Round Robin: Phone and Photo Phun!

For this week's  Round Robin Photo Challenge (RRPC2: Fun Fun Fun!), I mostly had in mind the fun I am going to have this weekend. By the time you read this, we will be driving to Disneyland! Perhaps we'll even have arrived by then, and will be having serious Disney-themed fun. I'll post pictures from Disneyland before Saturday is out, probably to Facebook and maybe to Tumblr. But in the meantime I'm having fun putting this post together on my newest toy: an iPhone!

My iPad II, called Ariel, and my new iPhone, "Blue Belle."

I'd been wanting to get an iPhone for over a year, but the desire grew especially intense as the Disneyland trip approached. I had apps on my iPad with maps of the Parks and wait times for the rides, but even if I were foolish enough to carry the iPad into Disneyland it wouldn't help much. It doesn't have a built-in wireless connection, so it wouldn't be online gathering data. But an iPhone is online, portable and versatile. My research showed that dumping the landline plus an Episcopal Church discount would save enough to just about cover the cost of me having an iPhone and John having my old Intensity II - John's first mobile phone ever. John said to go for it, so I did! I've been walking around with a big grin on my face for several days. Fun? You betcha!

My Canon Powershot has seen better days. 

One cool thing about this phone is that it has a fairly decent camera built in. It's certainly better than the one on my old phone, or even on my iPad II. To test this, I experimented with using these three devices to photograph each other. My three year old camera is a bit beat up from all the hard use and abuse I give it, and has dust inside that nobody is willing to clean for me. Plus, how do I transfer the photos while I'm in Anaheim without a computer? Photo uploads from an iPhone are a different story.

Blue Belle's photo of Ariel photographing the Powershot, which doesn't have a cutesy name.

As for the photos themselves, I'm not going to bother with the iPad ones. The resolution on the iPhone photos is visibly better. I was also pleased, and a little surprised, to discover that the iPhone has built-in flash, something my iPad definitely does not have.

Enough. Check out the various flavors of fun found and photographed by other Robins. I'll be back with photos of Disneyland fun, on one or more social media sites, before the weekend is over.

Karen

Linking List
prepared ahead of time because I'll be on the road

Karen - Posted!
Outpost Mâvarin
http://outmavarin.blogspot.com
http://www.facebook.com/mavarin
http://mavarin.tumblr.com/
@mavarin

Freda
Day One
http://fredamans.blogspot.ca

Jama
Sweet Memories
http://mummyjam.blogspot.com

Teri
Teri H Hoover Photography
http://terihoover-crystal-iris-images.blogspot.com/

Carly
Ellipsis
http://ellipsissuddenlycarly.blogspot.com


Tina
Tina´s PicStory
http://tinaspicstory.blogspot.de/2012/05/stuttgarter-fruhlingsfest.html

RRPC2: My Flowers For Steven

This week's Round Robin Photo Challenge is very different from previous ones, and rather important to Carly and me. We recently learned that our friend Steven, who used to co-host this meme, died several years ago. Amazing closeup photos of flowers, often with insects and other critters on them, were among Steven's photographic specialties, so we thought it best to honor him with the topic Flowers for Steven.

From Round Robin Photo Challenges

Most of the shots I got for this are from an amazing tree on the grounds of St. Michael's, which was in full bloom when I took these photos a few days ago. I have no idea what it is!

Here is a closeup of one(?) of its flowers.

Here is a grouping of several of them.

I mentioned that this week's RRPC was very different. That's because starting with this Challenge, it's going multi-format! Tumblr users, Facebook users, Twitter fans, Google+ early adopters, etc. are all welcome to join in, blogging photos to their favorite social media platforms! Just add #FlowersForSteven and #RRPC2 tags to your entry, and we'll find 'em (I hope!). But just to be on the safe side, you may want to post a link to the Round Robin blog entry, so I can list it for everyone to see. Steven was a big contributor to the early days of photoblogging, especially of flowers and cats. I hope you'll join us in honoring him this weekend. Thanks!

