Sunday, January 11, 2009

Photo diary of the last few days

I'm going to work backwards, since that's the order my photos loaded in :-)

I made a knitted kitty, inspired by an ex-roommate of mine, Jodi, and with a pattern from another person's blog (if you don't like swearing, don't go there).



To take the photos of the kitty last night, I decided I should practice using my fancy flash off-camera (my camera can remotely control the flash). I couldn't remember how to do it, so I got out my camera manual, my flash manual, and did a google search and finally got it, as this test shot (while sitting at my computer) shows. You can also see the manuals in the background.
Yesterday afternoon, Jesse and I went over to a coworker's house to watch a football game. For those of you who know me and Jesse, you'll know we are not the football-watching types. But, we decided it would be fun to give it a try. As I'm working backwards here, I'll start with after the game--"our" team, the San Diego Chargers, lost, but we sat on my coworker's deck and enjoyed the sunset and city lights.
I made yellow and blue cupcakes with blue or yellow frosting. My advisor's daughter (my advisor's significant other (and father of the kid) was at the party, though my advisor was not) took quite a liking to the cupcake frosting... she licked the frosting off of four cupcakes, and only then took a nibble of one of the cupcakes (but never ate the rest of any of them). Here she is licking, and you can see another licked one on the table. 
Here are the cupcakes I took to the football watching party.

Before we left for the football party, I had a little photo shoot with Alice as she sat in some autumn-colored leaves I collected on Friday (more on that towards the end).




And here are the leaves, that I photographed separately on Saturday:

Okay, now we're at Friday, the day I collected the leaves... I sat outside when I ate my lunch because it was such a lovely day (sorry to everyone who lives somewhere that wouldn't be a possibility in January). The leaves are finally starting to turn colors and fall off trees here (took some getting used to when I moved here!). I ended up picking up a whole bunch of the leaves since I thought they were so pretty, and when I got back into lab, I tied a rubber band around them to keep them as a bunch. I happened to have my camera in lab, so one of my coworkers and I had a bit of fun. Here I am throwing my bouquet:
This photo was actually taken as a test shot as I was showing my coworker something, but I am putting it in so y'all can see where I work... my desk is at the very back on the right (you can see my desk chair pushed back) and my bench, where I keep my reagents and equipment and set up some of my experiments is in front of that, where my stool with my gray jacket is. Lab's are cluttered-looking places.
My coworker took a self portrait, and I really like how you can see another of my coworkers in the back.
Me posing with the coworker you could see in the back of the previous photo.
I put the leaves on our light box to get a back-lit shot through one of the leaves.
Here's my bouquet on the over-turned lid of my ice bucket (we put ice into them to keep reagents cold on our benches, when necessary).
And there you have it.