The first tomato I’ve picked this year

Yellow Plum Tomato

Delicious, and less acidic than red tomatoes.

Gardening is fun.

Photos: passion flower

Today I had the good fortune to be able to see a passion flower bloom. I took photos of the different stages as the morning went on, but wasn’t happy with most of them. However, I did manage to get a couple of good shots once it had fully bloomed.

Please click photos to enlarge if you like.

Passion Flower, top-view

Passion Flower, angled-view

These flowers don’t stay in bloom for more than a day, so it was nice to be able to photograph this one!

Photos from the first half of June

I haven’t posted many photos recently, so I figured I had better get in gear, empty my camera onto the computer, and see what I had.

I haven’t taken as many pictures as I would have liked. I have this habit of forgetting to take my camera with me when I walk sometimes. However, I did find a few beautiful (or interesting) pictures from the past couple of weeks.

Please click photos to see full-size versions.

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The first two are from June 7th, when I decided to walk around the west end of town for a bit.

On Chestnut St.

Flower box

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The next photo was taken during my walk to Central Market last Friday (June 11th).

Soldiers and Sailors Monument, Penn Square, Lancaster

Information on the Soldiers and Sailors monument can be found here.

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There is a lot of construction going on in Lancaster right now, and on that same walk, I came across this door. It made me grin… you can see the construction workers coming down the stairs to thrash me for being a brat!

Eh... there's probably nothing of value in there anyway.

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Finally, here is a picture of my view from the back porch today. After a couple of hazy days, today has been beautiful, with low humidity, a nice breeze, and temperatures in the mid 70s. I took this photo, and then I did about two hours of yard work.

A beautiful blue sky!

Cottontail

This afternoon I took my first good photograph of an animal! Prior to this, I had never been able to get a good shot.

I was sitting on the porch, talking on the phone with my father, and noticed this Eastern Cottontail sitting a few feet from my car. So I grabbed the camera, zoomed in, and started sneaking down the steps, shooting as I went. I made it to the bottom step before it took off, and this is one of the closer pictures I was able to take.

Eastern Cottontail

Moving beyond WoW: hobbies, and the power of suggestion

I pretty much hated Silithis, but it made for a cool pic.

Last week I wrote a post about how well I’ve been adjusting to life without World of Warcraft. For the most part, I have had far fewer cravings for the game than I had expected, and have even felt very uninspired with respect to finishing up the feral druid articles that I had been working on at the time I decided to take a break.

World of Warcraft… and the power of suggestion

So a couple of days after I published that article, a friend of mine posted a “come back to WoW” comment on my Facebook page.

And this is where the title of this post comes from. The simple suggestion by that person reopened my mind to WoW. The call of the game, and the corresponding opportunity to be with friends, made a stronger impression with me than either of us could have anticipated!

So, does this mean I go back? For the time being, no. I still need time away from the game, and if I do play again, it will be in a different situation, with a smaller time commitment and different objectives. I’ll mix some of the familiar with the unfamiliar, exploring parts of the game that don’t necessitate a regular raid schedule. But now is not the time yet.

Each day has felt like forever, and yet the past month has flown by. It’s interesting how that happens…

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During this break, I’ve engaged myself in hobbies and activities that I had previously not taken the time to enjoy when I was playing. First and foremost, I’ve been reading a lot.

Books

Last week,  Franklin & Marshall held their annual used book sale, a three-day event. I went over with a friend on Monday (May 24), the first day, and between the two of us we bought around 35 books for under $50! I was able to pick up about a dozen Agatha Christie novels (Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot), as well as three of Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles series, a Lord Peter Wimsey short story collection, and a couple of Sherlock Holmes pastiches. With paperbacks at 50 cents apiece, it was difficult to go wrong!

I’m a big fan of Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (and those authors who lovingly craft tales that attempt to fill in holes in the Holmes canon), and other authors of mystery fiction from the last half of the 19th-century through middle of the 20th. I suppose that my interest comes partially from watching so much of the PBS program  ”Mystery” while I was growing up. At any rate, I can devour these books fairly easily, and if I get tired of one, I’m usually in the process of reading three to five books at any given time, so I eventually finish them all!

I’ve also recently picked up The Second Rumpole Omnibus, a collection which I had set down about eighteen months ago and forgotten about. I left off at a story that I wasn’t enjoying, but I am determined to power through it and move on to stories that I’m sure I will enjoy more.