Karen

Steven's obit on Philly.com
Steven's obit on Tributes.com
Steven's last photo on Flickr, with comments

Linking List as of Midnight MST 
Saturday, May 5th, 2012 

Karen - Posted!
Outpost Mâvarin
http://outmavarin.blogspot.com
https://plus.google.com/106386157515816723953/posts/Q9nTwu6xifJ 
http://www.facebook.com/mavarin
http://mavarin.tumblr.com/
@mavarin 
(And yes, I posted different pictures on Facebook, Tumblr, etc.!)

Carly - Posted!
Ellipsis
http://ellipsissuddenlycarly.blogspot.com/2012/05/round-robin-challenge-flowers-for.html https://twitter.com/#!/ondinemonet 

Jama -  Posted!
Sweet Memories
http://mummyjam.blogspot.com/

Kara
Notes from the tiny napping house
http://notesfromthetinynappinghouse.blogspot.com/

Julie - Posted!
Julie's Journal
http://www.barrettmanor.com/julie/journal.aspx

Shelly - Posted!
Creative Endeavors
http://shellysphotos.blogspot.com/2012/05/flowers-for-steven.html

Kat - Posted!
In My Dreams I Can Fly
http://inmydreamssfk.blogspot.com/2012/05/flowers-for-steven.html

Duane - Posted!
Visualizations
http://fotofrenzy.blogspot.com


Teri - **Welcome new participant!** - Posted May 9th
Teri H Hoover Photography
http://terihoover-crystal-iris-images.blogspot.com/

Round Robin: The Egg Variations

For this week's Round Robin Challenge: Back to the Egg, I asked to see any kind of eggs, or egg-shaped objects. Yes, we just passed Easter, when kids hunted for Easter eggs and adults bought Cadbury Creme Eggs at their grocery checkouts, but that wasn't what I had in mind for my own post. You see, one aspect of this semi-Paleo low carb diet John and I have been following involves buying natural and organic foods for the most part. So aside from Trader Joe's and Whole Foods, John's been going to a farmer's market and also to the University of Arizona's, umm, Meat Sciences Lab. Don't worry: it's not experimental meat!

Anyway, I don't think any of the mostly free-range, cage-free eggs we've bought recently have been white, like the eggs I grew up with. I didn't even know it was possible for a chicken egg to be another color until I was about ten years old, and the semi-retired farmer across the street gave me a brown egg from his favorite chicken, Henrietta. Yes, he really called her that.

  

But the thing that John got really enthusiastic about was when he bought a dozen eggs from a different old farmer. Inside the rather ordinary carton was a surprising variety of eggs, from golden brown to a very pale blue! He has since bought similar eggs from someone else on a day when the old guy wasn't there.

Another package of eggs we had at the same time is much more uniformly brown. But look! They're monogrammed: EB. Emmett Brown?

Maybe those are experimental foods after all!


Linking List
as of 9:27 AM MST
Saturday, April 21, 2012

Karen
Outpost Mâvarin --Posted!
http://outmavarin.blogspot.com/

Carly **Welcome back!** --Posted!
Ellipsis
http://ellipsissuddenlycarly.blogspot.com/

Kara - Posted!
Notes from the tiny napping house
http://notesfromthetinynappinghouse.blogspot.com/

And please check the Round Robin blog Sunday night for a new Challenge and an eggciting announcement about the NEW Round Robin Photo Challenges!

Karen

Round Robin Challenge: Just in the Neighborhood

For the Round Robin Photo Challenge: Take a Walk! I asked folks to take a walk in their own neighborhoods and post the resulting photos. Here are some of mine, taken late Friday morning as John and I walked the dogs together.

This little blue bridge crosses the Alamo Wash near the local high school. Most of the wash is wild and gravel-bottomed, but this little stretch looks more like a concrete culvert. During a monsoon storm, the wash floods and so does Calle Betelgeux where the wash crosses it.

