Taking the Universe Up on the Opportunities Presented

As the day winds down, and I try to put together my thoughts on how things went, I wrap up the evening with a feeling of accomplishment and contentment.  Earlier this morning, I was presented the opportunity of taking one of the household cars into the dealership for a scheduled service as well as playing my role putting the finishing touches on Takada air bag recall, the largest automobile recall in history. Truth be told, I've come to enjoy taking the cars in for their maintenance because the time that I used to spend essentially twiddling my thumbs in the waiting area turns into an ideal time to put in a pretty long walk.

Today, I was not disappointed in that quest for a walk.  I managed to put in a solid nine and nine tenths miles while the service was completed.  Having that outlet helped me avoid the angst of having to wait about an hour longer than the service tech indicated at the beginning of the visit he thought it would take to get my car out of the shop.  I visited some familiar places, and actually had enough time to walk home and back to the dealership as well as visit some of my favorite haunts.  It was a pretty slow walk, and I was able to capture a record number of photos that got turned into panoramic shots.  Here they are in chronological order.

Buddha Panoramic Painting on West Street, Annapolis

I've passed this building a number of times, and for whatever reason the idea of capturing this painting on the facade of the tsunami restaurant.  The mural has been up since June of this year, and is apparently the subject of a court dispute between the restaurant's owner and the Annapolis City planning commission.   My impression of the painting is that it's in keeping with the character of this particular section of West Street and that it would be a shame to see a ruling that would require the painting to be covered up down the road. This photograph is one of my favorites of the walk.

Main Street Annapolis from Church Circle

I had to stand in the middle of the road to capture this shot looking down Main Street toward Annapolis Harbor.  It would have been nice to have this shot without any cars and a little bit better exposure, but the early morning walk down this quaint little street in the cool of the morning was both familiar and left me with a sense of calm.

Main Street Annapolis about halfway to the Harbor

The lighting in this photo is a little better, but I did capture too many cars.  It makes the scene look quite a bit more frantic than it actually feld.  On the right and left side of the photo, you can see that the City of Annapolis has once again instituted free parking (for three hours anyway) during the holiday season by bagging the parking meters.  Every year, I think this is a really nice touch, and every year I wonder if it will all come to an end.  Happily, the thirst for revenue has been held at bay for another year.

Severn River from Annapolis Harbor

After marching down Main Street, I stopped off at the City Dock to shoot a picture of the mouth of the Severn River leading out to the Chesapeake Bay from Annapolis Harbor.  Apart from the moderate upgrades in the surrounding technology, this area has largely remained unchanged for a couple of hundred years. Having left Texas to come to college up here on the coast, I often wonder how anyone likes to live in the interior of the country, separated from the water by hundreds if not thousands of miles.  Clearly lots of people like it well enough to keep doing it, but I have a hard time imagining moving too far away from the coast.  Views like this are a major consideration in that decision.

Pussers Caribbean Grille, Annapolis Waterfront Hotel, and St. Mary's Church across Ego Alley from City Dock, Annapolis

Ego Alley, Pussers Caribbean Grille, Annapolis Waterfront Hotel (formerly the Annapolis Marriott, renamed AWH but still a Marriott property), and St. Mary's Church are all Annapolis landmarks and each worth visiting in their own right.  This picture captures them all in one fun loving and compact view.

Spa Creek looking downstream toward the Severn River

One day a long time ago, a friend and I took a two and a half meter dingy out the mouth of Spa Creek on a mission to hang a banner from the Greenbury Point Shoal Light.  The banner may or may not have been successfully installed. I leave it to the imagination of the reader to fill in the blanks about the practicality, legality, and advisability of such an undertaking.

Spa Creek and Drawbridge looking toward Annapolis Yacht Club

I keep thinking each weekend that we've reached the end of the boating season, and based on the number of empty slips from boats that have been hauled out for the winter, I don't appear to be the only one with that opinion.  Against many odds, the weather is still amazingly good, and the river would have been a good place to be today.  As it was, walking around Annapolis was really quite nice as well.

St. Mary's Church from the Spa Creek Drawbridge

Wrapping up a record setting day of eight panoramic shots is this picture of St. Mary's Church from the Spa Creek (or Eastport) Drawbridge.  It was a great morning walk and a fantastic way to spend my automobile servicing waiting time.

