Activity

I've enjoyed returning to my "new norm" of life in April. "New norm" is a relative term... work issues are no longer bogging my schedule and April has been something like bliss, with leaving the dragging work issues behind and re-entering the social atmosphere of neighbors and friends.  While working through the cultural shock of having real "free time" again, and the sudden shift to better weather, I've been getting up and out of the house more often.

We've discovered this fantastic park across the street from our neighborhood entrance, with trails winding through the forest which can be hiked, biked, or ridden via horse-back.  The multi-traffic trail is nice and wide, which is fantastic for learning some real in-the-woods-and-mud mountain biking skills.   I've tried to get some bird's-eye-view video of the adventures, however my first attempt was with a low quality camera (on my iPod... forgot I had that!)  My second attempt was with our high def. "GoPro" sports camera, however I didn't realize that when wearing it on the chest strap, the camera view ends up being mostly my handlebars and the ground below.  I will need to figure out a way to strap it to my handlebars maybe... but in the mean time, here is one of the better clips, complete with soundtrack:



Along with getting back outside, I've also gotten back inside... into the climbing gym.

I started indoor bouldering last year, directly contradicting my fear of heights.  Some days I can get up off the ground and finish a route, other days my fear takes over and I stick to horizontal climbing.  My goal is to be able to climb around inside a cave, ala Spiderman, however I'm finding my techniques are lacking, which is making climbing harder than it should be for me.  In order to see where I'm failing, I had my climbing buddy get some video of me trying to figure out a route.  My conclusion is... I'm going to sign up for a techniques class.  I'd love to have the confidence to do vertical routes, and also I realize (after watching some "pro tips" videos) I'm totally doing caves wrong.

As it stands, I'll consider this my "somewhat before" video... I've gone climbing about a dozen times, and this is what I can accomplish without formal instruction




I still feel overwhelmed with all the catching up I need to do, the backlog of projects which need attention... but I'm trying to find balance and not drive myself crazy with anxiety.  Things Take Time, after all, and for the moment, I have time.

Serendipity in the Home Depot

Last summer, when we decided to move from our old house, we said "good bye" to our riding lawn mower. It was a wonderful tool for the excessively hilly and expansive lawn of the old place (though truth be told, it was more moss and clover than lawn anyway)  however our new home has a decently smaller and much flatter lawn to deal with.  The riding mower also took up a lot of space in the old shed, and couldn't handle the tight curves of the new place, so all in all we figured a walk-behind mower would be the best tool for this new job.  As we had moved in the dead of winter, we were in no hurry to research lawn equipment and put off the final decision making until it became obvious that Spring had finally arrived in our yard.

That, and I wanted the grass cut before Easter.

Having priced out a few yard service companies and finding they wanted upwards of $150 for a once-over of our lawn (and couldn't make it out before Easter anyway) we thought we should just invest in a mower now and get it done ourselves.

We woke Saturday morning, cobbled together a list of "let's get the gardening season started" items, and set off to wander the vastness of Home Depot.  D had done some research online and priced a few things out, debated about where to go, and decided we should at least see what the Depot had in inventory.  He looked over a few models of mowers while I scooted around the store picking up the other miscellaneous items we needed.  After a bit of time and further questioning, Dan settled on a mower that was upwards of $700.00.  We loaded the box on a large flat cart and did a little more shopping around, testing the stiffness of broom bristles to see what might work best to rid our deck of the abundance of hemlock cones which dropped over the winter.  We were still debating about whether or not that mower might be overkill for the yard, and were we making a rush decision just to get the lawn cut that day, as we navigated the register area looking for a line short enough to accommodate our two carts.  A man wheeled up into line behind us and struck up a conversation.

"Where do ya'll live?" he asked.

"We live up in Woodinville," I replied.

"Ah... well I see you have a mower there.  I've got one that I was planning on putting in our garage sale... I bought it a few years ago but only used it a couple of times before my schedule got to busy and I just hired a lawn service.  It's just been sitting in the shed since.  If you're interested I'll sell it to you for $75.00, save you a few bucks rather than getting a brand new one."

D and I looked at each other and shrugged... might as well check it out.  If it works, it'll save us a bundle and if it doesn't then the new one is still here at Home Depot.

So we put the boxed new mower aside, bought the rest of our items and followed the guy out to his house.

The mower he had for sale was the same deck size we'd been looking at, but a different model and did not have quite as many options as the one in the store.  Still, it did have a front wheel drive, and options to bag or mulch (which I would prefer to do anyway)  It was bone dry of gas, though, and we didn't have any gas on us to test it out.  After a little conversation and poking around, we settled on a $60.00 no-test price, exchanged the money for the mower, and loaded it up.

The route to the gentleman's house had taken us somewhat north of our home, so we wound our way around into Woodinville and decided to stop off at the smaller-chain hardware store, McLendon's Hardware.  D wasn't sure if they would have lawnmower parts, but I thought I'd seen a whole section of air filters and it was a convenient enough stop to make on our way home.  Not only did they have the parts we needed, but one of the men working in the store came out to the truck with us to check out the mower, measure for the exact parts, and loaded us up with a new spark plug, air filter, and oil.  As an added bonus he took a look at the blade and confimed it was pretty clear that it was hardly used... aside from some caked-on dirt the blade was plenty sharp and had no nicks or chips in it to be seen.

Back home D set to work cleaning up the mower and changing the oil while I occupied my time seeking out and organizing our supply of yard equipment in the garage.  Within about 40 minutes D had the new/old mower up and running.  The grass did clump up in the areas where the lawn is thicker and still damp, but I expected that with the first mow of the season.  The mower took care of the thinner portions of the lawn like a champ, and the mulch option worked really nicely in the dry parts of the yard.  By dinner time he had our entire yard mowed, clippings in the can, and mower put away... all for less than half of what it would have cost to have a service come and do it for us, and less than a tenth of what that new mower would have cost us.

