Yesterday I finally made it out with my camera before all the fog burned off for the morning.



Click for a few more.

Pictures from two weeks ago. (Includes mountains, Gatlinburg, and Pezzers.)

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Got my first Crusade DVD from Netflix today. Much to my annoyance, the episodes are in TNT airing order, rather than the order they actually go in. I don't think it's supposed to make much difference from a plot standpoint, but I can already tell there are characterization moments that aren't working correctly in this order.

That said, five non-spoilery observations:

1. So, this is JMS pretty much saying, "All along, I wanted to write a fantasy series, and now I can! Mwahahahaha!" isn't it? Obviously, the technomages are the biggest part of that, but the townspeople in "The Long Road"? Uh, the folks at Stargate called, and they'd like their medieval villagers back, please.

2. So far, my favorite characters are Dureena and Eilerson. Since they're the two who map most obviously onto Ivanova and Garibaldi from B5 (not that I'm saying all the characters do that *coughGalenistotallyKoshandMarcusstucktogethercough* *coughGideonisn'tentirelydissimilarfromSheridancough* or anything...) in thier sarcasm and practicality, this is not surprising. I rather like Galen and Gideon as well. (I think Lochley might've been my favorite when I was watching this back in first-run. Eh, I was like fifteen when it was airing, and I think my first episode might've been the one where she and Gideon, ah, "make contact," shall we say. I shipped them hard.)

3. I...had forgotten the enormous sentient jellyfish that wanted to mate with the ship. I think I will try to do so again.

4. All the questions that are asked in the credits now have much more resonance for me after seeing B5.

5. ( Okay, this one is a bit spoilery for B5 )

I has pictures! Here are the Biltmore, the Blue Ridge Mountains, and the UT Gardens. The autumn colors in the mountain pictures blow my pictures from last month of the Smokies out of the water, so I may just not bother with them.

Samples under the cut. ( clicky )

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In TV news:
Corner Gas feature film likely (Squee!)
Brent Butt and Nancy Robertson are moving on to a sitcom called Hiccups. Nancy will star as a bipolar children's author (...I can totally see this); Brent will be behind the scenes only.
Something I got from comedownstairs, among others: Bryan Fuller confirms Pushing Daisies/Wonderfalls crossover. I am all asquee.

I finally managed to get my Knoxville pictures from last month up. Wahoo!

I also put up an album of flower pictures from this month, including the picture I made into the icon you see here. It's mostly tulips, actually, along with some trees.

Yay spring!

I drove down to Shelbyville and environs yesterday on a mission to take some horse pictures. And so I did. I also ran into a very needy cat, got assaulted for food by some ponies (I think? They were too small to be real horses, too big to be miniature horses, so...ponies? Small, stunted ones?), and stumbled upon a tractor parade in Lynchburg.

The full album is here. Samples are behind the cut.

( Cut for hugeness )

Finally got my (few) pictures from an excursion to the dam and reservoir up. Finally posting about it.

( Sample and link under cut )

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Tonight I finished East of Eden, only about, oh, a year after I'd intended to. Er. Anyway, I take back all the bad thing I said about John Steinbeck in high school when I was suffering through The Grapes of Wrath, because this was awesome. Also, OMG pretty. Want to go to California now, please, especially if it really looks like it's described here. And as for the book itself...BSG fans, you know the whole "all of this has happened before; all of this will happen again" thing the characters keep saying? This book is all about that, as it traces different permutations of the same story through time, coming a bit closer to understanding and clarity each time, even knowing that full understanding is a fruitless quest. It's good, really.

Sign you use your camera's macro mode too much: getting lily pollen on the lens.

( But...pretty pictures anyway? )

This evening, I also saw two juvenile mockingbirds sitting next to each other on a pole-to-house power line, taking turns chirping at their mother, who was in the grass below. I think baby mockingbirds have the most pitiful chirp ever; it's only one "cheeeeeep," but it is the saddest little cheep you ever heard.

I haven't been taking many pictures recently, despite the profusion of flora and fauna that came with spring. The ones I have been taking have been mostly uninspired and not worth the time to resize and upload. But these three are pretty good.

( Three large pictures: a nest, a bird, and the moon in conjunction with Venus )

Tonight, on Inappropriate Places To Build A Nest:

( Pictures under cut )

I put up a small album of random photos from the last month. Several birdies are featured.

( Another meme )

So the starlings have been congregating in and around my yard lately. I took videos, 'cause the flocks (probably upwards of 2,000 birds) have to be seen to be believed. Of course, since they're an infestation over most of the world, you've all probably seen them flocking before. Nevertheless, bird videos from my backyard! (Quicktime format; right-click and save.)

Video 1 (14 MB). Er, ignore the drone of the airplane that plays through most of this. I live five minutes from the airport; there's no getting around it. But notice that you can still hear the birds over the sound of the plane.
Video 2 (3 MB). This is what happens when someone claps their hands real loud.

I also have photos of birds in the trees and sunset from the other day ( behind the cut )

Fall has fallen! Or rather, fall has not fallen, but stayed all pretty on the trees. That hasn't happened here in a while. So I have pictures!

At Bowie Nature Park, I took a lot of Bob Ross-like shots of autumnal trees reflecting in ponds. Also of strange-looking geese, and a couple of just trees and such. ( Some samples of the Bob Ross-style stuff under here )

At Ellington Agricultural Center's Fall Festival, I got pictures of injured birds of prey, sheepherding, and lots of farm animals. ( Samples: Owl and a really eager border collie )

In addition to being pretty, it has also gotten OMG COLD. Well, coldish. Definite gloves weather. SHUT UP, 50F is totally time to break out the warm woolies. Also, it was windy and cloudy today, which didn't help at all.

Anyway. Shiiiiny shiny shiny.

Sign it's fall: passing trains sound like they're right outside my window, instead of three miles away. (I actually just found this out today. I did know about the propensity for sound to travel better in cold/dry air, which is what we've had for the past several days, but the trains at night are so much louder that I thought CSX must have changed the routes to run closer to my house. I can now just barely hear them actually chugging along the rails, in addition to just the whistles at the crossing. I've never been in this house in October before--we moved in February of my senior year of high school--so this is new and different. I like it, though.)

Another sign it's fall: Oktoberfest. Which was today, and which was also kind of a bust. This is the first year I've gone, and really, the one here is more of a neighborhood party that the rest of the city is invited to, rather than anything to really do with Germany (or rather Germany-as-conceived-by-Americans, which is likely to be very different from the actual country). The band up onstage was doing some passable oohm-pa-pa, and there were a few guys in leiderhosen wandering about (also some guys in kilts, which didn't make a whole lot of sense), but beyond that, it was just people trying to sell various handicrafts. The houses in that area are very pretty, though, and one of the booths was for a greyhound rescue organization. They had greyhounds there for petting. Aw, doggehs.

Anyway, better festivals last weekend, which brings me to the main subject of this post: Pictures!

First of all, we have my incredibly belated photos from the trip to a local butterfly garden/greenhouse we took, um, more than a month ago. Butterflies everywhere!

Next, we have pics from Chandra's visit. Last Saturday, the new symphony hall had an open house, with music everywhere, all day. It was fantastic. The hall is beautiful, and the acoustics are fantastic. We were there for a performance by the Philharmonic Orchestra (yeah, I didn't even know we had a Philharmonic), and they sounded amazing. Part of that was of course that they are very good; Chandra and I were sitting in the choir seats behind the orchestra and could see the conductor as he very vigorously conducted. He was singing along with the music ("Hoedown," something about dancing by Webern, something relating to Jupiter by Mozart, and something that was incredibly familiar, but which neither of us could place) and waving his baton all over the place. He was so funny. I've gotta try and hear these guys again.

After the symphony hall, we wandered around downtown for a bit (I finally had my camera while I was at the library for the first time in years, yay!) and then ended up at the Celebration of Cultures at Centennial Park, where the first thing we saw on the stage was...the youth program of the Nashville Ballet doing part of "Laurie's Dream" from Oklahoma. Hmm. We had some really excellent Indian food (I must find a recipe for vegetable korma) while sitting in the shadow of the Parthenon. Yes, Nashville has a full-scale replica of the Athenian Parthenon. It's a long story. We wandered through that, since it was free that day, and saw that hideous 40-foot statue of Athena, which is even more hideous now that it's been covered in gold leaf. (I weep, people. Weep.)

Sunday saw a visit to the Hermitage (Andrew Jackson's home) and Opryland Hotel (a kind of indoor arboretum writ large, with a hotel added on...must be seen to be believed). Oooh, pretty.

Monday was the zoo, 'cause they have baby snow leopards! We, and everybody else at the zoo that day, came by for feeding time, and got to see the handlers drag those wee little cubs from their hiding/sleeping place at the very furthest point of their enclosure and carry them down to near the fence so they could eat. SO. CUTE. They'd also finished their lorakeet enclosure since I was there in August; you go inside and they'll come land on your hands or head, if you're lucky. They sell little cups of nectar to make that more likely. Everything else was much the same; the meerkats were still adorable, I got a better picture of the elephants, and the goats in the petting zoo were still kind of zoned out from excessive kid attention. Yay for zoos.

Hmm. It's 1 AM. I should probably go to bed. Although I want to keep listening to my new Hem album over and over and over...

nickless is awesome and sent me DW videos. I know what I'll be doing tonight! :) (One of them is a Seven 'n' Ace episode. It'll be my first one. Nifty!)

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I finally put up photos from this summer.

There are only about thirty, 'cause I've been lazy uninspired and untraveled this summer, and it's too hot to do anything outside anyway.

( Three teasers, including flowers, a snail, and a rabbit )

Choosing pictures for my "best of" photography portfolio has totally made me want to travel around Europe again with my bigger, better camera, hitting all the countries I missed.

Mmm, photos.

Okay, people, I'm jumping on the photo meme bandwagon. (How could I resist?) Tell me what mundane part of my life you want to see pictures of! Shoes, house, bookcase, computer, my favorite [insert noun here]...whatever. You can even request stuff from Kenyon or Exeter, since, given the amount of pictures I've taken over the last two years, it's not entirely unlikely that I'll have a picture of it.

Heck, request multiple things. I like taking pictures.

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So I watched "Pyramids of Mars" yesterday, and oooh. Sarah Jane is awesome. Competence is so becoming on a companion. Also, pretty dress. Not to mention just the right amount of snark and willingness to talk back to the Doctor. Hee.

The story was...not scary in the least, but that's okay. It was period, and that's cool. Tom Baker's googly eyes still kind of freak me out, though.

The Awesomeness That Is Sarah Jane inspired me to try "Genesis of the Daleks" again, and...it's just. not. happening. It should be interesting, but it's not. I'm somewhere in episode four or five, I think, and I just can't make myself finish it. Perhaps it has something to do with Harry.

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Part of me is giving serious thought to writing the Eight-and-Charley-meet-the-SAJV-gang crossover my brain keeps threatening. And then somehow making Rebecca Fogg Charley's great-great-grandmother or something, because hee.

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Judith Flanders's Inside the Victorian Home is love. Yay for social historians who can write both authoritatively and engagingly. As with all studies in the social history of the later nineteenth century, this makes me think that, had I been born then, around age four I would've gone up to my parents and said something along the lines of, "I've got...a disease...called, um...well, it doesn't matter, but the upshot is that I'm now a boy; please start treaing me like one," so that I could actually, oh, go to school.

Her chapter on servant life is one of the better ones as far as detail goes; in fact, it is so detailed that it makes me want to go lavish praise on the inventor of the washing machine, because OMG, ow. Taking apart a dress and sewing it back together by hand every time you wanted to wash it? Ack.

