I Have Embarked on a Quest (Warning: Slighly Nerdly Refrences Lurk Within)

 Yesterday I began a quest. I'm kinda like Frodo. But not really, because my quest is for a hat, the perfect winter hat to be exact, and will involve much less walking and fewer magic talismans than Lord of the Rings, and I do hope to avoid Mt. Doom. But other than that, I'm just like Frodo (or any of those other fantasy heroes by those authors who think for a fantasy book to be fantasy it has to rip off Tolkien).

Having recently gotten ill after spending two whole, cold, windy days outside, I decided I need a hat. Les's parents were visiting recently and we spent all of Sunday at Mt. Hope cemetery. It was very cold and fairly windy but we were having a good time. At the end of the day I had that little tickle in the back of my throat that genereally means I'm going to get sick. But we came home and then I felt fine.

The next day we went to Niagara Falls (my own photos coming soon). I bundled up quite well, but I could not find my scarf that is also a hood before leaving for Canada. I knew it was a bad idea to be out in the high winds and mist of the falls, but I just didn't know what to do about it, we were on a schedule. When we got to Niagara Falls I looked around the souvenir shops for a hat, but the cheapest one I could find that would cover my ears was $12 and it was hideous. I thougth about going elsewhere to find one but we had already parked, it's expensive, and I really didn't want to ruin the Bowens' trip because they were so insistent that it was the only time they would ever be there and so they wanted to do it right. So I just went about my day. The longer I was outside the more I could feel myself getting sick. I never actually felt bad, but the tickle in my throat was more pronounced and my ears were getting ... itchy, for lack of a better way to describe it. But I ignored it because I'm an idiot.

By Tuesday I had the sniffles. By Wednesday I had a full on cold and was having to drug myself to work. Thursday I realized the full side-effects of the "daytime" cold and cough medicine and had to leave work early because I was so dizzy. Friday I was miserable, but Les was awesome and sabotaged my alarms, called into work for me and let me sleep all day, I wound up being asleep for about 19 hours on Friday. Saturday I went to work but, again, left early. I discovered if I took the daytime medicine that doesn't treat cough, just sinus symptoms, I didn't fall asleep standing up. In fact, even though I only take half a dose of anything, it made me so wired I couldn't sit still or close my eyes. Helpful at work actually and Les drove me.

I pretty much recovered over my weekend, I still have a fairly bad case of bronchitis, but that has pretty much been standard every time I get sick since I was 17, and I can work around it by now. But this has taught me a lesson. Even though I hate hats, especailly winter hats, I need to have one and wear it.

Thus begins my quest.

Since I hate hats, if I get one I don't completely love, I know I will never wear it. So I will find the perfect hat.  It will cover my ears, it will be the least itchy a winter hat can be, it will be cute and it will fit well over my hair, up or down. I am under no assumptions that this will be easy. I will not overpay for it, but I am really hoping for a bargain since I work in - and know how to shop in - a thrift store. I will be looking in every store I go into, from Goodwill to The Evil to the stores in the mall. I have only been at it for two days, and, as you can see, I have already ruled out several options. Since I took these photos in front of a bunch of coworkers, the hardest part was not laughing, everybody else was.  

Beautiful Day

Yet again the weather did not cooperate very well with my song for the week. But, all in all, I'm pretty happy with this last minute shot of the sunrise this morning. It is a promise of a beautiful day if nothing else. It was taken from my bedroom window just before dawn, I didn't even have my glasses on and I went straight back to bed after taking it. (If it was a workday I would have already been on my way to work.)

Next week the song is "Always Running Out of Time" by Motion City Soundtrack.

Weekly Photo Challenge #3

This week my challenge song will be "Beauutiful Day" by U2. And I almost forgot to post this so I'm not doing any links because it's late and I'm tired. I think I'll post the next week's song with the photo on Mondays from now on, at least for the most part, because this is a really boring post.

Boulevard of Broken Dreams

I Walk Alone

This week my challenge was from Green Day. The lyrics don't leave a lot of wiggle room unless I went completely abstract.

I was kind of hoping for a sunny day to get an awesome shadow, but the only sunny day we had Les worked ALL day and I felt like shit. So we went out and did this today and only got rained on a little bit.

