Dwarf Lilac

 
I love how lilacs smell. One of the houses I grew up in had lilacs planted in the side yard. The smell of the lilacs, snails and a large climbing tree were my favorite things there.

In our yard, we now have three different lilacs planted. Most are fairly small dwarf species. This one is an early bloomer, already forming the buds that will soon be fist-sized, aromatic blooms. 

2006 Jumping Spider

 
Old hat, I know. But this is the first jumping spider pic with the 12x lens. Seems a little chromatic aberation-y. 

Very Tiny Blues

 
Very teeny tiny blue flowers. 

I Like Blue

 
Definitely my favorite color. 

The Promised Pineapple

 
A dwarf pineapple plant at the Botanical Gardens. Definitely Mas Macho. 

Spiderweb at Botanic Gardens

 
I see these spider webs all over the main greenhouse of the Denver Botanic Gardens -- they stand out because of humidity and sunlight. The spider that made this web is a member of the cobweb spider family, I believe the American House Spider Achaearanea tepidariorum or if not, closely related. 

Paul Newman's Balsamic Vinegarette

 
Oil is pretty neat.

Tomorrow I'm going with my high school buddy and the boys (who are on Spring Break this week) to the Natural History Museum to see Body Works. 

Plant Flame

 
It's a dusting of... pollen? I need to go back for names of these plants. 

Orchids

 
While visiting my buddy Anna Sher at the Denver Botanic Gardens, I got in a few shots. "Few" is the important word here. Somehow, I only brought my 16MB memory card. :( 

Shooting Kids

 
My boys' school is holding a silent auction to raise funds for materials so I put together this flyer and then offered a two hour sitting fee as an auctionable item. This isn't really a Macro post, but more on the photography side than family (the subject of my other photoblog).

In my little blurb, I wrote "I'm a wildlife photographer and that means I take pictures of kids (and bugs, animals, and flowers)."

I definitely have a different approach to taking pictures of kids -- I don't have a studio. I don't want to do that kind of photography right now either. I like grabbing images while the kids do what they do. Terms terms... not quite candid, but it is candid... lifestyle... ? Hm.

Of all my pictures of children (who are not my own), the most popular has been of the beautiful girl on the right and center. The main voter is my son Kai. He adores A---A---- and carried around that picture as a 4x6 and wedged it into his bedroom mirror. They share a birthday and her mom and I were only a few miles away from each other at the time of their births.

I do have a tip gleaned from my last session of some young ballet dancers. I think the biggest challenge in getting a group of kids in a photo, is making sure that the majority do not have their fingers up their noses. 

I Miss Bugs

 
This picture is from last August. I did see a few spiders out a couple days ago and even a bee, but we've since dropped again in temperature and our springtime snow is beginning to fall in earnest. It made me wonder if I had the fortitude to take the boys out for a day of skiing. It would be their first time up. I miss skiing too.

Fun news, I received Macro Day's Editor's choice for my previous post Money. I put a notice on a Post Script there but I was just so tickled, I thought I'd write more about it. It's odd that's my first Challenge recognition and yet that one has no comments. I suppose comments (or lack thereof) don't really give one a good idea of a picture's impact. That or Carlos is the only one (besides me) who liked it! ;) 

Feminine: Tribute to Smoke Rings

 
Friday Photo's themes have been Masculine and Feminine -- things which I arguably know nothing about. Therefore, I went back to my androgynous mentor, Laurie Anderson for guidance. In the song Smoke Rings, she addresses the issue in a sort of Zen Koan style with knife and lightbulb. I added the rocket launch tube -- my own personal enlightenment. Had I thought of this during the Masculine challenge, I would have gotten out my pineapple and school bus to photograph. Don't think I don't have them. 

Opinions

For those of you who just want the pictures, skip this post.

To Do List:

• Get rid of the oxymoron-ic Patriot Act.
  
• Criminally prosecute government agents that spy on Americans without warrants and give medals to those who leaked the program.
  
• Inform the Intelligent Design goofballs that to be scientific, a hypothesis has to be able to be disproved and it must be predictive. This means that an Intelligent Design proponent must have a method for disproving the existence of a creator AND the ability to predict the actions of such a creator. Do they REALLY want to be part of the scientific community or are they really asking for some kind of untouchable privileged kibitzing? It stuns me that Bush says, "I think we should put Intelligent Design in our schools," and then says we need to promote scientific education. Scientific Education? Scientific Education? You couldn't handle Scientific Education.
  
