Day 362/365 - The Man in the Mirror

For the final 'self-portrait of the week' of my 365 project, we have this shot of me taken in the lobby of my apartment building. It took me forever to realize that those lilies weren't real. It was the fake water that threw me.

(Taken with my Nikon D90)

Day 347/365 - Shaving Self-Portrait

For this week's self-portrait we have me shaving. Oooh, thrilling. During the week I use my Braun electric razor, but on Sundays (or sometimes Mondays) I go the old-fashioned blade and shaving cream route to start with a clean slate. When I was in college and for ten years after I got out of the Navy, I had a beard. Then I got tired of messing with it and shaved it off a few years back. When I get tired of shaving every day, I'll probably grow it back again.

(Taken with my Nikon D90)

Day 329/365 - Iron Man

For this week's self-portrait we have me reflected in the soleplate of my iron. I hate ironing. The only downside to casual Friday is having to iron my shirts. My dress shirts for the rest of the workweek are all wrinkle-free, so that's not an issue. Someone needs to make wrinkle-free casual shirts.

It's not bad during fall/winter because then I can just throw on a sweatshirt along with my khakis and be good to go. But summer/spring require ironing. Or just saying 'the hell with it' and leaving the house all wrinkledy. I am known to do that as well.

Okay, time to quit stalling and go iron up this batch of shirts in a steam-powered frenzy of flattening.

(Taken with my Nikon D90)

Day 239/365 - Cruising Glacier Bay

This was our second day at sea, and what a day at sea it was. We visited Glacier Bay and the scenery was jaw-droppingly gorgeous. The mountains and the water and the clear blue sky were phenomenal, and then there were the glaciers. We stopped by three of them -- Reid, Margerie, and another one whose name I can't remember. Sheesh, not only am I bad with people's names, I'm also bad with glacier's names. The glaciers are miles-long, hundreds of feet thick tongues of blue ice that run from the end of narrow inlets up to the mountains. The ones we saw are called calving glaciers because chunks keep falling off of them into the sea, kinda like cows giving birth to calves.

Margerie was the best of the glaciers we saw. I saw a couple little landslide type calving incidents with it and then got to see one good-sized chunk splinter off and topple into the water with a boom. Glacier Bay is a U.S. National Park and we had a group of National Park Service rangers board our ship and narrate our tour of the park over the ship's public address system. It was like watching an Imax movie, but in person. The weather is still picture perfect. The ship's crew and everyone we talk to in the ports tells us that it normally isn't nearly this nice. Most of the time up here it's cloudy and cool and rainy, but it's been sunny and in the low 80s/high 70s for our whole cruise. And not only has it not rained, we haven't even seen hardly any clouds. So far we've hit the weather lottery. Here's hoping it holds for the rest of the cruise.

(Taken with my Nikon D90)

Day 237/365 - Moonrise over Alaska

We hit the first port on our Alaskan cruise today, the capital city of Juneau. I went for a six mile hike on a mountain alongside the Mendenhall glacier. The trail started out pretty easy and then got really steep. The views were great though and it was nice to be out in the woods. The weather was amazing. It's beginning to look like I packed the wrong sorts of clothes. I packed longsleeved shirts and turtleneck sweaters and jeans and I might have been better off packing shorts and t-shirts. It was sunny and in the 80s. Not what I expected from Alaska. I'm not complaining though. It was much better than hiking in the rain and the clear skies make for much better photos. This shot was of the moon rising over the mountains ringing the Inside Passage after we left Juneau to head further north to Skagway. The sun didn't set until 10 p.m. tonight. Now that is what I expected from Alaska.

(Taken with my Nikon D90)

Twice on Sunday Bonus Photo - Venetian Gondolas

For this week's bonus photo, we have a shot of a pair of gondolas in a canal taken on my recent trip to Venice. Ahhh, Venice...

(Taken with my Nikon D80)

Day 76/365 - Tag, I'm It

For this week's self-portrait I decided to get in the Christmas spirit and shoot my reflection in one of the ornaments on the tree in the lobby of my apartment complex. Also, because I was tagged on Flickr by Picture Prefect, it's now my turn to reveal sixteen random facts about myself and this seemed like a good occasion to do so.

