Link-Laden Friday... Man, I Wish Friday Started with an L

Am I tired or what? This Monday was the first Monday we've been in school since 13 December, which means this is the longest Warner Chilcotting week I've had in a while. (Nerdfighters will understand the reference. Everyone else: Urban Dictionary.) Anyway... I've been a bit more inspired as the week drew to a close. Let's see what we've got...

Here's Lele's purse (she of "Into the Unknown" fame) as it sat on the floor of the Literary Magazine classroom this afternoon. Lele always looks so stylish.

Sweet Ben... it took him a while to realize I was trying to get a photo of him (he and the girl behind him both thought I was trying to capture her), but when he cottoned on, he struck this lovely pose for me.

My teacher projects the computer at the front of the room onto this projection screen so that we can share our designs and ideas. I just wish she had a more interesting desktop wallpaper!

This shelf will endlessly amuse anyone who is familiar with the "In Your Pants" phenomenon (watch from 2:38 to the end and prepare to explode with laughter).

Loyal readers will recall that several days ago (at least. I don't really remember), I posted a picture very like this one. But you will note that in the other, the lights were on. I'll keep working on this one; watch for progress.

Ahh, so tasty... vanilla ice cream with chocolate syrup in a heart-covered mug. How much better does Thursday night get? (Yes, I took this yesterday.)

 It's Frank! Again. I'm sorry, he's just so darned photogenic.

I love kiwi... I hadn't taken any pictures yesterday, and then I came home and realized we still had one of these babies lying around. Kiwis make GREAT photos.

Case in point:

That's all for today, folks. Have fun with the links - I promise none of them will give you viruses. And tomorrow is the weekend! Hooray for... sleeping in?

Here I Am!

I haven't forgotten you, bloggy. Here are my pics from the last... wow, 3 and a half days? Let's get on with it, then. I won't even try to pretend I know what day some of these were taken.

I decided to experiment with mirrors... this one is not very eye-catching, but it was fun to take!

There, I like this better. My history teacher's giant world map is endlessly fascinating.

Not exactly the look I was going for... these are Christmas lights strung on the ceiling, and I wanted to capture what they look like when I take off my glasses. Unfortunately, simply manipulating the depth of focus didn't help.

Three fabrics in one! I've wanted to do a week of fabrics for a long time, so here's a sneak preview: my tights, skirt, and coat (yes, I wore my coat inside - the school is an icebox!).

Hooray, sour cream. I picked a hair out of mine. That's cafeteria food for ya.

I've seen shots kinda like this on 365, with colored pencils or crayons, and Expos were what I had handy. Not the greatest shot, but colorful!

Aha, the Dusk/Dawn photos I promised. Here's a view of the sunset at the end of our street. I can't get over how beautiful the sky is.

It's even pinker in this shot... so pretty.

Here's St. Francis, patron saint of small animals I think (which fits, since we have 6 mini dachshunds).

I always carry some Altoids in my purse... I think it was my aunt who originally turned me on to them.

This is the brand of pencil I use. There must be seven or eight in my purse right now - I always put more in there in case I lose one!

My (deteriorating) mini-Rubik's cube, given to me by a friend for my birthday last August:

Mini Rubik's Cube next to BIG DADDY RUBIK'S CUBE!

The next three show a montage of the cube slowly being dismantled. First, we see the cube whole:

Next, we remove a few pieces (which is difficult to start but then gets easy):

In the end we're left with 20 individual cubelets (12 edges and 8 corners) plus in the inside mechanism:

This makes me so happy... I found my dad's old Nikon EM this morning. It has 3 different lenses and a mini tripod... so happy!

This is one type of table we have in the school cafeteria. Others are round with backless seats, and others still are rectangular (also with backless seats). Obviously these ones are prime real estate.

When I walked into the lunch room and saw this out the window, the first thing I said was, "How absolutely beautiful. There's nothing like a good fog." Seriously, y'all, I was supposed to be British.

My lunch was smiling at me!

At least for the rest of this week, I will try to update more often. The tough stuff (papers, tests, meetings) has passed without incident, so I should have a little more free time. And maybe I'll figure out how to use that old Nikon and get some FILM pictures going on up in here! Yeah!

Are You Hungry?

Most of yesterday's pictures are of food, so I apologize to those who are hungry and not in reach of food.

I was feeling pretty nerdy last night after finishing my physics homework, so I decided to bring back my chemistry days and build a model of glucose (out of - what else?- marshmallows).