I'm pretty happy with the way this turned out, I've really missed the drama of black and white lately.

Boulevard Of Broken Dreams

I walk a lonely road
The only one that I have ever known
Don't know where it goes
But it's only me, I walk alone

I walk this empty street
On the Boulevard of Broken Dreams
When the city sleeps
And I'm the only one and I walk alone

I walk alone
I walk alone
I walk alone
I walk a...

My shadow's the only one that walks beside me
My shallow heart's the only thing that's beating
Sometimes I wish someone out there will find me
'til then I walk alone

Ah-ah, ah-ah, ah-ah, aaah-ah,
Ah-ah, ah-ah, ah-ah

I'm walking down the line
That divides me somewhere in my mind
On the border line
Of the edge and where I walk alone

Read between the lines
What's fucked up when everything's alright
Check my vital signs
To know I'm still alive and I walk alone

I walk alone
I walk alone
I walk alone
I walk a...

My shadow's the only one that walks beside me
My shallow heart's the only thing that's beating
Sometimes I wish someone out there will find me
'til then I walk alone

Ah-ah, ah-ah, ah-ah, aaah-ah
Ah-ah, ah-ah

I walk alone
I walk a...

I walk this empty street
On the Boulevard of Broken Dreams
When the city sleeps
And I'm the only one and I walk a...

My shadow's the only one that walks beside me
My shallow heart's the only thing that's beating
Sometimes I wish someone out there will find me
'til then I walk alone...

Music Photo Challenge Week #2

This week, my iPod in all its random glory, has chosen "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" by Green Day. There is some really powerful imagery in these lyrics, and hopefully I can come up with a powerful photo.

Mad World

The first song in my new photo challenge was "Mad World" by Tears for Fears. For the photo I was thinking something from the everyday world, twisted slightly. My first thought was a busy street with a slow shutter speed. But the only place I could think to find that was Rochester and we didn't make it there until yesterday. And there weren't enough people out and about to make it work, I'm blaming Hurricane Irene, it was really windy. So I did a house in the suburbs from the car at 30 mph. Then I upped the saturation to give it that '80s pop feel.

Run in Circles

"Mad World" by Tears for Fears

All around me are familiar faces

Worn out places, worn out faces

Bright and early for their daily races

Going nowhere, going nowhere

And their tears are filling up their glasses

No expression, no expression

Hide my head I want to drown my sorrow

No tomorrow, no tomorrow

And I find it kind of funny

I find it kind of sad

The dreams in which I'm dying

Are the best I've ever had

I find it hard to tell you

'Cos I find it hard to take

When people run in circles

It's a very, very

Mad World

Children waiting for the day they feel good

Happy Birthday, Happy Birthday

Made to feel the way that every child should

Sit and listen, sit and listen

Went to school and I was very nervous

No one knew me, no one knew me

Hello teacher tell me what's my lesson

Look right through me, look right through me

New Photo Challenge

365 days and 2,728.8 miles separate these two photos, they were my first and last photos for my 365project.

And I loved doing the 365project, but it was time consuming and hard. Toward the end of it I felt I was just sucking, struggling to get a photo before going to bed each night. But, for the most part, I liked that it made me get out the camera every day. Since I've finished I haven't taken as many photos as I would like. So I've decided to set myself a new challenge. I hated that I started the 365project on just the random day I found the site, so I've decided to start this new challenge on a day that means something, my birthday, which is today!

Because of my work schedule, my week starts on Tuesday (luckily today is a Tuesday). So on Tuesdays I will set my shiny new iPod (awesome birthday present by the way, thanks Dad and Linda) to shuffle all my music and whatever song pops up will be my photo assignment for the week. I will illustrate either the song as a whole, or a passage from the lyrics, and post the photo to this blog by the following Monday. I will set some limits on the music selection, no repeat songs, no two songs by the same artist on consecutive weeks, etc... But other than that it will be completely random.

The first song selected by Apple's infinite wisdom is "Mad World" by Tears for Fears. Photo to come by Monday and next weeks song by Tuesday.