So. Senior week. It's been raining steadily since last Thursday. That's...kind of it.

It was sort of nice for a bit Sunday afternoon, so I climbed the BFEC hill, finally. It was a bit less interesting than I thought it would be, although I'm glad I did it and can now check it off my list.

I have a few pictures from the three-hour walk Kate, Peter and I took yesterday, setting foot in every building on campus any one of us had yet to visit. That was fun, if wet. I had no idea Leonard had such nice lounges on the fourth floor.

I finally ordered food from Middle Ground (the cafe) today. It only took three years. Er, yes. (Well, two, technically, since I was 4,000 miles away all of last year. Whatever.) I went there much more often in freshman year when it was still the Red Door, I have to say. But the wrap I had was pretty good, and the salad had the most amazing sweet garlic dressing. Yum. I need to find a suitable replacement at Kroger sometime. Also, vegetables for the first time since Friday, yay! The senior week meals seem a bit lacking in the vegetable department. Ah, well. After lunch, I came home and packed a bit. Bah, packing.

Wow, that all sounds horribly boring. Uh, canoeing tomorrow! Whee! Well, if it's not raining. If it's pouring when I wake up, I reserve the right to roll over and go back to sleep. (I've been doing a lot of that this week. That and listening to DW audios. I finished Zagreus and listened to my favorite parts of Scherzo for the eleventy-first time yesterday, and got through The Creed of the Kromon and three of the four parts of The Natural History of Fear today. It's good for packing to.)

ETA: Grades are up, and I...made an A+ in Mongols. I have no idea how. The second essay of my final was an abomination. Whatever; I won't argue! I got an A+ in Choir, for obvious reasons, and A's in Fiction and Practice & Theory, which I pretty much expected. This year has been awesome, gradewise. My final average is 3.76, which means I graduate magna cum laude. Eeeexcellent.

I have goldfinches at my window! And pictures of them! (Plus some of a cardinal and one of some daffodils.) And Godzilla Robin was sitting on a branch outside yesterday. Seriously, I don't think it would have fit in two of my hands without some spillover. I've never seen a robin that big. It was having issues flying. (Of course, so are the greedy little nuthatches that eat all the seed I put out...not that I would have anything to do with that...) Oh, and a chipmunk just showed up on the fallen tree.

So much amusement outside my window. So much more interesting than this thrice-@#$%^&ed paper. At least I'm finally at a stage where I can start some meaningful revisions... *toddles back to Word*

One day, one day when it's not February or April, I will update semi-regularly. Theoretically, anyway. *looks shifty*

Not that there's much to update with. Bullet points, I suppose:

- Amazon.com is nothing short of amazing. I ordered Elizabethtown on DVD and a paperback book on Friday, got the free 5-9 days shipping for orders over $25, and the package was there on Saturday. That's next day delivery. The distribution center isn't even in Ohio; it's in Kentucky!

- The two types of woodpeckers out there have both visited my window ledge in the past week. They're so cute.

- I have an astonishingly busy weekend ahead of me. We're going ice skating again on Saturday afternoon and then out to dinner in celebration of my birthday (which is Sunday); Kate's recital is that night; comps study group Sunday evening, then ballroom, then Elizabethtown. Oh, and Those Who Know Who They Are: I am so making you watch another episode of Doctor Who tomorrow night after Sci-Fi Friday. Count on it. *eg*

- Sadly, this means that I must finish a paper I have no motivation to write basically today, as it's due on Sunday afternoon. Le sigh.

- Last but not least, I FINALLY found time to put up more bird pictures and Kenyon under heavy fog photos at my website. Oooh, pretty.

Seniors get to check out any item, whether its related to comps or not, until the middle of May. Including Consort items. *spazzes* Apparently we were allowed to do that last semester as well, but nobody ever told me. Dude, this will make writing my Practice & Theory proposal and paper and such so much better.

In less laudatory news, something I requested via ILL for my last research paper (which was due November 4th) came in today. Um, yay? *groan*

Also, bird pictures!