What is “chill” and how do I do it? - Day 6 of the Chill

For those of you following along, the 20 days of Chill Writing challenge only happens Monday through Friday, which is why there weren't any posts this weekend. The second reason why I haven't posted this weekend was because I was busy.  7 of us took a road trip to Escondido on Saturday for some geocaching, hiking and other frivolity.  A good day was had by all and I believe I ended up with 31 cache finds.

Moving on with the prompt of the day.  What is "chill" and how do I do it?  Maybe more important, do I care whether I do it or not?  I'm under the impression that "chill" means different things to different people, so does it really matter what I think chill means?

People in most parts of the world probably associate chill with cold.  I've always associated chill with being relaxed.  Chill out dude.  I could always use more of that chill as I've always been pretty high strung about a lot of different things?  NO???  REALLY?  

I believe I'm less high strung than I used to be.  That still hasn't helped my blood pressure much, but I'm working on that.  Then again, maybe it has helped my blood pressure.  So, I'll address what relaxes me, mainly because that's my chill.  Hmmm.  Things that relax me.

Good music.  Pachelbell's Canon in D.  Mozart.  Beethoven.  Vivaldi.   

Roadtripping.  I like to drive and it relaxes me.  Getting in the car and just driving somewhere, preferably with a view of some kind is what I find very relaxing.  I live within two hours of three national parks, Death Valley, Joshua Tree and Channel Islands, and within 6 hours of three other national parks, Sequoia, Kings Canyon and Yosemite.  Put me in any of those places, in a tent and enough food to last me for a couple of days and I'll probably come out of it at the other end pretty chill.

And I will be the first to admit that this challenge is not chilling me at all.  I look at some of the prompts and thing to myself, "Self, now what the hell am I going to write about in response to that one?"  And this is just that.  Ordinarily, I wouldn't write about something like this at all.  Not my style.  But I guess that's part of the game.  And so it goes.

The photo is from Bryce Canyon National Park.  I've been there 3 times.  I could go again and again.  It is my second favorite national park next to Yosemite.  There's not nearly as much to do there as there is in Yosemite, but I just can't get enough of those hoodoo formations.  Plus the hiking down amongst them is something that I just love to do.

And now I need to think about how I'm going to formulate something about 10 hotdogs.  That's not getting me to chill at all.

Some things change

When I first started this blog, I called it A Photo a day.  I even knew that I wouldn't be posting a photo a day, but I had high aspirations.  I started out well, then slacked off.  Then called myself on it, and wrote some more.  Then I slacked off again.

As I wrote in a comment on another blog I read, I thought I'd write more when I had more free time, like on my vacations.  That's definitely not the case as I seem to have realized that I'm doing so much on my vacations that I don't have time to sit in front of the computer for a long stretch and write about what I've done.  

So I guess what I'm trying to say is I'm going to write about stuff after the fact.  I don't do "Stream of Consciousness" very well, as I tend to ramble on and on as my thoughts move her to there.  But I think this might work better.  

Two or three times per week, I'll sit down and write about something.  Tonight I'll write a little bit about the start of summer vacation.  It's so hot here that it still feels like summer, although we know that it's summer's last gasp before our fall rolls in sometime next week.

As I posted back in July at the last photo contest on P.J.'s blog that I participated in, I ended up camping with a friend of mine along the east side of the Sierra Nevada and in Yosemite National Park at the beginning of June.  He hiked the John Muir trail this summer and I helped get him to his starting spot.  We ended up camping near Devils Postpile, on the east edge of Yosemite and then in Tuolumne Meadows for two nights.

He'd originally asked me to go with him, but I knew I wasn't in shape for a trek like that, but I volunteered to take him to his starting destination.  We left his truck at Whitney Portal where he would be hiking out and then drove north through Owens Valley.  After I dropped him off, I ended up spending a very lovely day walking around in Yosemite Valley, something I've never done before, at least by myself.  