• Legalize drugs, let the pharmaceutical companies pay the high prices for poppies and coca for useful drugs and get rid of the black market. Now that would be a blow to terrorists who use the drug trade to finance their operations. It would also open up prisons people who are committing crimes against people and property.
  
• Reform tax code to a list of multiple choice options: Here's my tax dollars, but this is what you have to spend it on. Even better: Here's how much of my money you get AND this is what you have to spend it on. That would be a democracy and make those that use the money accountable -- or else they won't get money the next year.
  
• Remove the the McCarthy Era "One nation under God" line from the Pledge of Allegance and never ask those who are under the age of consent to make such a pledge.
  
• Let reporters keep their sources private without having to go to jail to do so.
  
• Let the government know that we as people have no more basic right than to control our own bodies, in life, creating life, enjoying life, planning our deaths.
  
• Legalize gay marriage and gay adoption-- the stupidest argument I heard opposing gay adoption was that the partnerships break up more often. How many demographic groups could be excluded from adopting using this kind of logic? Here's one: There are more divorces in Nevada than anywhere else. Conclusion: don't let Nevadans adopt children.
  
• Make all offices (local, state, and national) have a one-term lifetime limit. Honest (well, no less honest) government through high turnover. At least it would spread the wealth and power and corruption around. Or maybe political service could be kind of like jury duty, "Yeah, Bob, I just got called up for the Senate."
  
• Re-institute public stocks, floggings and red letters for spammers, pop-up advertisers and spywear peddlers.
  
• Sign up any politician who says something like, "And we've had a 360-degree turn around on this," for a mandatory geometry class before speaking again in public.
  
• Make all military campaigns voluntary. Okay, you need to have a policy of, "You signed up for this mission for X months, gotta hang in there until then," as well as an immediate response clause, but let your standing army decide to be a part of, just for example, "Iraqi Freedom" or not. If none of your citizens or soldiers sign up, or not enough to carry out the campaign, hey, that might be a clue. Hm... wait that might already be happening -- not quite as quickly as I would have liked.
  
• Tax all churches as businesses.
  
• If a religion claims:
  1. to be the only way to salvation
     
  2. to trump freedom of speech and freedom of association
     
  3. that violence is acceptable in its cause
     
  4. that other religions are inferior, diabolical, and therefore their followers must be converted and/or saved and/or killed
     
  5. that harassment of the rest of the population is "godly"
     
  6. that one gender, class or race is superior to another
     
  7. that maintaining the reputation of the church is more important than the well-being of the members of the church
     
  8. that all people live by their rules
     
  9. that "killing babies" is wrong but "executing criminals" is right
     
  10. discourages questions or freedom of thought
      
  11. that a literal interpretation is the only interpretation
      
  12. that they know who is going to hell or heaven
      
  
  then give it the "What a Bunch of Stupid Goobers" seal.
  
• This wasn't my idea, but it's so good I'll repeat it: Allow the opposition party to name all new laws. The Patriot Act might then be the "The Republicans Use Fear Mongering to Control the Population through Spying".
  

Did I mention I was pretty far in the Taoist-Atheist-Libertarian camp?

Remains of the Day III

 
With film grain. Isn't digital camera technology funny? 

Remains of the Day II

  

Remains of the Day I

 
There is an up side to keeping cut flowers well past their prime. These petals reminded me of the paper scrollwork crafts. 

2 and a half D

 
When viewed from the front, this piece of art appears normally proportioned and three dimensional. A nicely executed optical illusion also at BB's. From an extreme side angle, it looks picasso-esque. 

Not a Macro

 
Just call me a rule breaker: it's not a macro, it's not strange, it's not even artsy fartsy or hard to grok. It just made me laugh, so I thought I'd share. I came across this sign while hanging out at BB's Coffee Shop waiting for Rowan's birthday celebration at school. I will admit to moving a couple things around, but I put everything back and bought a donut. 

