Portugal vs. England (Portugal, by playing dirty) in the morning and Brazil vs. France (France, by playing amazingly well) in the afternoon. That pretty much took the whole day. Last night Oz had pull an all-nighter for work, so today he had to fight to stay awake. He did okay till after the last match.
That was pretty much our whole day.
This evening I went out for a walk (alone) with my camera and my new monopod. I was playing with my big zoom lens. I've found that when you're all zoomed in, any little wobble—like from your heart beating—blurs your picture, and the monopod helps with that. It sure did this evening. All the monopod pictures are nice and clear, but the pictures I took without it are pathetic. Too bad. This little squirrel in the park was posing so nicely. I shot some pictures of her without bothering to set the camera on the monopod and now I have five blurry squirrel pictures.
I'm having better luck, in terms of clarity anyway, with my optical illusion pictures. When you walk through Libby Hill Park towards the river, Rockett's Landing hoves (hives? heaves?) into view beneath the spreading branches of an oak tree. The water tower and the brick warehouses look to be within arm's reach, but they retreat when you pass the oak tree. In pictures taken from both vantage points, the Rockett's Landing buildings are the same size. Huh. I'll have to run them by Oz when he regains consciousness.
254 words | July 1, 2006 11:59 AM | Real true storyI went to buy a tripod today at Radio Shack: they've got a 36$ 50" version on sale for $10 after rebates. It's definitely something I've been missing.
Unfortunately, being on an island has disadvantages. I showed up when they opened, to make sure that they didn't run out -- which is what happened last time we went to look at the swingsets at Wal-Mart -- and it turned out that they don't have any yet because the barges from Oahu haven't been running as frequently lately, so sale stuff doesn't get here on time anymore....
Posted by: Jonathan Dresner at July 3, 2006 02:36 AMWow. Barges and Hawaii were two concepts I never put together. Even here on the continent, though, it's hard to find what you want locally. We do a lot of online shopping.
Posted by: 100wordminimum at July 3, 2006 03:37 PMYeah, the big contain ships with 95% of our food and consumer goods only come in to Oahu, then small (well, smaller than cruise ships, anyway) barges drag the relevant stuff here about twice a week. Many's the time I've been told "we should have more Tuesday...."
We learned this while waiting for our car.
Online shopping is great, but we have to be a little careful: parcel post and UPS ground go by boat.
Posted by: Jonathan Dresner at July 11, 2006 04:27 AMI guess I've always thought of barges as sort of eastern seaboard industrial things. In Virginia they're always talking about the garbage barges from New York. Barges with food and tripods sound a lot more fun.
Posted by: 100wordminimum at July 11, 2006 09:56 PM