I realize now that I made a couple of minor errors in the arrangement of my marshmallow-atoms (yellow hydrogens should always be on the outside of the OH bonds, since they can't also bond to carbon), but I'm still proud of my nerd art.

Whoops, Betsy actually took this one! We have these food coloring markers, which are what I used to color my "atoms," and she decided to use all four of them on one marshmallow. Kinda pretty, isn't it?

Hamburgers for dinner! This is where I started getting crop-happy in my post-processing.

Aren't these pink roses beautiful? Wal-Mart had a whole display of flowers when we were there getting cheese. (Not having cheese is very serious.)

Man, do I miss biting into these suckers. But with braces, that's a big no-no. They're supposed to come off soon, though, and I bet you can guess which "prohibited" food I'll return to first!

This photo really looks like I've messed with the color and saturation, but it's actually SOOC (straight out of camera). By our driveway, we have a faded brick wall on which moss grows.

I haven't taken very many awesome shots today... Maybe I'll go outside and try out the Dusk/Dawn setting Betsy's been raving about. Updates to come.

Title Goes Here

Obviously I'm feeling less than creative today. Here are my photos from Thursday and yesterday.

The extra batteries I've taken to carrying in my purse... because you never know when your camera might spontaneously die on you.

A pen. The subject here isn't as interesting as the angle, in my opinion.

It's Ben! I think I freaked him out when I took this picture because when I saw how his sunglasses were throwing that reflection onto his face, I said "DON'T MOVE!" Not of the best quality, but I like that you can see his fuzzy beard. :P

These are my keys... neither to a car, of course. The green one is my house key and the other is to our family's public storage unit.

The kid next to me sure did look at me oddly while I took this, because I had to hold it in the air while snapping the photo. It's the liberty bell key chain on which I keep my keys ^

This one also earned me some weird looks... a ribbon tied around a tube of lipstick. I wanted to play around with something fairly small, since I just figured out how to turn on macro mode!

This photo definitely doesn't capture what I wanted it to. The morning was really cold and foggy, and the swing was sort of rising out of the mist... lost here, of course.

It's the Dark Mark! Run for your lives! (From the "Harry Potter Film Wizardry" book my brother got me for Christmas)

This one was almost my favorite yesterday (or was it Thursday? I dunno). I love the focus and the reflection and the lighting... I just love it.

In other news, I've taken on a huge project - a fellow girl scout and I, along with our sisters, are going to plan and direct this year's summer day camp. Hopefully this will be a big opportunity for me, photographically and leadership-wise. We'll be introducing ourselves and our ideas at Monday's leader meeting - wish us luck!

It's Mathemagical!

I have to start this off by saying that if you're not familiar with the amazing work of Vi Hart (youtube.com/vihart), you are MISSING OUT. Go subscribe to her immediately.

Vi was my inspiration yesterday, since I started my day by watching a couple of her newest videos. This resulted in my entire day being rather... mathemagical. See for yourself:

Here is Sierpinski's triangle (6th degree, I believe), which I definitely spelled wrong in the picture. Sorry about that. But y'all, I had so much fun devising a way to draw an equilateral triangle without a protractor. I am nerd central.

A bit of Sierpinski's triangle atop a bit of Pascal's triangle. (If you circle the odd numbers in the latter, the former will appear. How cool is that?)

And of course, a möbius strip. These things are way too much fun.

Moving right along, here are today's (less interesting) pictures:

I don't like the focus on this. It's not a real flute - it's a Christmas ornament that's about four inches long. For some reason it was in my purse, so I photographed it. (This is called desperation.)

A much better shot! I love the shadows here. This one was shot right after I FINALLY figured out how to use the macro mode on my camera. How could it be so simple? Doh!

This is the brand of water stocked by my school cafeteria. My friends and I have taken to calling it Nazi Springs.

I took both of these water shots at out National English Honor Society meeting this morning. I was just sitting there shaking the bottle because I liked the sound it made, and finally my Emily twin reached over, grabbed the bottle, and said, "STOP!" So I did. But I photographed the moment, so ha.

Also: news on the photography course being offered next year. We were given our course selection forms today - this is always one of my favorite times of the year, because I'm a nerd like that. And *gasp* the course catalog shows Art I as a prerequisite of Photography! I've never taken art class because I SUCK SUCK SUCK at drawing and the like, but I think my Literary Magazine advisor is going to talk to the art teachers. Being on the magazine staff has given me a lot of art and photography training, and I've even attended training sessions at the ASPA state conventions. So really, I'm probably just as qualified as somebody who took Art 1 because he needed a fine art credit. I hope things work out on this... some real instruction would mean so much to me!