Full Moon Wednesday

a mix of phone and camera from Sam's window this morning

  

Full Moon Tuesday

If these monthly moon photo sessions have taught me anything, it's how amazing the human eye is to any lens in the world. No aperture or shutter speeds or ISO or post-processing required, the human brain and the human eye just do it for us. All we have to do is look. 

But the challenge of photographing the full moon is still fun, even though it remains equally frustrating. With my limited resources, you can have moon details, or scenery, but rarely both without the noise factor overshadowing everything else. 

that is, in fact, snowy covered Mt. Evans backed by some beautifully voluminous clouds

(to differentiate between clouds and mountains, here's the lowered shutter speed)

Weekend Update . . . on Monday

rain clouds and turning leaves from my bedroom window

 

backyard pups among the crunchy leaves

Just in time for Halloween, during the game Saturday, on the first play, Nick got clobbered by two players and we didn't see him back in the game for most of the first quarter. Nothing worse than sitting 1000 miles away helpless to even know what might be going on. Turns out the busted chin reopened with a vengeance and sent him to the trainer's room for stitches in the bottom of his chin. Then, later on in the game, the top came busting open and he ended up with half a dozen staples in place. Get the boy some green hair spray and a couple of neck bolts!

Sam spent the weekend finishing up her next 2pt. perspective assignment and fleshing out a short story for her Storytelling Class which I'm proud to say I helped her brainstorm as well as edit. It's coming along as a nice little Victorian horror story.  

Sam blogs more thoroughly about this piece here.

Went to Hallmark yesterday afternoon and picked out a few ornaments, although the kids still have to do their own choices. Vader in his AT-AT Christmas sweater with half a dozen Christmas sayings came home. Our first Vader ornament, in 1997, has long since ceased speaking and, even when he did, it wasn't this fun. "O Christmas Tree" is a winner.

I'm completely over daylight savings time at this point. I like to get up early and out for the dawn. Now, it's not until almost 7:30. 

my nice out of focus sky photo this morning at 7:00 in the near dark.

if you strain, you can make out the snow covered peak in the back. This past weekend's storms brought what is likely to be the perpetual white blanket on the Rocky Mountains until sometime in late May or June. 

After a short nap this afternoon, I glanced over the side of the bed to see my constant companion quite happy I've brought out the blankets. And post-nap, I got to open my new Harney & Sons tin and make a cup of Cinnamon Sunset. Just the smell when that tin is opened is heavenly. And the little silken sachets! Bliss in a cup. 

And now? another constant companion has joined me in my chair to watch the evening start to creep in.

Lots of doings on the horizon:

next weekend: Bob and Jason fly to meet Sam in Tampa for our friends' wedding. My last pretty quiet weekend, except for Halloween party

next weekend after: Rocky Mountain Con

next weekend after: fly to Austin for Nick's Senior Game

next weekend after: Christmas decorations

next weekend after: driving home from Thanksgiving

next weekend after: Courtney visits/weekend in Breckenridge

next weekend after: pack for Disney World

next weekend after: be at Disney World!

next weekend after: Christmas

next weekend after: 2016

Just like that, 2015 will be gone.

Halloween Decor

Snapped a few photos of the decorations before the rains moved in. Won't be long before there are 10x more leaves on the ground in the yard.

 

 Inside is our little group of Halloween memories through the years: the first thing we ever bought in 1991, little ghost Ziggy, the dancing Frankenstein the kids thought was hilarious when they were babies, the Scooby Vampire back when that was their thing and the Warner Brothers Store was still in business, Fluffy the 3 Headed Dog from Harry Potter, after which time the kids got older and weren't "into" Halloween themed stuff. New this year, the Poison Apple Stein from our trip to the Magic Kingdom at the start of the month. 

& my very earnest Pumpkin Patch.

 Speaking of the Halloween trip, the Disney Photobook arrived yesterday!

Imagine my excitement flipping through each of the pages I'd designed

The front cover:

pages themed from the memory bank of Inside Out

and UP

and Wall-E

and Brave

and lots of our Photopass pictures

including . . . 

whaaaaa????

I went back online to make certain I hadn't inadvertently pushed something that rotated the photo sideways, even though I knew I'd meticulously  reviewed the layout of all 20 pages.

And online? Right side up.

So it's getting packed up and sent back tomorrow. Sigh.

Soup Weather

I've been looking forward to the Fall weather finally arriving for, well, months now.

I'd collected soup recipes in anticipation, since I can make a big pot and live off it for days and days without complaint. (With the kids home? Doesn't happen.) Mom and Dad even bought me an immersion blender so I could tackle a number of soups that would be much messier if I had to pour a bit at a time into the standard blender to get it the right consistency.  I had a grocery list prepared for all the difference ingredients I didn't typically buy so all the recipes would be complete. 

And then? More warmth, week after week. 

One day of cooler temps, followed by ten with increasingly warmer days does not a pot of soup make happy. 

Yesterday, it seems, we may have finally had the push we needed to keep us in the 40°s - 60°s range. The windows are still open here, but that's really not the best indicator. I keep the windows open past most people's comfort level. Today, I noticed not only was Faith, my tiny and always cold cat, insisting on curling up with me round the clock, but Bruiser began to find his way over, despite his misgivings about being that close to Faith. 

I put the heating pad on the back of my chair to keep some therapy on my sore shoulder and Faith promptly decided that was her invitation. She climbed up over my head and out of my lap. 

Bru then decided to try and settle in the vacated lap space. 

Bru doesn't fit quite a neatly in my lap with the laptop as Faith does, but he gives it his best. He kept getting uncomfortable, leaving, and returning from a different angle, always with an eye on the sleeping Faith above him.

 

Getting a photo of all three of us on the chair was a bit of a challenge.

Finally, I pulled out the other heating pad and set it up for him on the back of the couch, more comfortably away from Faith and in the window where he can watch for birds, as is his pastime. 

Then? Faith climbed down and settled into the post-Bru-warmth of my lap again. 

And so it goes. 

When I went down to heat up soup for lunch (which was dinner last night and again tonight...) I glanced at the thermostat, curious as to how chilly it had gotten. Mind you, the windows upstairs are open where I stay, but not on the main floor where the thermostat is located. Those stone floors do get icy.

(I like the "LEAVE" at the bottom... And I am just now realizing my clock is 2 hours off.)

Now to pull out that grocery list and see if I can't whip up a batch of green chili soup next time!