Blinky Lights and Shiny Objects

We saw this in the distance off to the north, after walking up to the St. Louis fort in Marigot, St. Martin. B thought it was a water spout. It did start raining once those clouds got to where we were, about two minutes before we got back to the hotel. The "Chewbacca Rock" was on an overlook point on another hill we hiked up in St. Martin, at Loterie Farm . B and I were joking about how we tend to "find a hill and climb it" whenever we go on a vacation. Maybe it is because we don't see hills with views in our day to day lives in the Chicago suburbs. As usual, clicking on the pictures will take you to the Flickr page and you can see the rest of the album. There are photos of B and I, but you've got to be my friend or family on Flickr to see them.

First, full disclosure: I was sent four free tickets for admission to LEGOLAND Chicago, as a result of either my previous blog posts or some email conversations with the promotional staff. So, K, R, D, and I were not spending our own money to wander around this morning. We almost made up for it in the gift shop, though. Here's my favorite picture - poor Batman doesn't know what he's in for: Little Santas had taken over the Chicago skyline and appeared to be rioting in the streets below: Upstairs in the open-play area they had these huge soft bricks, almost like a ball pit, but actually usable to built things with: One main objective of the trip was to take engagement photos for D and R while they were in town for New Years. Their wedding date is 3/14, Pi day, and there will be Pie. So if you are a friend of mine on Flickr and are looking through the album, that should explain the various "cute couple" poses and the engagement ring on top of the LEGO pie. All ...

Next year, when I get a great idea for a Christmas gift to make everyone, and buy the supplies in July and have everything set up to start working WHENEVER, I need to start actually working on the gifts prior to a few weekends before Christmas. I like how all the pillows turned out in the end. The last one was finished at about 10:30 pm on December 23rd. So, there's the sewing. For cooking, here's some eye candy: I suppose I collect herbs, spices, and seasonings, too. That's an ELFA over-the-door storage system, which will definitely be coming with us if we ever move. Those larger spice containers in the fourth and fifth rows from the top are from Valli Produce , and cost something ridiculous like $2.39 each. Some not pictured are in the wings to refill the smaller bottles and canisters - so the contents of the Kroger canisters are not all from when I lived in Terre Haute.

H had mentioned he was looking for photographs of Atlantic puffins . I decided to spend time today finding and scanning these negatives. These photos are from the summer of 1998, when I went to Maine with my then-boyfriend's family. I am fairly certain this is Machias Seal Island . The scanner I use now is an Epson Perfection V500 Photo, the camera I used then was my Minolta Maxxum 650si, the lens was probably a Promaster 28-200. Each image has been adjusted in Bibble 5 - just rotation, crop, white balance, and some exposure balancing. There are visible grains (it's consumer grade film, some ISO 800, some ISO 400) dust (I'll re-scan any important images with the dust removal tool enabled) and focus errors. I don't miss film.

Here you go. For the first set of photos from my new camera, I decided to take pictures of one of the first cameras in my collection. After downloading the RAW files to my computer I discovered that Bibble does not yet support the a850 (Bibble 4 goes up to the a700, and Bibble 5 preview 2.2 has the a900, but the a850 is not in that release. I hear the next preview release is imminent, but I JUST GOT A NEW CAMERA and I WANT TO PROCESS MY RAW FILES!) The nice looking picture above and immediately below were processed using DxO Optics Pro 6 , free trial edition. I'd be more impressed if it hadn't crashed three times and taken so dang long to complete the batch. Bibble has me spoiled for speed, that's for sure. The foggy version below is what happens when Picasa 3 converts the files to .jpg. I'm really not impressed at all. What were they thinking? I kept this one for reference and deleted the rest. I haven't even installed the Sony software, other than the plug-...

I know this will be crushing news for some of you, but Hot Wok Village is closed. The sign is gone, the doors are locked, the lights are out. I've got mixed feelings on the situation. It was an interesting place, serving interesting Indo-Chinese food. But, the last time we went there the food I ordered put me into so much pain that I was out of commission for the rest of the night. And I don't mean because it was spicy - I think there was something chemically wrong with what I ate. We've got other options. There are many Indian and Chinese establishments in the Schaumburg area that haven't tried to kill me. The Himalayan Restaurant serves some Indo-Chinese food, and the service we've gotten there was very attentive. Yu's Mandarin is the best Chinese restaurant in all of space and time. And Udupi Palace is a great place for vegetarian selections - with a wonderful lunch buffet. So, I'm sorry RK, you'll have to find another source for coconut w...

Official trick or treat start time in our town is 3pm, and no one has showed up yet. (Okay, we finally got a group at 3:47.) What have I been up to? Mostly work and crocheting. Being on Ravelry.com has encouraged me to finish projects faster than before. But, I think my next project will be a sewing project, to make something to hold my crochet hooks. I'm very close to ordering a new camera - the Sony Alpha 850 - with the justification of doing the wedding photography for some friends early next year. This is exciting because the a850 is a full-frame sensor, which means that the FPA is the same size as a 35mm piece of film. So, it will let me get nice wide-angle shots again with my 17-35 zoom lens. The APS-C sensors multiply the apparent focal length of a lens by 1.5, which is nice at the telephoto range, but I prefer wide angle drama. The weather is getting colder here, but at least today is sunny. Most of the week has been rain, but at least it isn't snowing yet. Same...