January 31 2009 The Menu

It is the time of year when I obsess over having my house ready for my two parties. I only throw two parties, ever (aside from my children's birthdays) and my already budding obsession was fed by the guest on NPR's Whaddya Know who wrote about Cuisine of the Mississippi Delta. Food... It's a potluck, so if you find an invitation on your doorstep, start thinking about which dish is yours to bring.


Taken with my traditional "no flash" on the indoor setting, without macro, my picture came out pretty good. You can even read my writing, but I won't because it will just make me hungry. Sazerac, anyone?

January 30 2009 The Celestial Alignment

Not that I pay attention to horoscopes, but it's the metaphor of the stars controlling our lives that strikes me today. Everything is primed. Things are aligned. Venus, the Moon, and me...and about one alignment a year it's a false alarm. Nothing happens. All the potential is there and nothing happens. Manifestations? Today I got the first call for my services for a month. And I didn't get the job. Anything else? Yeah, I could gripe all day about the meetings, the connections that could but didn't happen.


Hey, I said I'd post a photo every day that I took each day about something that struck me each day. I didn't say they'd be good photos. With something as far away as the heavenly bodies and something as imprecise as me, my tiny camera, my mini-tripod, and the roof of my car in the parking lot while I'm trying not to leave all the child-safety responsibilities to my husband and failing miserably, I can't hardly believe there is one shot that you can tell there is a bottom-crescent moon with a Venus just below it, being the only lights in the evening sky. The others looked like I was photographing vehicles with lopsided headlights driving down a dark road.

January 29 2009 The First Purchase

We went to the grocery store. He saw the Hot Wheels display. I asked him if he brought his money. He thought about it and said he hadn't. I told him he would need five quarters to get a car. That was last week. Today we went out. He found some change to bring. We went to lots of stores with nothing to buy. This evening I took him to the grocery. He put his hand in his pocket and showed me his money. He had five quarters. Then he got a car. With his own quarters. Having thought ahead. He's four.


"Mom, please take a picture of my new car. Not any of my old cars," pushing them aside.
I used the Indoor setting and took lots of pictures because he wouldn't stop wiggling, moving the car, re-setting things...Ah, a clear shot. Complete with fingers itching to move it again.

January 28 2009 The Knit Wits

Status update: "Alw_ays thanks two cool cats for an evening of hot drinks and cool knits."

Macro on "Foilage" setting about 2" from the subject. It adds a bit of yellow which looks good bouncing off the heads of the needles. I love this view. It makes me happy, and makes me want to put them to work.

January 27 2009 The Invasion of the Tetrahedron

Day three of spacial reasoning practice included getting toothpicks to stick together with clay. That can only be done after she learned how to roll balls, which is apparently not a natural thing. Take up space. Build something. Experiment. Practice. Try again. (I really had to fight the urge to start constructing bridges and other architectural phenomena.) (Also, the boy's creation is named "Spikey")

Macro and flashless, I took the angle of being able to walk through the project. It's like a construction site, stuff going up here, nearly finished stuff there, watch out for the dust and dirt piles on the smooth, white concrete finish. Wood and clay, life-sized, dim, because a construction site is only sun-lit when it's open air, at least until the electrical is run.

January 26 2009 The Calendar Project Part One

I use daily what's called an "engagement calendar" (the husband: "you haven't moved on to marriage calendars yet?") and they're remarkably rare, so I thought I'd make myself one this year. This the stack I will scan my photos from. There's Michelangelo on the bottom, Picasso, Norman Rockwell, Great Artists, Leonardo DaVinci, Monet, Lang Johnston, Dali, and two National Museum of American Art. And a kid's book because this stack is irresistible by even the littlest in the house. And some of the husband's notes, because the stack is conveniently located for stacking upon.


I took this shot not of the binding side of books, as they're often photographed, and not of the top, and not of them open. I chose this page side, the cut paper side, the parallel, least "informative" side. I let the flash add some tacky brightness to them. They're books, old, aged, smelly, awkward, and still perfect. There were "prettier" photos in this set, but I liked the mood of this one. They're art books. They're manufactured, reproductions, mass marketed. They're not the art themselves. They're thoughts of art.

January 25 2009 The Day of Boredom

It could have been worse; it could have been forced upon me. But today, feeling weak from accomplishments yesterday and recovering from some virus of the head-cold variety, we decided "better" was a long way off unless we actually did nothing. He never got out of his jammies, as incentive to stay put. I had occupied my compulsion of having to have something to do by scouring the dvd collection for special features and marking all the disks with watchable production documentaries or other fun features.


So as the evening came to a close, I grabbed my camera and wandered around the house taking pictures of things that had crossed my mind during the day, because I had not actually done anything. Except this. What's interesting about this photo is that you can tell my compulsion to organize by genre was halted before the second shelf. I sat in my chair and took this picture with a flash from across the room. Looks like my shelf.