I think my brain’s aw littlow fixatenow snow snow snow.

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Snow Snow: Savage, Marysnow
Snow Snow: Februsnow 2010

Snow.

Snow snow snow snow. Snow snow, snow snow snow snow snow snow. Snow snow snow.

Snow snow snow snow snow. Snow snow snow. Snow!

Snow snow snow snow snow, snow snow snow. Snow snow snow snow! Snow snow, snow snow snow snow.

Snow snow snow. Snow snow snow, snow snow. Snow snow snow.

Snow snow. Snow snow snow snow snow. Snow snow snow, snow snow.

Snow snow snow. Snow snow snow snow. Snow snow, snow snow snow snow snow. Snow snow snow.

Snow snow snow Snow.

  

Amusing Sidetracks

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Location Taken: Just outside Winnipeg, Manitoba
Time Taken: June 2010

There’s an amusement park just to the southeast of Winnipeg, right off of the Trans-Canada Highway. It’s called Tinkertown and seems to be a fairly standard amusement park.

Not that I really know. I’ve only been to one real amusement park (and a few tiny traveling carnivals with rides), the Six Flags America not too far from Washington DC.

It was with my physics class, of course. And I spent the time with my Mom, since she was a chaperone. I know, how typically geeky of me. Each student was given a small array of testing equipment and various experiments to run on the rides. The park was rather empty, since it was a special physics day, not to mention being during school hours, though I think there were other classes there. There were pretty much no lines, though none of the rides were empty. Well, except for maybe the tea cups. They’re not that popular a ride amongst teenagers, not when compared to the roller coasters.

That was my first time riding a roller coaster, actually. And my second, and probably my last. First, I tried a standard one, on a wooden track. It was awful. The g-forces go to my stomach rather than my head, so I was queasy for all of the ride, and I kept worrying about my glasses falling off. But, being of a scientific mind as I am, I gave another coaster a go, this one of the design that lets your feet dangle. Just as bad. Alas, roller coasters aren’t for me.

Nor are many of the other rides, really. The majority of them are designed to amplify g-forces as much as they can in various ways, which just wasn’t working for me. Some of the games were fun, if simple, and I’d have really liked it if the water park was open, but it was the wrong time of year for that. The rest of the park, well, let’s just say it didn’t encourage me to go to another amusement park since then, and it wasn’t the fault of the park itself.

Still, there’s something special about amusement parks. They’re places devoted to enjoyment, and thus operate differently than the rest of society. There’s a joy to them that leaks out even to people to me who don’t enjoy going on the rides and really don’t care for overly-fried park food. I may not visit them, but I still love going past them and living vicariously through all the people who do enjoy them. I certainly wish them the best of it, and the shortest of lines!

  

Like a Ray of Sunshine – Harsh and Unforgiving.

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Time Drawn: Today, in 10 minutes, because I wanted some sort of image. Not my best work.

The light of sunset last night was a bit peculiar. It seemed both brighter and darker than it should have been. The sky was the color that you would find before the sun dropped below the horizon, not after. And the clouds were quite dark against it. They were strong clear clouds, too, rain bearing clouds. Some were painted the normal dark blues and pinks of sunset, but others, the ones I saw when I looked away from where the sun had set, they were a dark rust red. Oddly enough, I saw a small section of a rainbow as well, rust red as the cloud behind it. There was a solar eclipse going on around this time, starting not long after the sun dipped below the horizon where I was. Perhaps that was what caused the peculiarity of the lighting.

The other reason the sky looked peculiar was because everything was looking peculiar. I had a nasty headache, and it was only getting worse.

I seem to be allergic to sunlight.

Now, I have known that spending time out in the sunshine is not the thing for me. I find sunlight harsh against my skin, unpleasantly so. Neither the warmth nor the light is welcoming and certainly nowhere near gentle. For me are the nights, the clouds, the rain, but not the sun.

