Florida. I love Florida, can you tell?
These three personable palm trees I photographed at St. Augustine.



Even though this is an osprey, he kept making me think of the song 'Hej Sokoły.' (Polish national song...it means 'Hey, falcon.' Don't listen to it. It's catchy). Anyhow, I took a lot of pictures to get this one.



This lovely gator is technically "the one that got away." I had forgotten my zoom in the house, and subsequently, missed out on a photograph that could have appeared to have been taken from only a few feet away. And I couldn't get a picture of his fascinating tail.

Dragonfly larvae. (I believe).




This is one of my favorites. A boat came through and made these wonderful ripples.
Mist in the early morning.

Here I become rather obsessed with reflection. When I was younger I thought it was bad luck to see my reflection in the lake, so I wouldn't look. It's actually sort of cool. The water was, one evening in particular, just like a looking glass.
Snail eggs. They were a delicate pink color that doesn't even show up as nicely as it did in person.



More reflections...

This is also one of my most mourned photographs. If it had been more centered, the heron and his reflection would have been frame-worthy.





I like this island a lot, as you can probably tell. It has a lot of character. One day I'm going to buy a canoe and go chasing alligators all over it. (It's too swampy to really walk across, though).

So, that is my Florida trip, summed up in pictures. Maybe I'll add my St. Augustine photographs later.

This Summer

Well, I haven't posted anything in a while, so I thought I'd just write a thing or two about what I've been doing lately. I have this nagging feeling that I need to hold my blogging claim down.

Hanging out in the woods . . .It makes me feel all Pathfinder-y. :-)

...Writing a lot. Although not in the picturesque manner depicted below. It's more like this:

Sit at the computer. Get distracted because I left the French dictionary on my desk open. (Who knew that 'être perdus' means 'get lost' in French? C'mon, that's useful knowledge right there. You never know when you may get harassed by some confused French tourist).

Settle down to write again...hear suspicious activity in the hallway...leap up to help my sleepwalking brother to the bathroom before anything unsanitary happens...sit down to write again, wondering how I can use the previous experience to help me feel what I'm writing better...start humming and thinking about what I'm going to wear tomorrow--and then rattle off ten pages of what is now probably watered-down, pulp-fiction-writer-on-a-bad-day (the remnants of my creativity). Then I realise it's one o'clock. [Who reset my clock?!?! Who reset all the clocks?!?!] Yeah. And then I go to bed.

I just sort posed that picture because I thought it looked so pretty and romantic. I'm sure writers in Oz have set-ups like that, anyways.

I'm assuming that since I write for pleasure (or at least, that's what I tell myself), people who write as a job have it really rough. Gosh, they might actually have to write straight through twenty minutes, without stopping once to play a game of thought-provoking solitaire!

So, back on topic:

Sewing...this is something I'm making for my sister's Civil War doll. Actually I've done a lot more to it since this picture was taken. I've some other projects to, all of which I had honest intentions of posting about. I'm sure I will. . . soon . . .

. . .Getting very excited about two movies: Where the Wild Things Are;

and Sherlock Holmes with Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law. I've watched both movie trailers about five times.

I've also been waiting for the Holmes movie for well over a year now, which does a lot to increase the suspense and make one prepared to be happy with anything. (By anything I mean Mr. Downey). Anyways, I don't want anything for Christmas except tickets to see the Holmes film! And I really want to take my little brother Josiah to see Wild Things--it's his favorite book ever. I think I've probably read it at least sixty times in the past month. I can actually recite the whole book in its entirety.

Looking at mushrooms, and being prevented from eating them by my mother...

Watching airplanes take off and land, which was surprisingly fun--every time they go down that runway, you think: it's impossible. How can something like that lift off the ground and fly? But it always does. ;-D (Kudos to the Wright brothers).

Also, I've watched Into the West. Wonderful series! Very realistic and historically accurate, as far as I could tell. Of course I have a thing or two to say about their erratic character follow-up. Advice to Steven Spielberg: if you're going to put your name on something, make sure their plot development is flawless! Really, we've come to expect better from you!

But other than that, it was wonderful. ;-)

And also, I'm reading Jane Austen and vintage science fiction simultaneously; an activity I highly recommend to everybody.

So, there you have it.

At The Museum

Here are some pictures from our more recent trip to the science museum:

That's Maura, and David in the background. There's a little man-made stream running through the children's play area, which is in a little courtyard. (It's sometimes a live butterfly exhibit). The stream is headed by the decapitated statue of a turtle, whom I suspect was placed in the position he currently is in by some child who found the courtyard too dull. Or else the heat got to him.

And here is Benny, having fun on the rock wall, which is no challenge to him at all. . .(yes, I am jealous. . .)

Josiah and I.

And here we are, having a fabulous time. Until I stepped off and realized I was fabulously nauseous. But, nevertheless, I'd do it again...

This Summer (so far)

Well, here I am, back again, trying to write something after a very interesting summer, and despite the fact that my computer seems intent on translating my posts into Hindi. Which is strange, because I don't even read Hindi.
Like I said, we've had an interesting summer. Went to see some relatives in New York--I tried to post from there, actually, but the computer and I just weren't working well together so I decided to wait until I got home.
The day we came home I was rather sick, and the next day was a bit sicker, but felt better after that. Unfortunately Josiah and Maura, who are four and two, got sick as well. They both had it pretty bad. But Josiah got better and Maura didn't. She was up all night for days with agonizing stomach cramps that kept she and my parents from sleeping. They were all very exhausted. It was so painful she never wanted me to even help her--she always wanted my mom.
Finally it all culminated rather dramatically, and my sister was taken to the urgent care. . . and then the ER. . . her blood sugar was amazingly high.
So she was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes and taken to Levine Children's Hospital. The staff was spectacular there, very kind and understanding. I think she was there for three days.
Initially she hated the idea of shots, but has adapted to the idea rather quickly. Although she still hates having to have two shots at bedtime. . . altogether she has five shots a day. She's going to get an insulin pump eventually. Diabetic people with pumps generally live longer, healthier lives. It makes it easy to closely monitor your body and therefore respond more accurately to one's own specific needs.
So that's that. We've all been eating much more healthily, which has been very good for all of us. It would appear that Maura also has Celiac's Disease, so she can't have wheat, and while the rest of us had been doing so (although much less than we used to) but we've all stopped eating sugary foods. Although my parents and I still have sugar in our coffee and I frantically scrounge up sweets whenever given the opportunity, because I am an addict.
However, I've been jogging (almost!) every evening. At least I think I'm jogging. . . maybe I'm running. I don't know what I do. But anyways, I do it. And I've been drinking the proper amount of water, which makes all the difference.
My mom is getting on in her pregnancy. She has a beautiful round belly, and we've actually started making baby-coming preparations--getting clothes out for it and things like that. I'd sort of like another brother, but I won't mind if it's a girl, either. A girl would balance things out!
So that's our summer so far. . .