My Town Shoot Out - Aquariums

This week's shoot out theme is courtesy of ChefE of Creative TMI. "An Aquarium or fish tank can come in many different shapes and sizes. Common types are glass and acrylic. We have them in our homes, we have them in our communities. Granted this time of year where I live is not as popular to go on a road trip to visit the one we have in Camden, NJ, but I have been wanting to go.

If you think about it we are all living on one big giant fish bowl, and viewing each others lives through our blogs. We also have probably been swimming and taken a few underwater photos! My new phone has an app that allows me to take fish bowl photos A puddle, or even just a lonely beta or goldfish will suffice. Get creative, and I am sure whatever you all post will be nice!"
I encourage you to go and see everyone's contributions here or here.

I won't get to Monterey Bay Aquarium until next month, so I tooled on over to Aquarium Concepts here in town and got some great shots!
This shot of a ray is completely unaltered, which is something I cannot say for a vast majority of my work.

Was playing with sharp filter on this clown fish:

This is only one rack of corals that AC has, and they are all fascinating and beautiful:

I love eels - I know I'm weird that way:

This little guy made me think of Spongebob's favorite hobby:

The anemonae are lovely as well:

Really filtered for contrast:

Soft coral:

This coral was waving in the current:

A fuzzy image of a shark:

I thought the mouth on this guy was cool:

You can even buy salt and brackish water:

Happy Weekend all!

Music Monday

This song has been going through my head all week.

The writer of the song, though not my favorite version:


THIS is currently my favorite version - it made me cry the first time I heard it, and embedding has been disabled, so you will have go to You Tube to see it.

My Town Shoot Out - Circles

This week's shoot out theme is courtesy of Kerry of Ed and Reub.
"Doughnuts, tires, plums, and spots,

Drops of water, polka dots.
Cat’s eyes, toad’s skin
Pearls and pebbles, a golden ring.
Fawn’s back, Dalmatian paw
Windows, wheels, an old buzz saw.
Traffic circles, prayer circles,
Crop circles, semicircles
Winner’s circles.
Running in circles,
Breathing in circles.
These will all do
Just fine too.
Sit in your chair and take one shot
Or go outside and take a lot.
Circles."
I encourage you to go and see everyone's contributions here or here.

I know I am late on this week, but I couldn't resist waiting as I had a field trip with school to SFMOMA. It was a good half day in the city, and there was plenty to shoot just in the surrounding area.

Looking into the entrance of SFMOMA:

Looking up from the Third Floor to the Fourth:

The Fifth Floor catwalk and glass ceiling:

One of the wals leading up to the ceiling:

This was a great exibit:

One of the Chairs was also a Circle:

The Atrium from outside:

A stained glass window at St. Patrick's down the street:

And finally detail form above the door at The Hearst Building:

Happy Weekend All!

Update

For those keeping track, I did sleep a full night on Wednesday - 11P - 7A, NO interruptions! It was a bit of a hollow victory for then I was up past midnight Friday morning to complete a work assignment...

I am going to try to get a Friday Shoot out post together on Saturday (I know, I know), but I'm heding to SFMOMA for the day as an assignment for school, and thought I'd hang about and just shoot the hell out of the day there.

The Best Laid Plans

So I haven't been sleeping lately. Something about the stresses associated with living a life, working and caring about and for lots and lots of people - blah, blah, blah. My problems really are few, and I have little to complain about which makes this post all the more obnoxious. I'm going to bitch about not sleeping, and I know there are people reading this that are thinking - Jesus H. Christ! If she only had my problems for a day... I know, I get it. But because I have a pretty good life in the grand scheme of things, I have to bitch about a lack of sleep because THAT is having the greatest impact on my ability to function.

Some background - my job has 2 focus areas. One of them requires multiple (a minimum of 4) hours of uniterrupted time to do paperwork that must be done precisely and in a specific order. The other requires me to answer questions coming in from meetings, voicemail, email, instant message, and an on-line tool. The questions that come in require anywhere from 2 minutes to weeks of investigation to answer. They must be acknowledged as having been recieved, if not answered immediately.

