Wednesday Weigh-In

I've lost 0.2 lb. Bleh. I was pretty inconsistent this week. And now we'll be traveling for the next three weeks, so we'll see how this goes.

Total lost so far: 41.8 lbs

Dream of Space, Part 11 - Drops of Jupiter

After 4 months in a row of my astronomy club's star parties getting canceled for cloudy weather, I was able to make it to one last one before we head up to South Dakota. I didn't bother taking my telescope equipment, since I mainly wanted to spend some quality time with my friends there before leaving. I did bring my camera to try out my new lenses and experiment on wide-field photography settings in anticipation of my plan to make a time-lapse video of the stars.


I also pointed the telephoto lens at a setting crescent Moon as it descended into some wispy clouds. It looked a lot cooler through a telescope.


Anyway, the best part of the evening had nothing to do with photography. We had our eye on Jupiter in hopes of catching a glimpse of something that happens maybe only once in a lifetime (alright, actually twice in mine so far). Early the in the evening the Red Planet was low on the horizon, stuck in the murkiest, most polluted part of the atmosphere. Looking at it through my friend's big 7-foot-tall monster telescope was like looking at a marble in a pot of boiling water. So we spent a couple hours reacquainting ourselves with the Summer Milky Way. Around midnight, Jupiter was looking a little better, and we were treated to a view of the great Red Spot and a transit of the moon Io. A little larger than our own moon, it casts a dark black shadow on Jupiter as it crosses in front. But that wasn't the once in a lifetime view.

Neither was the reappearance of Io a while later. Looking at first like a pimple on the side of the planet, as it comes back into view, it looked a lot like a pearl next to a big orange beach ball. Pretty cool. It was the first time I'd resolved the shape of one of Jupiter's moon (they normally look like dim stars next to the their parent planet).

Finally, around 1:30am as Jupiter slowly rotated around, our target came into view: an Earth-sized black spot on the face of the planet. Discovered by an AMATEUR ASTRONOMER, the spot is a scar from an unanticipated impact from a massive comet or asteroid last week. The last time we could see something like this was in 1994, and I think the chances of something like this happening twice in such a short time are slim. So we little band of amateurs shared an hour of amazement looking at something that we may well never see again.



In other Saturday news, I did some more pictures of some friends. A few of them turned out pretty good. Here are some of my favorites:

Worth a Thousand Words

My little girl is 5 months old today! To celebrate, we gave her rice cereal for the first time. She had some mixed feelings about it. "Mommy, what is this stuff?"

Getting to like it a bit more:

Clayton helping feed his little sister:


I really like the above picture. It pretty much sums up my whole life right now . . . trying to feed Dory, while trying to entertain/teach Brian, while Clayton pulls my hair . . . this is my life!


And here we have Clayton, dragging Andrew's flight helmet (in the case) around the house, looking for Daddy!
"Please Daddy? PLEASE??? Please can I wear your helmet??"
Pleeeeeease???????????

Wednesday Weigh-In

I have lost 2.4 lbs!! With that, I've reached two more little milestones:

1. I've lost over 40 lbs

2. I now weigh less than my husband! It's been a while.

Total lost so far: 41.6 lbs

Take Me to The Pilot - Redux

It's that time once again to clean out my work locker in preparation for our move. Clayton could not get enough of my helmet. He would sleep with it on if he could. Seriously.



More pictures at FlyingMonksPhotography.

Lightnin' Strikes (Twice?)

Does lightning strike twice?

Well, when it comes to photographing kids, it probably happens more often than getting a good posed picture with multiple children. It seems like I can take a whole series of shots and every one has at least one kid staring off into space, crying, squirming, or looking like a red-eyed deer in the headlights - and if by some miracle of miracles all the children in the picture are smiling, you can bet one adult is looking at the kids, coaxing them to pose. And even if all the adults are smiling at the camera, they'll have been doing it for so long that their forced poses scream "C'mon you freakin' kids, let's get this over with!?" or "I can't apologize enough for my demon children wasting your time".

