photography

Lomography

One of the blogs I check on a regular basis is [daily dose of imagery]. I’ve been noticing that, in his technical photo info, he sometimes mentions a “lomo,” and he’s even won an award for one of his “lomographs”.

So, finally, I’m like, “OK. What is this lomo thing?” I go to the lomography page that Sam linked from his page, and it’s weird. I follow some links, check out eBay, check out PhotographyReview.com, check out the Popular Photography forums, and find mixed reviews. What I did find for sure is that the lomo:

  • is a Russian-made compact 35mm camera
  • has a fast wide-angle lens with manual focus and adjustable speed/aperture settings
  • has a lens coating which makes colors more saturated
  • receives mixed technical reviews from photo-snobs and art-snobs
  • seems to have a two or three-roll learning curve before producing “good” images
  • is currently more expensive than it should be, due to its cult status

Therefore, after obsessing over the lomo for an entire day, I have decided to purchase one—but only if I can get a new or gently used lomo for around $60. New, they cost $199.99 with the instruction manual and case. I’m not down with that… but if I can get a relatively cheap point-and-shoot with adjustable settings that can fit in my purse or pocket, I’m all about it.

Beth, was that four-pane motion-capture camera of yours a lomo? That’s not the model I’m going for, but I saw that the actionsampler looked kind of like the camera you had back in 2001 or so.

health & fitness

Food Glorious Food

This morning, I decided to be all spiffy and make Spicy Chicken Papaya Curry for lunch. Aside from some minor papaya issues (hey, the recipe didn’t say to peel the damn papaya!), it was quite tasty. I’d include a link to the recipe, but the people at the Cooking Club of America don’t have it listed on their site yet. Bah. Anyway, if you like fruity and spicy Thai-esque foods, lemme know and I’ll type out the recipe and post it. It was really delicious… after we sliced off the papaya skins. 🙂

Then, this afternoon, we stopped in at the Low-Carb Solutions store on Reynolds, hoping to pick up some Cinnamon & Butter Flavored Pork Rinds. Unfortunately, they were out of the pork rinds, but we found a new snacky food: Parmesan, Garlic & Olive Oil “Soy~Teins.” Yummy, yummy stuff… as was the Asher’s Sugar-Free Dark Liquid Raspberry chocolate bar we shared. And Heather, the owner, was nice enough to take down our name and number so she can call us when the pork rinds come in.

I also picked up a bottle of Da Vinci Gourmet Irish Cream Sugar Free Syrup. I’d heard those Da Vinci syrups were supposed to be absolutely scrumptious—and I’d heard right. When we got home, I looked up a recipe for Italian soda (since we have a whole two-liter of club soda leftover from making our low-carb pizza crust). OMG. So, so good. I’m going to be buying more of these Da Vinci syrups. *yum*

randomness

Bad Plant Day

It all started when I saw that my jade plant was much, much wiltier than usual. It had been getting a little wilty lately, so I’d stopped watering it, having recognized the early stages of stemrot. (The jade is a succulent, related to the cactus, and can’t handle overwatering.) And, sure enough, when I checked it today, the stemrot was in full force. Damn plant couldn’t stand up on its own at all, the almost-trunk was papery-dry on the outside and empty on the inside—all rotted out. Damn.

So, I sat down and yanked the damn plant out of its pot, removing the rotted parts from the still-healthy parts. Currently, the healthy parts are sitting on top of the microwave stand so they can be repotted later. I’ll leave them sit for a few days, to grow a callus where the roots will be, then I’ll repot them and attempt not to kill them again. As I seem to do every few years.

With that crisis handled, I went upstairs to water the remainder of my plants, only to find that the cat had been up on the plant table and had severed my barely-recovered begonia right under the healthy, leafy part. It was only just getting used to being potted, and was finally beginning to stand up on its own and bloom again. Damn cat managed to pop off the top, where all the leaves were resprouting and the one bloom was just budding. Now, I was already pissed off at myself for having given my jade stemrot, so woe be unto the cat if she even sets foot in the same room with me today. She’s already discovered this, and is giving me a wide berth. Anyway, I took the decapitated begonia top downstairs and put it in a vase to sprout roots again.

Now, on to the outdoor plants. The coriander is just about dead, the dwarf hydrangeas are definitely dead, there are bugs eating my rosebush, my lavender isn’t blooming and neither is my rock cress or baby’s breath, and my pearlwort, while having spread mightily since May, is now looking brown and icky in spots.

Fucking plants. Why do I even bother?

randomness

Lazy Days

Yesterday was a moderately lazy day. We got up, ate lunch, looked for garage sales, did a little thrifting, and watched a matinee of Fahrenheit 9/11. Great movie—if you haven’t seen it, you should. I never considered myself a “swing” voter; more of an apathetic one. This year, though, I’m definitely going out to vote, no matter what I once said (oh, about four years ago) about the electoral college.

This afternoon, Aaron is over at Kris Heath’s apartment, helping him install Windows XP. See, Kris doesn’t believe in paying for antivirus protection, apparently, and his computer got royally screwed by various viruses and spyware programs. He managed to get it back up and running well enough to back up all his mp3’s, I think, but most of his applications are corrupted and too screwed up to function. So, Aaron’s over at Kris’s place, helping him install a new OS. *shakes head*

Meanwhile, I’m here at home, chillin’. About to clean out the cat box, and balance my checkbook, and maybe put some of my clothes away, and put some photos in the photo album.

Yeah… life is good.

vacation

The Vacation Thus Far

So far, you already know about the Art Fair and the Zoo trip. Next, on Tuesday, we visited COSI in Toledo, and were particularly disappointed to find that it was nothing like the Cleveland Science Center. At COSI, there are a zillion hands-on exhibits for the younger kids, but very little for big kids like us. The highlight of the day was the Distorted Gravity Room, where the room is built with the floor at probably a 45° angle, if not greater, and with no right angles in the doors or windows. Makes it very funky to try to walk from the entrance door to the exit. Weird, wild stuff.

But that was the highlight of our visit. Overall, I think we spent an hour and a half or so at COSI.

Today we drove out to Sauder Village to see how the settlers and old folks lived. I brought my 35mm camera, but ended up not taking very many photos at all, since most of the interesting stuff was indoors. Aaron and I both had a great time, even so. In each one-room building is a Sauder worker or volunteer, dressed in period clothing, who explains the building and the history behind it. We ended up looking into one original home, a replica of the first home in the Black Swamp, a one-room schoolhouse, a farmhouse, a community jailhouse, a mill, a printing press (including two linotype machines, for the VCT-minded—very cool), and various other buildings, in addition to walking around the grounds and checking out the museum building. Fun time, definitely worth the price of admission.

So, that pretty much concludes the major trips we’d planned for this week. Sometime tomorrow we plan to go see Fahrenheit 911 and maybe hit some earlybird garage sales. Friday we had considered going to a Clutch show in Flint, but I think we’ve opted against it at this point. We may go to the Art Museum for free. Saturday, there’s the community garage sale on Clymena, then we’re going to the Full Moon Walk with Kris and Jamie. We’ve still got some stuff left to keep us occupied, but no more major road trips.

In other news, we happened upon the Concert for George Harrison on PBS tonight. Not something I would have thought to rent on my own, just to watch, but seeing it on PBS was actually pretty cool. It featured a bunch of people we didn’t know, plus Clapton, Petty, George Harrison’s son, Ravi Shankar, Ringo, and McCartney, and Monty Python. Good concert, well-produced.

And I’m out. Word.