Memories of California

Photo by TaGurit(SS/NB) ><>.

Wow, this was a long time ago. Hard to believe it was 6 1/2 years ago. I was only 19 here (that's me, sitting front and center) and a new mom. My cousins (going counter-clockwise from the left) were 16, 16, and I think 14. You wouldn't know it just from looking... the gals in my family always look older than they are as teenagers... then we seem to get stuck there as we get older. I'm 26 now, but people still think I'm in high school at times... or more commonly just out. You wouldn't believe the way people treat me or the things they say to me when they don't know how old I really am. And then they find out and boy, are they surprised. I think that's why the doctors I take my children to also treat me like a young näive girl who doesn't know much about health care. Little do they know how much or how long I've read up on medical advances, general information, or issues pertaining to my family's particular medical history/problems. I could go on a rant about that itself for hours... but I'll save it for later. Got a pizza in the oven right now, husband's watching the Chiefs and Broncos game (go Chiefs!) and girls need a nap. Poor son is trying to interact with daddy, but *someone* gets really absorbed while the game is on... so I need to get off the computer and find something for him to do until the pizza's done.

Some other photos from when I was younger...

I was 15 here, I think. At the Alameda County fair with my sister and cousins.


I know I was 15 here. A friend of mine, his name was Jerry Ehlers, took this without my knowledge. I was helping him with a project for his photography class, and he said he needed me to stand there so he could get the right focus. Well, he took this surreptitiously while looking through the viewfinder. I was utterly surprised when he presented us with the 8x10 print.


Tthis one was taken during the same trip as the Gun-toting Girl Gang one. The border is hideous, I know. My mom had Microsoft PicureIt! Publishing, and it was a horrible program. Plus, I had horrible skills - so it came out horribly. ;) But man - we had fun. We'd gone to Raging Waters, and we were sunburned and tired.


Man - this is what I looked like 8mos. after having my son. I didn't look like this after having my daughter. It sure makes a difference when you're working as a lifeguard, in the water for at least 2 hours a day, working for around 35 hours a week... vs. being a stay-at-home mom, in a mold-infested apartment where you struggle just to take a full breath. (The apartment we moved into after I got married, had black mold all over the inside of the bathroom - and it spread over the entire apartment. When we moved out, we found black mold had completely grown through our bathroom wall into our bedroom [they had a common wall] and we had to throw out a bunch of stuff - and use rubbing alcohol and hydrogen peroxide on a bunch of others - because mold had grown on them. Wherever anything had been up against a wall, the wall was moldy and the back of the furniture had mold on it. The entire time I lived there, which was when I got married in May '04 and got pregnant, till the end of Dec. '04, I had severe asthma problems. I lived off of my inhaler - and didn't take a deep breath the entire 8 mos. I was constantly wheezing, and couldn't sleep more than a few hours at a time. My blood pressure was sky high the whole pregnancy - about 30pts higher than normal [and even when I was pregnant with my other 2 it's been low.] That place was horrible. Oh, it was the Outlook Apartments on Ridgetop in Silverdale, if you were wondering. DON'T RENT THERE - EVER!!!)


This one was when my daughter - that I'd had the hard pregnancy with - was 5mos. old, on my first trip to Cali since I was 19. Look a bit different, huh. :) The photo is with my beautiful Great-Grandma Foster. She is the sweetest, funniest, fun-loving woman I've ever known. Most of our family is crazy - but she's just a whole lotta fun.

And how do I look now?

;P

Baby, it's Cold Outside!!

Lately we have had some cold weather!! The other night, when I took this, everything was frozen over. I walked outside to get some photos, and the entire ground was covered in tiny sparkles, like it had been sprinkled with glitter or diamond dust. It was so cold, the air was almost painful to breathe.

I wish I could show how everything glittered. There was a thick white coating over everything, and the edges of leaves and blades of grass looked like they had been frosted. One of my flickrite friends who lives in Western WA also, took this amazing macro of a leaf he found:


I've been hoping for some winter weather; we were supposed to get a bunch of snow the other night according to the National Weather Service's Seattle office... and it did actually snow a little. I went out and took some photos while I could; like this one, using a long exposure and flash

and this one looking straight up at the sky with my flash.

I have more, but they're still sitting on my computer waiting for me to go through them.

I really wish we'd get some good winter weather now. It's been nice to get all snuggly in warm coats and scarves and hats. After a long, hot summer, I was actually looking forward to this. Even though there are parts of winter I dislike (mostly after it's been around for a good while, and especially when it consists of nothing more than grey skies and rain) there are many things I love about winter. I love when it snows. I mean, how fun is it to watch the soft white flakes fall from the sky? If you sit there long enough, you can almost get dizzy from it. And the snow covers everything like a soft blanket, hiding the ugliness of the earth and mud and smoothing the jagged edges of rocks and sticks. Kind of like what God does for us, when we come to Him... smoothes out our rough edges, and covers up our ugliness with His beauty.