A Lazy Day

Today was a lazy day.  It's an interesting characterization considering this distance I covered walking was thirteen and two tenths miles, just a little over half marathon distance.  I caught myself noting to Rory that I hoped my roommates and I would be able to get off our lazy asses and do something tomorrow just as I was wrapping up the daily distance.  I'm really not sure what to make of this characterization other than to say that the distance covered is not necessarily (anymore) the measure of how much gets done during a day.

I long to explore.  To strike out and see new things and have new adventures.  Today was the best day of my life, and I want the next one to be even better.  I took up the REI challenge to get outside and make the rest of the Thanksgiving weekend about more than conspicuous consumption.  It wasn't a boycott of Black Friday per se, but I did enjoy being out on my version of the trail as seen below.

Exploration in the Urban Wilderness

Once again, it was a glorious fall day, and my afternoon jaunt carried me to the edge of Annapolis Harbor to take in yet another sunset.

Annapolis Harbor at Sunset, Google's take and the original

A panoramic mash-up is always my goal, but today Google delivered what they call a "stylized" version of the original photo, and the above collage is both the original shot (bottom) with the Google version (top).  I've become pretty successful at getting the software to make the panoramic view, but ever now and then I get stylized instead.  By all appearances, you only get one google take on a particular photo (stylized, best smiles, animation, or panoramic), and I have not yet been able to detect a pattern for when the software goes with stylized vice panoramic shot.  Today was a rare day where I didn't get a panoramic mash-up. Yesterday's post didn't show any either, but they did finally come through later in the evening after posting. I'll go ahead and post the now for continuity sake.

Spa Creek Panorama from Thanksgiving Day

This view of Spa Creek is pretty nice, but I do like the photo from yesterday's post that captured St. Mary's Church just a little bit better.

Fleet Feet Annapolis Turkey Trot 5K Fun Run Crowd Panoramic shot

This one shows how good the software is in marrying up complex shapes including most of the people. The lighting is not the best, but once again the technology is really amazing, and I suspect it gets better with every use.  

It was another great day, and I look forward to another tomorrow.

Happy Thanksgiving 2915

When I go into the gym at work in the morning, I often run into the same set of people heading out to participate in their physical training routine.  I am on cordial speaking terms with a few of these folks, and one of these guys happens to be someone that I exchange greetings with in the cold dark mornings on a fairly regular basis.  He says something like, "Hey, what's up man?," and then I say, "Not much. How's it going." At this point in the conversation he always, and I mean ALWAYS says, "Today is the best day of my life!"

Day after day, he acknowledges that the past is the past, the future is not guaranteed, and today, this very moment, is the best day and moment of his entire life.  He's a man that seems familiar with gratitude.  He doesn't wait for that one special day of the year where most folks in this country focus on thankfulness.  In keeping with the fine example that I think he's setting, today is the best day of my life.  If I'm fortunate enough to make it to tomorrow, that too will be the best day of my life, and so, if I'm disciplined and observant, I can stumble through life with a series of days that just keep getting better than the last.

On the walking front, I took a bit of a breather today and only put in a little over nine miles.  About five of those miles was actually a bit of a jog because I was afforded the opportunity to participate in the Fleet Feet Annapolis Turkey Trot 5K fun run at 0900 this morning.  Going to this little jog was a total surprise, and a good one once I got over the shock of my roommates basically insisting that we participate as a group.  I'd mentioned this event several weeks ago, but my impression was that they're level of interest was somewhere between apathetic and mildly antagonistic to the notion.  It came as quite a shock when I got a text asking if we were going to participate. It had seemed like a good idea several weeks ago, and it seemed like a good idea today so we went.

Spa Creek with St. Mary's Church to the Right

On the way over to the run, I crossed Spa Creek and managed to snap a photo that captures the still, sunny, mildly crisp fall day that hosted the run. While there's really no such thing as bad weather, there is such a thing as good weather.  It's one of the many paradoxes that I've encountered walking. Today was decidedly good weather.

