Close Meditations of a Visual Kind

Up early today, somewhat in anticipation. Then again I'd gone to bed early yesterday after a bit of work on the Ranch and being tired, so that may be part of it. At any rate, a light fog this morning, would of been quite nice for photography excepting there waited a wee bit more house straightening to finish before our guests from Birmingham arrived. Quite nearly succeeded in that. Was just finishing wiping down the sink in lavatory when I heard a cheerful "Hello" from just outside the door. Of the house, that is. Lavatory is just inside the side door of the house.

( In Which Your Narrator Spends a Day With Friends From Overseas )

Kitchen cleanup is first stage done (i.e. the first round of dishes are in the dishwasher and running; second load waits until first is done, of course). I'm here rather than watching the Tube. Time to go read some other things.

Went on a brief walk about with mini_fred on Friday after packing checking out and checking the bags with the bell captain, as we also needed to wait for canuckdesz to finish up with work for the day. Mini-Fred tells that story better than I can, so go visit his blog. Met up later with both canuckdesz and capntypo, we had pizza for dinner and then went over to see the WW 2 Memorial after dark. Again, Mini-Fred tells you about that.

Then we headed out of town and crashed at canuckdesz's place. Saturday after a bit of a liesurely wake-up canuckdesz and I set off with Mini-Fred to the Washington Zoo and some fun adventures. We saw long-legged wolves, lions, pandas, elephants, tigers, beavers, and yes, otters. The less I say about that last, the better. When we finished up there at lunch time we stopped for burritos at Chipotle's oooo yum. Then onto the Metro for Arlington National Cememtary.

Went past the Tomb of the Unknown, arriving just in time for the 15:00 Changing of the Guard, and not one but two wreath-laying ceremonies. Wandered over to pay our respects to John F. Kennedy, then over to see the U.S. Marine Corps War Memorial, just outside Arlington to the west. That site is under some big renovation work, closed off by the traditional high chain-link fencing. So I'll need to come back and visit it again on another occasion.

From there we headed back to the house, started to upload photos from the day, and got a phone call from marjai. She, madpuppy, and Bean were inbound and suggested we meet someplace for dinner, so we wouldn't need to leave the house again after everyone arrived. Thinking that an excellent suggestion, I wrapped up the upload, and we headed out to Chili's where we also met up with capntypo.

Good visit, great time.

Today we collaborated on some artwork. I'm not quite ready to upload copies, but they are coming soon. Suffice it to say, canuckdesz contributed painting, marjai contributed canvas and modelling, and I contributed photography. We're all pretty happy with the results just now. They've headed back home, and we're about to set up for dinner tonight.

Tomorrow I will either spend a rest day, getting ahead on some of the photography from the weekend and packing up for the trip home, or I will try to head into town to do a bit more photography. We'll see.

This brought on by various entries regarding the NaNo write-in thingie, and editors, and such.

Once I had a good friend who did get paid for putting words on paper. He never claimed to be a writer. "I'm a word mechanic," he said, "I'm only interested in getting paid so I can go fly."

He was a damn good word mechanic. Enough people bought his words instead of beer that he could go fly.

:: To Absent Friends ::

[Bad username or site: @ livejournal.com] posted this one recently, and I bit. *G* As I mentioned there, considering I've just returned from a jaunt there, and considering (as a photographer) I really, really like the light there...

You're Colorado!

You really enjoy getting high. Even though it's often a lot of work, the
view from the top is almost always worth the effort. Your distance from others makes
your relationship with them rather rocky at times, but they do look up to you. Be very
careful around schools. And stop being quite so focused on the number 5,280!


Take the State Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

Though I wll say, there was at least one question which truly needed to include both answers. Particularly since quite a few of the restaurants in the Denver area feature both on their menues: Do I prefer Surf, or Turf? For myself, the answer really needs to be Both. Makes me wonder what the outcome would be if I'd selected the opposite.