I found out how to make a two mile run super easy- replace it with another run, a little longer with REAL hills.
Ouch.
The Running Coach/Husband is now introducing me to the foam roller. I hear that I’ll hate it, and love it at the same time. Sounds kind of like running? However, I understand that this 5K that I signed up for at the end of the month for my March Project has a bunch of hills. Yeesh. Hills.
At one point this summer, this guy was faster than me.
The new run kicks my butt bad. How bad? So bad that I feel like I’m back to walking with this guy again:
Torrey Pines State Preserve… a nice place to run. Nice and FLAT.
It makes the recent triumph of running those two miles, straight through, like a stroll on the beach… When I make it to the top of that hill, about a half mile long, I’m running the next day on the beach. Barefoot.
#1. I want to have seconds on taco night, and to be able to drink wine every night.
#2. My gramma and her husband taught me two keys to a healthy, long life: Moderation and Be Active.
The Great Gramma and The Girl
Gramma is 98 this year, by the way. She also taught me to drink the good wine, and enjoy Happy Hour- not just on Fridays. My grandmother and her husband did things that I have sworn to do as I grow older: they are the poster children for caloric restriction and eating with moderation (everything they want, but in moderation), and they had always been active. Always. Dancing, walking, aerobics, swimming, traveling. ANYTHING.
Don’t ANYONE show this picture to Betty Gene! I mean it, mom and Amie, DON’T!John, in all his magical glory.
At 96 she was still driving, cooking for her husband, taking care of her home, and for anyone visiting. A couple of years ago I was visiting my gramma and honestly, there was nothing that she had lined up for me to help do for her. She made me salmon for dinner and the most I could do was clear the table and help put things away.
I started running recently and have gone from hating this form of exercise to… well, not hating it. I’m logging two miles about every other day and at the end of March I’m signed up to run a 5K. Whew. A big goal for me. This month I am adding on some hills and lengthening the run to three miles. But honestly? I run because my gramma taught me that I need to move it or lose it. And I will!
Don’t ANYBODY show these photos to Betty Gene, she will KILL me, do you hear me, mom?
Whew. Trying to figure out how to work the Christmas Camera is waaaaaay harder than I thought. I may have to completely throw in the towel and pop for a real class with a real instructor, ’cause I ain’t making any headway on my own.
Just when I thought I couldn’t combine this control with that option, I re-studied how to work with different aperture settings, and after about an hour of monkeying around, I think I get this one… (Thanks to my “Nikon D3300 For Dummies” book)
OK- here’s what I think is sticking in my brain:
close focus + small aperture setting = out of focus background and clear foreground, better for close-ups
zoomed out + larger aperture setting = larger depth of focus, better for outdoor and landscape shots
Less than 10 feet in the shot? Larger aperture settings just get blurry with a slower shutter speed.
So… The object of today’s practice was to see how the snacks, the cat and the rosemary outside the window would look at different settings:
Oops- forgot to bring in the focus, resulted in fuzzy pic- 26mm f/418mm f/4.555mm f/32 and a 3 sec. shutter… no wonder it is really blurry. I need a tripod.
Best three for explaining to myself what I’m doing:
18mm f5.6 clear cookies, fuzzy kitty (rosemary not even in the shot)26mm f/18 cookies in focus, kitty clearer26mm f/25 everything is fuzzy, not just the cat, do I need glasses? No, just a higher focus or lower aperture, faster shutter… aieeee!!!
ANY AND ALL TIPS FROM EXPERIENCED PHOTOGRAPHERS WILL BE APPRECIATED. GREATLY!!!
I played around with my Christmas camera tonight, trying to make some headway into my February project- learn how to operate my Nikon 3300. I swear, I’m going to figure out this piece of technology and I am paging my way through my “Nikon D3300 For Dummies” book to help. Tonight I learned about several different auto and semi-automatic controls, and that I can type the word “exposure” twenty-five times in 30 minutes, and spell it wrong each time. I’m pretty proud of the fact that I can’t spell in three- count ’em- THREE different languages. Go me.
First shot is in Manual Exposure Mode, and I have no idea what I am doing. This proves that the camera is way smarter than I am.