Money

 
Okay, so the Macro Day theme is "Money" -- I found out that it's not quite as hard as I thought to manipulate a dollar bill inside a cowrie shell. Why a cowrie shell, you ask? It was a form of money as early as 1200 BC and as late as the 1700's to buy slaves from West African groups. At the Monticello cite I read, and it was so boggling I don't know whether to believe it, that cowrie shells were imported from Asia to Europe as essentially "packing peanuts" and then exported from Europe to Africa as the currency to buy people on that continent.

PS I just found out this received "Editor's Pick" on Macro Day. Wooooohooooo! My first Internet Challenge recognition. Yowza. Thanks Carlo Ferroni!

 

Mystery Subject

 
Can you guess what this is? (Click for the answer.) 

Counting the Days

 
I'm not sure which happened first, Photo Friday's topic "Baby" or the idea of combining an abacus with some of the paperwork associated with our adoption of Li Mei. I've not a lot of experience with still life, though I feel like I'm finally gaining an intuition about composition. This was a hard picture to take -- three, four sessions, arranging and re-arranging, experimenting and so forth.

Generally, I take a picture when something catches my magpie-eyes and I think, "Now that's neat." This time, I did feel the need to communicate, not unlike when I write fiction or poetry. It is artificial, it is a creation, a reflection of a mind's eye emotion, a concrete representation of an amorphous ache. That sounds a bit melodramatic and sentimental which ordinarily I try to avoid -- but as long as I'm not avoiding it, I might as well share and hope it was a successful effort.

Adoption and pregnancy have a lot in common. 

Flowers!

 
I think I need to move to the tropics.

My wonderful husband sends me flowers and I spend all day photographing them and thinking about camping and hiking. We're in a cold snap, about 20 degree highs, but I was jonesing for spring long before that. So anyway, here's a little detail of one of my flowers and my wishes for a short winter.

I just saw Starship Troopers in its entirety. Yes, I was sporting my, "Go Bugs!" paraphernalia. No, actually I was wearing my "I feel pretty!" shirt with a picture of Grrr in makeup that would make Tammy Fay proud. 

Equations of Love

 
A bit more Artsy Fartsy than usual. Happy (late) Lupercalia! 

Crocodile Teeth

 


I'm not sure why these crystals made me think of croc teeth, but there you are. We grew them from a crystal kit until our cat, Yeti, knocked over the solution of water and monaluminum phosphate (the chemical as my sleepy brain remembers it). Currently we're tumbling some rocks (ready to start the third and final polishing stage) and I hope to start a new batch of crystals tomorrow.

My big news that I mentioned in my previous post is two-fold. First, we have been matched with our daughter in China (see Wave, Tree and Bloom Note the updated URL!) and I got the job working in software development for NMR.

I'm a very lucky chick. 

Pot Top

 

I never thought I'd see the day I could legitimately use a palindrome. I noticed the irridescent oils on the lid of our coffee pot when I was making the daily wake up pot. By the time I finished taking pictures, we were late for school that morning.

Big news ... 

Facets

 

This is the crystal ball of a 10cm tall pewter dragon; the ball is about 1cm in diameter. It caught my eye as I was walking up the stairs and thinking that I'd didn't have any good fungus of which to take pictures. So, I get all set up, use the air compressor to knock off the main dust, run some water to get off more dust, and then the air compressor again and snap a few and put 'em on the compy.

Eeeeeeeeewwwww. Talk about filthy. UGH! So I grab my optics cleaning stuff and attack the microscopic dust bunnies again with about a 75% success rate. Snap a few more, clean a bit more snap a few more and finally get something that doesn't make me want to go take a very long and soapy shower. It's all kinda funny when I realize what a mess my house is. I think I'll try to get some cleaning into my schedule.

I've been reading The Battle for God: A History of Fundamentalism in Christianity, Judism, and Christianity (I think the religions were in that order), by Karen Armstrong. It gives me an interesting perspective on the Danish cartoon news bits.

More news, we may have a match in our adoption quest. We received some basic information about a little girl in Shan Xi province and we're waiting for the follow up information. I've been very distracted with all my thoughts of her. It doesn't really help me focus on my grading work. More on the adoption as it becomes available.

I may have a job... a cool job, a perfect job. I got an offer and I sent an accepting email and phone call, but I'm waiting for them to get back to me. That too is distracting. I hate waiting.

I need a good massage, a dark beer, and some white noise. Since that ain't going to happen, I better just try and sleep.