When I was in Minneapolis, on Sunday morning, HB and I headed to the rental car so that we could drive down to the park by the river.

I got in the car, and looked out through the window/gaps in the parking garage and saw a distorted building.

I said "Oh my gosh! Look at that!"

and HB questions "What?"

How many other people have looked out that same set of windows and not noticed it?

These remind me of Escher.

When we went down to the river, I also noticed a really cool set of power lines.

I took all pictures with Tweedle Dum, the Cyber-Shot DSC-P71.

Posted by danielle at 10:13 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

That clevah smahhht hubby of mine sure did surPRISE me!

He bought my anniversary/graduation present earrrrrrrrrrrrly and it was waiting for me on our bed when we got home from the airport last night!

So, let us all welcome into the family, a precious new member:

My very own Digital SLR - the Nikon D70.

Just in time too, I've been seeing the black screen of sickness periodically on our sturdy little Cybershot DSC-P71 lately. Especially over the weekend. Poor baby, I think the battery connections might be a hint weak. We'll doctor you up in no time, dear thing, and then you can be all HB's.

I'm still in shock over it his giving it to me.

I knew I wanted a Nikon. My family has always had Nikon cameras and has loved them and loved them more and more. It was just a matter of deciding between the D70 and the D71, which actually wasn't that hard of a decision when it came down to it. HB and I had talked about this via email a little bit ago... but I was still SO surprised.

The instruction booklet is going to take me a while to work through, and I have (as I said in my comments on my last post) about 2-3 weeks of pictures from my Minneapolis/St. Paul and Indiana trip to post. But I'm sure I'll be posting some D70 pics soon.

I am the type of person that usually needs a week or more to really get comfortable with the idea of some expensive new toy. I am always so afraid of breaking it or hurting something out of ignorance.

But I bet I'll get over that really fast.

This morning I've been overwhelmed with these kinds of thoughts:

OOOOOOO! and I can take pictures of THAT now.

And THAT would be really cool too.

OH, and this will be a perfect time to get a picture of THIS!

And I've always wanted to try to take pictures of THAT, and won't it be fun to try!

OH! and this means I'll get in LOTS of practice before Texas Sister and Trainwreck's wedding (in November).

YIPPEEEEEE!

smooches and smooches and more and more for darling hunny bunny.

I think I'll give her a name.

Suggestions?

Posted by danielle at 09:25 AM | Comments (17) | TrackBack

I still have a couple more posts left of pics that I took while in Minneapolis/St. Paul. However, I jet back out of here tomorrow morning for my cousin's wedding in Hoosier country.

Yup. Going back to home-ish country.

I say home-ish, because, well, I never lived in this particular part of Indiana, but it is where my parents grew up and where my grandma and grandpa, almost all of my aunts, uncles, cousins, and cousins' kids live (or lived, in the case of my grandpa).

Funny enough, home-ish, sounds like Amish doesn't it? Well, there are Amish in the area too, about 10 minutes away, I suppose if you want to get technical.

Anyway, I've been debating about the best way to not run out of memory space for my (I mean our) digital camera. *sigh* Taking my laptop and moving pictures off of the camera is the easy answer... but I have issues with flying anyway, and my laptop (fan) is temperamental as it is, so I really don't want to deal with lugging it in a bag through security etc. bleck.

I guess I'll just have to continue taking medium to low resolution pictures or be more diligent about deleting the ones I really don't want to keep.

Anyway, ("my gosh, does she HAVE a point," you must be wondering) I suppose I will take bunches and bunches of pictures in Indianer too, which means that it will probably take me a couple of weeks to show you all of them.

"Geeeesh lowpeeet, do you REALLY think we want to see pics of a bunch of cornfields?"

WELL, yeah, don't you?

;-)

Just kidding.

well, kinda.

Anyway, this means that Flowers for Friday might be a bit loose for the next couple of weeks. Although, I imagine my cousin will have some nice flowers in her wedding bouquet, and wouldn't that make a nice pic for next Friday? hmmm?

Can you SEEEEEE how getting me out of my usual environment stimulates my creativity.

I must say, I lurrrrrrrrrrrrrve this feeling of having ideas bursting out of my skin.

FUN FUN F.U.N.!

