People have stuff they want to share.

People create blogs so they can share interesting information and photos with others

People read blogs.

That’s pretty much it, but since Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking sites have become so popular, the need for a blogger to share her or his thoughts has become superfluous. When the “Cliff’s Notes” version is conveyed via Tweet or status post, who needs the full volume? And photo uploads are much easier via Facebook than Wordpress. However, since no one in my family will deign to join Facebook, I will continue to post the odd summary of my life here and there.

There were four drafts in my Wordpress dashboard when I started this one; I haven’t been able to find the time or the attention to finish one. I’m going to combine them and hit the highlights of the last few months, so that the three people who read this blog will have something to look at other than Chip’s traffic cone imitation.

I swam with dolphins during my last visit to the keys. It was incredible.

We got an early morning visit from a wild dolphin too. I was amazed by the number of people who responded “in the wild?” when I said I’d gone swimming with dolphins. They don’t *generally* swim up to the boat and offer rides, folks.

You’d think I’d get tired of taking sunset sailing photos, but I don’t.

I highly recommend Bahia Honda if you’re ever in the keys; it’s beautiful.

I really wanted to find these kayakers so I could give them this picture … another postcard-quality shot from the keys.

For a full account of my adventures in the Keys, read Misty’s post, because there’s just really no point to typing that up again. Sooner or later I’ll post the photos the Dolphin Research Center folks took, although you can see some of those on Misty’s blog too.

I also visited my parents, and found an amazing pear tree collection just a few streets from their house.

Just turn your head to the side when you look at it. I’m busy, okay?

I have enjoyed a very brief reprieve from school work, but Summer Term starts Tuesday and I already have reading to do. While I’d like to promise I’ll be a better blogger in the future, we all know how that goes.

Stay safe and warm, everyone!

First of all, Misty met me at the airport with a fruity drink to welcome me to Florida, effectively ending my lifelong embargo on grapefruit juice.  I thought Ruby Red was legitimate grapefruit juice; I was mistaken.

For a few days I got to see what’s it’s like to live on a sailboat, and I have to say I was surprised.  One of my first questions to Misty was “so, what do you do all day?”  She gets that a lot.  Trust me, there is plenty to do when you live on a floating vessel, even when you don’t have a vacationing guest to take care of.  Besides keeping the boat stocked with water, which involves hefting full tanks from the dinghy into the boat, meal planning and food storage is tricky business due to limited space.  However, “limited space” doesn’t necessarily translate to “cramped.”  I love all the nooks and crannies that are built in to boats, and even though there was an extra full-sized adult person on board in addition to Jeff, Misty, and Janus (my boyfriend for the weekend), we didn’t really step on each other’s toes very much.

This is Janus.

He’s a very attentive boyfriend.

In addition to running the boat like a streamlined little household (which is pretty much what it is) Misty is an indescribably good cook.   In fact, it was eating her cooking in the early years of our friendship that inspired me to start cooking more often, and I will confess to copying more than one of her recipes.  It was no surprise that she has managed to adapt to cooking in a tiny galley with minimal power … everything we ate was delicious, and I came home with a few new tricks to try.  Lobster, however, is not going to be one of them.  I will leave the lobster killing to other, more capable persons.

We toured the harbor, ate fabulous sushi, listened to great music, practiced yoga by the water, and scouted some local wildlife.  We stayed busy, but it certainly still felt like vacation.  Did I mention that I didn’t fix my hair or wear makeup for five days?

Misty DID make me walk down the most terrifying ramp I’ve ever seen on our walk to Pigeon Key.  I was increasingly convinced that the rotting wood planks were going to give way under me, four ton weight limit or not.  She calls it wusification; I call it a well developed sense of self-preservation.

While Jeff had to work for part of my visit, he was kind enough to indulge my desire to get out for a sail and photograph his little floating palace on a beautiful, if not terribly windy, Sunday afternoon.  I showed uncharacteristic restraint and only took 300 photos of the Sailing Vessel “Exposure.”  It was nearly impossible to narrow down which to use here, because they all look like something out of a dream.