I can't wait to see what we get tomorrow. According (once again) to the NWS-Seattle we've got a "Winter Storm Watch" for Thursday. Doesn't sound like much though:
"...WINTER STORM WATCH REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM 7 AM PST THURSDAY THROUGH THURSDAY EVENING..

A WINTER STORM WATCH REMAINS IN EFFECT FOR THE PUGET SOUND AREA FROM 7 AM PST THURSDAY THROUGH THURSDAY EVENING.

RAIN AND SNOW WILL BEGIN THURSDAY MORNING AND CHANGE TO MOSTLY SNOW BY AFTERNOON. ONE TO THREE INCHES ARE POSSIBLE DURING THE
DAY...WITH ANOTHER INCH OR SO POSSIBLE THURSDAY EVENING. SOUTH WIND IN THE EVENING WILL WARM THE AIR ENOUGH TO CHANGE ANY
PRECIPITATION TO RAIN.

A WINTER STORM WATCH MEANS THE POTENTIAL EXISTS FOR SEVERE WINTER WEATHER."

We had a Severe Winter Weather (or something like that) warning for the other night, and it only snowed for a couple hours... and then a bit more in the morning when my husband left for work. By the time I got up though, all the snow was melted, and it was clear and sunny all that day. (Which, I think, was yesterday. ;) So who knows. I've heard that the chance the forecast is accurate is something like 48% (or maybe it's 52%) - so it's not like I'm holding my breath. But I can still hope, right? ;)

You can be sure if we do get snow, I'll be right there with my camera, snapping away! And hopefully this time my kids'll get to play in it. They were really looking forward to building a snowman... this time, I hope they can.

My first video post - here's hoping!

Well, I've decided to try vimeo.com, since I've not figured out how else to upload clips to my blog. If anyone can help me there (with the whole uploading thing - or maybe I should just do a search on blogger ;) I'd so appreciate it!

Anyways, I'll consider this my test-post. We went to Chuck E. Cheese's for my son's 7th birthday last night (it wasn't his birthday last night, but we weren't able to go the day of) and my youngest and husband were goofing around. Here is the evidence of their goofiness. ;)

edit: Anyone able to see the video? I sure can't. I wasn't able to earlier either, here or on vimeo. I'm not sure how long I'll stick with them, since it appears that nothing works over there right now... if I can figure out how to delete my account over there maybe I'll check back in with them in a couple years. :) I'll give it another day, to see if the video appears (their forum has a topic on this very issue dating back 3 weeks with no response from the creator. A second thread about the same issue stated it had been fixed about 12 days ago.. but since then, nothing. Who knows?) but I'm not planning on sticking it out very long. I'm way too busy managing my photos on flickr (which btw is having a massage right now, since something broke big time over there, it seems!!) and taking photos, and everything. Plus, now that I've sorta figured out one way of loading my clips into my iMac, I'll be trying out iMovie and see what I come up with. Or at least, iDVD and create some fun stuff. Oh well...

edit#2: I deleted the video and the info. on my profile, and I'm trying to decide whether to email the creator "Jakob" or just forget the whole thing, period. It never worked for me, and the help just doesn't cut it. I understand they're in their early stages, but I guess right now I just don't have the patience to deal with it. What's the point, if I can't even use it, at all?? So, forget vimeo. If anything, I'll just look elsewhere. Or see if .Mac allows videos...

Camera-Toss: 1st Attempt

Yes, I've joined the ranks of Camera Tossers. :) Funny, I don't remember how I came across the group, but a couple days after I joined, they got FlickrBlogged and apparently popularity has just skyrocketed. Funny, I still hadn't tossed my camera yet... until about 5 days ago. All of a sudden, I thought - hey, why not just "do it" - so I did, in my living room. Turned the setting to "Night Shots" (long exposure) and turned off the flash, then just started hitting the button and tossing the cam. This was a shot from among my first attempts.

I cannot believe how popular this shot is. In the 4 days since I've posted it, it has surpassed my previously most-viewed photo (below) by almost 1000 views!!



And it has been faved almost as many times! I am so continually amazed. I mean, I like the shot too... but I never expected this to be so popular, considering the rest of my photostream photos stay around the low hundreds at most. But the rest of my CameraToss photos have also surpassed that mark within a couple days. Maybe it's just the idea of someone tossing their camera being such a novelty? Who knows. But I don't mind. :) It's sure alot of fun... as long as you don't drop the camera on its' way down!

More Waterful stuff, and Six Word Stories

I finally decided to try out some more high-speed shots of water - and look what I got! I'm so proud of this one. It was pretty hard to get it just right - but I love how the entire stream was captured in the frame, with that little droplet on the end. :) Check out the other photos in my Waterful set for some other shots I'm really proud of. :)

Another fun thing I've been doing lately is Six Word Story which is a whole lotta fun! Trying to come up with some kind of title or caption containing only 6 words, and tellling some kind of story about/within the photograph is quite a creative challenge. So far, I've only done 2 - this one ("In defense, the fish spewed venom") and another one

Oh no! We're having another earthquake!!"



I need to go through some of my old pics and see what I can come up with - both of those are new, but I'm sure I can find some old goodies and add something! At least, I hope so!