Through the Pinhole

One of my favorite (and few remaining) camera stores is hosting their first ever pinhole photographer contest.  A departure from their plastic camera contest... in this case they'll accept any sort of pinhole shot, be it through a home made matchbox camera, a manufactured Holga/Diana pinhole, or the Lensbaby pinhole optic on a DSLR.  I happen to have the Lensbaby optic already, along with a home made pinhole camera  I built from a kit... though I haven't done a lot of experimenting with either, the contest has inspired me to break them out and see what I can't accomplish.

The Lensbaby optic takes some getting used to.  It sits within the Composer lens, which tilts easily unless it is locked in place.  The images are much more zoomed than I'm used to with pinhole shots, and the focus is quite soft (though this is indicative of pinhole photography)  I keep forgetting that I cannot look through the viewfinder to line up my shot, so there is a lot of guess work involved in framing and exposure - again indicative of pinhole photography, but difficult to "switch" my brain when I'm holding a giant DSLR. This shot was taken with my DSLR/Lensbaby pinhole loaded on the tripod

The advantage to shooting with the DSLR is the instant gratification of seeing the framing/exposure, and being able to make adjustments on the spot to get closer to the image I want to capture.

By contrast, here is a shot taken with the cardboard pinhole, sitting atop the flat surface of my tripod:

What I enjoy about the cardboard camera is the depth of field... everything is in focus from camera surface to infinity (again, minus camera shake)  I can't get this look with any kind of lens.  The frustrating thing in using cardboard is having to burn film guessing the exposure, then (in the case of color) wait for the lab to find time to develop the film (or, in the case of black and white, find the time to develop the film)

I loaded the cardboard camera with 400 speed color, intending to shoot the interior of the Seattle Aquarium.    Due to the high occupancy (school field trips that morning) and my daughter's desire to watch the sea otters, I did not have as much opportunity to experiment indoors as I would have liked.  Still, I did come away with this image, done at a 1 minute exposure with the camera propped on my tripod:

I discovered that my cell phone has a stopwatch feature, which was wonderful to use for the long exposures.  I was completely guessing on this, but that is why I chose 400 speed, it tends to be forgiving when you are a few seconds off.

My last test was to hand-hold the cardboard pinhole camera, for a short 1-3 second exposure, to see how steady I could hold it:

Not terribly steady, though I've made worse exposures.

As I go over my film, I see that most shots are surprisingly borderline overexposed.  Even when I had the camera set on the tripod, I found it difficult to drop the cardboard "shutter" for such a short exposure, then cover the camera back up without bumping into it.  Although it seems at odds with my normal conclusions, I think in the future I should stick with a slower speed film for pinhole photography, and always have the camera on a steady surface.  Tri-podding it will always yield sharper images, and the extended exposure will give me the time to drop the cardboard block and cover the pinhole back up again without fumbling.

Dreams to Reality

The other day I had that wake-in-the-wee-hours-vivid-dream time again, this time it was all about doodling.

I had a clear vision of a drawing, zentangles within a zentangle... a wide ribbon pattern with smaller patterns inside, some background patterns, some things dangling here and there. Even as I dreamed it, I knew I had not drawn it yet.  It was a strange mix of looking at this sketch knowing that it was going to come from my head eventually, but in order to make it a reality I would have to remember how I drew it the first time... even though it wasn't drawn yet.  As I woke up I had already begun to deconstruct the main ribbon part to figure out how to make it dimensional.

This is my first attempt at the vision:

It is a very basic version of what I saw in my head... the ribbon is not quite wide enough, and the "extras" outside the ribbon are missing... but I have the basic construct down, which is half the battle.

A garden retreat

Lately I've had this odd sleep pattern that has me wondering if there might be a scientific name for it.  (This question might be fueled by having recently finished reading "Sleepwalk With Me")  I wake in the early hours of the morning, not quite late enough to get up for the day but not quite early enough to be the middle of the night, and I stare at the clock.  Just when I start to consider giving up on sleep and getting up for the day, I fall into a hard coma-like sleep.  It is a heavy, draining feeling sleep which is ripe with extremely vivid dreams.

I've always had vivid dreams anyway, but these are the most tangible.  And I'm aware that I am asleep and dreaming.  Most of the time I explore where I'm at, sometimes I'm arguing with people, a few times I've been running.  The oddest part, though, is that I will wake from these dreams, enough to see the clock and register the time in my mind, and then drop immediately into R.E.M. sleep.

From what I recall from psychology class, all those years ago in college, R.E.M. is supposed to be something we gradually drift into after having passed through other stages of sleep.  These early morning sessions, though, feel like I'm dropping off a cliff and slamming into R.E.M., aware that I'm dreaming and I was just awake.  I know I'm jumping rapidly because I open my eyes often enough to see that only 5 minutes has passed.

In a recent dream I was wandering through a house will a lot of rooms and hallways.  The passageways kept stretching in all directions, there were people everywhere (could have been the Winchester Mystery House maybe?)  I turned a corner and found a door to a side yard that I had never seen before.  I stepped outside and looked around the corner of the door, and there was the most delightful little patio... natural stone steps set into sand, a low garden wall made of stacked stone, a lot of mosaic art work on terracotta pots, herbs growing, and glass viewing orbs of various sizes and heights surrounding a small stone bench.  Lots of blues and lavenders with hints of yellow and orange.

I can see it as clearly now as I saw it in the dream, a cozy meditation garden.  

I think I will build one this summer.