Shrimp Salad ingredients… decent shot…
This next one is too bright, but I think I am figuring out how to use the Exposure Compensation button:
Shrimp Salad ingredients, monkeying with the Exposure Compensation button.
Hey, now it is getting better! I think I need a different lens for close up shots, yes?
Manual setting, Exposure Compensation brightening up things
This one I knocked the exposure down a tic or two. Next thing to learn is how to correctly use the technical language of photography… The daylight really looks nice here as opposed to the next few pictures of the bread.
Manual, less exposed with using the Exposure Compensation button…
On to the bread ingredients. OK, it’s even obvious to ME that the flash should not be used in this type of lighting (kitchen table overhead lighting, after sunset)
Flash with bread ingredients… bad.
All righty then! Not enough light in this, but not too shabby, either. I can’t seem to get the little stuff in focus- like the millet and bulgur wheat (two of the ingredients in the small bowl).
Fully auto focus. Pretty good! But it needs to be focused differently, maybe on the millet and bulgur?
Switching back to the simple auto focus-
Auto Focus… (it smells as good as it looks)
And with Aperture I got what I expected- better light but lost focus. Guess I need to learn how to compensate for this.
Aperture Priority auto-exposure- good lighting but bad focus?
OK- if I use a better light source, is this the shot I wanted?
Shutter Priority auto-exposure. Too dark, good focus.
And here we have my standard favorite, my iPhone 5s. Notice the lighting is fine, the focus is fine… good depth of field, too, huh? You can clearly see the dirty napkins from tonight’s dinner:
iPhone 5s took the best shot, argh!!!
Side by side- Nikon and iPhone:
Nikon- What napkins?iPhone- Those napkins, right there.
So, there you have it. My iPhone and I have been doing a great job all along. I can really make it sing. This just makes me want to understand how to use the Big Person’s camera even more. I’m not (too) discouraged. Yet.
I’ve been so focused on daily business that I rarely have done or tried anything new or challenged myself in what felt like YEARS. Bottom line is, running a blog about trying something new daily has become my way to get over the freezing effects of anxiety, to force myself to make decisions and not be afraid to try new things.
After only one month I’ve learned:
Trying to coordinate with extended family to attend a theatrical performance is even harder than trying to coordinate an appointment with my son’s ortho and dentist.
it is not easy to make Indian food, actually ANY food look good in a photo. Maybe February’s project will help?
Family is totally fun to mess with by dragging them into this project!
January’s Project has been to learn how to use WordPress, and although there are a few things I’d still like to figure out (how the heck do I hook up the Twitter and Facebook feeds in the Widget bar? How do I link a “featured image” to its original site? Dianne Parks has beautiful artwork that she graciously allowed me to feature but maybe feature images don’t allow it), at least I have learned the following-
How to upload my photos
How to link up within a post the web pages to my photos or to those that should be connected to an original site- like the Comic Pearls embedded in my post here.
inserting links wasn’t that hard, either, like this!
The tech support chat really does work!
I love that I picked a layout for my blog titled “2015,” reminding me of the blog’s overall goal.
January’s Book of the Month, The Happiness Project,” by Gretchen Rubin… I get a kick out of statistics and studies, I’m weird like that, so I’ve enjoyed reading her summary of literature and philosophies, as well as the 12 months of tasks that she chose to explore.
These are a few of the great lines and quotes I found in the book-
“I’d often wondered why anger, along with pride, greed, gluttony, lust, sloth, and envy- were the seven deadly sins, because they didn’t seem as deadly as lots of other sins. It turns out that they’re deadly sins not because of their gravity but because of their power to generate other, worse sins. They’re gateway sins to the big sins” p. 47 (italics and bold are mine)
Oscar Wilde observed one is not always happy when one is good, but one is always good when one is happy.” p. 54
“Like grief has five stages, …happiness has four stages. To eke out the most happiness from an experience, we must anticipate it, savor it as it unfolds, express happiness and recall a happy memory.” p. 108
…and many, many more favorite passages could be listed, because I enjoyed this book tremendously. I definitely recommend “The Happiness Project” to anyone.
In one month I’ve banked two really enjoyable experiences- a new read and and a new skill. Here’s to the anticipating eleven more of each to come!
branching out... on a limb 