I ended up taking some very nice photos, some of which haven't seen the light of day yet, but the intention is to post some of them over the course of the next couple of weeks.  On the trip, I also decided that I would grow my beard back.  I had a beard in my early forties, but haven't had one for about 15 years or so.  I just decided to see what it would look like.  I've received some nice compliments and I'm probably going to keep it for awhile, mainly because I hate to shave.  Trimming a beard, I don't mind, but I just hate shaving in general.

The top photo was taken on the top of Sentinel Dome in Yosemite.  The beard was about four days worth of growth, so it's basically a before shot and the bottom shot was taken about a month ago, with the beard fully in.  One of my students asked me whether I was going to go all "Duck Dynasty" with my beard and I definitely don't want to do that.  But I like this change, so trimming it occasionally won't bother me.

Total Random stuff

I have been challenged by my blogger friend P.J. to a post of randomness.  11 random thoughts about me, 11 questions from P.J.  Then I'm supposed to challenge 11 other bloggers to do the same thing.  That's the tough part, which won't get done, and you'll see why in the randomness below.  I hope not to repeat any randomness that P.J. might have already stated, but that's the randomness I guess.

So here goes.

1.  There are 58 National Parks in the United States.  I have been to 24 of them.  I will not list them all here as that would be tedious. At one time I had a goal of seeing them all.  Whether that will happen all depends now upon how healthy I can stay over the next 20 to 30 years.

2.  I think most people who read this blog don't realize that I am happily married.  I post a lot of photos of my kids, but very few of my wife.  I've been married for 26 years and they have been the most fulfilling years of my life.  I would not be the person I am with her.  Therefore, every photo in this blog will feature her.

3.   I have had two concussions that I know of, but it could be more.  Perhaps the dain bramage associated with concussions has knocked that out of my memory.  First one was when I was 8 or so and I got run over by a neighbor while we were playing kickball in the street.  I was knocked unconscious and lay there for a long time.  I have no recollection of this incident outside of what my parents have told me about it.  The second time was between 8th and 9th grade in a bicycle incident.  Not saying I wouldn't have gotten a concussion had I been wearing a helmet, but I wish they had been mandatory back then, especially with all the evidence coming out recently over head injuries in sports.

4.  I have broken my right pinkie finger twice and my left arm once, all between February 1972 and July 1972.  Let's just say that the last part of my 8th grade year, I was always splinted up in some way.  I broke and dislocated my pinkie playing basketball.  Three days after the doctor took the splint off of my finger, I bumped into a friend of mine and broke the finger again in a different place.  That splint lasted until the end of the school year.  My left arm was broken in the above mentioned bicycle accident.  As an aside, I am still very good friends with the girl who I bumped into when I rebroke my finger.  She doesn't know about the incident, unless she figures it out by reading this.  Also, when I hold my palm up on my right hand, my right pinkie doesn't meet with the other fingers.  These are the only bones I've ever broken.

5.  I have cool looking eyes. They are bluish gray with gold flecks in them.  Looking at some photos of my youngest son, he has similar eyes.

6.  I do not read very many blogs.  In fact, I don't think I could tag 11 other bloggers to get them to repeat the process, so I won't be doing that part.

7.  I used to do counted cross stitch.  I entered several of them in the Los Angeles County Fair and one year, my design took home a first place ribbon.  Our home is decorated with many of my designs, most from patterns that I used to buy.  When people visit and see them for the first time, they always compliment my wife over her stitchery and she always has to refer them back to me.  I don't do this anymore because it aggravates my carpal tunnel syndrome.  My hands go to sleep in minutes after starting to stitch.

8.  There has been a teacher in my family since 1896.  I consider myself a fourth generation teacher.  My dad was a teacher as were both of his parents.  I have a newspaper clipping from 1896 that shows my great aunt as the teacher in a one room school house.  There is a little doe-eyed kindergartener sitting in the front row - my grandmother.  She was being taught by her oldest sister, who was basically a full generation older than she was.  My daughter has continued on the tradition.

9.  If I wanted to recreate my proposal to my wife, I couldn't.  I proposed to her as we floated over Fantasyland in Disneyland on the skyway.  That ride doesn't exist anymore.  Why Fantasyland?  It was too noisy on the Tomorrowland side, so I waited until we rode through the Matterhorn into Fantasyland where it was a little quieter and then popped the question.

