My Wife is my greatest treasure, but as I’ve mentioned before we’re rather particular about sharing personal photographs.
I already shared how coffee is my daily dose of bliss; spoiler alert: it makes another appearance here!
First, there are the family treasures: the kind of thing you’d want to grab in case of fire.
For me, that’s my great-grandfather’s matchsafe. He was a printer on turn-of-the-century banana boats (that’s the 1890s-1900s, by the way) as well as almost serving on the Titanic, but didn’t. This particular matchsafe is from the SS Almirante, a merchant vessel out of Belfast, Ireland that sank off Atlantic City, New Jersey in 1918. I don’t believe Great-Grandpa was on board.
Second, there are the daily treasures: the little things that help make life worth living.
You guessed it, time for more coffee:
Finally, there are the rare treasures: things that are only here for a short time and then gone for good.
Like lebkuchen from Day’s Bakery:
Because even if someone buys the bakery, it just won’t be the same, you know?
The Seven Deadly sins may bring to mind one of two things.
For Catholics (and several other religious denominations), the phrase refers those faults that may or may not send one directly to Hell without passing Purgatory or collecting $200. Although thirty pieces of silver may be an option, I hear the gift shop is terrible.
For the more musically-minded, the phrase might plant an earworm:
Sail away where no ball or chain
Can keep us from the roarin' waves
Together undivided but forever we'll be free
So sail away aboard our rig
The moon is full and so are we
We're seven drunken pirates
We're the seven deadly sins
Of course, the two are not mutually exclusive. Anyway, Heather over at bitsnbooks recently posted her Seven Deadly Sins of Reading; being tagged by proxy, here is my own list:
LUST: a strong sexual desire
What attributes do you find most attractive in male (or female) characters?
Intelligence and strength of will. This means I often find myself sympathizing with the antagonists of a story rather than the intended protagonist.
What author do you have a love/hate relationship with?
Nicholas Sparks in that I love to hate him. Lacking originality, his books are highly predictable; never mind the fact that he’s literally sold the exact same story many times over.
Fifth Circle illustrated by Stradanus
ENVY: a feeling of discontented or resentful longing aroused by someone else’s possessions, qualities or luck
What book would you most like to receive as a gift?
Anything signed by Tolkien, Lewis, Pratchett, or Dante (good luck with that last one!)
My dear, here we must run as fast as we can, just to
stay in place. And if you wish to go anywhere you
must run twice as fast as that.
The week began innocently enough with a decent Monday, as far as Mondays are concerned, but it had all gone downhill by Tuesday afternoon. I was behind in Photography 101, behind in my online college class, behind in grading and lesson planning, and students’ science and history projects were due.
Today I played catch-up, rising before the sun on a Saturday – my one day to sleep in – to take advantage of the Golden Hour at sunrise. OK, that isn’t entirely honest. The Wife headed out of town to a business conference and needed to meet her carpool. I simply stayed up instead of going back to bed. Hey, whatever works, right?
I wandered downtown for three hours, taking pictures and killing time until the library opened so I could use the free wifi – and make another dent in my TBR.
My online class completed, I tackled the morning’s photographs.
Check them out in the galleries below!
Monochrome Architecture
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Movement
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Landscape
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I hope you enjoyed vicariously reliving my morning; for me it was time well-spent!
Even though it will be Wednesday when this finally posts. You know how things keep piling up . . .
Just in case you don’t know, Teaser Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by A Daily Rhythm. Anyone can play along! All you have to do is grab the book you’re currently reading, open to a random page and share two sentences from that page. But make sure you don’t share any spoilers!*
*I wish I could take credit for this introduction, but I shamelessly stole it from Heather over at bitsnbooks. To help me make amends, you should go check out her blog.
Last night I started Amanda Palmer’s Art of Asking. I was just going to grab two sentences and ended up reading the first 64 pages; I only stopped because I had to sleep sometime and I really did need to make it to work on time this morning. That’s how good it is. Now I’m going to break my own rules and share not two but three sentences:
Here's the thing: all of us come from some place
of wanting to be seen, understood, accepted,
connected.
Every single one of us wants to be believed.
Artists are often just . . . louder about it.
If that doesn’t spark your interest, bear in mind that Amanda Palmer herself retweeted my library run to get her book:
How many authors would do that?
In Retrospect
I awarded last week’s book Republic of Pirates 3 out of 5 stars. I’m still working on writing a review; stay tuned to Goodreads!
Photography 101 has its challenges. Monday’s pop of color was no different.
I took another sunrise photo and thought that’d be it:
And then inspiration struck as I was cleaning out my supply cabinet and found a hoard of forgotten pencils – and just in time for standardized testing, too!
Stand Apart
by J.E.
People always say to be yourself until you do, then
you find that everybody lied to you: "Your hair is
too short, too long, too bright, too dark; your
music's too loud, too goth, too punk, too rock; your
art is too something; why can't you just be
normal like us? You're so fake, focused on the
external; fit back in the box in our monochrome
world where no one stands out, no sensitivities
curdled."
So we hide ourselves away behind a facade of what
passes for normal; believing we're flawed we put on
a show for the world to behold while the things that
make us us grow withered and cold. In a world that
sees in charcoal grey and midnight black we see in
bright neon hues and refuse to go back to the way
things were before. Choosing rather to wrestle our
innermost demons, we risk and dare all to be the
yellow pencil.
Personally, I like the first pencil photograph best; what do you think?
For me, that’s my great-grandfather’s matchsafe. He was a printer on turn-of-the-century banana boats (that’s the 1890s-1900s, by the way) as well as almost serving on the Titanic, but didn’t. This particular matchsafe is from the SS Almirante, a merchant vessel out of Belfast, Ireland that sank off Atlantic City, New Jersey in 1918. I don’t believe Great-Grandpa was on board.
Because even if someone buys the bakery, it just won’t be the same, you know?
Running In My Head 