playing with pictures

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Bored with cold, bored with monochromatic landscapes..........

What if I took a pic with COLOR,

and one with completely different texture,

and played with blending modes?   (I have no idea what the blending-mode names mean.....) 

I kinda like the results, and I know I'm glad to see COLOR.....................

Color burn.

Color dodge.

Overlay.

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March 3

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12:40 am -- trees with sun-dial shadows.

We got another 3-5" overnight between the 1st and the 2nd, and we shoveled the sidewalk on the 2nd.

We did not shovel the driveway.

A closer crop of the image above -- you can see from the tire tracks about how much new snow there was.  Somewhere between 3 and 5".

A bright blue day in snowy suburbia.

The sun makes a real difference -- walking was comfortable, despite the less-than-20(F) temp.  Footing was good, too.  New snow, on top of ice, can make the surface fine for walking.

I was glad to walk on the sidewalk instead of on the street.  In Walkable City (which I blogged about here), he mentions that pedestrians feel more secure if there are parked cars along the street.

I'll note that if there are four (or more) feet of snow and ice in the lawn extension between the sidewalk and the street, that has the same effect.



The sun is higher and higher in the sky -- I don't think we've had this much sun on these snowy bushes in other shots.  This was taken around 5:00 pm.

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love is all you need........

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This week in Beatles class, we looked at Sargent Pepper's, and Magical Mystery Tour.  One of the things he mentioned about "All You Need is Love" is all the other music in the background, near the end.  Greensleeves.  Something from Bach.  Something from jazz.....  I never noticed those, as pieces of other things, before.........




All together now, love is all you need is love. 

And a little sunshine, and a few flowers.....

Above is a digital montage I made a few years ago -- it's always seemed very late-60s to me....

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March 1

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Saturday.  Enjoying the grocery-store flowers..............

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February 27

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Partly sunny at sunrise.

Not that much later -- snowing.  Of course.

Not much accumulation from this one.  A heavy dusting.........

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bonsai class

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Sometimes my email is fun to open..........

I have no interest in learning how to do bonsai, but I think it is very cool that I could take a bonsai class, if I wanted to.

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over one billion dollars donated via Kickstarter

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One billion is a very large number.................

This is a fun page to look at -- lots of graphics and some interactives........

There's a map, where if you mouse-over a country, it shows you how many people in that country have backed how many projects for how much money.

Cool and interesting to see that people all over the world are helping others get projects going!

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February 26

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Sun rising, 7:25.

Morning sky, behind the tulip tree.

7:30.

Walking downtown for lunch.  Cold.  But it felt less so, because the sun was out.

Here's an idea what it takes to clear a storm drain, when you don't have a front-end loader.

The plows left over 3' of snow over the storm drain.  Someone (with a shovel, presumably) cleared this drain. 

I probably should have backed up to give a better look at the bigger picture, but I hope you can get some idea from this next image.  Someone did a lot of shoveling, and broke the ice to make channels toward the drain........

Note that the curb cut would have been full of that same 3'-plus of snow/ice that was over the drain, requiring the neighbor at this house to move that out of the curb cut.........



The drain itself, down in there.  Way too cold, on the 26th, for any liquid water to be moving toward the drain.

I had lunch with my quilting buddy, and, as it happened, there are a couple of groups of small quilts at the library.  We enjoyed our lunch, and then went and looked at quilts, as we are wont to do.

Lois Ann Fulton is a dab hand with a paint brush.  This is hand-painted fabric, quilted.

"Beyond the Stars"

Detail.

Lois Ann had a couple of quilts with big ocean waves in them, also very nicely done.  I was glad we'd gone to see the quilts!



Walking home.

Someone else who knows how to use paint!

Yay, orange.  Such a pleasure to see all that orange, when everything is brown/gray/white.......

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double take

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So -- it looks like this, out, right?  Over a foot of snow on the garage roof, and lots more accumulation than that, in most places.

A corner of my mind went "??????" every time it caught sight of the laundry basket.

Shorts?????

Oh, right, our daughter spent the weekend in Texas, where, I'm told, it was in the high 70s and even was over 80, one day.



But the next time I went by the laundry basket, I was back to "?????"

Sort of the way I keep flipping light switches, even when I know the power is out. 

Different parts of my brain take in information at different rates............

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February 25

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Another Woman vs. City encounter.  This neighbor hustled out there and emphatically caught the attention of the guy driving the machine.

I don't know what her topic was, but she talked to him for several minutes.

BIG machine, big man, small woman..........

Maybe she's pointing at the location of one of the storm drains......  There is one, about there.

"Look, lady, I just do what I'm told."