I added the caption because on this walk I was racking up steps, distance and calories burned on my Nike+ pedometer, which consists of a sensor in my new Nike shoes plus an app on my iPod nano. The Nike+ Active website has a game that equates your walking and running to travel in various cities. This walk earned me a postcard for running across the Brooklyn Bridge!

Here's how this same little blue bridge looked on one rainy afternoon at the end of July, 2007.

You know what? I think I'm wrong. There are two little blue bridges that cross the wash in our neighborhood. I'm thinking that the taller one is the one by the school, and the shorter one is near the park. But the stretches of wash beneath them look pretty similar when it hasn't rained in weeks or months.

Here's the view behind Palo Verde High School, looking northeast from Betelgeux. The steps on the left lead down from the bleachers, just a couple of feet from the sidewalk.

This is the alleyway that runs next to the wilder part of Alamo Wash, looking north. The wash itself is to the right. This is my favorite part of the neighborhood. John wanted to walk in the wash itself, but we gave it up after a couple hundred feet. The shifting sandy gravel beneath my sneakers made for arduous, treacherous walking, and I had bad memories of having to hike out of a canyon with similar conditions back in 1986 or 1987, after spraining both ankles!

The alleyway continues behind the little neighborhood park. The blue roof is the top of our underused neighborhood gazebo.

Check out all of this week's participants! So far...

Linking List
as of 12:05 AM Saturday, April 7th

Karen - Posted!
Outpost Mâvarin
http://outmavarin.blogspot.com

Jama - Posted!
Sweet Memories
http://mummyjam.blogspot.com


And by the way, Happy Easter!

Karen

Round Robin: What Have You Got on Your Head?

River Song: What in the name of sanity have you got on your head?
The Doctor: It's a fez. I wear a fez now. Fezzes are cool.
(Amy snatches the fez and throws it into the air, where River blasts it to smithereens.)

For the Round Robin Challenge: Hats and Headwear, I asked to see, well, an interesting hat or headwear. Hats aren't nearly as popular as they once were, but still I see them from time to time, and not just baseball caps, either. Here are some recent sightings:

   

Joyce T. at El Charro Cafe in November.

   

Jon R. often wears a sun hat when he's out and about.

   

Jon wears his green plastic "Irish" bowler to the St. Patrick's Day dinner at St. Michael's.

   

Bishop Kirk Smith in the traditional mitre.

   

No need to take off the camo hats while eating lunch! 

Now let's check out some more hats and headwear:

Linking List
as of Saturday, March 24th at 11:54 AM MST

Karen - Posted!
Outpost Mâvarin
http://outmavarin.blogspot.com

Jama - Posted!
Sweet Memories
http://mummyjam.blogspot.com

Kara - Posted!
Notes from the tiny napping house
http://notesfromthetinynappinghouse.blogspot.com/

And it's not too late to post your own hat shots!

Playing Hooky

I meant to post this last night, but my life is crammed with distractions right now and things fall by the wayside. I'll give you an overview now, and double back later with pictures and tweaks.

With my new temp job across town turning out to be a lengthy commute, I've had a bit of trouble this past week getting in much work at church. After a Saturday morning vestry meeting this weekend, I intended to go back after lunch and get a few good hours in.

A light-hearted venue for serious softball.  From My Tucson

But it was Saturday afternoon and the weather was nice, and it seemed better to get the dog-walking in well before sunset approached--for a change. So the dogs and I headed for Tucson's Abraham Lincoln Park, which was recommended online as a good on-leash destination. First we walked to and around a large oval track bordering a couple of baseball fields. Then we did the same around a larger oval enclosing four softball fields, in two of which some college-age women, probably including the University of Arizona softball team, were having spring training.

Into the wilderness.

Where to now?

Signs of civilization. 