Requiring Drug Tests for Welfare

It's one thing to get upset when a stranger or someone I barely know posts a stupid and false copy-and-paste Facebook status about welfare benefits and drug testing (reproduced below). But when my own family does it and then starts spouting Regan era, Fox News talking point bullshit defending it, I get pissed, but it also makes me sad. And any attempt I make to defend myself on Facebook just gets me attacked by people I don't know (friends of family members) and I really don't care to defend my position against people I don't know and who, frankly, seem pretty uninformed and simpleminded.

Thank you FLORIDA and KENTUCKY!! Florida and Kentucky are the first states that require drug testing when applying for welfare, effective July 1st. Some people are crying this is "unconstitutional"... How is this unconstitutional? It's OK to drug test people who work for their money, but not those who don't? Re-post this if you'd like to see this done in all 50 states !!!

So I left it alone. But it just kept gnawing at me. So I was going to lay out my position here, to at least get it off my chest. But then I realized I don't really have to do that, it's been done, and is documented better than I would have been able to do. I found this article which does a wonderful job of documenting my points, thank you ACLU. I kept finding myself paraphrasing from it so I thought I would just link to it move on to what pisses me off that isn't addressed in the article. (Plus it's nice to get back to the cathartic side of blogging, not just posting pictures of places I go, like I have been lately.)

Drug testing as a requirement for welfare benefits is not just unethical, it is unconstitutional. And the ACLU article documents this very well.  But the Facebook post pisses me off for more reasons than that. First and foremost is that people will copy and paste anything that uses capitol letters and exclamation points and says the words, "repost if you agree" at the end of it. This leads to a lot of people posting things that are stupid and that, if they actually thought about it, they wouldn't agree to put on their wall. And not just this one about welfare, there are dozens of them. It's the new, ridiculous email forward, the kind of thing Snopes was invented for. So many of these copy-and-paste statuses are false, four words typed into Snopes proved this one false in less than 10 seconds. 

Another thing that annoys me about this post in particular is the ludicrous idea that the majority of people on welfare either abuse drugs or are abusing the system. It's not in the post itself, but in every discussion I've participated in, this is the first thing brought up. The term "welfare queens"was a Regan catchphrase, used to refer to women who committed welfare fraud. While the term isn't used very often these days, the Fox News wackjobs still cling to the idea that every single person who receives welfare benefits is a drug-abusing, lazy ass who does nothing but take advantage of hard-working Americans. And since everything that Glenn Beck says is the perfect, unadulterated truth, that must be the case. Never mind the studies that say otherwise, never mind common sense. "Poor people are bad and they're taking MY hard-earned money." This bullshit wasn't true when Regan was saying it in the '80s and it isn't true now, but because it plays into the "me, me, me" attitude, people are willing to buy into it without actually using their brains. That isn't to say that welfare fraud isn't a problem, it does happen, but not nearly to the extent that the people who post this stuff on Facebook seem to think.

A stereotype is, according to Merriam-Webster, "something conforming to a fixed or general pattern; especially : a standardized mental picture that is held in common by members of a group and that represents an oversimplified opinion, prejudiced attitude, or uncritical judgment." The reason I hate this post so much is that it perpetuates the stereotype. It takes something complex — people who receive financial benefits from the government for a variety of reasons (including but not limited to; a poor economy, mental/physical disability or a job that doesn't pay well enough) — and oversimplifies it into "people who are poor don't deserve a handout because they'll just use it on drugs." It is a prejudiced attitude and it is an uncritical judgment.

This type of thinking, or non-thinking, in stereotypes and talking points is all too common right now. It is true in the email forwards and the copy-and-paste statuses. It makes people feel like they are informed on the issues and taking a stand in politics. But if you are just repeating what other people are saying, if you aren't actually researching the issues, how can you consider yourself involved? Maybe the people who forward or post are informed, but then why are they perpetuating false information? It is my opinion that if you aren't going to take the time to inform yourself about an issue, you shouldn't put your opinion of it out into the world, because you just come off sounding ignorant. (And by that I mean the dictionary definition of ignorant and the Utah definition of "ignernt.")

Vermont Vacation

Back in June Les and I took a short vacation to Vermont.  I have been meaning to post about it and share photos for a while. But I took a ton of photos and the task was rather daunting. So I've decided to split it up. I already posted my theory about Vermont being the Oregon of the East Coast, this post will be about the basics of our vacation. I have another post in the works about our trip to the cheesiest, corniest museum ever and one documenting our exploration of the covered bridges.

