Spring pictures

Time to upload a few more pictures!

Sunset over the school.

Daffodils in the rain.

Sunset over 66.

This and the next few are at Manassas Battlefield Park.

Some pictures of the cherry blossoms near the school.

Christmas Lights in Old Town

This little walk I took to take a few pictures in Old Town (well, all right, it was an hour-long walk, and I took about 75 pictures) was a wonderful stress-reliever. I needed it, between the end-of-quarter stress at school and the I'm-getting-married-in-just-over-six-months stress in the rest of my life. I'm this weird mix of busy, anxious, and excited that leaves me pacing around the apartment, ignoring all my responsibilities, and then suddenly grading twelve book reports and doing all the dishes.

Here are the fruits of my photo-op.

The view down Center Street. Yes, I did have to stand in the middle of the street to take the picture. But it was quite safe.

I have always loved it when people do trees like this, with shining trunks and a web of lights in their almost invisible branches.

City Hall. I have photographed this building dozens of times now, with several different sunsets. It stands out well against them -- and also without them, as you see.

Okay, here's the beginning of my clock obsession. Prepare for many more clocks. I am not sure why I like clocks so much. Perhaps it is because they are so very round and white. Perhaps it is because every picture you take of them is of a slightly different scene, because they move. But there is just something that makes the street with the lights completely different from the street with the lights and a clock.

This one is special because it has not only a clock, but also a flag unfurling in the light wind that was going by. There's something about knowing that a moment before or after would have been a different picture.

"One luminary clock against the sky"

The same clock from the other side, near the pavilion where there's an ice skating rink.

I love this picture. I had to take many to get it right. Maybe it's the circle within the square that does it. Or maybe it's the light shining out of it -- like the moon. I just don't know, but I like this clock.

The train station, all decked out. With the ubiquitous water tower. I do not understand why this town needs so many water towers. In my regular walks to the grocery store or Old Town, I see three water towers without traveling a single mile.

These are two pictures I've been trying to get for a long time. Don't the gates rising and falling look like fans? And the red light lines are dotted, because the lights were blinking. Again, maybe I like these pictures more because of the effort it took to get them. There's a lot of waiting for trains it takes to get even one take of the picture -- and then you find the shutter speed wasn't slow enough, or the aperture was too big, and you have to wait for the next train. Or you just finally get lucky when you're photographing the train station -- which is what finally happened, after all those times running outside when I heard the train whistles.

This one was intended to be symbolic. Doesn't it look like the lighted trees are there to decorate the Nativity scene? Actually, they are reflected from City Hall, across the street. I don't know if City Hall put up their trees because of Baby Jesus. But it doesn't matter what they intended -- there they are, all the same.

Recent pictures

More pictures: these from around my house, plus two from the airport when I was going home for Thanksgiving.

Autumn

Here are some pictures I took this past fall. This batch is from the day I went down to Christendom for Homecoming, and ended wandering around by the Shenandoah, looking for good pictures to take. I think I found a few! (I actually took over a hundred. But these are the best.)

I had to shrink them down a good bit to reduce their file size. The original pictures were very clear and vivid. I am so grateful to my grandpa for the camera that lets me take pictures like this. I am getting more and more into photography these days.

Zoo Day

These are some pictures I just remembered I had from our zoo trip in August. A bunch of my friends in the area got together and went to the zoo in Washington, DC.

Matt and Chris imitating a statue labeled "Interdependence," or something like that.

Hanging out outside of Cold Stone Creamery, where we stopped after seeing the elephants and everything.

I was behind the camera for this one. We have Betsy, Matt, Syd 'n' Sean, and Andrew.

Pictures

Life as a teacher is so terribly busy! When I'm not teaching, preparing, or grading, I'm chaperoning a dance or planning a club activity. And on the off-chance I'm not doing any of those things, I'm probably at a school volleyball game or being coaxed into going to the Legion of Mary by the other teachers. (I decided Legion of Mary is not going to be something I'm going to do right now ... I just don't have that kind of time.)

I did have time to take a few pictures, though, so I'm just going to post those in lieu of the longer post I would be writing if interim reports weren't due Monday. I have to figure out a grade for every single one of my students, plus any other things their parents should know. I have a lot of students ... something like 120, if you consider a student I have for two classes as equivalent to two students.



Anyway, here are the pictures.

Our house. The door in front is our apartment; I'm rather pleased that the other three apartments have their doors in back. That way it looks like we own the whole house!

A tree in the vacant lot across the street. I had thought at first the area was a park, but it's not, even though it has a Civil War memorial sign in front of it (these signs are scattered all over town). But it might as well be a park, because it's such a nice bit of grass and trees.

Sunset. I love the sunsets from here. We have to go out of the house and around the side to see them, but they are always lovely. The water tower is a good landmark for navigation, but it also makes a nice silhouette against the sky.

This picture, of a car going around the corner and across the railroad tracks by our house, is the result of some time spent trying to figure out how to slow down the shutter speed. I think it worked really well! I have dozens of pictures like this; I think slow night photography is really awesome.

Philadelphia

So I went to Philadelphia this weekend. That involved a lot of organizing, and up to the day before I was still not sure it was going to happen. There was the VRE train, the Metro, the Greyhound, and a ride from a friend that all needed to be arranged. Not to mention lodgings with someone I've never met ... a fellow intern of John's. She ended up being quite nice, luckily!

The trip was kind of a whirlwind, because I didn't have a lot of time to be up there before I had to come back, but I did get some pictures.

My first clear sight of Philly from the bus.

City Hall. I'm not positive, but I think it's Penn on the top.

Me in front of City Hall, sitting on a giant checkers piece. The hat is from John--it has the name of his paper on it.

View from Kate's place -- a highrise dorm at U Penn. You can see this big cemetery in the foreground, and the Schuylkill River in the background. (John tells me it is pronounced Skookle. Who knew. The internet tells me it is Dutch for "hidden river.")

City lights at night. I took tons of pictures of them, on every setting my camera had, and it was quite interesting to see how differently they turned out.

It was a good trip, but there was a lot I didn't get a chance to do. Getting together with Dr. T., for instance--there just wasn't time. I also didn't see the Liberty Bell. So I'll have to go again sometime. Till then, I'll be content with the interesting parts of the city I did see.