265/365 Change

"The Twilight Zone"

I am not happy with Apple right now.  The changes that have come with iOS7 have made me quite an unhappy camper - and phone user.  Well, that is not exactly true; I have not yet updated my phone.  Weber updated his.  Thankfully I looked at the changes on his before I made the decision to update mine.

I am not one of those people that is resistant to change just because it is change.  I am all for change if it is change for the better.  With all of the previous Apple updates, I believe that change for the better definitely existed.  Not this time.  This was change just to change and in my opinion (and apparently that of many other people) this is change for the worse.

Apple's goal was to "simplify" the visuals of there apps.  That translates to put everything on a white or light  background with super thin fonts and gray icons.  For me, it is pretty much unreadable, even with all of the supposed "accessibility" features that Apple includes.  

Above is the old resident weather app on my phone and the same app on Weber's with the new operating system.  See what I mean?  I intended this difference to be the point of today's picture.  I guess to some extent it is, but as I was looking at the day's images on the computer, the picture took on a whole other dimension.

Look carefully at the phones.  Weber and I are standing side by side, no Photoshop tricks here.  Notice that his phone says that today is Saturday.  And despite the fact that both phones are displaying the local weather in Dallas, mine say the temperature is 84 degrees and his 64.  Just to further confound the issue, the weekly highs and lows vary by a few degrees each day as well.  It is the same time on both phones.  That is good to know!

Right now, the only thing i like better about Weber's phone and the new operating system is that according to his phone we have another day of weekend!

I hope Apple listens to the feedback of the many people that are unhappy with some of their aesthetic choices with this upgrade and either changes them or allows for user customization.  If something doesn't happen before I absolutely have to upgrade, I'm not sure what I am going to do.

Apple, can you hear me now??

264/365 Brown

"Diggin' Up the Dirt"

263/365 Power Lines

"Power lines - Lifelines"

Today was a day of choices.  I'm not sure that I made the best ones, but I am happy with the ones I made.  I had a bunch of work to do for school.  I unconsciously made the choice not to do any of it today.  I say subconsciously because throughout the day I kept saying, "I'll do this, then I'll grade tests."  With this tactic, I managed to read a bit, do some laundry, clean the kitchen from top to bottom and watch some online photography videos.  Then there was the time I took to have a piece of cake for lunch.  Remember,  I said that I didn't necessarily make the best choices, but the ones I made did make me happy.  I was very happy with that piece of cake!

It rained all day, something we haven't seen in a long time.  That made it a perfect day to hunker down at home, Since I have no classes on Fridays, I can choose to work from home…and, I did.  I really had good intentions of accomplishing so much.  I did, too...just not the things that probably needed to be accomplished.

I have always heard that if you are going to work from home, you should treat the workday at home exactly like the workdays away from home.  You should get up at the normal time, get dressed and follow your normal daily routine.  I was good with step one; I did get up at the normal time.  Then things fell apart.  I didn't do so well with step two and beyond.  I didn't get dressed until about 3 o'clock.  That's what rainy days do to me.  And why do I need to be fully dressed to read and watch videos?    I'm making up for it now.  It is 11:30 pm and I am still fully dressed…shoes and everything.

I also had to make some choices regarding my approach for today's photo.  The prompt was "power lines" from below and or at dusk.  I knew that I wasn't going for a photo walk in the rain looking for pictures of power lines.  I wasn't dressed.  I also knew that with the cloudy skies brought about by the much needed rain, dusk would be nothing inspiring.  Early in the day I made the decision to photograph important "power lines" in our house - the power cords to everyone's computers.  In this case, power lines and life lines are one in the same.

This evening we went out for dinner and to take our resident baker to the store for supplies for this week's bread orders.  It was still dark and gray, but the rain had let up for the most part.  Though it was totally dark by the time we finished all of this, Weber and I went out to see if we could find anything interesting fairly close to home that might better satisfy the day's prompt.  We didn't really find anything except the very cool wind turbines on the local water tower.

"Power(flu) Lines"

This is related to power and it does have very cool lines.

Below is another picture of the water tower taken from a different perspective.  I took this one to address the "from below" part of the prompt.

