EMPS: A Page for March

For Ellipsis Monday Photo Shoot #29: Winter Meets Spring, Carly gives us the alternative assignment of designing a calendar page for March. Mine is fairly individual, the sort of thing I might put on a custom calendar rather than one for the general public. See, for me, March is a month of birthdays...

Let's see. My birthday is on the tenth. John's birthday is the 22nd. My brother Steve's is on the 25th. My best friend from college is the 22nd again, my online friend Becky just had hers, and Sara's, I'm pretty sure, is the 21st. Another college friend, Ed, just had his birthday a day or two ago. One of the Whovians, Heather, has hers today. Florinda's birthday is this month, but I've forgotten the details, and there's probably at least one other former March baby I'm forgetting entirely. I've always wondered whether a tradition for June weddings contributes to a glut of March birthdays.

(Setting up this photo: the only thing I bought for this shot was a slice of carrot cake from Safeway. I cloned out the carrot decoration in the icing. The card was a late-arrival for my birthday last week that I just opened tonight. The box and toy dog were from John's birthday present to me last year, representing a promise to buy a dog. Result: Pepper! The candles turned up in a drawer of the china hutch.)

Still, I don't suppose this statistical anomaly is shared by the rest of the calendar-buying population, so here's an alternative page for March, illustrating everyone's favorite silly March holiday. Personally, I don't like St. Patrick's Day even a little bit. I dislike the emphasis on drinking that's a big part of the celebration, or people pretending to be part of a particular ethnic group for a day without honoring that group's non-trivial contributions to the culture, or the pressure to conform to the day's dress code of green shirts or blouses or dresses. I only own one green shirt and I'm pretty sure it doesn't fit. I wore orange today, not to make a statement but because it was at the top of the pile of clean laundry.

(This hat was worn by a parishioner tonight at the St. Patrick's Day supper at St. Michael's. I showed up for a few minutes to take photos, but didn't stay for the food. Too bad, because I really do like corned beef and cabbage a lot. )

Let's finish tonight's entry with a few sunset shots, because I took them today and they're not like my usual ones. This one was taken while driving toward the sunset, bound for the dog park. I got a really late start tonight; it's been a while since the sun's been this low in the sky during the drive over.

And here's a dog park sunset shot. What makes this a little unusual is that I managed to frame one of the Tucson Mountains in the shot. Unfortunately, the chimney of a house across the street on Country Club Road was directly in front of the mountain. So I cloned it out.

Karen