Posts made in March, 2009

What’s Your Play #39 – Rings

Posted by Michelle on Mar 31, 2009 in Photography | 4 comments

What’s Your Play is hosted by Laura at Dolce Pics. She provides a SOOC (straight out of camera) shot and the folks post-process it and share the results. More info here.

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Here’s my entry for What’s Your Play #39 – Rings

Software: Lightroom 2 — one of the first times I’ve used LR and I’ve fallen head over heels in love with it. So powerful! So shiny! So… expensive. Ow.

What I did and why:

• I tweaked the color a bit, boosting the saturation and vibrancy in particular as well as the white balance. I had tried using an LR preset that I just didn’t find myself very happy with. Playing with the sliders and working with curves was more familiar and gave me a better result than the presets.
• I started playing around with the sharpening slider and was amazed at the difference it made in the detail on the rings. Wow!
• I tried a number of different crops but decided I liked this 5×7 one the best.
• After all was said and done, I added a slight vignette to finish it off. Whee!

Lesson Learned

Posted by Michelle on Mar 31, 2009 in To Be Sorted | 1 comment

I will not feed internet trolls.
I will not feed internet trolls.
I will not feed internet trolls.

I ended up commenting on a post on Gizmodo which mocked the Peekaru vest. I also ended up getting 21 replies, most (if not all) of them troll-like in nature.

*sigh* Lesson learned. Lesson also learned not to use my fricking FB account to comment. BAHx2

Earth Hour? Puh-leeze

Posted by Michelle on Mar 29, 2009 in Life | 0 comments

So yesterday was the much touted Earth Hour which, as I understand it, everyone around the Earth was asked to turn off their lights for one full hour.

Seriously?

It’s not that I don’t care about the Earth. I do. While I wouldn’t call myself an eco-warrior, buying everything organic and eschewing mainstreaming living on the grid, I think we do our part. We don’t buy many paper products like paper towels and diapers, choosing to use dishcloths and cloth diapers. We never turn on a light that isn’t being used. Most things are turned off at the power strip when not in use. Our appliances are Energy Star rated, we have low flow toilets, we don’t use our dishwasher more than twice a week and then only in the middle of the night, etc.  We don’t do this because we’re tree huggers.  In our family, we simply don’t have the money to waste electricity or resources and we live a generally green life every day out of necessity.

Honestly, I’m kind of amazed that people have to be asked to turn off their lights at all.  Are there actually people who leave lights on when no one is using them? I mean, seriously? On any given night, I can assure you that this house is dark, with most every light shut off except for the rooms that people are actually occupying. And that would be two rooms at the most, usually only one room because The Hubster ™ can game just as well in the dark, thank you. (Prolly not so good for the eyes but there you go.)

I look at Earth Hour the way I look at Valentine’s Day — a meaningless, corporate ploy a bringing people together under false pretenses to assuage mainstream guilt. Except instead of flowers and chocolates to declare one’s love on Valentine’s Day, everyone starts crowing about how they turned their lights off for a flipping hour. Don’t give the Earth an hour or even a day. Be contentinous of how you use the Earth’s resources every day of your life. Is that so hard?

So when Earth Hour hit last night, I was happily sitting on the couch, watching DVDs with The Hubster ™ and The Litle Empress. The lights were off everywhere but the family room. Earth Hour? Bite me, it was Family Hour for us.

How does our garden grow?

Posted by Michelle on Mar 28, 2009 in Life | 1 comment

Spring has sprung. The weather right now is gorgeous with the sun shining brightly. Our jungle of a backyard has been mowed down and carted away, leaving us with a huge expanse of dirt. Since we really don’t have the money to landscape the way I’d like to, I figure it is either now or never for me to put in my starter garden. It probably won’t be pretty but oh well.

I made a wish list of things I want in my garden, mostly herbs and veggies that aren’t readily available to us and/or are something we eat quite a lot of.

So here’s my wish list of what I hope to put in:

Herbs

• Saw leaf herb
• Asian mint
• Thai basil
• Thai bird chiles
• Shungiku
• Red lettuce
• Sweet basil
• Dill
• Chives

Veggies

• Tomatoes
• Daikon
• Asian cucumbers

Fruits

• Strawberries
• Plum tree
• Cherry tree
• Meyer lemon tree
• Kalamansi (Filipino lemon) tree

Looking over the list, I know I’m being waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay over confident for my first gardening attempt. For starters, I have NO idea how much room each of those herbs would take and how much work will go into it. I’ll probably cut it down to the bare essentials (bird chiles and tomatoes are definite keepers) rather than being overly ambitious. As for the fruits, I probably won’t go for those unless my dad makes good on his promise to plant the trees himself I do hope for a cherry tree, though. We’ve got a lot of u-pick farms in the area but having our very own cherry tree would be so lovely and cheaper than buying. I’ve been known to eat POUNDS of cherry by myself when in season.

Cabin Fever

Posted by Michelle on Mar 27, 2009 in Life, Photography | 0 comments

Explorer

The Little Empress did not have a good birthday. She had a bad cold that turned into secondary bronchitis, leaving her with high fevers, an icky cough and many snot filled adventures. But this little girl would not let the sickies keep her down. Oh no! Fever or no, she was happy to go blitzing about as fast her wobbly steps and crawling could take her, intent on exploring that mysterious area known as the kitchen. There she discovered the awesomeness that is shiny appliances, particularly the dishwasher and the stove.

Honestly, she wore me out. If this is how curious she is when she’s sick, I have no idea how Mommy will keep up when she’s 100% well!

After nearly a week and a half, I’m happy to report that The Little Empress seems to finally be on the mend! She hasn’t had a fever since yesterday so it looks like the antibiotics are doing their job. Not a moment too soon too because I was beginning to go stir crazy after being on house arrest for the past week or so. Luckily, my sister has been here at our house to help keep me company which has helped out a lot! She’s also been doing a good amount of the cooking and some of the chores since these past few days have left me with little time to do anything but nurse and chase TLE.

Now that TLE is feeling better, we can look forward to starting  our new, improved weekdays! I had decided that once TLE was a year old, we’d try to go to more places during the weekday so that she had more places to explore and so I didn’t go absolutely insane being cooped up in the house. We’ve got our weekly playgroup to look forward to as well as story time at the local library and bookstore. There’s also TLE’s rescheduled birthday party to look forward to

I’m also really, really looking forward to a photo shoot that I have scheduled on Easter Sunday with my friend Meg. She’s just starting her photography business and she’ll be taking some family portraits of us for TLE’s first birthday. I can’t even begin to say how excited I am about this! As much as I love photography as a hobby, I think the downside of being the photographer is never being in the shots yourself. But I know that with Meg, we’ll be in good hands. She is a talented photographer and I know she’ll be able to capture our family insanity well.