February 21, 2008
Snow Day
Wahoooo! Snow day!
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February 21, 2008
How to shoot a lunar eclipse
- Dig out old 70-300 mm lens, which on your DSLR becomes a 105-450 mm lens. Sweet.
- Dust off the tripod.
- Attach lens to camera and camera to tripod. Place by door.
- Find warmest coat, gloves and red fleece hat with cute pompom on top (one must look cute when shooting an eclipse). Bundle up like you’re the abominable snowman.
- Beat tripod against every part of the door frame trying to get out of the house with abominable snowman suit on.
- Trip motion detector light on way out. Curse light pollution.
- Set up tripod in driveway. Contemplate throwing rocks at big street lights that cause even more light pollution.
- Frame shot in viewfinder. Zoom in. Zoom out. Zoom in again. Adjust framing. Try to figure out how many stars you can get in the frame with the moon at it’s largest. Answer: one. Damn.
- Try in vain to operate camera with gloves that, while warm, effectively turn your hands into Muppet hands, which are not so great when it comes to pushing small buttons and turning small dials on a DSLR. In the cold. At night. Curse again and remove one glove.
- Fire off a few test shots. Realize after chimping on your LCD you have no freakin’ idea how to effectively shoot a lunar eclipse.
- Leave camera and tripod set up in driveway and come in to warm up. Remove gloves but leave rest of abominable snowman outfit on to sit at computer and search “lunar eclipse photography” on photo.net.
- Read. Read some more. Click links. Find a chart. Estimate your best chance given your focal length and the brightness of the moon is to go with around a 2 sec. shutter speed.
- Go back out in the driveway and fire off some more shots.
- Invite tired, sick husband to come out, and oh by the way, bring the telescope and binoculars out, too.
- Watch for a few minutes. Contemplate one’s tiny speck of insignificance in the grand scheme of the universe. Decide you’re freezing your insignificant ass off and go back inside. With husband, tripod, camera, telescope and binoculars.
I’ll be happy to post what I got here, if they aren’t too bad once I get them in the Mac and take a good look-see. Can’t do it tonight, though. Camera has to warm back up and I’m going to bed before it does. Tomorrow is my first day back to my 5:15 wake-up call to go exercise (yes, I’m going to call “power walking” exercise, at least until I can do more) and I need to get to bed at a decent hour.Happy lunar eclipse!
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February 20, 2008
Das Boot
is kaput!!!
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February 19, 2008
On the edge of relapse
I’m teetering right on the edge. I so want to get a Britney update right now.
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February 19, 2008
My 12-Step Program to Quit Britney
Okay, really, my fascination with all things Britney (and her trainwreck life) has devolved into a sad little abnormal obsession that involves periodic and regular checks of certain web sites to see what’s developed in the last five minutes. “Gotta get my Britney fix!” I’d exclaim, before gleefully clicking my favorites to find out what idiotic thing the poor girl has done now. I cheered for her parents’ much-needed return, and booed the antics of evil-incarnate Sam Lufti.
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February 15, 2008
Who wears the smartypants in our family?
Nothing says Valentine’s Day romance like snuggling up with your loved one and a lovely accounting text book.
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February 13, 2008
Another hat!
167.5 hours until I get the boot off!
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February 7, 2008
Dial R for Rip-Off
As many of you know, our phone service at the house went wonky about a month ago. Maybe it’s been longer than that, I don’t remember. Anyway, all I know is that for most of the past month we’ve been unable to make or receive calls. No dial tone. At all. The landline phone keypad doesn’t even light up when plugged into the phone jack now. We disconnected all the cordless phones, even taking out their batteries. We let the phone line rest for a bit (per the instructions from the phone company). We looked in the phone box on the back of the house to plug in a landline there, to try to determine if the problem is inside the house, or outside the house. Since there isn’t a jack in the box (ha ha), there is no way to test it. We did get phone service back, myseriously, for a few days in the middle, but now it’s out again.
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February 7, 2008
A half-brained idea
Ornithologists concluded that migratory birds take hundreds of naps as they fly; they also practice unilateral eye closure, in which one eye closes, thereby permitting half the brain to sleep.
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February 6, 2008
Smash Wednesday
Today is Ash Wednesday, which I forgot, as is evidenced by the fact that I had a buffalo chicken samich for lunch at Trainwreck. Oops.
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