Photoshop!

It's me!

Guest Photographer

A.G., this is for you and by you!

Pup

I like using this picture as a background on my computer. It makes me feel like I'm home.

Root vegetables

Last night I dreamt that my camera was housed inside a root vegetable--sort of like a turnip, sort of like a potato. The camera and lens were separate, the top half and bottom half of the root. I was hanging out in a kitchen watching beautiful food cook. There was something that looked like artichokes, cut in quarters and sauteeing next to a pile of a leafy vegetable. The two shades of green and the two textures/patterns were great, so I wanted to take a picture. I found half of my camera, the bottom half/lens part, behind the stove, and it had cooked through. I had to mush it around with my tongue to find the tiny part that was the camera. I didn't wind up taking any pictures.

Abstract art?

I call this Piece "Homage To Prince." Tell me why, win a prize.

Northampton=Yum

You know what's pretty? The sky.

Day sweaty

Today was day two of taking advantage of two weeks at Back Bay Yoga. We checked out the Forrest Yoga class, and I can safely say I have never sweated that much in my entire life. I sweated so much my fingers wrinkled. I sweated away the dirt from beneath my toenails. This picture has nothing to do with Forrest Yoga, except that I probably sweated more than the water in this glass.

Day Five

This picture represents me living in the moment. Well, not really. This picture represents me taking pictures of broken glass. I just got back from a yoga class. Yoga is something I've wanted to get into from time to time, usually scared away by the price. But the place we went to offers two weeks for one low price for newbies, so I said "sign me up!" Then I said om. But not before 90 minutes of "gentle beginning" yoga that left my legs shaking.

Day 4ish?

It takes 15-20 minutes from the time I walk out the door of my apartment to the time I walk in the door of my work. Whether it is 15 minutes or 20 minutes depends on this intersection. This is right after the museum of science, and traffic is such that all bicyclists wind up on the sidewalk waiting to cross 3 streets controlled by three un-synchronized lights. As annoying as it can be at times, it's sort of neat to sit there as everyone forms a knot of bicycles. I told a woman at work about this--she's a big time biker--and she said that is how critical mass in China started. There are so many bikes there, competing with the cars, that bikers will just sit and wait at an intersection until there are enough of them, a critical mass of them, if you will, to take over the road and cross the street. Here in Cambridge there are usually no more than half a dozen or so, and we tend to wait for the lights to change. Usually.

Did you know that July 12 is official don't-do-what-you-said-you-were-going-to-do day? True fact.

KJ and I have been spending weekend days just running errands by bike. Today it was:

Bike to Sherman (a cafe with the same name as a dining hall at Deis...) to look at a flier to find the time and location of an event we wanted to go to.

Bike to the mall (!) and try on dresses for an upcoming wedding in December (you know who you are!). We tried on some dresses from the junior section, and no joke, both of us are still covered in yellow glitter.

Bike home and eat lunch; decide not to go to the event on the flier.

Bike down to the co-op (because we are hippies) and buy some brown basmati rice (see previous "()"), then to Trader Joes to buy: salt, wine, and mints.

Bike home.

Love the biking :).

Day 2

I had a very lovely evening. I like this picture. :)

Day 1--two for the first day

These are the stairs that go up to the apartment.

This is the view from upstairs.

I really enjoy the views from the windows, especially at night. Same goes for the sounds. Rooftops slanting up to the skyline at night. I wish I wish I wish I could take an accurate picture. It would be really lovely. Last night I heard a couple fighting. They were parked outside, two cars, I'm not sure of the logistics. The woman was screaming, hysterical. I peaked through the window, honestly because if anyone was hurting anyone (not going to lie, I was worried the guy was hurting the girl) I was going to call the cops in a heartbeat. But they were just fighting--loudly, but just fighting.

One a day, everyday--for seven days

There are some things I would like to do every day that would not be hard to do every day. For example: 1.) Flossing. I have done this before, flossed every day, and I loved it. Loved it. 2.) Stretch. I have never been the most limber person, but once upon a time I could pretty easily touch my toes. Now I can barely bend over without imagining individual muscle fibers. 3.) Take pictures.

I could also stand to drink eight glasses of water day, but realistically, that's not happening.

I was just thinking about figuring out a strategy to get myself to stretch for five minutes everyday. I was thinking about making a star chart in fact (very effective!). Then tonight during some random internet roaming I stumbled upon a site, one of many I'm sure, where someone posts a picture every day. Then she writes just a little blurb about the picture, but really how that relates to what she was doing when she took the picture. Nothing mindblowing or novel, but hey, what a good idea. So it's a challenge to myself, and I think I'll enjoy it. Plus, I'm going to attach the 5 minutes of stretching and the flossing to it. A sort of clumping strategy.

Let's see how long this lasts :).

Welcome Back, G9

I'm probably overcompensating, but it's good to have the camera back :).

I miss this little one.

Loaves Loves Flour Flower

I am a fool and I left my camera charger in Northampton a week and a half ago. I'm not going to lie, I am dying for my camera. It's not as though I can't use it at all. I've just been conserving. It's like half a roll of film left, but worse, because I don't know how many pictures are on the roll. I never know when it's going to be the last shot. Overdramatic, I know, but really...It's making me nuts. It's probably the slightest tinge of what it's like to be hungry and not know when you're eating again. Just the slightest broadest outline. Or at least how I'd react so such a situation...

This is the picture I want to take: Bread rising in the kitchen. It is cinnamon raisin bread. I never really took to making cinnamon raisin bread when I was a kid. I'm pretty sure I tried it a few times, but only by making a swirl in the recipe for white bread.

I am also up too late. I have fond bread memories, and one of them was making bread one night when Cheka was sleeping over. We started late (I'm sure she warned against it :) ), and wound up falling asleep when the bread was in the oven. We got a kick out of it though and carried the burnt loafs around to use them as doorstops and to try to get the dogs to eat them. (Neither thing worked.)

But the bread rising in the kitchen. There is one loaf on a baking sheet, and next to that, two loaves together in a rectangular spring form pan (I never knew such a thing existed. I'm sure it was not made for the purpose of making bread, but I think it's going to be awesome.). The thing about the recipe that I made is that the dough is softer. It's a yeast bread, but there are eggs and milk and sugar, but the bulk of it is still flour. I was able to easily stretching it out into a huge rectangle and cover it with the cinnamon and sugar mixture. Then I rolled it up and cut it in three loaves. There's should be a complete swirl in each loaf, not just a little swoosh of cinnamon (It was always tough to pull the white bread thin enough to roll).

But here's where it comes back to the camera. I want to describe what it looks like rising, and I can't. I can say that you can see the cinnamon through the dough, imply it's tranlucent, maybe a little skin like. But the thing is, I just want that image, not the metaphor.

Not that I could take a picture that would show that right now anyway. I just don't have the skill with my camera yet. Someday though:)