10.  My favorite painter is Pablo Picasso and my favorite photographer is Ansel Adams.  I could look at paintings by Picasso or photographs by Adams for hours on end.  When we go to the Los Angeles County of Art, I always head to the Picasso area first.  After Adams died, I went to a showing of 100 of his photographs.  He is a fine landscape photographer, but I don't think he could do portraits very well.  In my opinion, they lacked something that the rest of his photographs had.

11.  My favorite singer when I was in high school was John Denver.  I saw him in concert twice, once at the Universal Amphitheater and once at the Inglewood Forum.  The concert at the Forum was in the round and he was on a revolving stage, so he faced the entire audience at one time or another.  He put on a very good show both times.

Well, those are my random thoughts about me.  P.J. also posted 11 questions that I'm supposed to answer too, so here those are.

1.  What is your dream vacation spot and why?

One of the national parks I have not visited is Arches National Park in Utah.  I would like to go there, spend an entire day sitting near Delicate Arch and watch the light play over it, all the while taking photos.  I guess, in the long run, any place I haven't been to yet would be a dream vacation for me.  I love to travel and going somewhere new would be incredibly fun for me.

2.  Where did you come up with the name of your blog?

At the time, I was doing my 365 project, taking at least one photo every single day.  So this is another part of it - A Photo a Day.

3.  How do you define blogging success?

I think success is dependent on the blogger.  What some people would consider success, others would consider failure.  As long as I continue to write here, I consider that a success however.

4.  What is your favorite type of "going out" entertainment?

Getting outdoors and hiking with someone, or geocaching with a friend is what I enjoy the most.

5.  How many states have I lived in?

I was born in Indiana, lived there until I was 3 and a half, then my parents moved us out to California where I've lived ever since.  Interestingly, it wasn't until I was in my 20s before I stopped thinking about Indiana as "back home."  

6.  What is my favorite holiday and why?

This may sound selfish, but I like President's day.  It happens right around my birthday which usually means I get a three day weekend out of the deal.  I kind of like that.

7.  What your favorite number and why?

13  My favorite football team is the Miami Dolphins and my favorite football player is Dan Marino who wore 13 during his career.  I also like the fact that most people view 13 as unlucky.  That makes it good for me.

8.  What would be your dream vehicle to own?

Pretty much anything from the 1950s would be really cool to own.  

9.  What is your favorite hobby?

Geocaching.  Some would say it's an obsession of mine, but I enjoy participating in the silly game.  It keeps me busy and out of trouble for the most part.

10.  How do you try and keep your blog fresh?

My first blog was entitled Electronic Breadcrumbs and it was solely about geocaching.  After awhile, you can only talk about geocaching for so long before you end up repeating yourself.  I found I was doing that and started to write less and less on that blog.  That's one of the reasons I started to write this blog.  It's about anything I want it to be, which keeps it fresh.  I don't think I'd write a specialty blog again.

11.  Where do you do your best thinking?

When I'm out mowing the lawn.   Mowing the lawn is pretty mind numbing, so I think about all sorts of things while I'm mowing the lawn.  It keeps me occupied and seems to shorten the process of getting the grass cut.

Well, there you have it.  That's probably way more than you ever needed to know about me.  I'd love to hear your feedback, preferably here as opposed to on Facebook, but I'll take it either place.

New photo challenges

For those of you that didn't see my post on Facebook, I just completed my 30th year of teaching, 29 at the same school.  It's getting to the point that I've been around so long that I've been teaching longer at my school than three of the other teachers have been alive.  It's just something that I've noticed that I have many more years behind me in this profession than I do in front of me.

I'm in the first week of summer vacation and I've accomplished a whole heck of a lot of nothing so far.  Well, not really, it just seems like it.  Friday, the first day was pretty much spent sleeping.  The recharge on my batteries was something that I really needed.  For the most part, with a couple of errands, mowing the lawn and other "honeydoos" that I've accomplished, I'd say this summer is a smashing success right now.