I think one of Einstein's lesser known equations dealt with family portraiture. The time required is proportional to the square of the number of kids multiplied by the function of their combined ages minus the length of naps taken divided by the inverse of the number of adults simultaneously saying "yoohoo . . .look at the camera . . . look here . . . smile big . . . c'mon look right here . . . hey . . . psssstt . . . cheese . . . ". Here's our best effort:


Trying to "single-shot it" with the self-timer is an exponential multiplier . . . which is why we have no family photos of all five of us. But thank goodness for Photoshop:

Now candid shots, that's totally different. I think sometimes they're more predictable than posed ones. Example . . . let our kids into the backyard after a thunderstorm and lightning will strike two times . . . and three times, and four times, and as many times as takes for Mom and Dad to learn. Filthy, clothes-staining, muddy lightning:

And on the subject of thunderstorms, after being skunked repeatedly by terrible weather, I managed some astrophotography through the clouds last night. It wasn't so much for aesthetics - patchy clouds, hot weather, high humidity, and street lights seriously limited the quality of any pictures. It was more some warm-up for our vacation to Utah next month. Just wanted to make sure I could still figure out the equipment setup and procedures so I'm not wasting time under the pristine high desert skies of southern Utah. Here's the only usable picture I took. It's the Ring Nebula - a star that exploded - Death-star style - centuries ago.

One final note, our house was struck by lightning during a freak thunderstorm Saturday night. During a violent storm that blew up overnight, in which lightning was flashing like a night club strobe, Lisa and I were both awake to hear a deafening instantaneous strike which shook our house and tripped the circuit breaker for the upstairs bedrooms. Sunday at church, our neighbor from down the street confirmed it. He was awake watching it, and his first words to us were" I think you guys got hit by lightning".

Exciting.

Most exciting video ever!

This is what I found when I came home from water aerobics last night. I had to get the video camera.


Apparently, when Mommy's away, the kids will . . . finally go to sleep.

Side note: Andrew was destined to be Dory's father. He has always had this habit of bouncing his knee when he is at the computer. We have found out that it absolutely hypnotizes Dory! Turns her to jelly. EVERY TIME. I have tried it with no success whatsoever. But it is so cool that Daddy can get Dory to sleep.

Wednesday Weigh-In

I lost 0.4 lb this week . . . hey, it's better than nothing!

Total lost so far: 39.2 lbs

Random Pics from this Week

From some pics I took for our friends:


Clayton with green eyes, or so Photoshop would make it seem:

And overexposed:

And the rest of the kids, Brian not so amused:


Lisa's anniversary gift to me of sorts. A mini-fridge she found for $10 at a garage sale to put in our computer/TV room. Pretty cool.


And a nice walker Lisa found for Dory. Pity we have to confine her to a cage to keep our green-eyed monster from trying the walker out for himself:

Everything is Hunky-Dory

Here is a cute video of Dory laughing. Well, cute except for the diapers by her head.

Here is Dory with her new 'foot rattles'. I got them as a door prize at a Discovery Toys party, and they are so cool! Great way to let babies know that they can create an effect on the world around them. We just tried them out tonight, and Dory loves them.

Wednesday Weigh-In

I have lost 3.0 lbs this week! I'm pleasantly shocked- what with 4th of July breakfast and BBQ, and a much-needed date night on Monday, I really went overboard some days. But maybe my desperate attempt to compensate on the other days kept my metabolism guessing??? Who knows.

Total lost so far: 38.8 lbs (the equivalent of Brian!)

Eight Miles High

Eight Miles High . . . the location of the scattered clouds that canceled our fireworks show. But more about that in a minute. Here are the kids dressed for the Fourth:





We celebrated by going to a church breakfast early Saturday morning, taking a nap Saturday afternoon, having a barbecue with our friends the evening, and then trekking off to the other side of town for a supposed fireworks display. After parking with a thousand other people, literally on the side of the freeway, we placed bets for an hour on if THIS was finally the show, or just more illegal fireworks. Finally around 10pm, and seeing the hoards leaving, we figured it was either canceled, or this was it:


Turns out the display was canceled for a little wind and some scattered high clouds. So, we made our own fireworks show in the car on the way home . . . so to speak.

The Byrds - Eight Miles High
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GRANDPARENT BONUS: A pic of Dory in her baby carrier, which makes her look a little like an unmasked Darth Vader.

"Luke... help me take this mask off. Let me look on you with my *own* eyes."

Feel the Noize!

So today was another base flag ceremony, complete with airplane flyovers. I snapped some pictures with a new lens, Clayton chilled out, Dory was puzzled, and Brian - as with all jet noise - was terrified beyond description as the B-1 set off car alarms with it's earth-shaking flyby. Ya'd think the kid would be used to it by now, living on an air force base and all, but no.

"TOO NOISY! TOO NOISY!

More pictures on Flying Monks Photography.