Year 2 - Day 59 - February 28

Lest you think there are only kid books in our home - this is what my husband is reading right now.  Really? An "oral" history of the zombie war?!?  And he mocks my General Hospital!?!? :)

Year 2 - Day 58 - February 27

We voted on the Black Eyed Susan Picture Books today!  I won't spill the beans, but one of the ladies had her friends make these cupcakes.  Aren't they stinkin adorable?  The petals are mini marshmellows snipped with scissors, dampened, and dipped in yellow crystal sprinkles!

Year 2 - Day 57 - February 26

Tonight we celebrated my friend's birthday at a German restaurant named Eichenkranz in Highlandtown.  It was definitely old school German food.  I had Pork schnitzel and Mike had this crazy thing called Rouladen. Here's the description from the menu: "Steak tenderized, smeared with Dijon mustard, then rolled with carrot, onion and pickle. Cooked in a beefy mushroom sauce."

They weren't kidding about the rolled.  It looked like a burrito but the meat was the roll.   It looked crazy to me, but both people who ordered it liked it!

Year 2 - Day 56 - February 25

Another book that I re-read this week prepping for voting weekend.  I really hope this one makes the list, too. 

Of course I knew about the famous sit in at the lunch counter.  I learned about it in more than one year of school.

However - I didn't know that it happened right here in Baltimore until I heard the protests about the fact that someone wants to demolish the building where it happened.  I felt really dumb that I didn't know.  It's amazing that growing up in one of the "newer" Baltimore suburbs gave me a completly different history than people who grew up in the more established suburbs.  Our area didn't have the "hon" thing, the strong accent, and apparently we didn't know that much about the goings on in our very nearby city.  It's amazing that we lived less than 25 minutes from downtown, and were a world away.

Year 2 - Day 55 - February 24

Hopefully my husband isn't scared of heights, because we now own a really tall ladder!!!!  It's not "Little Giant" brand, but it's that style of adjustable ladder.  We ordered from Amazon earlier in the week, got free shipping, and it appeared on our porch today.  Fantastic service!  Hopefully nothing ever happens in our life again that would require a tall ladder.  It'd be nice for it to be a shiny insurance policy, right? :)

Year 2 - Day 54 - February 23

Tonight my photography class was canceled, so I got to go to book club!  That's exciting because we were actually discussing both our Jan & Feb books due to the January snow.  We read Room & House Rules.  I had actually read both previously, but it was fun to discuss them with people.

More importantly, I read this picture book again because we're voting on the Black Eyed Susan Picture Book Award list this weekend, and I needed to refresh my memory with some of them.  This book is genius.  I really hope it makes the list.  I'd love to sit down with the author and say HOW DID YOU DO IT?!

On each page, there is a pair of poems and a fantastic illustration that go with a fairy tale.  They describe both sides of the story.  The catch is that the 2nd poem is the words in the 1st poem exactly reversed.  It's spectacular. 

Year 2 - Day 53 - February 22

4 days ago, I wore short sleeves two days in a row.  Today I'm home for a snow day with 6 inches of snow on the ground.  Silly February.

I know that if summer disappeared a month early, I'd be horrified, but really - with a month to go in this season, I'm ok with it disappearing for good! :)

Year 2 - Day 52 - February 21

Room service for breakfast!  We both had OJ, I had decaf & he had tea, I had a meat omlet & his was veggie, I had turkey sausage & he had regular bacon, I had strawberries & melon, he had a random fruit cup, I had french toast & he had raspberry pancakes.  I never wanted to leave, but the roofers were coming to fix the roof & he had a PT appointment for his knee, so we came home at lunch time.  We couldn't afford to frequent places like this, but if they do a groupon again, I'm all over it!!!

Year 2 - Day 51 - February 20

 We are away for the night ... it's like a staycation, but in a hotel!  We stayed at the Gramercy Mansion for our wedding night a few years ago, which has a sister property near the Inner Harbor called the 1840's Carrollton Inn.  Awhile back there was a groupon for a day that made the expensive rooms super cheap and affordable for a night. We decided to grab one for fun and then also use a Visa gift card from my Aunt & Uncle to go out to a nice dinner at the Capital Grille.  (So delicious. He had raw fish and I had cooked filet. Yum.)

