A Novel Idea: Photography

Showing posts with label Photography. Show all posts

Monday, November 14, 2022

A Jump Turned into a Hop

Me last Monday: Ooh, an extra day off! I can get a jump on my blog posts!

Me last Thursday: What happened to this week? I have to do a post for Veterans Day and Monday and - oh bugger it, I'm tired.

I did have this nice post in mind for Friday, I even had a picture all picked out. But I lost track of time and it didn't get written. Maybe next year. For now, we'll just pick up here and keep on moving forward.

There are certain things in life I will always try to get a picture of if at all possible. Flowers. Pets. Deer. Moon. Husband. Mother. And as seen above, rainbows!

This particular photo is from July 15, 2019 near Shakopee, Minnesota which is just outside Minneapolis. That was in our first year of driving truck, and according to Google Photos we were coming from an Amazon center.

This particular day was one of the more interesting ones because it happened to be the day this warehouse had a strike. We decided not to cross the picket line and whichever one of us was in the sleeper bunk, I think it was me, had to call up the satellite image of Google maps for the area to see where the would be a safe place for us to get off the road and sit while we waited for the strike to end. We called our Dispatch to let them know what was going on and, well, there's not a whole lot that could have been done. We found a lot large enough for us to sit and just waited.

I'm not sure how long we waited, but the sky ended up opening. It poured buckets.

I don't remember if we decided to see if the strike had ended on our own, or if we talked to Dispatch first. But it was over by then, so we got in and got back out in time to see that amazing rainbow. In this second photo you can see better the faint double rainbow it was.

A little over a year later, coming up I65 in Kentucky, just outside Cave City there was this cool rainbow that pictures just don't do it justice because the fact that it wasn't a solid curve but a little bit wavy didn't come through very well. It was taken from the sleeper bunk by a somewhat cranky husband while the truck was still moving. In my defense, he was already awake as we were soon to be switching in just a couple exits. It's his picture posted above and to the right.

And one of the cons about driving truck locally is that I don't have someone in the sleeper bunk to take pictures when I can't just pull the truck over! This past weekend as I was coming north on I81, I was climbing the long hill after the I80 exits and even though it was noon, the angles were just right that there was a rainbow visible at the top of the hill! Given how miserable the weather was, it was a definite bright spot to driving that day. I think it was Sunday, but it could easily have been Saturday.

I can tell I had a cup of caffeinated coffee earlier today, I'm just running off at the keyboard! I've been trying to cut back on caffeine since July when the DOT doctor was giving me a hard time about my heart rate, rightfully so, but man oh man - life without caffeine is hard. Especially when your day begins at 3am. Earlier if you count the time the alarm goes off.

Okay, shutting up for now! Until next time!!

Thursday, November 10, 2022

A Picture's Worth

I absolutely love having a camera in my cellphone. Even before the digital age, I loved taking photos even though I had to take the film to a store to have someone develop them. With the cost of film, it was a hobby I had to take care not to spend too much on since at the time funds were limited. Still. I have more than a few old photos of animals and flowers. When I took off for college after high school, I even took a bunch of pictures of the mountains around home to help ward off homesickness. It didn't work, but that's another story.

But as technology advances, I can indulge myself in snapping a photo of whatever strikes my fancy. The photo I've posted first is an older one, taken with one of my first cellphones. I'm not sure if it was the flip-phone or my first iPhone, but it was one of them. Mr. Janney and I were walking along one of the trails on Round Top Mountain during one of my family picnics and here was this old stone wall covered in forest. I just liked how it looked, and the questions it sparked that I'll never have the answers for. How old is it? Why was it built on the side of a mountain? Who built it?

In the early days, device memory was an issue. I was always faced with the dillemma of not enough space. I usually emailed the photos to myself to save them before I deleted them from the device so I could take more pictures and repeat the process. Now though, there are different online 'clouds' we can store our digital photos. That, coupled with phones with larger memory capacities, I have a lot of photos stored. In more than one spot because for some reason I can't quite explain, I'm terrified of losing photos. I loathe deleting photos.

I don't even like deleting work related photos because 'what if' I need to call them up for some reason. I have year old photos of Bill's of Laden that I've only begun to weed out. But the fear that management will someday ask for the bills from back then persists. Irrational, I know.

One thing I just started doing in my Google Photos is to sort pictures into albums to make finding photos for blog posts easier. Photos help break up large chunks of text, something I try to avoid anyway. In a perfect world, I'd slap in photos that actually pertain to whatever I'm writing about. But that's not always possible, which is why there are a going to be alot of flower photos put in just because they're pretty. They probably won't have captions, because for some reason that throws off my formating and then I have to spend way too much time trying to get one paragraph match the others.

It's also easier these days to get the digital photos printed in physical form. If you have a good enough printer, you can do it yourself at home. If you don't there are bunches of online places you can order them, just the ones you want instead of the entire roll of film, and they can mail them to you. Although honestly I usually have them prepared at my local CVS because I go there at least once a month to pick of meds of one kind or another.

I may pick out older photos as I do this and write a post about them, just for something to write about and post for when life is absolutely boring. A boring day may be great for truck driving since it means nobody did anything out of the ordinary stupid for a change, but it doesn't make for good blogging!

Until next time!

Friday, January 29, 2021

Writing Update

I did not get as much writing done during Christmas home time as I was expecting and planning. I'm bummed about it, but I couldn't help being too sick to do the things I wanted. It wasn't until almost New Years that I even got my laptop out of my backpack!

But I did manage to get some new words down after that, so it wasn't a complete failure. It's still frustrating though, because the book is done in outline form, I just need to write it out and good God it's been harder than I thought it was going to be. Writing out the outline was supposed to make it easier!!

Oh well. One thing at a time. At least the outline IS done, so it's only a matter of time before I'll be releasing book three. I have no real goal other than by the end of the year. Hopefully sooner rather than later, but there's no point in giving myself anxiety by picking any other unrealistic goal. Life is hard enough as it is! Life as a writer who is also a truck driver is also hard enough as it is!

I did release The Ring of Fire again, both for Kindle and paperback. I have added links to the side where you can find both my novels at Amazon. I'm still giddy about how nice the new cover for Ring of Fire turned out. It looks even more gorgeous on a physical paperback. I had a couple physical copies, but I mailed them out the intended recipients without taking a picture. Slacking, I know.

Valentine's day is coming up and I'm thinking of doing another paperback giveaway. I'll probably do the random number generator again and have people chose a number on my Facebook page. I don't know whether to offer Ring of Fire or give the winners a choice of which novel they'd want. I'm leaning toward the latter.

The outline...such as it is lol

One thing I should start doing is the outline for book 4. Some of it is already written since I ended splitting what was originally book 3. Of course, some of it is now...not right...as things have changed, but I'll deal with that as I go. I've already had to cut things I had written for the book 3, Bigger than the Beetles. I was telling Mr. Janney about how I was cutting stuff and saving it in a separate file in case there was something I was going to want to include in an different spot with a new twist. He found that amusing, for reasons I don't understand. But then, he is a man who isn't a reader so I should probably just be grateful that he's willing to listen when I talk about my writing.

I have very few people I can talk to about writing. Some of that is due to my job. It's not the most conducive for maintaining any kind of friendships. Today's technology and social media platforms help, but there's an element of isolation just the same. People are afraid to call me on my cell because they don't want to bother me when I'm driving, but they don't understand that there are times I need that human contact while driving because it helps me fight fatigue. Even if I've had decent sleep, driving in the wee hours can be hard. Especially in the winter when there's so much darkness...ugh, I can't wait for the days to start getting longer. I'm usually okay once the sun comes up, but that's not even a guarantee if I'm on the west coast.

Mr. Janney and I do 12 hours shifts and we stick to Eastern time to maintain some kind of schedule. And on the west coast, than can cause some confusion...I get more dark hours and Mr. Janney gets more daylight. It's also hard, because most of my friends and family live on the east coast, so they wouldn't appreciate a phone call at 4am just because I'm feeling drowsy. I usually take a break when that happens, take a walk into truck stop or a rest area even if I don't have to use the facilities, get little snack or drink.

My favorite pic of Mt Shasta
because of the bird flying through

But I do get to see all sorts of beautiful scenery, once the sun comes up, so there's that. Nothing against the beauty of the mountains I live in, but I love the views in the western states. I love driving up the middle of California and seeing Mt. Shasta growing in the distance. I love driving along the Columbian river in between Oregon and Washington. I love driving along 90 in Wisconsin and Minnesota. I love Arizona and New Mexico; I have yet to get a picture of Saguaro cacti. I got way too excited the first time I saw a Saguaro. I do not like the high bridges and overpasses in any state, but I10 in Louisiana has some doozies, which I couldn't take pictures of because I was driving. We're going to be experimenting with a GoPro for a dash cam, because the ones we've tried so far have not been performing as expected. Maybe I'll be able to get some more scenery shots that way. One can only hope!

Until next time, stay safe!

Friday, December 11, 2020

A Year in Review - Part 2

One of the things I like about driving truck across this country, are the photo opportunities. I've always like taking pictures, even back in the day when it was on film and you have to wait for them to come back from the developer. I'm pretty sure I have some old film floating around somewhere that's probably too old to be developed.

One thing I dislike about driving truck, is driving in winter weather. Although I have to admit that it can lead to just as impressive photo ops.

This first photo is from December 2019. Mr. Janney and I were trying to get a load to Utah, and the weather was not cooperating. We had tried avoiding going through Wyoming on 80, but there were also issues with 70 in Colorado. After a little pressure from dispatch, we rerouted through Wyoming and had to shut down again. Visibility was crap, and Mr. Janney had lost track of how many accidents he'd passed. It took two of us to find a parking spot, only to be kicked out of it because it was a reserved spot. So we had to back track until we found a parking only pull off with an opening. The weather had lifted by sunrise, as you can see in the photo.

When we have to sit for weather related reasons, one thing we both do is catch up on sleep. And I prefer to wait until daylight when it's snowing or raining. I don't always, but it is my preference. This time, I did sleep, especially since I had woke up to help find the parking spot. I was up in time for the Wyoming sunrise. Not only did I snag that pretty sunrise pic, but I managed to snap this pic of an early bird.

There were quite a few of these birds flitting about in the early morning light, but this one was in the best spot for a picture. I don't remember now if I managed to get it in one shot, or if I had to grab it from a short video. My hands aren't quite as steady as they used to be when it comes to picture taking anymore. I believe it was Mr. Janney's suggestion that I take short videos and then grab a picture from it that way.

I know that's how I grabbed this shot of a bird just two days later. It was at a rest area in an area without snow. I'm not sure if I had made it to Arizona yet or if I was still in Utah. Wherever it was, it was southern enough for there to be cacti. I'll post that picture just below.

At the time of composing this post, the worst problem we've run into this season has been high wind. We've had to sit more than a few times because either our load was too light to risk it or we had an empty trailer. I'm hoping we manage to miss the worst of it when we go back out after Thanksgiving.

One other thing I don't like about truck driving, is the inability to take pictures while I drive! Oh, the sights I have stored in my memory!

There was one morning, I was heading west. It was actually not too far from the same Wyoming parking area in the above picture, though not the same day. The sun was rising behind me, and the full moon was still above the western horizon. The misty clouds glowed pink around the setting moon. It was beautiful.

Going to sign off now with the picture of the cactus at the other rest area. See you around Christmas-time!

P.S. - I'm experimenting with fonts...leave a comment and tell me what you think of this one!

Monday, January 28, 2019

What is in Front of You?

I don't know why I try to take pictures while riding in a vehicle. I mean, it's not even a 50/50 chance of getting a good shot. But I insist on trying anyway.

This photo was taken last Wednesday as we were returning home after all our appointments. I like water pics, and the river was so icy and cold looking, I tried even though I could see the cellphone was having trouble focusing. I thought I had it and pressed the screen, only to have the focus shift at the last second. I almost deleted the picture in frustration, but decided not to. Because I think it's a cool picture anyway. The background is all out of focus, but what is in focus are the water droplets right in front of me.

When my anxiety is high, I can't focus on anything. I can't get my ducks in a row because they're bouncing around like balls in a pinball game. All of them, all at once. It's frustrating, and only makes the anxiety worse.

Since I am unwilling to add one more medication to my long list of meds that I already take, I find myself resorting to other methods to try and corral those bouncing balls. The one thing I've found that is free (wine costs money, you know) is something called Mindful Meditation.

I'm not even sure if I'm doing it 'right', but it's enough to help. All I do, is force myself to focus on what is in front of me. There were times in the past, at previous jobs, where my insides where bouncing around so bad that I had my mind walk myself through the steps of my task at hand. It was enough to get me through the shift and usually the anxiety had passed. Until the next day, but that was probably because I was tired of working in the cold and a lot of the anxiety I was experiencing stemmed from that fact.

I have tried the traditional methods of meditating and praying. I've even tried yoga. Anything that puts me down on the floor, puts me on the same level as my dog and Jaclyn never fails to let me know it. I love her, but the best way she helps me with my anxiety is to snuggle in my lap...her being in my face is just not as cute. Aside from snuggling with the 8-year-old pup, focusing on the moment and the next thing to do is what I have found to work best for myself. Do you struggle with anxiety? If so, how do you deal with it?

Speaking on 'the next thing to do', since I now have water back (idk if it was frozen or what) the next thing to do is switch the dishes around and do a load. Or take a shower. I'll flip a coin. I've tried taking a shower while the dishwasher runs...it turns out to be very chilly!!

Until next time, leave a comment if you'd like.

(I'm going to send this post over at Broads of a Feather too.)