"Looking Up the Water Tower"

I find this angle kind of interesting.  I also like the big bokeh that I think was created by passing car lights and the heavy mist in the air.

Though it is not as photographically interesting, I chose to use the Mac power cords for my picture of the day because, of the three, it is the one that is the most  accurate representation of our lives.

"One's philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes…and the choices we make are ultimately our responsibility."  - Eleanor Roosevelt

262/365 Morning Light

"School Day Sun"

I had to scramble for a photo today.  On Tuesdays and Thursdays I teach from 7:30 am to 1. That doesn't allow for much opportunity to photograph the morning sun.  It was barely up as we headed for school.  I managed to grab this shot with my phone as I quickly made my way through the hall at school.  I bet we don't have too many students who know that there is this beautiful stream of light flowing past the performance hall early in the morning.

My 7:30 class is a small but dedicated group.  The class is an out of sequence class, meaning that it is normally taught only on the spring.  Because these students needed this class this semester, they agreed to come whenever we could find space in the schedule and also a physical space in the form of an available classroom.  7:30 am was the only time during the week when student schedules, my schedule and room schedules aligned in perfect harmony.  The one advantage for the students in getting to school this early is that parking is no problem.  

This group also agreed to keep this meeting time next semester for the next course in this sequence.  That is dedication from a group of college students!

261/365 Sugar and Spice

"To Be Me Or Not To Be Me"

I'm not sure whether I'm in a creative slump, a creative surge or maybe just a state of rebellion.  For the last couple days I haven't been able to think inside the box with the daily prompts.  You would think that with all of the cooking that goes on around here that I would have been able to come up with something good for "sugar and spice."  Everything that I thought of seemed boring and uninspired.

Feeling a bit defeated, I climbed up on the couch and put my feet up to watch the news for a few minutes before tackling the night's work.  I had kicked off my shoes; I then smiled when I looked at the colorful socks I had put on twelve hours earlier.  They weren't at all visible with the shoes that I wore to school, but I knew that I had them on.  Because I make a lot of my socks, I have many that are wildly colored like these.  That is part of my personal fashion statement.  Whoa!  Did I just say that I have a personal fashion?  That may be going a little too far…

As I looked at my feet, the wheels in my head started turning.  I could take a picture of one of my feet in its "sweet" boring brown school shoe and the other in its "spicy" sock, sans shoe.  That might have been fun, but I just couldn't get the whole image in my head and make it work.  As I sat a little longer, now paying absolutely no attention to the TV news, I considered various shoe and sock possibilities.  Finally it came to me…go all out.  Shoot  sugary, grown-up lady shoes on one foot  (Yes, I actually own some of those despite the fact that most people who know me have never seen them on my feet.) and the spicy, colorful, fun, more me shoes on the other foot.

It took a few attempts to make this work.  It is hard to focus a camera on something that is not there to focus on.  I am getting better with the timer on my camera and both getting myself in the picture and also being marginally in focus.  I'm pretty happy with the way this came out.  It does make me giggle a little.

Here's to wearing and being whatever makes your heart sing and your feet happy!

260/365 On A Board

'A Splinter of Who I Am"

This is just where I am today…not sure why this spoke to me, but it did.

259/365 What's In Your Bag

'Does Anyone Have A Pen?

The point of today's prompt was to document the things that you carry around in your purse or bag every day.  As I mentioned a few weeks ago with the "back to school" prompt, I don't carry a purse; I carry a backpack.  My backpack is full of stuff that is useful and necessary, but necessarily photo worthy.  I don't want pictures of all the papers I need to grade, or the binders of lessons, or the various notebooks of notes and sketches for various projects.  The only thing that seemed interesting to me in my bag was my pencil case.  It is full of cool office supplies and pens and pencils.  I love pens and pencils, not the fancy and expensive ones, just the fun ones.  I have a specific pen or pencil for every writing task.  There is the journaling pen and the crossword pencil, the composing pencil and the grading pen, the drawing pencil and the sketching pen.  Perhaps this is just a way to try and justify my ridiculous attraction to writing instruments.  All that to say that today I photographed a few of my favorites.