Day 243: Under the Weather/Heather

I woke up this morning with the head cold that's going around. Here's my cold remedies:

f5, Exp. 1/60, 35mm

Day 242: Awards/Heather

The Academy Awards are on tonight. Here is one of the first awards I ever won. It was for a bowling league I was in when I was 12. Everyone got one at the end of the season but I was still pretty excited to have a trophy of my own.

f5, Exp. 1/60, 70mm

Day 241: Speakers/Heather

One of the speakers from my surround sound. I'm going to have to draw a diagram and take a lot of pictures if I ever move to put it all back together!

f5, Exp. 1/60, 38mm

Day 240: Scarves/Heather

This ended up being a fun picture to take. The grey scarf was my dad's, made for him years ago by my mother. The blue one belongs to a friend of mine who left it here one evening.

f5, Exp. 1/60, 70mm

Day 239: Siblings/Heather

Today is my brother's birthday so I wanted to take a picture of something that reminded me of him. But we were hit with snow and since I'm a wuss when it comes to driving in it, I had to come up with a Plan B. So here's my boys. Raised together since they were puppies, if I tell Charlie to go get his brother, he'll go over and bark at Sammy. If he feels like listening, that is, which is rare.

f5, Exp. 1/60, 38mm

Day 238: Staplers/Heather

It turns out staplers are not that exciting of a subject. I thought this was a cool shot though. I know it will come as no surprise to anyone who knows me that my stapler is purple!

f5, Exp. 1/60, 70mm

Day 237: Vertical/Heather

I was really at a loss on this one until I realized the object didn't necessarily have to be vertical by nature, the orientation of the picture being vertical would suffice. In this case, I did find a vertical object, however.

f5, Exp. 1/60, 34mm

Day 236: Signs of Spring/Heather

I took a bunch of nice shots of some little crocus-looking flowers that have bloomed, but ultimately decided on this. I'm pretty sure it's a daffodil but could also be a tulip. I chose this because I felt it was more of a sign of Spring being on the way than the flowers that are already bloomed.

f10, Exp. 1/125, 70mm

Day 235: Starts with "U"/Heather

I took the dogs for a walk along the river today and as I was driving home, I was thinking I would just have to settle for a picture of an umbrella for today. As I was exiting the highway, I saw a sign for the U.S. Forest Service office. I see that sign all the time-it's about two miles from my house-and I've never really paid attention to it before. So I decided to check it out. I'm quite pleased with this shot of the U.S. Forest Service logo I was able to take.

f10, Exp. 1/400, 24mm

Day 234: Cooking/Heather

A friend of mine is running a half marathon in April to raise money for leukemia and lymphoma research. So another friend hosted a dinner here to help her raise money. He's from India and made a 4-course meal from scratch (and made a disaster out of my kitchen!). Here's a shot of one of two curry dishes. This is the lentil curry.

f5, Exp. 1/60, 38mm

Day 233: Picture Frames/Heather

You would think with all the pictures I've been taking, I'd have something to put in these. I've got a couple of ideas for them and actually have two of the dog frame. One for each dog-I definitely have a lot to choose from when it comes to pictures of the two of them!

f5, Exp. 1/60, 18mm

Day 232: Chocolate/Heather

Forrest Gump was right. Life really is like a box of chocolates. You never do know what you are going to get. In this case, it was yummy deliciousness.

f3.5, Exp. 1/40, 18mm

Day 231: Measurement/Heather

As usual, the artistic value of this shot in reality is much different than how I was imagining this would turn out!

f5, Exp. 1/60, 18mm

Day 230: Coins/Heather

At one point, James decided he was going to start collecting proof sets for every year we were together. Here's one of the sets of presidential coins from his collection.

f5, Exp. 1/60, 46mm

Day 229: Hearts/Heather

I bought a heart-shaped box of chocolate for the Anti-Valentine's Day party. Of course, I dumped all the chocolate in a bowl and hid the box as it didn't go with the party's theme!

f5, Exp. 1/60, 22mm

Day 228: Hands/Heather

I had a houseful of people over today for an Anti-Valentine's Day party. So this should have been an easy challenge given I had a lot of hands to choose from. But I forgot about it until after everyone left, so I had to get a shot of my own hand.

f5, Exp. 1/60, 18mm

Day 227: Starts with "V"/Heather

It would make sense that being so close to Valentine's Day I would pick something along those lines for today's shot. But I didn't. I went with some old VHS tapes instead.

f5, Exp. 1/60, 44mm

Day 226: Seeing Red/Heather

I found quite a few red things laying around but none that I really thought were good for this theme. I finally settled on the wrapper of my Norfolk pine that doubles as a Christmas tree.

f5, Exp. 1/60, 70mm

Day 225: Layers/Heather

This ended up being more of a challenge than I thought it would be. I tried to get a good shot of my mini-blinds but didn't get any I really liked. So I tried the siding on the back of the house and found those to be slightly better.

f5, Exp. 1/60, 27mm

Day 224: Earrings/Heather

There's really not a lot to say about this one. The antique-looking earrings belonged to my grandmother.

f5, Exp. 1/125, 70mm

Day 223: Table/Heather

"If I don't make eye contact, maybe the human won't notice I'm standing on the table." No, my dogs aren't supposed to be standing on the table. I do have some rules they clearly don't believe in following.

f5, Exp. 1/60, 29mm

Day 222: Basketball/Heather

I'm not really a basketball fan, but I am a fan of winning things so when I had the opportunity to enter a drawing for tickets to tonight's Blazer game against the Bulls, I went for it-and I won two tickets. It was a really good game-it was pretty close the entire time with Portland winning.

f5, Exp. 1/60, 70mm

Day 221: Football/Heather

Today is Superbowl Sunday. It is also the third anniversary of James' passing so it is bittersweet that his team played today. Unfortunately, they didn't win.

f5, Exp. 1/60, 44mm

Day 220: Creativity/Heather

My plans for today included a glass blowing demonstration. Though I've seen this done before, it was really cool to not only watch the vase being made from the very start but also to have the technical aspects of the process explained as well.

f4.5, Exp. 1/25, 70mm

Day 219: Sequence/Heather

At game night tonight, one of the games being played was Sequence-a game I loved when I was younger but haven't played in years. Unfortunately, I didn't get to play tonight but I had a blast playing Taboo instead.

f5, Exp. 1/60, 70mm

Day 218: Hot and Spicy/Heather

I admit I took some liberty with this in deciding that "spicy" was subjective. It just so happened that I have one packet of hot sauce in my collection.

f5, Exp. 1/60, 62mm

Day 217: Hangers/Heather

It turns out taking a good picture of hangers was not as easy as I thought it would be! This one's not too bad though.

f5, Exp. 1/60, 40mm

Day 216: Aces/Heather

I raided the Pinochle cards and pulled out all the aces for this shot. It's not the best but it is the best of the bunch I took today.

f5, Exp. 1/60, 70mm