This is Karen.

Karen is h-i-l-a-r-i-o-u-s, especially when she’s a little sleep deprived.  She was my pilot for the afternoon, since operating a camera and a dinghy at the same time is beyond my expertise.  I was only a little nervous when the dinghy ran out of gas and Karen said “what plastic thingy?” in response to Misty’s instruction to “use the plastic thingy” to pump the gas from the can to the tank.

This is the funny little dragon boat that belongs to one of the other locals.  He had a little too much fun that afternoon, so it’s probably best that we woke him and suggested he head back to the harbor.  I only took 150 photos of his homemade boat … obvious restraint, again.

I seem to have caught what Misty calls “Keys Disease” during my stay.  No, that’s not a rash.  I simply fell in love with the ease of living and the abundance of sunshine, so it has become my new goal in life to own and live on my very own sailboat.  I’d have turned around and gone right back (after coming home to 17-degree temperatures) but Kory wouldn’t let me.  Fear not; the kid’s gotta leave for college some day, and then you can all come visit me on my very own floating palace.

One at a time, please.

My point is, I had a very uneventful trip to Louisville last weekend.  It was lovely, don’t get me wrong.  I spent some much needed and much appreciated time with my mother, my father, my sister, my niece, and my brother.  But we didn’t do anything special, other than hang out at my parents’ house.  And yet … I took sixty-three pictures.  Sixty-three!

I’m obviously not going to curb my photo-taking habit, but I feel as though it bears mentioning … sometimes it might be better to enjoy the moment, rather than take a picture of it.

That being said, my niece is as cute as ever, and I did come away from the weekend with a few lovely photos.  Thank goodness I wasn’t shooting film – I got roughly five good ones out of sixty-three.

To celebrate, we met the Koch family at the Cincinnati Zoo. It was hot out, but we had some cloud cover that made it bearable. The Cincy Zoo is really cool if you haven’t been, although it’s HUGE compared to Louisville’s. And the bird show was lots of fun.

It was not a good photo day for the niecii. They really just weren’t having it, even though they obviously had a great time.

I think the girls have been over-photographed. You bust out a camera and ask them to smile, and they just look at you as if to say “Again? Really? We’re tired of that.” And then they look away like this:

I had to have a monkey do a stand in.

Speaking of monkeys, I love this guy. He’s The Thinker of the animal kingdom.

I also love this guy. He’s a bad mo’fo monkey.

Now, I think my mother is beautiful. However, I can’t help but draw similarities between these two photos:

And it goes without saying that Kory is right at home in the zoo …

As is Vicki

As is Karen

As is Michael

Really, my family just consists of monkeys who fool you into thinking they’re people.

Dawn is less monkey-like, but she’s very well hydrated. Seriously, it’s hard to get a photo of her without a bottle in her face hiding that great smile.

Kory actually held Emily for once and I got that on film, rare occasion that it is:

Chip managed to get this lovely shot of Katie and the seal fountain, since she had no idea there was a camera in the vicinity:

All in all, we had a lovely time celebrating the fact that my only baby is one year closer to heading into the big bad world on his own. Can you imagine how I’m going to be when he hits sixteen?

This is how the ‘fro looks on an average day.  Kind of frizzy, a little out of control, and rarely symmetrical.  You would think that’d drive an OCD-affected person like Kory insane, but apparently his disorder only extends to alphabetizing the contents of my grocery cart and making sure the volume on the car stereo is always an odd number.

However, when you add water … strange things begin to happen.

It absorbs the water and repels it at the same time.  It’s fascinating.

While swimming, his hair never gets completely wet.  I’ve never seen anything like it.

This is Caesar’s Creek Lake, by the way.  It’s a lovely spot we discovered recently – I would spend much more time there if I could.

They have seagulls.  If I squint just right, it’s like being in Florida.

The lake is lovely, even if it reinforces my futile desire to own a boat.

Kory is turning fifteen next month (!) so I will, at the very least, have photos of that blessed event.  Until then, continue to be bemused and amazed by the ‘fro.