View of Lake Champlain from the deck.

First off, thanks are in order to my wonderful coworker (and sadly, basically my only friend in this ridiculously overpopulated state) Mary. She graciously allowed us the use of her cabin on Lake Champlain. In great vacation tradition, it rained the entire trip. And the cabin has a tin roof and no insulation. It was a wonderful sound... for about the first two hours. Then it was incredibly loud and hard to sleep, at least for me Les has been known to sleep through much worse, including earthquakes. But the rain made for some beautiful scenery.

Breakfast on the deck was lovely. Les spent all morning playing some color/shape block game on his iPod.

And when we were done eating, it was raining so hard we were able to wash the dishes in it. (Don't worry Mary, we used soap and the sink later, this was just to show the amount of rain.

Les walking out from the "driveway."

One of the best things about Vermont is, of course, Ben and Jerry's. We took the factory tour and tried a sample and purchased a few souvenirs.  It was really cool not so much to see how they make ice cream, learn about a socially responsible company. I was also intrigued by all the different flavors they have, and have had over the years. Some I wanted to try and others just sounded disgusting.

A replica of the Ben and Jerry's tour bus, the original burned to the ground in 1986 (we learned that in a slide show).

At the end of the tour they give you a sample.

Bad lighting, but good samples.

They have a graveyard for discontinued flavors.

I found this interesting.

Tanks of ingredients, soon to be Stephen Colbert's Americone Dream.

Really cool-looking rusty tower, terribly back-lit.

If amazing ice cream wasn't enough to make a rainy vacation super-awesome, beer is. Since we were in Burlington anyway, we stopped in at the Magic Hat brewery. I don't drink beer (it's a smell issue) but Les is on his way to becoming quite the fancy-schmancy beer drinker. The brewery was really cool and Les got a great deal on a case of summer ale.

Les tried to pull it over, and the color is more accurate on this one.

That's a lot of beer.

This is the only photo I took of the Cabot plant, I was too busy eating cheese.

This was a factory heavy vacation, it probably wouldn't have been if we had gone hiking or canoeing, but it was just too rainy for that. In addition to the ice cream and beer, we saw the Cabot cheese factory. The tour wasn't as interesting as Ben and Jerry's, but they gave us samples of dozens of different kinds of cheddar and it was amazing. I had never heard of Cabot before moving to the east coast, but I love it! We also did some sightseeing and saw the Vermont capitol building, for some reason I don't really remember.

Capitol building in Montpelier.

There were cannons and odd, skulky-looking statues at the capitol, Les climbed on one of them.

Taking scenery photos on the side of the highway.

Falls in Middlebury, where we had a great dinner.

We also visited the New England Maple Syrup Museum and hunted down some covered bridges but both of those things have enough photos to deserve their own posts. Overall a great trip!

And a goodbye scoop for the drive home. Les's was chock full of coffee flavors and mine had more chocolate then I've ever had in my entire life.

Why I Shouldn't Write Books for Children

Yesterday Les and I went to Maplewood Rose Garden in Rochester. It was a good time, but was smaller than we were lead to believe. So after exploring the roses that weren't completely wilted from the heat, we went to Holy Sepulchre Cemetery hoping it would be interesting like nearby Mt. Hope. It wasn't, not even close, in fact. But while we were driving around we did see quite the show near one of the mausoleums. I thought I would share this story, and it's important moral, like a children's book. 

Once upon a time there was a red-tailed hawk named Humphrey. Humphrey was hungry. So Humphrey stared at his favorite tree where Suzie the squirrel lived.

When Humphrey saw Suzie in the tree he jumped at her.

But Suzie was smart, and when Humphrey jumped at her, she ran down the tree.

And then Humphrey fell out of the tree.

Humphrey knew that if at first you don't succeed, you have to try again. So he shook himself off while Suzie ran back up the tree.

He found Suzie in the tree again.

And made a bigger jump than before.

But Suzie made a bigger jump too.

While Humphrey fell again, Suzie ran away and hid.

Two nearby crows had watched Humphrey's attempts, and now they were laughing at him. Humphrey was embarrassed, so he flew away very quickly. 