Yesterday, though, I gave it a go again. You see, I bought a new bike last Friday. It is a fantastic bike, too. An Electra Townie. It’s got some unusual features, such as letting me sit straight up and down rather than stooped over like most other bikes. I can even put my feet on the ground when I’m sitting on the seat! I’ve been really enjoying riding it, which since I really need to increase my exercise, is a fantastic thing.

My Mom also has a bike, so yesterday we went to Patapsco Valley State Park and biked along the Grist Mill Trail. I went about 4.5 miles! Not too bad for someone who has just started biking again after 15 or so years. I biked as a kid, but I took a bad fall that cracked my helmet about a week or two before I started middle school, and well, I didn’t have time to bike after that, and we didn’t get around to replacing the helmet, and the bike eventually rusted and so forth. I plumped up a lot in Middle School, from the combination of high stress (I went from home school to middle school, a rough transition even if you don’t have social phobia), sleep deprivation (I was never able to adjust my sleep schedule to waking up for class at 8 AM, and was frequently late), and a drop in the amount of exercise I got (I stopped biking, and my knees started going bad as well). I’d say school made me fat, though that’s a bit of an exaggeration. But I am fat, nonetheless, and I want to get in shape again.

The bike ride was glorious. It had gentle slopes and lots of flat areas. There were a few hills I had to stop on and walk my way up, but that was because my knees were complaining and I’m not going to strain them too much (I did mention they were bad), lest I dislocate them or at least not be able to walk. The downhill stretches are the best. My bike glides along the ground using only gravity, and I can sit there and do little but steer and delight in the wind and speed.

The trail is mostly tree-covered and shady, but near the end, there’s a long hill that’s not so shady. There’s a seat at the top, as well. And that’s where I needed to take a break. Mom went ahead, to finish up the last half mile of the trail, and I decided to sit on that seat. This was a bad idea. I was only there 10 minutes or so, sitting in the sun. It didn’t seem too bad, though the light was as harsh as always. I need my vitamin D, right? Right?

Well, about three or four hours after we got home, I started feeling icky. Then it got worse. A headache popped up. It was about this time I decided, in my less-than-infinite wisdom, that it was a great time to do the shopping I needed to do. Then, as I was about halfway through my shopping, my headache turned both motion and light sensitive. Driving home at night when you’re both motion and light sensitive is NOT a pleasant experience. Every stop light, every headlight, every turn signal hurts. At least it wasn’t too far. But well, I was feeling icky enough when I got home that when I saw that Dad was occupying the spot on the table I’d been planning on putting the groceries on, my brain short-circuited. Obviously the best thing to do was drop them on the floor. So I did. From about 4 feet up. Forgetting that I’d picked up something in a glass jar. Which shattered. And I couldn’t deal with it. I’m really thankful to my Mom for cleaning it up, as well as handing me medicine and sending me to bed. At this point, the pain was getting overwhelming, perhaps near migraine levels. Laying in the dark and eventually sleeping seems to have helped some, but I slept for 10 hours, I’ve still got a headache, and this post is late. At least the headache is milder, and no longer light sensitive.

I’m also achy. You’d think after biking 4.5 miles I would be aching from that, but no. My legs, while a little weak, are otherwise just fine. It’s my head and shoulders that are aching most. I’m really not sure what it is about sunlight that’s such a problem. Maybe it’s something my body is metabolizing from the sunlight, since that would explain the delay. I doubt it’s vitamin D, though, since I drink vitamin D fortified milk with not a problem. It might be an overdose of it, though, or some other compound. All the literature I can find on such things focuses exclusively on vitamin D, though, so I don’t know what else is produced. I have problems with being in bright light too long too, not just sunlight. There are times I get sensitive enough that it feels like the photons are bouncing off my skin. Everywhere that’s exposed to the light is prickling and tingling unpleasantly.

It’s annoying, not being able to go out in the sun for long. Though I suppose it’s just another way I’m not a standard example of humanity. Like I didn’t have enough of them already.

  

The Path of Bamboo

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Time Drawn: February 2010

I’ve mentioned once or twice that I took a Chinese Painting class, since I’ve mentioned using the paints and brushes I was introduced to there. This was drawn as part of this class. Well, sort of.