From there we followed another path to a dead-end past a gazebo, and backtracked to a hiking trail. The online listing mentioned a .6 mile nature trail, but this was not that. I proceeded to get lost in a maze of desert trails, and ended up with a high school campus and a fairly steep ridge of desert between us and the softball players. The parked car was even farther away. My little dog-walking expedition turned into an hour and a half of hiking about, some of it rather strenuous. Good! But it ate up a chunk of my afternoon.

The Dakota Cafe in Trail Dust Town. Dogs allowed (outside).

Did I then drop off the dogs and go virtuously on to work? I did not. The same website that recommended Lincoln Park also mentioned a restaurant in Trail Dust Town where pets were allowed at the outside tables I decided to check it out, without the dogs. I ended up spending another chunk of afternoon at Trail Dust Town, eating a truly marvelous salad at The Dakota Cafe and chatting with an archivist at the Museum of the Horse Soldier, which I'd never visited before.

Bad photo of a few exhibits at the Museum of the Horse Soldier. Do not reproduce. 

The museum used to close at 5 PM, right about the time most people start heading to Trail Dust Town to eat at Pinnacle Peak Steakhouse, ride the little train and watch a Wild West stunt show. But now the museum is open from 11 AM until 8 PM, with a paltry $3.00 admission fee. They've enclosed their roof, upgraded their exhibits and are about to reopen an entire roomful of exhibits. I'll have to stop by again.

What could be more authentically Old West than a covered wagon Ferris Wheel?

After that I took a few more pictures around Trail Dust Town. Then, and only then, I headed over to church and got in perhaps an hour and a half of work. Better than nothing, I suppose.

But here's the thing. As you can probably guess from my last few postings, I'm a bit stressed out right now. My brother is still in the midst of medical and financial issues a thousand miles away, and somehow counting on me to solve them for him, talking to doctors and social workers, gathering papers that are currently locked up in his rehab facility somewhere, filling out forms and maybe even making his missing house key reappear out of thin air. I'm not quite done settling my friend Jan's estate, my efforts to lose weight are getting more and more time-consuming, I have other ongoing obligations to my church (as a parishioner and volunteer) and to two friends, and now I'm working two jobs. I need a vacation! So I guess I just took one, for about two hours.

K.

THAT dream

I don't remember why my friend Sara wanted to experiment with becoming microscopically small; but she did, and I helped her. Don't ask me how or why. Afterward I left her apartment (Sara doesn't live in an apartment), with her still invisible. I must have dropped the key to her apartment somewhere as I left, without which she could not be restored. I searched and felt quite guilty. Eventually I found it in a hallway, under a chair.

But I didn't make it back there. Instead I was sitting with some people on a lawn at something that looked like a tableau of Americana. It turned out to be a tableau of Americana, for a tv show. They let us stay because we fit right in, I guess.

Afterward we were in a cafe or someplace, and I was trying to explain about my friend who was currently microscopic. I could not remember her name. I was pretty sure it started with a D, but...

"All I can come up with is Dawn," I said, "and I know that's not right."

"Dawn is a Buffy character."

"I know that."

I struggled to come up with this name I really should remember, putting my whole body into the effort. This was a mistake, as I discovered when my dead friend Tracy turned up.

"Am I dead?" I asked her.

"Yes, you are."

I started shouting, Let me go back! Let me go back! There was no breath behind the words, no external sound. I kept shouting until I managed to produce an audible squeak of desperation and panic.

I was alive again. I took a breath. And I woke up.

Okay, it was just one dream, just one stupid, awful dream. I didn't belittle a friend, I'm not missing a key (metaphorical or otherwise), and I am most evidently alive.

But it's been many hours since then, and I'm sitting typing this when I really should be asleep. I do have sleep apnea. John has seen me stop breathing. Is that what happened this morning? Probably not. More likely it was an anxiety dream about taking care of myself and meeting my obligations to others, and what if I fail? Do I get another chance?

Karen