Dejected and still hungry, Humphrey perched on a nearby roof and watched the crows who were teasing him eat bugs and grains to their heart's content.

The moral of the story, boys and girls, is that life is a bitch. Bigger animals will try to eat you. Sometimes you don't get what you need even when you try you hardest. And those who have life easy will mock and ridicule your struggle.

And that's why I don't write children's books. (BTW that photo of Humphrey flying away was taken at 1/400 of a second and his wings were moving even faster than that.)

Top 10

Of all the photos I've ever taken — and there have been more than 15,000 just in the last 18 months — this is my favorite. But it doesn't come close to being my most popular.

I have recently decided that I miss taking photos. I decided on a whim about a year and a half ago to start the 365project. I did it every single day for a year, never skipping a day. And it was hard, but it was fun. I decided not to continue though, because I felt burnt out at the end of the year. Taking photos had become a chore and, mostly because it was the middle of winter in Western New York, I was having a hell of a time taking anything good or original.

So now that I've had about a five-month break I want to get back into it. But going back to a photo every day is a bit overwhelming. I've decided on a weekly challenge. I am planning to start on my birthday since I started the 365project on such a random day. I haven't decided exactly what I'm doing but I have decided not to go with a simple weekly theme like those from the 365project or Wordpress. I was thinking of basing it on an obscure word of the day calendar or possibly quotes or song lyrics. I still have about a month to decide and I am completely open to suggestions.

In the meantime I looked through my old photos and compiled my top 10 most viewed, based on views from Picasa and the 365project. I must admit I am surprised at most of the results.

#10, with 308 combined views is "Bridge Over Troubled Water" taken November 11, 2010 at Stony Brook State Park.

#9 is the alternative version of "A Drama of Lights" taken February 12, 2011, of Asbury First Methodist Church on East Ave. in Rochester. It has 354 views, most of which probably resulted from my use of this photo in my blog post about my views of religion (which was crazy popular because it wound up on Reddit).

#8 is "Ripple Effect," from March 1, 2010, the first time I ever participated in the 365project weekly theme. It came in 3rd in that contest and was a huge ego boost. It has 396 views.

#7 is one of the ones that really surprised me. Taken June 18, 2010 outside our house in Ardenvoir, I didn't think it was that great of a photo, just a cool sun flare, but I think my choice of titles increased it's popularity. I call it "100 Suns" based on one of my favorite 30 Seconds to Mars songs. I included the lyrics in the descriptions on both sites which may have led to some of its 442 views. 

#6 is one of the ones that isn't a surprise, because it's tagged "nude" on both sites, even though you can't see anything (the ones where you can see something have move views on Picasa, but aren't on 365project) it has 455 views. This was taken January 16, 2011, with my new remote, I made it intentionally grainy and high contrast and posted it with a commentary about body image.

#5 is also a self-portrait, this time with Les. I took this on October 10, 2010, the fourth anniversary of our wedding. I called it "All I Want is You," which is our song, inasmuch as we have a song.  This is another one that has a surprisingly high number of views, 699, probably because I included the lyrics.

#4, "Something About Everything" was my guess to be #1. It is extremely popular on the 365project and if it had done even half as well on Picasa it would be the #1. With 750 combined views, it is one my personal favorites. Taken July 14, 2010 of a giant weed in my back yard, it won the "curves" competition on 365project.

#3 was my other guess for my top viewed photo. "Careening Through the Universe," the title comes from a line in a Third Eye Blind song, was taken just two weeks before the #4 photo. July was a very busy month for me on the 365project last year. Again, it was tagged as a nude, increasing the views even though it's only my back, it has 800.

#2, "Rough Waters" was only the ninth photo I posted on my 365project February 25, 2010. I guess its popularity, at 831 views, might be simply based on its age.

#1 was the biggest surprise of all. It was a photo I took at the end of the day on September 13, 2010, I didn't try very hard, just snapped something before falling asleep. "What Council" (the title is based on a James Joyce poem) only my second photo taken in New York, was taken on our first full day in the state. I was still incredibly tired from our insane trek and a full day of unpacking and moving. So I am really surprised that, at 913 views, this is my most popular photo, especially since I don't think it's very good.