The gathering Turkey Trot crowd early (but not too early) Thanksgiving morning

I'm pretty well acquainted with the owners of Fleet Feet Annapolis who hosted this event, and they claim that they believe they could have had as many as three thousand people participating in this run today.  They base that on about 1800 RSVPs and the assumption that most of the folks who come bring one or two family members to participate.  While I'm forced to admit this was my M.O., and the crowd was pretty big, I do have some skepticism that we topped the tree millenia mark.  The overall number matters very little since there was a large and fun loving crowd that turned out to run on Thanksgiving morning.  The event was quite a bit of fun and struck the right mark in rounding out the final five miles of my pedestrian activity this morning

After wrapping up the fun run, it was time to get down to serious business in preparing the Thanksgiving dinner for the evening.  Including my roommates, we hosted a meal for ten people.  We, of course went overboard a little and prepared twelve dishes for ten people to enjoy.  I made a spirited defense of curtailing our excess a little, but ended being unsuccessful in this effort.  I won't bore you with the details of mashed potatoes, green beans, peas, Brussel sprouts, glazed carrots, stuffing, sweet potatoes, pumpkin pie. 

apple pie, cherry pie, and gravy.  I will tell you that the two main courses were deep fried turkey and deep fried ham.

Moderately Dangerous Cooking

Deep frying a turkey or a ham is a serious (and potentially dangerous) undertaking, but the results are predictable, easy to achieve, and absolutely fabulous from both a preparation time and taste perspective. One of the chief advantages to this method of cooking the main course is it decouples the cooking of the main course from the kitchen activities. This is an especially welcome state of affairs when you only have one oven.  The downside is that you're dealing with three hundred fifty degree peanut oil that is always looking for a way to progress from relatively energetic cooking activities to a flashover fire that might just burn your house, your yard, and your back porch down.

Tieing it all back to the proper example set by my gym acquaintance, this was the best day of my life.  I'm grateful for it and all that it brought my way, and I'm looking forward to having another great day tomorrow...no matter what the future holds.  Happy Thanksgiving - 2015.

The Secret of Connectedness and Contentment

Over the last several months, I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't on a quest to track down the secret ingredient of connectedness and contentment.  Today, on a relatively quiet and beautiful fall day, the secret was revealed to me.  There is no secret to connectedness.  We're connected.  It's just that simple, and whether we acknowledge it or not the fact remains that we're tied together by strings that run through time and space. Now capturing the feeling of connectedness, well, that might be another story all together that will probably require continuing practice.

On my afternoon walk this afternoon, I also managed to capture the feeling of connectedness as well as the intellectual acknowledgement of the fact of connectedness.  It was exhilarating.  I started off on one of my standard routes, but deviated from it a bit at about the two mile point.

Supreme Court Building

As you can see, the weather was beautiful, though a bit cooler than yesterday.  I meandered my way back to Union Station and this time took some time out of making progress to go inside.  Truth be known, I was looking for a restroom.  Failing to find one, and not willing to ask, I exited the main entrance and came upon this view.

Center Arch of the Main Entrance to Union Station

Although I've seen this view from the opposite side a couple of times, I really didn't imagine it would line up this nicely from the inside looking out.  The lighting was wonderful, and when I walked out the door this sight stopped me short.  I pulled up and just about caused the woman exiting behind me with a roller bag (it is the supposedly the busiest travel day of the year after all) to run into my newly imobile backside.  I let the exiting traffic clear a little, and then lined up slightly left of the center of the door to snap this picture.  I didn't want to impede folks on their way, and have botched the symmetry just a little. Be that as it may, the flag gently blowing and outlined in the wreath was an remains a sight to behold.  One thing that I plan on doing relatively shortly is returning to this magnificent train station after dark to see what the blackness and lighting will reveal. With any manner of luck, there will be more pictures to follow.  There are just too many interesting aspects of the station to not explore them a little.  It's the gift of breaking up my routine, and I'm glad that whatever moved me wander on down here had the wisdom to know what I needed to see.

Failing to find a bathroom, I headed up toward the United States Botanic Garden. This place is a real gem located just south and west of the Capitol Building, and perhaps more importantly it has one of only a few easily accessible restrooms on the Washington Mall.  I made it there with twenty minutes to spare before closing, made my way through the main exhibit hall, into the primeval forest, through the section representing Hawaii, into and through the desert, and finally into the best public restrooms that federal tax dollars can buy. On the way back out, I noticed that the main hall had what amounted to a model of the Washington Mall running down the length of the hall.  There were stylized models of the major buildings rendered in a bronze colored patina and lit from within. These were surrounded by a collection of plants meant to invoke the feeling of the holidays. Mirroring the actual mall, the east end of the hall hosted the model of the Supreme Court Building.