Then they went across the street and talked about that for a while.  I put this pic here mostly to show how high the snow is....

Also notice how icy the road is........................



Eventually she went home, and he started moving snow/ice.

That thing can move a LOT of snow/ice in one scoop!  Enough that we'd be moving it off our sidewalk for hours, if it landed there...........

It was sort of weird, watching as the rear end of the machine slid sideways as it worked at pushing.  Just goes to show -- when it's slippery enough, NO machine can be trusted to go exactly where you want it to go!



He carefully put the snow on the lawn extension.  It's hard to imagine that none of it ended up on the sidewalk, but very little of it did, relative to the volume of snow/ice moved.........

Note yet another neighbor on the sidewalk.  There are really quite a lot of us who are home in the daytime........

I don't know that I'd be standing quite so close to that thing, when it was in action.

Note schnauzer in lower right corner.  That's Pete.  I don't know what the man's name is.

Snow was moved, but for what purpose, we have no idea.  No storm drains were cleared as a result of this activity...........


Much later in the day.  Trying to get my walk in.

Where the neighbors have shoveled, it's no problem.  Unfortunately, there are too many neighbors who haven't lifted a finger to move any snow.  (Shame on them!)

Note very high  snow.............

This neighborhood road is very wide.  I don't know why.  It's wide enough that even with all the snow in the road at the sides, it's still wide enough for two cars to pass, which makes it less scary for pedestrians.  The fact that it's a neighborhood road, and doesn't really *go* anywhere, aside from within the neighborhood, means there's very little traffic on this road.

I walked half a mile up, and then turned around and walked half a mile down.

I listened carefully for traffic, and got well off the side whenever anyone was going to go by me.  I wondered why a couple of the dozen or so that went by, as I walked my mile, came within six feet of me.  They had the whole )#(&$*&^ road to drive in; why give me ANY reason to wonder if they were being cautious for me?  ?????????????????  Dirtbags.

(I was wearing my reflective vest; there's no way they didn't see me............)

Sigh.


If it ever comes to pass that I can walk on safe dry sidewalks again, I'm going to be grateful for that.  Even when it's too hot.

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February 23

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On the 22nd I spent some time clearing ice off the sidewalk.  Most of our sidewalk was clear, but the part the cars drive over had 1-3" of ice, with the average over 2", I'd guess.  It was warm enough that the ice was (relatively) easy to break.  (A dirt shovel is a good tool for that job.)  You break the ice loose, and then move the broken chunks somewhere else.

Here's what that part of our sidewalk looked like, the next morning.

You can see I pitched some of the chunks on down the driveway.

I ran some "a car makes this trip much easier" errands.  I bought new shoes (the same shoes I wear every day, unless I'm wearing my boots).  They take good care of my feet.  I just walk into the running-shoe store, and say "Just like these, only newer, please.  8.5" and the nice people get me some new ones.

On the 23rd I mentioned to the person helping me that it was scary to walk outside, with so much ice on the sidewalks.  She told me that they go run on the University's North Campus all the time; that the U keeps the walks clear.  Given that the shoe store is very close to North Campus, that makes sense.  And given that I would go right by North Campus on my way home from the shoe store, I decided to stop there and walk.

I parked in the lot across from the North Campus Recreation building, and headed down this hill toward the art school.

Partway down the hill I headed east.  The University has two carillons.  I don't think I've ever heard the one in this tower play.

It wasn't terribly cold on the 23rd, but it was windier than I need it to be.

Lots of open space on North Campus, as well as lots of art, and lots of excellent trees and other plants.

I wonder if that piece of rebar(?) apparently supporting the heart on the left is necessary for structural reasons, or for artistic reasons?  And I wonder what is the meaning of the rubble underneath.

This is the way the buildings on North Campus are labeled.  Apparently this is what donors prefer.  It isn't very informative for visitors, who might be more interested in knowing what's going on in the building than in who gave the money to build it. 

At least this is a nice alliterative name.....

The bell tower, with a snow person.

A rather Calvin-ish snow person -- the "oh no!" face, and twiggy arms that are almost invisible here, against the trees and their branches.

Looking back at the bell tower.

Sycamore and shadow, on a blue winter day.

Turning just a bit left of the previous; this is where I came from.  That "last look at the bell tower" shot was taken at the other end of the sidewalk at left in this next shot.

Having walked back west, here is the way back to the car.  Up and up and up.....

The sidewalks were just fine for walking!  That one big puddle by Bob and Betty's building did not quite cover the sidewalk, and it was the only hazard of any significance that I encountered.

Thank you, University of Michigan, for rendering part of the world safe for pedestrians!

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