I picked this room because of the swimming pool sized jacuzzi tub.  If I were about 5 inches shorter, I could go swimming!  And tomorrow morning for the first time ever, I'll get to have room service.  I don't know why I never have, I've been on cruises where it's free, but it's just never happened.  I'm excited by small fun things. :)

Year 2 - Day 50 - February 19

We lost a piece of fascia today during the height of the wind storm.  (Fascia, for those of you who are learning a new vocabulary word like I did today, is the diagonal piece of siding like stuff that goes from the point of the roof diagonally down towards the gutter.  It protects wood, I imagine, since that's what is showing now in that space.)

Being Saturday evening, we had to come up with a solution to last 36 hours until they could come on Monday. 

Problem - 2 pieces flapping in the wind - one about 10 feet long, 1 about 20 feet long. The 10' long one was attached only at the very tip of the roof, and flapping back and forth. BANG. BANG. BANG. (Our neighbors were loving it, I'm sure.)  The other one was attached lower down, but not so low that we could rip it off.  BANG, BANG, BANG.  Into the tree! Onto the siding! Flying free for moments and then slamming back down. It was loud.  Problem was, that there were nails in the flying flap, so we didn't want to get close to it.  Eventually hours later, the nails were gone.  (We need to find them, because they're out there somewhere!)

When on the top of our 6' stepladder (with me standing on the bottom holding him, since the ladder was on a hill and it was still gusting 40mph out there) , Mike could reach the very bottom of the flap. He tried duct taping it down to the house, but the flap was so long that it had serious lift and tape couldn't hold it down.  We decided to try to tape it TO something, and then secure that somehow. 

Enter - the garage door opener.  When we moved in, the garage door opener's motor was bad.  We had it replaced, but the guy didn't take the old one.  Therefore, the motor has been attached to a 10 foot pole and propped up in the garage for months.  It's long.  It has something super heavy on one end. We laughed about the wackiness of the idea, but it worked.

So, the pole with the motor is a few feet out from the house to make a triangle shape, and then the top of the pole is super duct taped to the flying flap.  Now the flap can't get close enough to the house to bang.  I hope it holds for 36 hours....

Year 2 - Day 49 - February 18

Oh my goodness, it was so good.  And practically free with a sale & coupon. :)

Year 2 - Day 48 - February 17

We were supposed to get a moon shot this week, and since it was pretty clear for a few minutes tonight I went out and snapped.  The idea was to be able to see the craters. I see them!  It could be a little less blurry though.

Year 2 - Day 47 - February 16

We took some outside shots during class tonight.  This one came out really clear!

Year 2 - Day 46 - February 15

Terrible shot, but great song!  Glee did Rent tonight.  Mike rolled his eyes, but I loved it! :)

P.S. What is my life coming to, that I've been tagging pictures for a year and 46 days, and this is the first time I've used "rent" as a tag?!

Year 2 - Day 45 - February 14

 This morning, the sunrise was glowing in a very neat way behind the trees in our yard.  First, I quickly grabbed the camera and took a shot.  (See above.)  Oops.  The flash went off & the tree got lit up and took away from the background.  Then, I changed all my settings a few times and came up with the bottom version.  I didn't really like how that one came out either, however, by the time the minute and a half had gone by that I was messing with the camera, the light changed and it wasn't glowing anymore.  Maybe another day....

Year 2 - Day 44 - February 13

I took over a hundred pictures of this vase today for my photography class homework.  Our task was to do 5 sets of pictures.

Set 1 - Outside - Set ISO & aperture at a given setting and then take a picture with every different shutter speed your camera has.

Set 2 - Outside - Set ISO & shutter speed at a given setting and then take a picture with every different aperture setting your camera has.

Set 3 - Inside - same rules as set 1

Set 4 - Inside - same rules as set 2

Set 5 - Inside - Set aperture & shutter speed at a given setting and then take a picture with every different ISO setting.

With sets 1-4, each set of pictures went from being super overexposed & white so super underexposed & dark.  With the last set, the "noise" (grainy-ness) went up with each picture. 

Year 2 - Day 43 - February 12

This is the card we made tonight at stamping.  It's a magic card!  the piece that is sticking out is removable (you could totally make it a bookmark) so when it's out, the flowers are blue and when it's in, the flowers are yellow.  Nifty trick - but the flash on the camera kind of gives it away....

