I sat at the stoplight and watched the sun peek up over the horizon in that moment… which meant that it blinded me for the remainder of my commute.
Sunrise: 8:07am. Right in my face.
Minolta 110 Zoom SLR Mark II Test Roll
Ever since I discovered that 110 SLRs existed, and that there were multiple models by multiple manufacturers, I made it my mission to collect them. I love my Pentax 110 SLR, so why not catch ’em all?
The film advance on the Mark II had been stuck since I got it at a yard sale back in the Summer of 2016. I finally got it working in early February 2017 by cleaning the battery contacts with a pencil eraser and loading fresh LR44 batteries. I actually had to polish the batteries on my jeans and avoid getting any fingerprints on the poles for the camera to recognize the batteries, though, which was a new one on me.
Once I had the camera working, I loaded up the Mark II with Lomo “Tiger” 200 speed film and headed out to the local metropark to start photographing.
[10 Feb 2017 | f/3.5, -1 EV]
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New Year’s Day 2018
It was just as well that the fireworks roused me at the stroke of midnight last night, as I had fallen asleep on my stomach, with my arms folded beneath me, and my hands were numb and tingly.
This year makes two — or maybe three? — years in a row when I haven’t even attempted to make it until midnight on New Year’s. I pretty much turn into a pumpkin by 10:30 or 11pm, and I know my son is going to rouse me at 8am on New Years Day, anyway. (I long for the day when he decides that really sleeping in is a thing.)
Memaw used to say that whatever you do on New Year’s Day is what you’ll be doing all year, so the half-joke was that we wouldn’t do any laundry or house-cleaning on New Year’s, but Memaw would cook, of course. That superstition never made any sense to me, though, since New Year’s was a holiday. Of course you’re going to be off-schedule and not doing the things you’d normally be doing all year, like going to school (or work).
Even though New Year’s Day is honestly a pretty arbitrary date, I still like to take this opportunity to reflect on my habits and goals. What do I want to accomplish this year? Did I accomplish what I set out to do last year? Continue reading
Christmas 2017
To start off, here’s a link to a Flickr album of our Christmas Eve and Christmas Day festivities (since the embedded slideshow feature seems to be broken). For more details of the festivities, read on…
Fifty New-To-Me Recipes in 2017: The Top Ten
Back in January, I resolved to cook fifty new-to-me recipes in 2017. Unlike some of the other resolutions I made (like, say, posting to my blog daily), I succeeded and surpassed my recipe goal.
I reached 50 recipes by the end of November, and (while I ran out of room on my notebook page to record them) I continued trying new recipes through December, reaching a total of 55 new recipes I tried this year — better than the one per week I’d originally been shooting for.
Some of the recipes, of course, were more successful than others. The undercooked sous-vide tilapia wasn’t my best moment, and neither was the woefully under-spiced egg curry. Some, though, became house favorites.
These are my top ten. Continue reading