Just Walkin’ Around

Sometimes the best part of visiting New York is just walking around and looking at stuff.

The Chrysler building pretty much rules.

New York Public Library

I’ve seen the New York public library before, but I’d never gone in. Last weekend while walking down the street with no set plans in mind, we decided to go inside and check it out. The word is, large. Opulent is another word.

The Swankiest Room on Earth

Want to see the room we stayed in last weekend?

You’re gonna be jealous.

As jealous as we are poor now.

Yes, we had a television embedded into our bathroom mirror. Yes, that’s a thing.

Oh yeah, and unless we forget… there was the awesome view.

And that, friends and neighbors, is the sweetest suite on Earth. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go cry over the fact that we are now dirt poor.

Our Window

Messing with shutter speeds while looking out the window of our room.

The Blizzard of 2015

I poked my head out of the front and back doors at about 7:45 this morning. I figured I’d snap a few pics in the morning, and then a few in the afternoon, and then a few before bed so that we can all have fun (sarcasm) comparing the size of the drifts and such.

Out the front of the house we see this freshly fallen frozen hell.

I didn’t actually go outside. For this pic I had to lean around the open door. Hence the tilt. I’ll try harder next time.

Out of the back door, the first two don’t have any frame of reference. They are just nice wintery pics.

The gas grill gives us a little perspective on the whole awful mess.

More pictures this afternoon. Assuming we don’t lose power.

A New King of My Flickr Account

When I woke up this morning, this was my most viewed picture on Flickr with 3820 hits…

Nothing special, but kinda cool. Very cool in comparison to most of my stuff.

Now though, there is a new king of the hits mountain…

As of right now it’s at 3831 hits.

Umm….. Why?

Is it Cold Enough For Ya?

The word of the day is, Brrrrr.

There’s this from the weather channel app:

There’s this from the dashboard of my car:

The kids school was delayed for two hours due to the cold. I’m not sure I get the logic there. The temperature was below zero at 7:00am. It’s still below zero just before 9:00am. Does the fact the sun is up change things in the school district’s opinion?

Anyway, when I went out this morning at about 5:50am to start my beloved’s car I saw that the sky was clear and the moon was looking cool. Of course I took a very cold picture.

Here’s another one that I cropped a little closer.

Stay warm, boys and girls!

2014 Year in Review

Let’s take a look back at 2014. Here is one picture from each month…

January:
After years of searching, I finally had my first up close sight of a male deer complete with antlers.

February:
While one might expect Rob the nerd to post something relating to the RPM Challenge, I will instead go with my first AHL hockey game in years. My step daughter’s school chorus sang the national anthem at the Verizon Center in Manchester, NH before the evil, hated, loathed Manchester Monarchs game against the Providence Bruins. My AHL loyalty still rests with two teams. Either Lowell (be it the Lock Monsters or the Devils) even though they don’t exist anymore, or any team that beats the Monarchs.

March:
There were a surprisingly small number of pictures from March, but there was this happy one showing that the snow and ice were going away. I can’t wait for some warmth in 2015 too.

April:
April was also light on photographs, but we did make an unplanned trip to Hampton Beach.

May:
The love of my life and I celebrated our fifth wedding anniversary by taking a trip to the white mountains. It was beautiful and wonderful and I am crazy in love with her. Even more today than five years ago when we said, “I do”.

June:
June was all about youth baseball and softball. Both kids made the playoffs, and we ended up with a league champ in softball.

July:
We traveled to Montreal, Toronto, Niagara Falls, and then drove home through upstate New York with a stop at the Baseball Hall of Fame. It was a seriously amazing trip.

August:
Yet another photographically light month. We joined Weight Watchers in January but it didn’t last long. We joined again on the last weekend of August. I stuck to it faithfully up until Christmas Eve. I’m going back on the wagon full force starting Monday. I was down 37 pounds prior to last week. I probably gained 30 of it back over the last eight days. I’ll lose it all again. I promise.

September:
Fall means leaf peeping and we had our best view of Mount Washington ever.

October:
After nearly a year of constantly working on songwriting and recording home demos, I actually joined a band.

November:
This year I went a little nuts chasing sunrise pictures. On Veteran’s Day I went to Old Orchard Beach in Maine and took the best pics of the year.

December:
December is always all about Christmas.

This Vs That – Gimp Edition

I took one of today’s pictures and played with the auto color functions in Gimp. Which picture looks better?

The original?

Or the Gimp’d version?

Test Driving the New Lens

I had some errands to run this morning so I got up early. The sun still hadn’t risen so I checked weather.com. It said it was cloudy out. Okay, I think, on my way to run my errands I would take my camera to the usual places in town and try out the new lens. I took a shower and did the dishes and then I was ready to go.

I stepped outside and it started to rain.

Crud.

Oh well, I was already packed up so what the hell. The first stop was the Sands bridge which is continuing along the way to complete collapse. When I think about how much I weigh, and about how the last two times I came here I actually walked across this thing… I’m lucky I didn’t fall through.

This one seems a little soft. It was one of the few that weren’t nice and sharp.

My second stop was the Methuen Rail Trail where it crosses the Mighty Spicket River in the Nevins Bird Sanctuary.

I didn’t notice the foot trails the last time I came here. I saw two or three this time. That gives me something to focus on next summer when I come back to explore a little more.