I haven't picked up my camera much so far, but I know that will change.  Near the end of last month, I ended my 365 Project.  For the first two years, I made sure I went out every day and took at least a couple of shots with my camera.  I used the best one of the bunch to post at 365 and sometimes posted others in my reserve album.  The third year, I used the reserve album as my main album, but  I decided that I wasn't going to be so uptight about it this year.  I wanted to post great photos every day, not just average stuff I'd taken on a particular day, so I resorted to filler shots when I either didn't pick up my camera, or didn't like what I'd taken so far.

Eventually, there came a point where I decided that the process behind 365 was done in my mind and I ended the project.  This doesn't mean that I've stopped taking photos.  On the contrary, I'm just posting them in a different format on Flicker now.

I'm involved in several different projects over at Flicker.  One project is a 52 week challenge.  Take and post a photo each week based upon a theme.  The tomato shot above is this week's entry into the "Smartphonography" challenge for this week.  Not having a smartphone, I got explore my iPad a little bit and use some of the camera settings on it.

I'll continue to work on my 100 Strangers Project.  With 37 stranger shots taken in 10 months I've been averaging 3.7 strangers per month.  When I first started, I figured I'd have that project done in less than a year.  Well, it just goes to show you that taken shots of strangers is a much more difficult task to undertake than I realized at the time.

I'm also involved in a monthly blogger photo challenge.  Last month's challenge was a night time challenge.  The month before was all about transportation.  This month, the theme is Bridges, so expect to see some bridges near the end of the month.  And, as always, there will be my weekly entry for the Sharpshooters International Photography Club.  As you can see, I'm still quite busy, photographically.

I've been going through some of my archived shots and dealing with them.  I've already looked at several PhotoShop tutorials on things that I want to try.  If you click on the Flicker link above or here, you'll be taken to my photostream.  Feel free to add me as a contact so you can follow along there.  

Photo Blogging Challenge (May 2013): Night

I've been out of commission for a couple of weeks mainly because the last two to three weeks of school are just incredibly busy that I don't have much time for anything else.  This is only my 3rd post this month, by far and away, my lowest monthly total for this year.  Now that vacation time is hear, I have more free time to explore other things and that also includes blogging more frequently than I have been this month.  

As noted in the title, the photo blogging challenge for this week was night.  I have several different shots, but some that are very similar as I did a lot of night time photography this month.

1.  Jellyfish

A couple of weeks ago, I made a quick trip down to San Diego to go to Sea World.  They had a deal for teachers that if you went to the park on a voucher they provided for you, you'd get in free, plus get a year pass good for the rest of the year.  I couldn't pass that up.  

Most of the jellyfish exhibits I've seen at aquariums are always in simulated night environments, probably because jellyfish are more deepwater creatures so they don't need or get a whole lot of light in the first place.  If you ever get to one of these exhibits, you can get mesmerized by these floating disks of jelly very easily.  It's a very peaceful and calming thing to view if you crowd out of your mind the stinging tentacles that most jellyfish tend to have.

2.  Evolution

In the town where I live, we have a new shopping area completed just a couple of years ago, including a very nice movie theater.  In the center of the square, opposite the theater's entrance is this nice fountain, complete with stair step waterfalls cascading down to different tiers in the fountain.  At night there are lights under the water that illuminate it.

Included in the fountain are what look like salamanders, eels and fish, slowly evolving and coming out of the early "primordial sea" of Earth.  Several of these creatures are also reading books.  I chose to process this one in B&W.  I liked the flowing water, but I wanted the attention to also focus on the salamander reading its book.  With the light in orange and red, I think that would have drawn the viewer's eye away from the salamander and to the lights and the water.

3.  Heavenly bodies


I had about 20 seconds to set this shot up.  Our church fiesta was in full swing and I had been walking around taking shots of the various amusement rides at the fiesta, when I spotted the crescent moon just about to drop behind the trees.

I had the camera on the tripod already, so it was just a matter of setting it up, composing the shot and triggering the shutter.  The ride was slowing down, so I had one chance to get the light trails before the moon disappeared behind the trees.  As a bonus, I also got Jupiter shining brightly above the moon.

