I don't think this picture requires any explanation.  I shot it on Bow Street near Arlington Heights this afternoon after I saw it driving back from lunch with Katherine.

 

 

I live in Medford, a mere seven miles from downtown Boston.  Even so, there is a staggering celebration going on, and I suspect it's happening all over the region.  For awhile after the game, it sounded like the fourth of July, even here in Medford, with fireworks and who knows what other kinds of explosions happening frequently.  I could hear screams, commotion, horns, and so forth.  I live in an upper middle class neighborhood, mind you, with no bars close by.  It's just a release of tension that is probably happening all over.

 

My reactions to the win are a bit anti-climactic.  Since I haven't followed the Sox closely, I missed out on the euphoria of the moment.  But I couldn't help but to have a few thoughts during the post-game coverage.

 

The first thought was that if they really want to gauge the reaction on Fox, they should talk to the older folks around town.  During the coverage, I heard one guy say how sweet a win it would be, and that he's been following the Sox since his oldest son really got into baseball (his younger son was there, and he was in his teens).  That's all well and good, but there are people who have been waiting their entire lifetime to see this moment, and I'd like to hear what they have to say.  I have been waiting for about twenty years, and I'm a young-un, relatively speaking.

 

The second thing I noticed was how when Manny Ramirez was receiving the MVP award, he couldn't pay attention to Bud Selig because he kept turning away to gesture to other people in the locker room.

 

The last thought I had before turning off the coverage was wondering how many thousands of dollars of champagne were sprayed during that celebration.  It's not like they were drinking Freixenet - they were drinking at least $100 bottles.

 

At that point, I decided that it would be disingenuous to keep watching, and I turned it off.

 

I am happy for the Sox.  I'm even happier for all those people in Boston and the region who can finally let it go.

It would be hard to imagine, since they kept showing it during game four this evening (more on that later).  Although it was very cloudy this evening, it cleared up a bit, and I decided to take a few pictures just to see if I could.

 

So here it is.  Pretty ho hum, don't you think?  You might be surprised at how hard it is to take a good picture of the moon.  It's really, really hard.  I usually don't bother, but since there was a total eclipse, I figured I'd see what happened.  The problem with the moon, you see, is that it's so darn bright.  If you expose for the moon, you won't see anything other than a black sky and the moon.  Any other exposure will give you a white disk.  But there are a few lunar events that allow you to take a decent photo.  The easiest situation is when the moon is rising or setting during dawn or dusk.  At those times, the moon is relatively close in luminance to the sky, and you can get rich detail.  It turns out that a lunar eclipse is another good time, although it has its issues.  Because it's in the earth's shadow, it's not that bright relative to the other things in the sky.  The photos I took tonight show stars and clouds in them as well.  Even so, this photo shows the range of luminance during the total eclipse.  This was taken during totality, and the top of the moon is substantially brighter than the bottom, because the only significant light hitting the moon is from refraction in the earth's atmosphere, and the alignment of the eclipse was such that it lit that part of the moon brighter than the rest.

 

The other problem with photos of the moon is that it just moves too fast.  If you want a lot of detail, you can't just stop down to a small aperture, because the exposure is too long.  From my experience, anything over about 5 seconds starts showing distortion - the moon will look more like a hockey rink than a circle.  A little slower than that, say, 15 seconds, and you'll start to see star trails instead of specular lights.

 

Anyway, it was a beautiful hunter moon tonight, a long lunar eclipse, and an interesting experiment for me.

Time to jump on the bandwagon.  I actually watched part of the game last night, and will so again tonight.  Go Red Sox!

Katherine, that is.  Last night it started at about ten past two.  I awoke to Kara jumping out of bed to tend to Katherine, who had croupy cough again.  The thing about croup is that you either have to steam the kid, or take her out into the cold.  Usually steam works for us.  By 3, she'd spent a half hour in the bathroom with Kara and I.  We run the hot shower to generate steam and sit in there until it has a chance to clear her lungs.  But she was still coughing and uncomfortable after this.  So Kara took her outside for a walk around the neighborhood while I prepared the infamous trundle bed for another night of co-sleeping.  The walk outside worked, and was actually pleasant due to the stars and moon being out and bright.  While she was doing that, I was cat-napping on a pile of pillows and blankets in her room.