Finally, I’ve recently started rereading the second to last book in Jack Whyte’s Camulod Chronicles, The Lance Thrower. I’ve only ever read each of the last two books in the series once, and I’d like to read them again in order to have a better understanding of what happened. For anyone interested in historical fiction and an Arthurian theme, the entire nine-book series is highly recommended.

I tend to read books multiple times, which I guess is strange. However, a book that I enjoy is almost always a book that I can read more than once, since I tend to get new things out of it on a second or third read-through.

There are some local bookstores downtown that I’d like to check out on one of my walks, so perhaps I’ll be able to pick up some more treasures in the near future.

Music

In addition to constantly uploading music to my hard drive, I’ve been playing more guitar lately. While my intention has always been that I would play my guitar every day, I had let it go this year to the point where I was almost never playing. As someone who loves to play guitar, noticing the callouses disappear from my fingertips was disheartening, and when I would occasionally attempt to play, both my muscle memory and fingertips were so ill-equipped that I would put down the instrument after a few minutes… And the cycle continued – disillusionment led to less playing, which led to more disillusionment when I’d try to play again, and so on.

Lately, since I moved out of my old place, I’ve gotten the opportunity to spend more time outside. I have, of course, been walking and taking pictures, but I’ve also spent a lot of time sitting on the porch, reading or looking at my surroundings. Being in a new place, and more exposed to the outdoors, has inspired me to pick up the guitar at times. As such, I played more guitar in the last three weeks of May than I did from January through April combined. I haven’t yet played a long session, and I’ve done very little as far as working on new material, but the simple act of sitting down with my acoustic and playing through some old songs and song bits has been gratifying. My callouses are slowly developing on my left hand again, and my picking hand is true more often than it had been.

Photography

As I mentioned, I’ve gone on a few walks where I took some pictures, and have posted photos from those walks on two occasions in the past few weeks. I’m about as fledgling as they come when it comes to photography, but I’ve concentrated on taking pictures of things that I find beautiful or interesting. I’m still learning how to use my camera, and it is my hope that as time goes by and I gain experience with it, I will be able to post a greater variety of quality photos. Most recently, I’ve concentrated on nature photography, but I would like to expand my horizons!

Video Games

Ah, this is where it gets tricky. In lieu of WoW, I’ve spent time with a half-dozen games over the past few weeks: Portal and Half-Life 2 for Mac, Dragon Age: Origins and Tiger Woods 07 for 360, and Scribblenauts and Professor Layton and the Curious Village for DS. Portal, Half-Life 2 and Tiger Woods have each gotten more than 90 minutes of play from me; the others did not hold my attention for long, for various reasons.

There is a common reason that none of these games has become my “go-to” game at this point: simply, I am still wired for WoW right now.

However, there are other reasons. In the case of Dragon Age, while the game seems to be very interesting (and I’m loving the music!), I don’t like the control scheme at all. I need to put some more time into it before I decide to scrap it and perhaps pick up the Mac version, but my first impression was frustrating… I’m not a big fan of using a console controller for these types of games.

In the cases of Professor Layton and Scribblenauts, I’m probably just not feeling puzzle games right now. I like them both, conceptually, but I’ve only put about 30-40 minutes into each in the past month. I’ll put them down and pick them up later if I feel so moved.

I have many other games to try, and so I’ll continue to throw a few against the wall every so often and see which one sticks.

Conclusion

I’ve had mixed results with not only finding other hobbies to get back into, but having the discipline to keep at them. With books, it has been easy – in fact, I’ve had to pace myself at times. Playing guitar has been more of a process (albeit a rewarding one), and finding new games to latch onto has been a challenge. We’ll see how June goes!

Photos from my walk: Franklin & Marshall edition

On Tuesday afternoon, I took a short walk that gave me an opportunity to take several photos. My route led me near the southwest side of Franklin & Marshall College. As you can see in the photos, it was a beautiful, sunny day with temperatures in the low eighties.

(Click photos for full-size images)

The first three are pictures from the rose garden at Buchanan Park, adjacent to the college.

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The next three are photos of two slate-like rock formations that sit closer to the college itself, along Race Road.

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This is a photo of State Street, from the corner of State and W Clay.

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Finally, here are two photos from what I believe is a crabapple tree on Buchanan Ave.

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I hope that you enjoyed these photos as much as I do. It’s nice to finally be able to take some good photographs. I’m a total novice with the camera, but I’m improving!

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By the way, this post looks AWFUL in Google Reader… if you’re using a reader to view this, please click the post to see it in a readable format!

/shakes head

Cardinal

There is a cardinal that occasionally flies by the back porch. It sometimes lands momentarily in a neighboring yard, or on a power line. I’ve seen it three times in the past week now.

I really want to get a picture of it someday soon. Hopefully I’ll have the good fortune to do so…

Six photos from Saturday

Last Tuesday, I ventured out for a stroll into Lancaster city. It was a dual-purpose walk: I needed to pick up a few things at the Central Market, and I also wanted to see some of the city’s beauty again.

I just moved back to Lancaster after being away for a couple of years. It’s a city with a lot of history, charm, and culture. In addition to Central Market, which is the oldest running farmer’s market in the U.S., there is a growing art district, a college-town atmosphere, a variety of musical attractions, many shoppes, cafes, and boutiques, a local minor league baseball team (Lancaster Barnstormers), museums, and so on.

While there are parts of the city that don’t do much for the eyes, there are several sections that are lovely to walk through. I walked to market again last Saturday, remembering to take my camera, and was able to get some good photos while I was out. Here are some highlights. Click the photos to see them in their glory!

Walnut @ Pine

I found a house on Walnut St. with these beautiful flowers on the windows.

Beautiful flower arrangement

A photo of the front of Thaddeus Stevens school on Charlotte Ave.

Thaddeus Stevens school

Here is one of my favorite homes in Lancaster City.

One of the houses that makes walking in Lancaster so rewarding

Eventually, I made it back home with my purchases from the market, and set about making lunch…

I wonder who gave me this mug...

…and my lunch accidentally turned out looking very classy, so I figured that I might as well take a picture of it, too!

A delicious lunch

Vietnamese egg rolls, fresh cucumbers with ranch and cheddar, and coffee. And it was delicious.

It was a beautiful spring day, and I’m happy to have gotten some time in with my camera. I’m looking forward to getting some more pics from around Lancaster and posting them at some point.

Photos from my walk (10/18/09)

So after four days of cold rain, I was finally able to get out and walk. I don’t normally mind walking in the cold, or the rain, for that matter. Lately, however, the weather has been miserable, with highs in the low 40s, so I’ve stayed inside. However, it finally let up this morning, so I was able to get out and enjoy the fresh air and snap some photos.

Yes, I took a picture of my foot, and the sidewalk, as I was walking...

It's was good to see the sun again, and the colors that it brought out.

The road (often) taken

The colors of fall

proof that I was there...

I usually listen to music when I walk, but today I decided to just enjoy the quiet of the neighborhood. It’s warm enough outside to walk, but cool enough that most people are inside, so I didn’t have to deal with dogs or lawnmower noise. It was peaceful, which makes for a pleasant time to be alone and think. Hopefully we’ll have several more nice days this fall – they definitely help keep me sane.

Early Autumn (photos from my walk)

I just got back from a walk through some of the nearby neighborhoods here in East York. I decided to bring my camera, because it seemed like a prime day to take some early-fall pictures. Here are just a few of the highlights:

This was the most symmetrical tree that I shot today... at the top, at least.

I had varying luck, as far as the sun goes. For this shot and the next, I was shooting across the sun’s light, which leaves the top of the photos somewhat empty and grey.

I tried to get orange, red and yellow leaves, but there weren't many nice, yellow-tipped trees to photograph. Maybe next time!

This next shot shows the sky a little better!

Trees, early fall, East York

This next pic is a fun one! The background is clean, and I managed to center it perfectly – no cropping! (I’m not normally this good at centering subjects like this…)

Keeping the lamp post company

Finally, here is a priceless picture!

Happy Halloween? or an animated discussion, frozen for all time?

Yeah, I cropped that one… I just got my first digital camera this year, and I haven’t used it enough. When I have, though, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed it. Hopefully I will use it more, partially motivated by this new blogging experiment, and my skills will improve. I hope you enjoyed the photos; I plan to do this again in the next couple of weeks when autumn is more ripe!