And so here they are:

1. I was once hoisted up into a helicopter that was hovering fifty feet above the deck of a ship at sea.
2. I used to have two earrings and a body piercing, but I quit wearing them about a year ago.
3. I took fencing and bowling classes for PE credit in college and sucked at both.
4. I love musicals.
5. I once had dinner at a restaurant one table over from Condoleeza Rice and totally eavesdropped on her conversations.
6. I've been through the Panama Canal.
7. My driver's license expired about eight years ago and I never bothered to get it renewed (obviously I don't drive).
8. I once chewed the same piece of blueberry Hubba Bubba bubblegum for three days straight (it turned white eventually).
9. I've skydived and bungee jumped, but social situations scare the hell outta me.
10. Until I was halfway through college, I thought the word 'pseudo' was pronounced 'puh-sway-do'
11. I sat three rows in front of Colin Powell for opening night of 'Mamma Mia' at the National Theatre and didn't realize it until I got up to leave at the end.
12. I'm terrified of dancing but secretly wish I knew how.
13. I used to write short stories for fun in high school and college but stopped (I still think up ideas for stories but never actually do anything with them).
14. I'm really good at building a fire (both fireplace and camp fire).
15. I once stepped on the end of a hoe and the handle swung up and whacked me in the face just like in cartoons and Three Stooges shorts and I wound up having to get stitches in my eyebrow.
16. I'm ridiculously over-organized (you have no idea how much time I put into compiling and revising this list).

(Taken with my Nikon D80)

Day 71/365 - A Capitol Christmas

This is the Christmas tree that stands in front of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC as mirrored in the waters of the reflecting pool. I set the self-timer on my camera and put it on the edge of the reflecting pool basin and let it do its thing in order to avoid winding up with a shaky, blurry shot. Wish I'd bothered first to make sure I had the camera straight. There were some people there with a tripod though and I was getting in the way of their shot so I tried to be quick about it.

Even though there's only one week left until Christmas Day I still haven't been able to muster up a lot of holiday spirit yet. Once you become an adult you kind of lose Christmas a little and I don't think you fully get it back again until you have kids. You can recapture a bit of it by going home for the holidays, but during those years where you don't go back and spend the day with your family, Christmas just winds up sort of empty feeling.

Tomorrow night though I'm going to see It's a Wonderful Life at the AFI Silver, a really cool art deco movie palace in Silver Spring, and I'm hoping that will help jump start my Christmas spirit. It's my favorite movie ever and I've never seen it in an actual theater before, so I'm pretty excited.

Remember, every time a bell rings an angel gets his (or her) wings.

(Taken with my Nikon Coolpix S200)

Day 68/365 - Elevator Funhouse

I've been wanting to do a self-portrait in an elevator for a while now, but it always turned out that there was either someone in the elevator or I had the angle of my camera wrong and just wound up with a shoot of the elevator ceiling. I'd made a few attempts at this in the elevator at home and the one at work, but no joy. Then this morning in the elevator of my apartment building I finally got lucky -- I was the only one in the elevator and I actually managed to get myself in the picture. Bonus!

Previously I had given some thought to just riding up and down in the elevator until I got an empty one and I got the shot right, but that would've seemed like cheating. It was more fun to just keep trying until I finally got it right.

(Taken with my Nikon Coolpix S200)

Day 62/365 - Spoon Portrait

As you can probably tell by this shot, I didn't have much time at work today to think up a cool shot to take and now that I'm home I'm tired and I just want to read for a bit and then go to bed early. So that's how I wound up standing in my kitchen and shooting a picture of myself reflected in the back of a slotted spoon for this week's self-portrait. Ta da!

Why is it that your reflection on the back of a spoon is rightside up, but your reflection on the inside of a spoon is upside down?

(Taken with my Nikon Coolpix S200)

Day 12/365 - Reflecting on Greatness

Got this shot of the Washington Monument's reflection rippling across the Tidal Basin as I walked home from work today. Politicians have been routinely badmouthing DC for over 100 years, but the city really gets a bum rap. It's actually quite a beautiful and amazing place to live and/or work (although I only do one of those within the District myself).

Never ceases to amaze me how every election cycle it's the same old thing. There are always a bunch of blowhard politicians running the District down. It's always "Washington is a mess", "Washington is what's wrong with this country," yadda yadda yadda. Yet despite the fact that these bilious buffoons loudly profess their hatred for all things DC, they sure fight like hell to be able to live and work here.

I guess it's a bit like Brer Rabbit pleading with his captors to not throw him in the briar patch. 'Pleeease don't throw me in that briar patch. Oh no, anything but that!'

(Taken with my Nikon Coolpix S200)