I really haven't had a hell of a lot to say lately.

The trapezius spasms have returned with a vengeance, so I'm trying to spend as much time away from the computer as possible. For the better part of the past two weeks, my right shoulder blade has been burning. It feels like it's going to explode. I had a fabulous massage on Friday after work that did help. In fact, it helped so much that I bought a massage package, so I have three more hour-long sessions to look forward to.

The annual Mother/Daughter Trip is coming up soon. We're flying into Jacksonville, renting a car and driving up to Savannah, spending the night there, and then driving the next afternoon to Charleston, SC. I can't wait! I'm really excited to take pictures all over these sister cities. I'm planning on picking up a copy of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil and quickly reading it, so that I'm well-prepared for the Savannah leg of our trip. I did read it once, back in the mid-90s, but I'll be damned if I can remember much about it.

Work has been hectic, per usual. Nothing even worth writing about there. But I have kept my promise to myself about leaving promptly at 5 p.m., and I'm amazed by how much stuff I get done at home in the evenings as a result of that!

In two weeks, I'll be heading downtown to try and get some shots of the Dad Vail Regatta, Philly's annual collegiate boat race on the Schuylkill River. I usually go down there and hang out for a few hours most years; I love the energy of the college kids who are competing in it. Not to mention checking out all those young, muscular rowers. I don't recall the guys looking like that when I was in college!

I'll leave you with a picture that I took about ten days ago in my backyard. It's hard to believe that these bare-branched trees are now bursting with bright-green foliage. Spring has sprung and I am so happy!

Labels: books, family, hobbies, Philadelphia, pictures, sports, travel

The Huz and I met up with Cayman and her parents at Delaware Park this afternoon for opening day.

I'm into horseracing and do occasionally like to place some bets on the ponies, but today I brought my camera and didn't wager a penny.

I tried a new technique with the camera today that I've been reading about on various photography websites called "panning." This technique is basically exactly what it sounds like. You set your camera to continuous shooting mode and focus on one particular moving object (in this case, a racehorse and/or jockey), and shoot frame after frame of that object while they move across your line of vision.

The desired outcome of this technique, at least while shooting horseraces, is a sharp image of the jockey, combined with a lovely blur of the horse's legs to suggest motion. Out of all the pictures I took today (nearly 200), I'm only really satisfied with one. Don't get me wrong, I took some other nice, colorful pictures, but only one of them met my goal while panning. Here it is, followed by some other ones that I thought looked good.

Labels: animals, friends, pictures, sports

Last night was so beautifully clear that I decided to try my hand at lunar photography, which is much more difficult than it sounds.



I'm not thrilled by this picture, but it's not awful. I used both my tripod and the camera's self-timer for the first time while taking this shot. Less camera shake that way.

I'm really eager for a night in which the moon is really huge and low in the sky.

Happy Friday, everyone!

Labels: hobbies, pictures

Thanks to The Huz (and his business Amex card that allowed me to buy presale tickets!), we'll be seeing this guy in concert again in July at the newly-christened Susquehanna Bank Center, nee Tweeter Center. Hell, I still catch myself calling it the E-Centre every once in a while.



I'm wondering how difficult it'll be to get the Nikon into this show. In my younger days, I went to a few concerts at this place with practically a brick of marijuana in my purse, and security just shrugged and pushed me through.

The info on Ticketmaster says "no cameras." Hmmm. We'll see about that.

Labels: concerts, good news, John Mayer, memories, Philly burbs

Several months ago, I received an email from one of my coworkers that read:

Since you like writing, I’ll share my community service work with you.

Read below for the link to register as a judge for the InvestWrite program. Middle- and high- school kids write investment-themed essays and we judge them. It’s real easy work, all on the web. They always send certificates to celebrate my judging achievements as well.

It sounded pretty cool, so I signed up as a volunteer judge.

This morning I got an email from the organization that contained a link to the judging rules and to the five essays that I must judge.

I scrolled to the bottom of the email, where it stated:

Due to the tight time frame associated with the end of the school semester, please review and score the essays by 7:00 PM (EDT), Wednesday, April 16, 2008. We greatly appreciate your understanding regarding the urgency of this judging schedule.

Yowza! Now, I realize that these aren't doctoral-level dissertations that I'll be grading, but with the tax deadline tomorrow, this is the busiest time of the year for anyone in the financial services field. I'm a little surprised that the judging must be submitted one day after 4/15. That doesn't give a whole lot of wiggle room.

So I guess I have some homework tonight.

Labels: education, money, volunteering, work, writing

Here is the trailer for The Happening, which is being released in June.

I just watched this for the first time from my desk at work, and I inadvertently let out a loud howl when, about halfway through it, there are a couple quick scenes from the G-Lodge Restaurant on the outskirts of Phoenixville, known in the movie as The Filbert Restaurant, in which everyone looks to be running for their lives out of the restaurant and into the street. It's just after the scene in which Mark's character is talking to the train conductors.

Just from the quick shots of it here, it's almost impossible to imagine that just beyond the camera's scope, several hundred crew members and gawkers were gathered in the street to watch the filming.





By the way, I just realized that in the picture just above this paragraph, you can see part of John Leguizamo's face. He's sitting in a chair, just to the left of the guy in the black t-shirt and baseball cap who's standing right near Mark Wahlberg in the center of the picture. See him? I'd been thinking that was JL at the time, but some crazy woman standing next to me kept insisting that it couldn't possibly be John Leguizamo, that the guy in question looked too young. Well, now that I've seen the trailer, I can confirm that it was definitely him, without a doubt.

Apparently the critics are already bashing the film, but I don't care, I'm still going to see it in the theater anyway. It looks like a totally different role for Mark Wahlberg, and I'm very interested in seeing how he does.

Labels: celebrities, Mark Wahlberg, movies, Philly burbs, technology, The Happening

So I booked one yesterday.

Just a long weekend in May in Savannah, GA and then driving to Charleston, SC. I've always wanted to see both places, and since they're considered "sister cities" I figured why not just do it?

Shortly after that, we're going back down south for a wedding on Marco Island, FL. We're going to stay an extra day after the wedding and do a tour of the Everglades.

I'm pretty excited about both trips, but honestly...May still seems so far off, and I'm trying not to let my anticipation distract me from all the stuff I have to accomplish at work first.

Labels: good news, travel