Year 2 - Day 42 - February 11

Tonight I was messing with the settings, trying to get a constant light line as cars drove by.  I was semi successful, because the red tail light line is showing on the right, but a lot of the other stuff is blurry too.  Maybe it'll get warmer soon and I will actually go outside.  For this one I was standing in the kitchen with only the camera sticking out of the sliding glass door. :)

Year 2 - Day 41 - February 10

The idea behind the landscape setting is that the foreground, middle ground, & background are all in focus.  My house in the very far distance is a little blurry, as is the smashed tree under the snow pack in the front.  Dear goodness from this angle the bushes are even uglier than when you look at the house straight on!!!! 

Year 2 - Day 40 - February 9

Tonight was photography class #2.  There was a long period of "hurry up and wait" while we set our cameras on various settings.  The teacher then looks at each camera individually to check our work.  So, you get a foot shot of while I was waiting....

Year 2 - Day 39 - February 8

This set of pictures came while working with the Night Portrait (mountain with the star) setting on the camera.  While obviously this is not really a good picture of Mike (unless I was going for the staring at the heavens style?) I did ok with the actual setting.

The goal is to have the lights from the house show and glow.  You can definitely tell that the lights are on in there.  The flash pops when you take the shot, and that is the split second that it takes the picture of Mike.  But then, the shutter stays open for a long time - almost a second - to let the light from the house seep in and show up in the picture.  This will let your background show up.

To see the difference, I switched to regular portrait and got this:

Now, the house looks dark.  You can see the chandelier in the dining room sort of, and you can see the outside light as a fixture rather than a glowing orb. 

Year 2 - Day 38 - February 7

Attack cat!  Taken with the action setting.  Terrible angle, but the only one where I really got the action to stop.

Year 2 - Day 37 - Feburary 6

This was taken in portrait mode.  The goal was for him to be clear, especially his eyes, and for the background to be blurry.  Since the berber carpet design kind of disappeared, I consider that blurry. :)

Let me just say, we can add cameras to the never ending list of things that scare Moose to death.  It took 25+ pictures to get one where he was looking at me. 

Year 2 - Day 36 - February 5

Sometimes, your phone is the only camera you have.  We went to Chameleon Cafe tonight to celebrate a good friend's journey over the hill.  Their food is mostly local ingredients, and I loved my dinner.  The steak was great, and the sidedish was a cheddar potato cake with bacon - but no onions.  It was delicious.

Year 2 - Day 35 - February 4

It was so much fun to have the box of Stamping purchases come here this month!  Even though most of the stuff wasn't mine, it was like Christmas to open the box & see all the goodies!!!!

Year 2 - Day 34 - February 3

This is the picture I took in Macro mode.  The baseball in Mickey's hand is about the size of a "shooter" marble, to give you an idea of size. 

Year 2 - Day 33 - February 2

Tonight was my first photography class.  So far, we practiced holding the camera the right way and we learned about the "semi auto" modes on the camera dial.

The picture of a lady's head - portrait mode - Your subject will be nice and crisp, the background will be blurry

Picture of a mountain - landscape mode - Your whole picture will be in focus, foreground to background

Flower picture - Macro mode - You can get really clear close up shots, background won't necessarily be clear

Running Man picture - Stops the action - Not exactly sure when I'll use this...

Mountain with the Star picture - night time portrait - Enables you to take a picture of a person at night time and still have the background show up.  His example was girls on a balcony with Washington DC behind them - with this mode, you could see the Capitol dome in the distance.  With the regular portrait mode, you just saw them and then darkness behind them.

So this week I have to take a bunch of each type and send him the best.  The picture of the water bottle is none of these things.  Rather, it was an example of ... take a picture of something in the room and make sure you can zoom in at least 4 times on your LCD screen and make sure it's still in focus.  Lots of things look like they're in focus on the LCD screen and then when you get home & export to the computer, you realize they're blurry.

Year 2 - Day 32 - February 1

Advertising is EVERYWHERE.  I was surprised to look down an see an ad for Wii's Donkey Kong on my banana.  Even more interesting, there are 3 or 4 different stickers - the bananas all have different ones!