BTW, there are many many more car pictures where these came from. So, I'll give you the low down later.

I took these pictures blah blah blah Sony Cyber-shot DSC-P71.

Posted by danielle at 01:01 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

Do you remember our outing with Mr. F.U.N. from last time I was in Minneapolis? If not, you can read it here.

You might recall me telling you about
1) the Bavarian hunting lodge with accordian accompanied sing-a-longs to music from the Sound of Music and
2) Nye's, the retro place where I sang Proud Mary accompanied by a woman who looked like she stepped out of the 70's.

Well, we met up with Mr. F.U.N. on Saturday night. After deciding that we were in the mood to try some Cuban food (I'd never had it, and it sounded like a fun thing to try) we set off on a walk to take us there.

He was sure to point out one of the tourist attractions of the area.

Note: Yes, the third letter is an X. And if you can't read it, I'm not going to tell you what it says, I'd prefer that the spam blocker for my blog not be tested to its limits.

HA! He tells me it really is in printed tourist attraction books of what to do and see in Minnesota, and that it is the K-Mart of the ahem-world.

We decided not to darken their door on this trip, but to leave that particularly road not taken, well, not taken.

Instead, we headed to our dinner destination.

Cafe Havana has a beautiful bar and a really classy front room. The band that started playing at the end of our meal was not quite to our taste. However, we weren't there for the music. No sirreee bob. We were there for the foooood. We started the meal off with plantains, then I had some fabulous marinated pork with a tomatillo-chipolte sauce, yuca as a side dish, and a portion of key lime pie for dessert. YUM.

My other favorite meal was at Hell's Kitchen. I had their famous caramel roll, (I had this the last time I visited and insisted we go back) rosti potatoes, and bacon.

Let's all pause a moment and say baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaacon.

Everything is better with baaaaaaaaaaaacon, right SeaQueen?

Oh, and they actually served my hot tea as loose tea in an infuser in a japanese style pot. Also YUM.

Those were really the most noteable meals.

I did, however, notice a theme at a couple of the restaurants we had attended.

First the no crybabies sign at Tuggs.

And then the sign at Hell's Kitchen,
no whining,
no complaining
(and my personal favorite)
no surly attitudes.

All you folks with the surly attitudes can just go eat somewhere else!

Here is a Thought To Ponder: Is the "quit your belly-aching" a Minnesota thing?

Posted by danielle at 10:21 PM | Comments (10) | TrackBack

If someone hadn't given it away in my comments (HB - ahem!), I could say "Guess what I did this weekend!?"

For those of you who read the comments, you will find it no surprise that I flew into Minneapolis on Friday night for the one-shot house hunting trip.

HB did a good job setting the tone for the weekend by insisting that we go to Cold Stone Creamery. YUM.

It was a terrific start to our weekend.

The actual house hunting on Saturday had its ups and downs. As of the 5th house, we were wishing we could combine the layout of house A, with the lot (land) of house B, with the deck and landscaping of house C. But we still had one left that HB had not gotten to prescreen, and THAT was the one!

Look at the great landscaping around the 2 levels of the deck! Such nice mature bushes, and trees in the yard, and there appears to be some nice perennials in the front. And space for some of my favorite shade loving ones. :)

While we will not get to continue to have our enclosed porch, I am excited that we'll have a nice big space where we can put our table and chairs.

We had gone into the weekend with the full intention of putting an offer on a house by Saturday early afternoon, and sure enough, over lunch, we ironed out the paperwork and put up an offer.

Then came the stressful part.

The waiting.

We were worried that the family wouldn't want to close as late in the summer as we were hoping, and that they'd want to move and be settled before the school year started. However, we ended up having the reverse problem; they wanted the closing date even later, because they are building a house.

The stressful part was that we couldn't agree which house was going to be our second choice. Which meant that all night Saturday and all morning Sunday, we were stressed about what we could do to make the closing date work, and what we would do if they turned down our offer, and if we were making the right decision, and was the timing really as set in stone as we thought (the answer to that one was yes), and on and on.

ugh.

When we got the call Sunday afternoon telling us that they were accepting our offer, we were really, really happy,
and excited,
and relieved.

And I was sad. Because that meant I had to leave HB and fly home to Boston.

But HEY, I couldn't be too sad, because we had a house! and we negotiated a closing date that worked!

And we'd had an awesome Saturday night out with Mr. F.U.N. and a Sunday at the river, trying to take our minds off of the house stuff (more on those later).

Mission accomplished.

Posted by danielle at 09:58 PM | Comments (11) | TrackBack

I couldn't get to my server this morning, so this post is going to be a bit rushed.

This is the 'Moonshine' Yarrow
Achillea millefolium
that we have in our perennial garden at the front of the house. It is next to the Lady's Mantle and the rhododendron.

On Sunday, when I took these pics, there were some parts in full bloom and others that were not. Which created an interesting effect in the pictures, I think.

When I got home on Wednesday or so, I noticed that it appeared to be in peak bloom. And the sun was out just enough at 7:00ish last night, that I was able to get a few extra shots.

I have always liked that late afternoon glow. And on these, I particularly like the shadows that are created too.

Needless to say, the Moonshine yarrow creates quite a bright spot in front of our house right now.

Posted by danielle at 12:04 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

On Sunday, I was surprised to see that our rosebush had two mature buds. Here is one of them.

I noticed yesterday that the two buds were starting to open, so I set my alarm early this morning to give myself time to take a few pictures of the first blooms of the season.

Of course, it felt much nicer to snooze in bed a couple of times than get up. Fortunately, I guess (?), today was trash day, which meant I was forced to go around the side of the house where the rose bush is located.

And this is what I saw.

ooooo! grab the camera!

Due to my extra snoozing and the need to hurry and deal with the trash, I ended up being a little rushed taking pictures and I forgot to set the focal length on the flower setting. But they seem to have come out okay anyway.

I am usually not a pink kind of girl, but this hot pink rose bush blooms so many blossoms throughout the summer, that I can't help but feel affectionate toward it.

um... maybe affectionate isn't quite the right word.
*pauses while searching for right word*

Um, yeah, creative juices are all dried up. Well, this is what happens when I try to blog in the middle of the week, when I'm tired, right?

Anyway, even with it being pink and all (the previous owners planted this bush) it was a thrill to see it bloom that first summer. It has also been a thrill to see it bloom all of the subsequent summers.

All season long, it will bloom flower after gorgeous flower and I'll get to cut them and take them into school with me to brighten up my work space.

I took a few more pics when I got home tonight, but the roses were pretty battered from our afternoon rain storm, so I'm glad that I got these this morning.

Oh, and I may regret it later if I run out of "Flowers for Friday" pics, but I thought I'd go ahead and post these today for the following two reasons:

1) Since the first bloom of the season for this bush is so special, it seemed appropriate to go ahead and post them on the actual day it bloomed.

2) This is my gift to all of you, for all of your kind thoughts and well wishes yesterday.

Here is another one from this morning. Can you tell it rained last night too?

And a close-up of the water droplets, which is a bit pixelated, but still interesting and pretty in its own way.

I took all pictures with a Sony Cyber-shot DSC-P71.

Posted by danielle at 09:15 PM | Comments (10) | TrackBack

I know that some of you believe in the power of prayer, and others are more into the "sending of good vibes" but this would be the night/day to say a quick prayer that my experiment goes well tomorrow (or today, if you are reading this on Monday). If you want specifics, you could pray that this is the perfect dose and that everything goes very very smoothly.

I was on the phone with my advisor tonight and we admitted to each other how discouraged we are both getting about trying to finish these last few experiments. It is getting rather depressing; something that was supposed to be so simple... is not.

The biggest issue is that I ran out of a very very expensive chemical and had to buy more. The company that sells me the chemical didn't have any more of the lot that I had used originally. And with the new lot, I am getting different results. After many phone calls and questions, the company is now admitting that the bioactivity/biopotency can be VERY different from lot to lot.

This type of issue was brought to our attention, in part, in a seminar by a scientist from a different institution who has had the same sort of problem with his own work (different chemical - again, one that is unregulated). To which I say, "Yay for the sharing of scientific knowledge that is unpublished, because without it, we'd still be wondering what the heck was going on with my experiments lately."

I've already done one experiment to determine the dose that will replicate our earlier work. And well, it wasn't quite right. So, this is the second try. For reasons that I'd rather not go into, repeating these experiments can take weeks.

So, this one needs to be consistent!

and gorgeous!

And it will be!

BTW lest you get confused, I mentioned previously that some experiments were going very well (the gels, etc.). Well, that is a different part of my thesis work. That part is still going pretty well. It is this other part, which is really the heart of my thesis work, which is being so dang problematic.

But this will be great!

and perfect!

and there will be NO problems!

Posted by danielle at 09:32 PM | Comments (15) | TrackBack

Last weekend, our rhododendron bush bloomed.

When I look at this photo and I see the fanciful curve of the pistil and stamens and the curved shadows that they cast, I see a fairytale decoration. Perhaps the chandelier in the ballroom made of delicately blown glass. Or the crown for the princess.

I tried taking pictures from different angles.

I find it interesting that the flowers can look so different from one angle...

... or from a different angle.

I really like this radial view.

While I was outside, I noticed a whole bunch of buzzing insects. If I could've captured the sound and the movement for you, I would've.

This little bee is determined that the lady with the camera is not going to deter him from Getting That Flower.

(He's in the lower, middle portion of the pic)

And see, he did Get That Flower.

But why go for one that is barely opened?

Perhaps no other bees had gotten to it yet?

Did I mention that I'm still a bit afraid of stinging insects? Yeah, so although I might've been able to go in for a real close up shot. I was a bit timid.

They were fun to watch though, busy little bees, crawling all over the stamens and pistils...

... "pollinating the beauty," as La Pixiatrix once said.

All pictures were taken with my Sony Cyber-shot DSC-P71.

Posted by danielle at 07:35 AM | Comments (10) | TrackBack

I took these pics when I was at school on Saturday. I've always thought that when the water is boiling, the water columns for the distilled water system are really pretty.

In case you are puzzled by it, I turned the second pic 90 degrees counterclockwise and put the columns on their side. I like the image better that way.

Taken with my (our) Sony Cyber-shot DSC-P71.

Posted by danielle at 09:33 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

This is a long one, don't say I didn't warn you... ;-)

I worked a pretty full day at school yesterday (Saturday) in order to get an experiment done. It worked! Really well, which made it worth it. There is nothing suckier than sacrificing a weekend day for an experiment that doesn't give you a conclusion. But this one did. So, well worth the sacrifice.

HB is in Mnnpls this weekend, and I'm going to be taking a day or two off in the upcoming weeks to go house-hunting and go to my cousin's wedding back in Indiana. Thus, I felt like I needed to go ahead and work a little extra to make up for it.

Anyway, the POINT is that because I'd driven into school, it was extra easy to drive to my advisor's house afterward to visit the new kitty member of her family!

Lucy

When I arrived, Lucy was exhausted from her daily activities, and was sleeping on a chair cushion. You can see that she is waking up in this pic and is starting to get pretty interested in the beepy rurr rurrr sounds that my (our) camera was making.

After a fair amount of petting and cooing, I decided I'd better go say hi to the other 2 cats, so as not to make them jealous or anything.

Here is how I found Norman.

Norman, is so named, because as a kitten his paws were very very big, and it was apparent he was going to be enormous. Even with diet cat food, he is either as heavy as or heavier than the Girlie-girl (i.e. 20 lbs). He definitely has a big frame. In my experience, all orange cats are pretty dang big.

He is a handsome sweetie though, even when a little peeved about being woken from his nap.

Then there is Bella. Formerly, the little princess of the household. She is not so fond of Lucy yet; they are still in the adjustment phase.

After visiting with Norman and Bella, I went back to join Lucy on the floor. She was pretty much wound up again and was entertaining herself by batting a little mouse across the floor.

At one point, she came over to me and decided she'd better investigate my shoes.

"Hey! You smell like some other cat! What's up with that?"

I untied my shoelace so that she could play with it...

I like this pic because we are foot to foot - and that part of the pic is so in focus. But the blur of her paw and face captures that feeling of constant play motion that she was so full of once she got wound up.

Then, surprise of all surprises, Bella came over to join us! My advisor tells me that Bella hasn't wanted to play much since Lucy came... but we played "something's in the grass - you'd better get it!" for a while.

Of course, Lucy was back to chasing her little mouse in the midst of all of this.

Which provided a nice photo-op when I scratched the wall way above my head.

Or a few photo-ops, I should say.

Here is my one artsy one - yin yang.

Eventually, Lucy was back to being exhausted.

I've never been able to take a picture of the Girlie-girl while she is asleep, because she always wakes up. So, it was rather fascinating to me to be able to take multiple shots of Lucy while she was sleeping. And she just kept sleeping.

Speaking of the Girlie-girl, when I got home (kind of late), I didn't let her sniff me, but distracted her by feeding her really fast, and then while she ate, I hurriedly changed my clothes and washed my hands really well. So, she didn't seem to notice that I'd been playing with other cats.

But she might have known something was up (or was just lonely), because I got the hair chewing/grooming treatment when I sat on the couch.

You know what they say, right? Grooming is a sign of affection.

Posted by danielle at 12:13 PM | Comments (17) | TrackBack

When we did our massive landscaping project of perennials a few years ago, I needed some sort of short plant to put around a petite bush that we were getting.

Well, this stuff caught my eye because it was called ajuga "chocolate chip."

I mean, how can you resist a plant that has chocolate chip in the name?

It blooms these purple flowers for a little while, and then the rest of the time is just a basic ground cover.

While I got pretty frickin frustrated taking these pics on Saturday (I was having trouble with my camera and the lighting and the focal length, etc.), I do think it is funny that in this picture, the shape of the petals remind me of moose for some reason.

I am including this next pic, because I like the blooming alchemilla erythropoda that is next to it.

Oh, and BTW, you might think I'm color blind because I'm referring to these flowers as purple, but they really are purple. This is just one more example of my camera irritating the hell out of me, because in the process of trying to "help" me with its automatic settings, it is throwing off the color.

Okay, I'll be done being angry now. If you really want to see gorgeous photos of flowers, go see La Pixiatrix's post today with the ones she took with a (DSLR) Canon Digital Rebel.

yes, I have DSLR envy. Does it show?

;-)

Posted by danielle at 09:17 AM | Comments (14) | TrackBack

Two years ago, I started dreaming about how it would be really cool to paint our guest bedroom a bright turquoise blue to bring out the carribean flavor of the lime green and turquoise bedspread that we used in that room. HB, being the one who helps follow through on my ideas, brought home a slew of paint brochures from Home Dee-pot.

(tangent: some say tar-zhay, I say Tar-get (properly), but I massacre the Depot's name and make it Deeeeeeeeeeeeee-pot).

Anyway, the paint colors from most of the usual brands were just not catching my eye. But Ralph Lauren had one page of BRIGHT turquoise and HOT pink, and yellow. The display room in the picture had this fantastic glistening white trim - Sneaker White.

I was really taken by that turquoise and the white trim. I showed it to HB, and he agreed that it was very slick.

That weekend, I went to work like usual on Friday, but instead of coming home, I went to an overnight women's retreat with some of the women from my church. Now, this all happened to be in the vicinity of Valentine's Day.

When I got home in the late afternoon on Saturday, I thought it was oooooooodd that the door to the guest bedroom was closed. I also noticed a lingering fresh paint smell while hugging HB.

"Did you paint?" I asked him with this quizzical look on my face.

Tah-Dah! HB threw open the door to the guest bedroom and it was a GLORIOUS Ralph Lauren turquoise blue with Sneaker White trim! It looked fantastic! I was assuming the bed, bookcases and dresser would be lumped in the middle of the room and it would be all rough looking. But nooooooo. He'd actually gotten it done early enough that he was able to put everything back in place AND buy a white lamp and white framed pictures that he even HUNG before I got home!

He did it all between Friday night after work and Saturday when I got home. I couldn't believe it.

That HB is a sneaky one, I tell ya.

This weekend, well, we decided it was time for him to finally paint the closet doors white.

Look at him go. You GO, HB.

This was Saturday morning, when I had a headache/early migraine and the most I felt like doing was sitting on the front porch steps and taking pictures while he worked.

Proppping the doors up on the red plastic cups in order to paint the edges was my idea, which ended up working out really well.

Then Sunday (?) night, I hung out on the bed while he did the trim on the window.

I like this one because of the cool shadow. Actually, this shadow effect is what got me to jump up and grab the camera.

And this one, because of the reflection, which is perfect for semi-preserving his identity and showing off the Red Sox shirt all at once. Of course I had to crop out one of the best parts (his tush) *sigh*. Oh well, at least I've got his nice shoulders in this one. I'm more a shoulder-girl than a butt-girl, chest-girl, or leg-girl anyway.

(TMI? Well, this is, as they say, My Blog)

Where was I? All distracted...

ahem.

Oh yes, I couldn't get a picture that incorporated all of the beautiful parts of the finished room. And actually, I forgot to get a picture with natural sunlight, so I took this pic in the evening with the lights on, which throws off the POW of the room, but well, you can imagine.

Great gift, eh?

And yes, that picture to the left of the bed, is indeed a ladybug. There is also a dragonfly that is visible.

And did I mention that I was wishing we had ice cream on Sunday night for dessert. But by the time I wanted it, the grocery stores were all closed. Dang. Well, HB had to go off to Home Dee-pot at 7:30ish before they closed at 8:00, so I cleaned up the dishes etc.

And where, pray tell, did he stop after his Home Dee-pot stop?

Starrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrbucks.

Mint mocha chip frappuccino, dark chocolate covered graham crackers, baby.

That HB, he is one smaht hubby.

Posted by danielle at 09:42 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack

Our house officially went up for sale today.

So, you might be able to imagine how we spent our Memorial Day weekend. Yes, frantically scrubbing and cleaning and organizing. I was, and still am, pretty exhausted from all of it.

The part I enjoyed, was getting to, as HB says, pretty-fy the house. This was the official 'last frost' weekend for our area, which meant that it was the first that it was okay to plant annuals. So, I spent an hour on Monday perusing one local nursery and buying enough plants to fill up some pots that I like to put on the porch. Oh, but I have been informed that the porch is not really a porch, no sirree bob. It is a stoop.

A stoop.

hurmpf.

A porch sounds faaaaaaaaaar more appealing, don't you think?

So, I will continue to call it a porch.

When I started out my planting o' the annuals, there was a thunderstorm forecast for 6:00 pm. I'd purchased them before lunch, and had a nice 5 hours in which to decide where things would go and plant. Plenty of time. Except I started hearing thunder at 2:15.

CRAP!

I frantically sped up the pace and strategically did the flower bed and mailbox spot first, with the idea that if it really started raining, I could always lug my stuff under or into our enclosed porch to do the pots. This is where the "joy" of gardening becomes a big FAT chore.

Fortune smiled on me, though, and the big, dark clouds skirted the area and rained somewhere else.

The cool wind and thunder at 4:00 was less of an annoyance, because by then, I was on the clean-up and the bonus/frivolous part.

Here is how the front porch (stoop) turned out.

It is welcoming, yes?

(Here is where you lie to me and tell me any person walking up to the house would instantly feel welcomed and homey at such a beautiful sight.)

The shepard's hooks, rings, and pots that fit in them where my last year's idea. I am rather fond of them.

Here is a close up of the right side.

The annuals are still just babies, but they'll get bigger. And when they do, I'll take closer pics and identify them for you.

This pic also gives you a nice view of our waterfall maple, european ginger (the round leaves that look like little lilypads), and barren strawberry.

I had a little helper when I first got started, and no, it wasn't the Girlie-girl.

Isn't he (or she) cool?

By the way, this close up pic is one of the largest file sizes I've ever posted. So, please, please tell me if it loads hopelessly slow for you.

After I finished all of the clean up and crap around the yard... (tangent: why is there always more crap to take care of than you realize? hmmm?)
...I vacuumed and scrubbed the enclosed back porch.

And then I got to prettify it too.

I like how it turned out too. Note the hydrangea in the corner still has some blossoms. Surprisingly enough, the blossoms that were originally mostly white, finally turned the same blueish purple as the rest. And the blueish purple ones turned more green. It has been really interesting watching the progression.

- to be continued -

(I have another house prep post in mind for tomorrow night)

Posted by danielle at 09:36 PM | Comments (11) | TrackBack