4.  The movie theater

This is the marquee for our movie theater.  To get to the theater, you have to walk under the marquee, between several restaurants and past the fountain I described above.  I've taken shots similar to this before, but that was back when I didn't have as good a working knowledge of my camera like I feel I have now.

This shot was a matter of timing.  I had to watch down the street and wait for cars to come by.  Just leaving the shutter on washed the shot out very quickly as the lit marquee is surprisingly bright.  Just a couple of seconds of open shutter was enough to get a good image on this shot.  I would have preferred to have continuous streaks of both headlights and taillights, but traffic was light last night when I was taking those shots, so I had to take what was given to me.

5.  The Statue

There's not a statue in this shot, but if you look in the lower right hand corner, you'll see a man in an orange shirt who is remarkably in focus.  This photo is an 8 second exposure, which is why I call this shot the statue.  

I've actually used this particular shot in another challenge set up by P.J. earlier this month, but I wanted to include it in this five shot set, because of this guy.  During photography's infancy, it was common to have most people's photos taken when they were sitting down so it would be easier to control movement.  Most exposures lasted 30 seconds or longer, so many of the chairs they sat in actually had neck braces to help the subject hold their heads still.  A photo of a Civil War battle is incredibly rare although I know at least one does exist.  Most of the Civil War photos were taken after the battles were done, mainly because dead bodies tend not to move.

I think the reason why this guy is actually so still is he wasn't aware I was taking his photo.  He probably would have been self conscious had he known and swayed slightly, making him a blur much like the other guy standing in front of the ride.  Looking over some of my other shots taken with this one, I'm still amazed at how many people really do stay fairly still over long exposures.

Once you're done, head on over to PJs place to see other bloggers interpretation of the night.

Lastly, I would like to apologize to the other bloggers who posted photos last month.  I never was able to get around and look at your shots and I will make that up over the next couple of days.  I look forward to seeing your interpretations of the night.

Spring Break

Spring break has sprung!  I just looked and realized I haven't posted in a week, so I figured I'd get you up to date on things.  It's Spring Break and unlike many school districts our district has decided to have two full weeks off.  I love it for several reasons.

Everyone says Christmas break is great.  Bah.  Christmas break is a cruel break.  You spend the first week running around gearing up for Christmas and then spend the next week running around gearing up for New Year's.  If the actual holiday falls early in the week, then you might have three or four days in which to actually rest and recuperate. And, if the weather's bad, you still have to go out, because things need to get done.

But Spring break?  Two weeks with nothing to do.  Nothing to really shop for, and no place that you "have" to go.  The weather's nicer, the days are longer and if you get an occasional bad weather day, you can curl up inside with a good book and a good movie and just enjoy the day.

Since the break started, I've been out geocaching a couple of times, once by myself and once with my good friend Jim.  The latter was more enjoyable because it was with someone else, however I found more caches the first day.  But it's not about the numbers is it?

The front lawn has been mowed and the back lawn will be mowed.  The plan is to do that tomorrow and then work the garden soil and plant many different kinds of sunflowers.  Two years ago, we planted sunflowers and tomatoes.  That didn't work too well.  I've discovered sunflowers need lots of water, but tomatoes need to be stressed.  They need water, but you have to stress them out with long dry periods in order for them to produce good fruit.

The first year, our tomato yield was negligible, while we had glorious sunflowers as evidenced by the photos.  The next year, I figured the seeds that were dropped from the year before would sprout new sunflowers.  They did, but they didn't do very well, because I wasn't watering the area as much.  Great tomatoes that year, but the sunflowers were lucky to get 2 feet high or 2 inches in diameter.  This year, the sunflowers will occupy one area and the tomatoes another area.  Hopefully I'll get good yields from both.  

Taxes need to be done this week.  Then next week, I'll be taking a nice road trip up to the bay area to visit with my daughter and celebrate her birthday.  We're planning on going to San Francisco on her actual birthday and being tourists.  I'm looking forward to it since I haven't been to San Francisco in 25 years.  

Yes, there are things to do, but there's no deadline on them as long as they get done by the end of the break.  It's a much more relaxed kind of deadline.  This is the kind of break I like.