It was actually quite funny – I was standing in front of Chip’s house trying to take artsy photos of the massive icicles that hung from the gutters.  It was ABSURDLY cold out, and no matter what I did, my camera wouldn’t take the shots I wanted.  At first I thought it was the time of day – too much light, not enough light, shooting into the sun – something.  I played with the manual focus, auto focus, white balance, f-stop, whatever.  No matter what I did, the shot wouldn’t snap until I was just about fed up with standing there pressing the button.

Figure it out yet?  Yeah.  The self-timer was on.  Therefore, if any of these shots are even remotely good, it is purely by accident.

(I recommend clicking on them to zoom in – the detail in the ice is kind of cool)

Is this thing on?

Things have been rather busy lately, so I am just now getting around to posting some photos I took over Labor Day weekend. I don’t expect to be posting a ton in the near future, since school and my new tutoring gig will keep me fairly busy.

First, this is my favorite shot of the weekend. I know you can’t see her face too well, but in black and white Katie looks so classic, and the shot reminds me of something from a magazine.

Next we have JoAnne and John, who are such a cute couple it’s nearly impossible to be cranky around them.

Don’t ask about that last one. I said they were cute, not normal.

My favorite subject of the weekend was Sarah. I told Kory she is his future bride, but he just looked at me funny. I wasn’t kidding. She’s a very sweet girl and man, is she photogenic.

They will give me beautiful grandchildren. (Did I really just type that?)

Speaking of photogenic, here’s Melissa.

Contrary to appearances, Melissa was not sitting in the back yard naked. Sorry fellas.

No post would be complete without a Riley update – she wore herself (and myself) out running around trying to snatch hotdogs from plates and terrorizing small children.

I leave you with my second favorite photo of the weekend – I left the redeye in intentionally, because I think it’s funnier that way.

I love kids.

Normally I will sleep until 10 or so on a Sunday, just because I can, but such a luxury was not what Riley had in mind. She started making noise around 7:30, and I lay there hoping that Chip would suddenly become a morning person and volunteer to take her out. This was not meant to be either. So I blearily got dressed and stumbled downstairs to let the dogs romp in the yard. After a few minutes of reading and enjoying the cool morning weather, I glanced up to see this rising above the trees in my yard:

Which makes me wonder – do hot air balloons frequently pass over my house in the morning, and I’m just never awake to see them, or was I just really lucky this morning? I can’t have been too lucky, because I stubbed my toe while running inside to grab my camera.

And of course, since I already had the camera out I had to snap a few puppy portraits. Riley is growing crazy fast, and Lilly is, of course, as beautiful as ever.

Chip snapped this one a bit later in the morning – she looks like I felt, but I never got a nap.

Lucky dog.

Louisville friends Jennifer, Jason, and Austin drove up for the event, and Dayton friends Jeremi and Stacey, with their kiddos Xavier and Xander attended as well. Jeremi, in addition to working with Chip, is a photographer on the side. You can see his amazing photos here. Pride dictates that I point out that Jeremi has a much nicer camera back than I, though we were shooting with the same lens.

All of these shots are straight from the camera – I’ll post some of my favorites after I play with them in photoshop as well.

All-female skydiving team the Misty Blues opened the airshow:

There was a lot of stunt plane action:

There was a Wright Brothers replica that I still can’t believe actually flies:

There were some really big planes:

And this stunt plane, whose pilot was a total show off:

Some older models:

Oh, wait, that’s just Jeremi. Well, he’s kind of an older model. (Just kidding, Jeremi. Please don’t hurt me).

The Starfighters, which look like something out of a sci-fi movie:

Some seriously cute kids:

And finally, the fighter jets (my personal favorites):

I’ll stop now with the fighter planes. But they’re just so COOL.

Oh, and there was this ridiculous truck with jet engines. It topped out around 375 mph, I believe.

The sun deserted us for the Heritage Flight, but it was still lovely:

We then adjourned to the house to celebrate Chip’s 33rd year of residing on planet earth. Most of the time, anyway: