August 09

Having spent a week in 90-degree weather, with lots of bright Florida sunshine keeping things hot, coming back to 70-degree weather with overcast skies was a nice change.

I had a busy week on vacation, and ended up spending most of today sitting in my pajamas doing nothing. I'm feeling a little tired, and think I've got a little bit of a sore throat from going from air conditioning to the humid outdoors to air conditioning over and over. Floridians are absolutely in love with their air conditioning.

I did finally drag myself out of the house to catch a movie with Boyfriend. Go see Julie and Julia if you get the chance; it's very worth it.

221/365 -

May 24

We've had a stormy day here today. It's funny; a stormy day in New England is an entirely different experience than a stormy day in the midwest.

Getting a photo of a stormy day is something of a challenge. Lightning comes so quickly that it takes a lot of effort, dedication, and no small amount of luck to get a photo of it. Rain is just difficult to capture clearly. However, the raindrops falling earlier this afternoon were big, splashy drops, so I was able to get some interesting shots of the rain hitting my front steps (shot from the relative dryness of a covered front porch). I particularly love the splashes created by some of the drops as they hit.

144/365 -

May 22

For most of the six or so years that Pogo (my dog) and Pretty Boy (my cat) have lived together, they've pretty much ignored each other. Occasionally, the cat would hit the dog, and the dog would snarl at the cat, but once done, they went right back to the status quo: pretending the other animal just doesn't exist.

Boyfriend and I have caught them not ignoring each other more and more lately, as Pogo becomes more infirm. Today was the best; I got out of the shower to find them not only sharing our perpetually-unmade bed, but touching each other.

Once Pretty Boy realized I'd seen him, he took off for another room in the house. Pogo, going blind and nearly deaf, simply slept on.

142/365 -

May 19

Vacation is over. It's time to get back to the routine, which includes walking the dog and going to work. Good thing the building where I work is photogenic.

After having what was one of the busiest, workingist vacations I've taken in a while, I'm back to the usual routine at home. Realistically, this means getting up late, having a very unhealthy breakfast before nearly being late to work, then bickering almost good-naturedly with my doorman, Ennio, before settling in and doing my job, which is best described as keeping a building full of wealthy people happy.

Oh yes, it's good to be back.

139/365 -

May 07

So yesterday, water main work near my house prematurely cut off my attempts to finish washing my clothes. Today, police activity near the laundromat where I dry the washed clothes (our dryer is dead) nearly prevented me from finishing the job.

I'm not sure what the story was, but I did see the police escorting these two folks out of the parking lot and into two separate cruisers. They moved the cruisers blocking entry to the laundromat parking lot a few moments later, so I made the block (it's on a one-way street), pulled in, and dried my laundry (albeit 45 minutes later than I planned).

Honestly, I'm almost ready to conclude these are signs from God, and that He doesn't want me doing laundry anymore. Unfortunately, nobody else (including the Almighty) is likely to buy that one.

127/365 -

May 06

The City of Boston decided to clean the water mains in several locations around Roslindale today. Coincidentally, today was my laundry day.

I have no idea what is involved with cleaning water mains, to be honest. Nor am I certain why they have to be cleaned in groups (there were further crews on Cummins Highway -- two of them). I guess you don't want your nice clean water main gunked up by dirty ones nearby? Whatever the process, it used water from a nearby hydrant and a big vacuum hose thingie.

Actually, I don't know that this has anything to do with water mains, except for the name on the side of the truck and possibly the use of the hydrant. Still, with stuff being stirred up in the vicinity of utility lines to my home, I don't think it was worth the risk.

Now, Thursday will be laundry day!

126/365 -

May 04

Please allow me to present another pretty flower picture. With all the new planting in the yard, it seems like every time something begins to die off, a new bloom comes out to replace it. Since tomorrow is supposed to be rainy and cold, this was my last chance for a couple of days.

That, and I couldn't think of anything else worth photographing.

Today's photo brings me a little past one-third of the way to my year's worth of photos. It's been both easier and more difficult than I'd thought it would be. Whatever else can be said about the experience, though, it has been a rewarding one.

124/365 -

March 25

If you're wondering what a hemp-dyed crazy shirt is, you know what I was thinking when I received this special little gift.

My landlady went to visit her brother last weekend in San Francisco, and asked me to take care of her animals (Jasper the dog, Tico and Ulti the kitties, and assorted fish). This is a common request and one I'm glad to accept. She's very nice and usually brings back a small gift or souvenir -- this time, it was a hemp-dyed crazy shirt. (And yes, I'm "Uncle Upstairs" to her dog and cats; it's a long story.) I like this gift a lot; it's comfortable and just a little quirky, and the packaging was outstanding.

84/365 -

March 21

Behold, 15 -- count 'em, 15 -- hardcover Star Trek novels.

On weekends, unless I have something pressing to do, I'm something of a layabout. I got up, did some laundry, and then ventured out for breakfast around 3 pm. On my way back from the KFC, I noticed that the Treasure Chest, the little junk store near my house, was open, so I stopped in.

That's where I came upon these Star Trek novels, hidden on a bookshelf behind a row of videotapes. At a dollar per book, I pounced on them. I love to read, and it's my dirty little secret that I actually enjoy reading crap on occasion. Nobody will mistake these for fine literature, but they'll make for an enjoyable afternoon or two.

80/365 -

March 14

I don't know if it's art, but that's what I was aiming for when I created this piece I call "Guard Dog."

We live on the second floor of a two-family house, and in our entryway we have what I can only describe as the ugliest wallpaper ever. There's not a lot we can do about the wallpaper -- the space is awkwardly-shaped, so stripping the wallpaper and painting it is out of the question. It did, however, give me a large wall space to try this art experiment.

I took an old black-and-white photo of Pogo, my dog, and did some work on it. Each of the tiles you see is a plain piece of copier paper. I blew up the photo, ran it through a halftone filter, then divided the image up into separate images. These were printed on a laser printer, and I assembled them into one honkin' big piece of art (42.5 inches wide, 66 inches deep). It wasn't made specifically for the entryway, but it was the only swath of wall large enough to put it up.

It's pretty cool what you can do with copier paper, scotch tape, and a little imagination.

73/365 -

March 08

I've been suffering from computer problems over the past week. My laptop developed a bulge over the keyboard, and the cooling fan was running hotly and continuously. Then my display began acting up, making the computer unusable after it ran for a few minutes.

I'd been hoping to keep my old computer running until Windows 7 is released, but that hope went by the wayside. I had an older computer, but it's not very reliable either, and if I wanted to continue having daily access to a working computer, I had to replace it. And I hate spending money -- especially on a Windows Vista machine.

Nonetheless, I bought a replacement machine, one that should (hopefully) be a reliable machine until it's time for the next version of Windows to come out. Meanwhile, I'll be working over the next few days getting this new machine set up. That should make keeping up the Photo of the Day project pretty interesting.

67/365 -

March 02

It's amazing, really, how Boyfriend's Saab looks fast even when buried in the snow. I awoke this morning to the sight of both our cars slumbering under this foot of frozen precipitation, and proceeded to spend two physically-active hours shoveling them out from beneath the sodden mess. I'm beginning to think I'm going to get my first repetitive stress injury of my life from shoveling snow. It's dig-carry-dump, dig-carry-dump, over and over again.

This winter hasn't thrown any particularly-bad blizzards at New England, but it's been relentless in sending us snowstorm after snowstorm after snowstorm. The biggest of the drifts and mounds of snow had just melted -- finally -- before this storm arrived. There are only 18 more days until spring arrives, and I can only hope that it brings warmer weather and more sunshine -- mainly because I'm going to lose it if I have to deal with shoveling very much more snow!

61/365 -

January 18

Snow, snow, and more snow. I know I'm probably imagining it, but it seems like this winter has been one of the snowiest I remember in New England.

This is the view from my front porch this morning, during the last of the snowfall. The original photo was so dull and gray, I considered (and experimented with) rendering it as a black-and-white image. Ultimately, however, I ended up increasing the color saturation a bit, just to bring something out of the eye-catching yellow house on the corner, and the red of the stop signs and my neighbor's hat and gloves.

There is one good thing about the weather today: it's warmer than its been in more than a week. I don't like snow, but it's marginally better than having highs in the high teens and lows nearing zero. When air is that cold, it can't even hold enough moisture to snow.

18/365 -