Kind of the Most Amazing Thing Ever

Possibly. It's pretty cool. I like it.

Ahem. Behold:

Fire in a glass! Except not really. I saw a much better version of this cool trick on the 365 website (here) and have been dying to try it. What you do is use a white background and drop blue food coloring into a glass of water. Then in post-processing you make it a negative and voila! Fire in a glass. I'll keep trying until I get a really excellent one, but this is the best one I got today.

Testing 123

Howdy, folks. I know I haven't posted the rest of my vacation pics (that post is in progress!) or anything from last week (they're still on my card!), but I have a good reason.

I'm busy.

I know: oldest excuse in the book. But it's true. All my life I've basically had school and the occasional Girl Scout meeting. But all of a sudden, like this semester, I have a TON of stuff to do. Yesterday I spent four hours at Day Camp training, had an hour at home, and then spent another four hours at a fellow Girl Scout's house for movie night. The day before, I spent twelve hours in Tuscaloosa for a journalism workshop.

I know that all this stuff I do is optional and I COULD just stay home and eat bonbons and post to my blog all day (now from the comfort of my bed with this Blogger app!), but... I don't know. Suddenly I, like, want to do stuff. As tired as it makes me and as little time I'm left for the things I used to do, I kind of love all this running around and seeing the world. I'm going to New York City in two weeks, y'all. All kinds of opportunities are knocking, and now that I've figured out how to open the door, we're having a pretty great time in here.

Vacation = Photo Binge

Okay, so I might have gone a little overboard on the photography on this trip, y'all. How many did you take, Emily? Um... a few... How many? Oh all right... like, 160. *is shocked into silence*

So yeah, I took a lot of photos. But they're pretty! Wanna see?

These in the first batch were all taken at Baylor Academy in Chattanooga. We met with the choir there and performed with and for them. It's such a beautiful campus, with all these trees (young and old) and big brick buildings.

Here's a different and brighter shot of that same tree. I took these while we were out on the lawn for a fire drill. Funny story, that - remind me to tell you.

Holy muffins, they had REAL plates and REAL pizza and it was delicious. I was very impressed.

I think this is the computer science building, through a tree.

My choir director spotted me taking this photo of a bush and complimented me for taking such artistic shots.

Another iteration of my favorite winter image - a bare tree against a cloudy sky.

Because I'm weird, staircases fascinate me. They're always one of the first things I look at when I visit a university campus, and I really liked these.

Baylor abuts the Tennessee River, and they own the island you can see in the background there.

This is definitely the computer science building. It looks so tall and imposing - I love it.

So that was Friday (actually we also went to Hamilton Place Mall and a murder mystery dinner show, but I didn't take any pictures), so let's move on to Saturday. I'll probably put most of it in another post, but here's a little taste.

This is the view as we rode our giant tour bus up the mountain to Ruby Falls. I love how even the really big buildings look tiny when you're up that high.

Our view of the TN River on the way up was simply breathtaking.

Here are a couple of "down in the caves" pictures. Mostly you can't really tell what it's supposed to be (and more often that not it isn't supposed to be anything), but they're still pretty.

See, isn't the light kinda nice? This one almost puts me in mind of a giant bonfire or something, just with the way the light is shaped.

3 flags outside the caves - Tennessee, the United States, and Ruby Falls.

Under the flags was this lovely water feature, which the choir sat in front of to have our picture taken.

After touring the caves you can walk up several flights of stairs to this observation tower...

...where the view is something like this. It's pretty spectacular.

 Oh wait, another cave picture. This one is more my speed. I'm a macro girl, through and through.

My friends actually laughed at me for stopping to capture this. I responded, "Y'all, this fire hydrant is GORGEOUS!"

And of course, the falls. SO pretty. When you walk into the "room," it's all dark and there's quiet music playing.

Then, as the music reaches its most exciting moment, the lights are thrown on and the wonder of Ruby Falls is revealed.

You can even walk around behind the water (if you don't mind being splashed a little), where you can better see the mechanism used to create the color effects.

That ought to do it for this post, folks. When I've done my other stuff I'll post about Rock City and the aquarium.

Oh yeah, the fire drill story. See, at my school the fire alarms have a tendency to go off rather often. Often enough that they've now put in the official school literature that a real fire will be signaled by a bell AND an announcement. So when we were sitting around in Baylor's choir room and the fire alarm went off (which we later learned was because their director had just turned on the heat), we just sort of looked around, unconcerned. Finally somebody from Baylor was like, "Um... guys, I think we should evacuate." It just didn't occur to us that we should do anything until an announcement was made. That's fire safety at its finest. :D

Why Am I Not in Bed Yet?

I have to get up at four tomorrow, y'all. Then I have to be at school by 5:30, and the buses pull out at six. This is my first choir trip - we're going to Chattanooga. Wish me luck, and look out for some EPIC photos of caves and such! Meanwhile, here are this week's:

This photo does not do justice to the beauty of this rose. It was given to the girl next to me in choir by a (very cute) member of the show choir who is wooing her. He's so sweet, and they're so cute together...

Yes, I have weird fingers. Are we past that now? Good. This week's theme is hearts, so on Monday, ALL I photographed were hearts.

...and kisses. How could I not?

Somebody who loves him gave Ben this awesome slinky:

Hooray for occasional cooperation of sucky cameras! It actually decided to focus for once, and I got this really cool shot of some candy hearts.

Only one photo on Tuesday, which I uploaded to the project site, so here are Wednesday's extras. These hands belong to AEon, a friend of my sister's.