 

We finally settled down for bed around 3:45 or so, and the rest of the night went peacefully.  The thing now is that we are increasingly bothered by the fact that every time she has any kind of minor head cold (which happens a lot due to her interactions with other kids), it turns into croup.

 

So we are both very tired again today.

A computer monitor

A laundry basket

The rear fender of a truck

A microwave oven

A bottle of peppermint schnapps

Linseed oil

 

They are all subjects of a new photo essay I'm working on.  Stay tuned.

I find it sad and kinda funny that we don't actually know how many legs Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has.

I don't know what happened to our wonderful sleep-through-the-night girl.  Last night, just after 3AM, I awoke to the sounds of fighting in the nursery.  Kara was up with Katherine, who was congested.  She didn't want to take her medicine and didn't want to go back to sleep.  She wanted to do downstairs and watch shows.  So I got up and took over for Kara.  I talked her down and tried to get her back to sleep, but it wasn't happening.  I barely got back in bed before she was talking about going downstairs again.  So I slept in the trundle bed again.  She was so tired.  I didn't get back to sleep until 4AM.  Ouch.  Then, around 8ish, I awoke to the sounds of a loud fight downstairs.  Katherine was in the TV room barking orders at Kara, and Kara was in the kitchen drawing the line, as we say around here.

 

So I dragged myself out of bed, went downstairs, and mixed it up with my girls a bit.  They were both fine.  Kara has been working, and she's unfamiliar with the house routine.  It's hard to jump right back in, especially during this period of rapid development of Katherine.

 

For example, Katherine asked for and got cheesy eggs for breakfast.  I wouldn't have cooked them, because I know she doesn't eat them lately.  Kara realized in retrospect, that the reason she asked for them was because she wanted to carry the eggs from the refrigerator to the counter.  She likes that.  But that's the only part of it she likes - she's just not eating eggs right now.

 

But we have some food issues.  We're working really hard on getting her to commit to eating something and then eating it.  When she leaves a meal untouched, there are consequences.  Kara was correctly enacting those consequences when I woke up.

 

I didn't actually do anything, but sometimes it's nice to have a third party to get in the middle of everything.

I actually went out on Saturday night.  DiggerDawg was playing at Tequila's Bar and Grill in Danvers, and so I went and took live photos for them.  I like to do this from time to time - to go out and see the bands I'm photographing.  They are really very, very good.  And here they are after the third set.

 

 

Here's the ironic photographer story.  After the third set ended, I rushed up to the stage and made them all stand together.  It's hard to get a band like this together outside of performances and practice, so I thought it was a good opportunity.  I told them I was going to take five pictures, and I made them pose and smile for an interminable few minutes.  Wouldn't you know, there was a problem with all but the last of the photos.  *whew*.  But that's what it takes to do photography - you've got to get the shot.

 

Anyway, Kara had to work on Sunday, so Katherine and I went to a friend's house for a "big-girl" brunch, which was really good.  She had a great time - grandpa was there too, which helped.  But she was very well behaved.  Then it was off to a Halloween/birthday party for the rest of the afternoon.  Kara was home by then, which was good, because I needed the time to set up for another shoot on Monday.

 

The Monday shoot was a portrait for a friend of mine who needed it for a web site and publication.  She brought her kids over, and since Katherine was away at yet another Halloween party, I entertained the kids with my considerable collection of kiddie movies and Tivo'd shows.  They were great.  When Kara and Katherine got home, a wild half hour ensued as the kids all played (they'd met once before).

 

And here I am, trying to dig out from a few hundred photos that have to be sorted, archived, processed, and otherwise dealt with.  Yeah, I'm pretty busy these days.