.   But of course it’s a much longer story than that.

We arrived early, way too early, again.  Lesson learned.  We were there for 3 hours before it was actually time for me to walk the Advanced course.  By then Katie was pretty much over it, but she waited patiently in her crate for me to go through the course.  There were only two of us in Advanced A; a woman named Kim and her sheltie Mona.   Mona is just the sweetest girl I’ve met in a long time!   Kim and I did the walk through together.  Good thing too, because I fixed something she had a misconception on and she pointed out we had missed station #4 totally the first walk through!

I’ve been working on memorizing the signs and perfecting my footwork all week.  I practiced pivots on my lunch walk yesterday.  I called ‘”come!” and “down!” and “heel!” on my commutes.   I worried about her popping up from downs, following me too fast when she was supposed to stay.  I worried about forgetting to ask her to sit when I should, or asking her to sit when I shouldn’t.  I worried.

What I didn’t worry about…ever…was her jump.  She loves to jump.  She’ll jump anything…and then she will often turn around and jump it again.  So the fact there was a jump at station 2 was not alarming.  Until she walked around it and then looked at me like ….”What?  You wanted something else?”  So there goes 10 points right off the bat.

I sighed and shook my head and we finished the rest of the course.  Other than a couple of crooked sits she was perfect.  The things I had worried about were beautiful.   She’s something else, she is.

Then we were out of the ring and I told her she was a good girl, which she was.  I think I just wasn’t going fast enough to get her running, and she didn’t realize she was supposed to leave my left leg and go jump.  We watched the other woman in our class do the course and they did great too.

Afterward Kim was excited for me because the score they put up for me was 99.  Her score was 95.  But I knew that wasn’t right, with no jump the best we could get was 90.  So I talked to the steward and at a break we talked to the judge who was grateful that I told her.  I was glad too.

So we ended up in 2nd place of two…but I’m proud of Katie and her score..the judge gave us 90 and I’ll take it!

Katie says it was a long day for a little ribbon…but she’s willing to do it again, and if I give her enough warning she’ll even do the jump!

Maybe.

Mine!