We can almost NEVER find wintergreen tic-tacs around here, so when mom found some she bought, like, eleven. MAN, I love these tic-tacs...

And... today. I only thought to take a picture after the sun had set and I was about to set off home from a friend's house, so I took a couple of shots of the tree outside their house. This is the worse one - I uploaded the other to the project site.

Tomorrow and/or Sunday will be absolutely FILLED with awesome photos. We're going to Ruby Falls, guys! Have you ever been there? Golly, it's pretty. I'm not going to be able to choose a favorite. Be on the look-out!

It's Today!

And the only pictures I have for you are from... wait for it... TODAY! I'm so cool. Here they are:

First, to mark the date. I had plenty of ideas and knew I'd take a more interesting photo than this, but I still did it. The angle appeals to me.

More book hearts! I told you I'd come back to this. And with tomorrow being Valentine's Day and this week's 365 theme being hearts, how could I not?

I like the bit of the text that you can see in this one: "angels' wings" on the left and "I have the power" on the right. Very uplifting, and I didn't even mean to do it!

This is the book I used for the hearts, Rebel Angels by Libba Bray. It is undeniably fantastic - you must read it immediately.

I tried some really cool stuff with this lens, but in the end my camera simply wouldn't cooperate (regular readers will remember that I have a very unruly camera). So here's a simple shot of a lens and its cap, backlit by my creepily glowing blinds.

Along with the old camera and lenses that used to belong to my dad, I also have this cute little mini-tripod. I can't really figure out how to attach it to the camera, but that's okay! It's still cute!

And finally, a shot similar to today's favorite. I've seen this done with various items: matches, markers, etc. So I just had to try it out to kick off my "hearty" week. It's not the best, since I prefer taking natural shots to having to set them up, but I like it. I really like it.

Random note: psychology is a powerful thing, y'all. I made some microwave fettuccine alfredo for dinner, which of course my aunt said looked anemic. She's always saying things look anemic. So to appease her (and also because I thought it would be cool), I got out the green food coloring and added a few drops. Boy, was that a mistake. Don't get me wrong - it tasted just fine. But the psychological aspect was almost more than I could bear. Seriously, kids: don't try this at home.

I'm So Bad At This!

LIVE! (Nerdfighters will get the joke here. It's totally jokes.)

So... I haven't posted since Monday. It's been a super-busy week, though. Tuesday was the return of Glee, Wednesday I got my 120 boxes of Girl Scout cookies (110-ish of which have to go to school!), Thursday was Write Night (an event put on by the literary magazine staff to raise money to print the magazine), and yesterday I was just freaking tired. So here I am on Saturday, having just binge-shot some photos because I realized I hadn't taken even one yet today. May I present to you Tuesday through Saturday?

Tuesday's batch consisted of only 2 photos, one of which was of course uploaded to the project site. This is the other, a text-message from Ben promising me a rather wonderful title once we're married:

Yes, I really do use phrases like "pray tell." Perhaps I've been reading too much Gemma Doyle. Who knows?

On to Wednesday! My wonderful baby sister, who had had oral surgery just hours before, took it upon herself to make a double batch of chocolate chip cookies for Write Night. Mmm...

I love the fact that the measuring spoon and the measuring cup match, even though we didn't buy them together. These are the little things that make me smile.

Speaking of me smiling, Wednesday night brought a happy surprise for us: snow! When I saw it coming down, I donned my coat and hurried out into the night, were the snowflakes collected in my hair. And, of course, I took pictures. Major white balance here because porch lights make SUCKY photos:

With Thursday came Write Night! I was excused from my last three classes to help with set up, and during that time I got some cute photos (before my camera died... alas!). This little guy is part of a massive art display, an amusement park made almost entirely of toothpicks.

I think most of these are gels from the theater department, which we used on the lights in the lobby.

The t-shirt! I know it's a little blurry - this photo depended on Tracy and me standing still, and apparently at least one of us didn't.

Ah yes, the lights with the gels. It looks odd here, but in the evening with half the lights off and the other half gelled, it looked pretty darn spectacular.

Ben had some art displayed at the art show! This is part of his drawing of an astronaut on the moon.

I took this one right after I took yesterday's favorite, which is of two whole cookies. My photo shoot made me hungry!

When I saw that Betsy was using my heart mug for her ice cream I was mad, but she made it up to me by letting me photograph her creation. Yes, those are Thin Mints!

Gah, I HATE the focus in this one. I was just so glad to finally have my Girl Scout cookies.

This one is better - and it shows some of my favorite cookies! In fact I could really go for a Trefoil right about now...

A random shot of the inside of my purse, shared with you purely because the quality is stunning. The whites are so white and the image is so crisp - and I didn't have to edit it at all! Score one for the point-and-shoot.

My history classroom:

It it today yet? Finally. This shot is way less cool than I thought it would be. It's the pattern in the glass of our front door, backlit by the porch light. Meh.

A nighttime recreation of my not-so-famous sundial shot. Nothing to write home about, but I like it.

The lighting in this one was really horrible, so I tried to white balance it. Sometimes you can only do so much, though, so I just decided to get drastic. I turned the blacks way up and decreased the saturation, and here is the result. I kinda like it!

A close second for favorite of the day: tonight's light source. I love our porch lights; they're so pretty. If this photo were somehow a little brighter, it would have been the winner.

Hoorah! I'm finished! Now I can go to sleep. I was supposed to be off the computer half an hour ago, but I knew if I didn't do this now it'd be another five days. Hopefully next week I will be more on top of things, eh? Cross your fingers!