This is a series of four practice pieces when I was learning the traditional Chinese way of drawing bamboo. This was all done out of class, as I was figuring it out. Compared to those who have mastered this art, these are solidly amateur. And for good reason, since I am still an amateur at this. I may like the paints, brushes, and the look of the art, but I don’t fully care for actually doing the techniques. It just doesn’t fully mesh with the way I approach art.

Traditional Chinese painting is all about mastery. Practitioners will spend years just studying one technique, painting it over and over again until they get it right. And since many great artists in the past have both gotten it right and then told others how to do it, there are set paths for doing things. Which, alas, means there’s less room for experimentation.

I’m very fond of experimenting, you see. Even in this piece, it’s apparent. I could have just kept these in their original form, in black and white and separate. Instead, I took my four best pieces out of the twenty or so I did and arranged them, colored them, and added a border. This is not at all traditional Chinese style.

There’s advantages and disadvantages to being so solidly an experimenter. On the plus side, I’m pushing my boundaries with every piece, trying something in a way I have not done before. I toss in odd compositions, throw together techniques I read about from different sides of the planet, use materials in new ways. On the other hand, these experiments sometimes fail, and parts of the piece just don’t work. Plus, I’m not heading directly to mastery. I’m taking too many side paths instead of heading straight for the goal. And this means my work is nowhere near as good as other people who have been artists for just as long. I may be able to do more things, but they are very good at the one thing they have specialized in.

Still, it does mean art is always new to me, and my experiments do work sometimes. For instance, the four practice pieces in this would be nothing if I hadn’t arranged them together, letting one bolster the composition flaws of another. And while I may not be following a traditional path to mastery, I may just be forging my own path to a new mastery. It’s just always tougher to be the one who cuts through the brambles and finds the pass through the mountains, instead of someone just walking on a set trail.

  

Pretty AND delicious, what a combo!

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Location Taken: Savage, Maryland
Time Taken: May 2010

My mom asked for more flower pictures, so a flower picture it is!

This is a plumed celosia, growing in my mother’s garden. My Mom has a rather large garden, taking up a significant portion of the yard. Well, more like two gardens. There’s a flower garden in front, with a pond, and a vegetable garden in back, with another pond. Currently it’s strawberry season, and we’re getting a bumper crop, 10-20 or more a day. Now if only I was more fond of strawberries (I find them a bit boring).

Interestingly enough, this celosia could go in the vegetable garden as well. It’s fully edible and is a common vegetable in Indonesia, India, and large swaths of Africa. Mainly, the leaves are used, eaten cooked or raw like any other leafy vegetable. The flowers area also edible. There’s actually a large number of edible flowers out there. I still recall one sermon at church back when I was young (9 or 10) where the pastor pulled out some daffodils, talked about them, then ate them! You could probably make a really pretty salad just using flowers, though no one would realize it was a salad.

There’s an odd bit of societal blindness when it comes to uses for plants. The pretty flowers in the garden could be quite suitable for the dinner plate, or it could drop you dead (Oleander is poisonous, if rarely fatally, for instance). And the fruits and vegetables relegated to easily managed beds for easy access to their products can be quite pretty in their own right. I read once that Marie Antoinette wore potato flowers in her hair, when people were trying to get more people to plant potatoes in Europe (potatoes are in the nightshade family, so there was some understandable trepidation). It’s a pretty flower, too, not at all brown and dumpy as the roots are.

Still, the celosias in my Mom’s garden never get big enough to eat. It’s a variety that emphasizes flowers over leaves, and tends to only be a few inches tall. She tends to buy them cheap off the clearance racks, too, so they’re the runts of the litter anyway. But they are quite pretty, and have an interesting flower with strong colors. They add a bit of spice to a garden. Though I think I shall resist using them in my recipes. I doubt Mom would like it if I took a bite out of her flowers, after all.  Though it does look like someone did nibble on this one.   It wasn’t me, really!