What this causes is questions coming in all day, though sometimes not at all, but a lack of dedicated time during business hours that stretch from Bangalore to Seattle. This leaves a tiny slice of time from 10PM - 2AM during which my house is asleep, and the people of Bangalore are not yet on line. That is when I have been doing the uninterruptable part of my job. Of course, I also perform at least 8 hours a day on the other part of my job, so you see the dilema. For the past three weeks I have been staying up and getting maybe 5 hours of sleep a night. This has taken its toll on my weight loss and healthy eating, my relationship with The Dude and The Boys, and made me into a baggy eyed zombie. I've been downing a half a pot of Pete's coffee a day just to get going, and I'm unwilling to take anything else to do so.

This week I decided I was going to get at least one good night's sleep. That was supposed to be last night. I was in bed by 10:12, and fell asleep right away. At midnight, The Youngest woke me up to tell me he was going to the bathroom. At 4:00, the cat needed to go out and proceeded to march across my face until I got up to let her out. At 5:00, The Oldest woke up from a bad dream and climbed in bed. I kicked him back to his bed at 5:30 because none of us were sleeping. At 6:00, The Youngest was up again and climbed in bed. At least he fell back asleep pretty quickly, so I could too. At 7:00 the alarm went off and we were up and running for the day.

I'm going to try again tonight, but if not, I won't have another opportunity for at least a week because with 2 days of NO time on the uninterruptable part of my job, I'll have to get caught up. As I sit here at 9:45 ensuring The Oldest completes his homework, and I AM tired. I WANT to go to bed. I can hear it calling me...

Of pick pockets on vacation

Courtesy of NanU and her travel blogging of late as well as Mark's memories. I am reminded of my trip backpacking through Europe when I graduated from college, and the pick pockets I encountered along the way. Before I begin, I must admit this was 1989, and I have since packed away my journal, and can' quite get the order in which these occurred, but they all did occur during the summer of '89 while I traipsed across the Continent.

The overnight train from Nice to Madrid:

I was sleeping in a compartment when I was unceremoniously kicked out by a family who wanted the compartment for themselves, and had sleeper reservations. So I sat near the door, in a walkway and slept with my back resting on my fanny pack, and backpack. This is about the time that the quick releases came out on fanny packs, but I'd opted to stick with my standard buckle (like a belt). I woke to someone trying to release the quick release which didn't exist. When I opened my eyes, a man's face was inches from mine. He tweaked my nose, winked and walked away. I was left wondering if I had dreamt it, but soon realized what was really going on. Then I jumped up and started waking everyone in the surrounding area. All of the backpackers with fanny packs had been relieved of their fanny packs, money, passports, airline tickets, you name it. By the time anyone figured it out, we'd stopped and the pick pockets were long gone.

Roma - Round 1:

I'd heard of the pickpockets of Rome before leaving on my trip, and so was hyper aware of those around me. When I visited the Coliseum, I bought a bread and cheese and sat myself a bit uphill from the action to witness all of the children working the huge tourist crowd. It was mesmerizing, and a good reminder to watch myself. I was stunned that these couples would pull out their wallets to give money to the beggars, only to never have the chance to get the wallet back to its place in a pocket, purse or fanny pack. Often the couples would not even realize what had happened, and wander off to the next destination.

Roma - Round 2:

During the second sweep of Rome (a few weeks later), I met a foursome of men from Northern Ireland, who'd been stripped of all cash, passports, airline and train tickets, Euro rail and Youth Hostel passes while chasing down and being run into by the beggar kids in the streets. They were biding time until their families could bail them out, but they were also in pretty good humor considering the circumstances.

I just consider myself very fortunate to have made it home safely, and not have been robbed.
Note - all images from google image search, none are mine.

Music Monday and The Bell

So I was catching up on all my blog buddies and ran across this post by Barry. Barry is in the middle of chemo and I want him to ring that bell, much as I want everyone who is undergoing treatment to be done with it and on to live long and heath filled lives. With that in mind, I bring you Music Monday.
The first song that came to mind while reading Barry's post - I'm sure he wants the time to go fast as well:


The other song that came to mind.


And the definition of Ring The Bell from Urban Dictionary:
A sayin used when something is done finished or accomplished.
Man he got beat down, Ring the Bell.
knockout done finished over
Of course there are other more colorful definitions of the term, but I think this one fits.