Model of the Supreme Court Building

Seeing the model of the United States Supreme Court caused me to capture that feeling of connectedness that I've been walking around for the last year trying to track down. If I hadn't needed to find a restroom, I wouldn't have gone into Union Station where on exiting I was treated to a view I hadn't imagined existed. Failing to find one, I hot footed it over to the Botanic Garden where I saw a model of the area I've been walking around regularly for the last year.  I had no idea that this display was here, and it wasn't here the last time I came in the garden.  It's almost as if I was being led by an invisible hand to see what I needed to see and I felt the connectedness and contentment that I needed to feel today.  Sounds a bit daft, but it felt pretty good.

On the way back to the starting point, the cars in the lots surrounding the Capitol Building had largely cleared out and the Botanic Garden had closed to visitors. The lights on the inside of the garden caught my eye, and I was able to capture a panoramic photo of a scene that I've walked past countless times but was still somehow new.  A slightly different perspective where the Gardens and the Capitol were linked visually in a way that I've never noticed before.

Light show at the United States Botanic Garden and the United States Capitol

The walk was the perfect way to kick off the Thanksgiving weekend and I'm grateful to have experienced the journey. The sights I took in ended up being beyond my most optimistic imaginings of what would unfold, and it happened in a way that was unforced and organic.  The path didn't have the geographic symmetry that I've become accustomed to on these little jaunts, but there was visual thread that wound through it all.

Breaking the Seal, Shaking Things Up, and Exploring TED

Today was one of those days that most everything seemed to fall into place.  The sync problems from yesterday disappeared, I was privileged to attend a lively discussion centered on telling a triumphant story on the path to redemption, my walking routes were deliberately shaken up giving a renewed interest in my daily plodding, and I've discovered the cache of TED Talks and have been listening to them when not talking to Rory or working.

Starting the day early with the lively discussion on the topic of redemption ended up being the ideal kick-off, and after that was over, I discovered that the sync issue from yesterday had been resolved, and two new panoramic shots had materialized.  They are not "new" subjects, but as is my habit, I'm going to share them.

Anacostia River Sunset

This view just doesn't get old for me.  There is a construction barge that's moved into the Anacostia Riverwalk Park area, and they appear to be driving relatively robust pilings into the river bottom in the vicinity of the stage that hosts concerts during the summer months.  It will be interesting to see what develops over the coming weeks.

Capitol Building in the early evening fall darkness

This picture is the first really short stubby panoramic shot that I've gotten.  I'm not even really sure if I couldn't have captured the whole width of this shot with just a standard photo.  Nevertheless, here it is because it appeared.  As you can see the scaffolding is still up around the Capitol dome although I'm looking forward to this coming down later this winter.

Later in the day, I decided that my routine was in desperate need of some minor adjustments just to shake things up a bit.  Being the Thanksgiving week, my schedule was not terribly full today, so I took advantage of the lull and walked a little over five miles in one shot during the early afternoon hours.  The destination was Union Station, and I was not disappointed by the route, the weather, or the view that I had when I reached the turnaround point.

Union Station on a glorious fall afternoon

During this little jaunt, Rory was unavailable to talk on the phone as has become our collective habit, so I spent the time listening to TED Talks streamed through their Android App. I find that these talks are witty, smart, thought provoking, and moving and the time flew by as I listened to seven pretty diverse topics covering Choice, Christianity, Cognitive Science, Marketing, Slowness, Mindfulness, and the value of Stress. These are great educational talks and there are literally hours of intellectually challenging and curiosity provoking speeches by real experts available to anyone with an internet connection. If you can't find something on TED that sparks just a little bit of interest leave me a note in the comments section because I'd be interested in talking to you.

Later in the afternoon, I had the opportunity to wrap up the day with a route that was a little bit different, but took me past the old Anacostia River stomping grounds that you're familiar with if you've followed these posts at all.  I did get a little bit different viewpoint in this first photo because my morning's lively discussion put me at work late enough that I had to use a parking garage that I haven't used in months.  I was a little bit irked by the situation in the morning, but the view at the end of the day was worth every little bit of minor inconvenience I might have perceived at the beginning of the day.

Anacostia River Sunset - A different perspective from the "inconvenient" parking garage

Again, I'm reminded that the universe is conspiring to contribute to my happiness and well being if I'm only open enough to let the events play out and observant enough to see the opportunities those events place in my path.

Anacostia River Sunset from the sea level perspective

One day very soon, the ex-USS Barry will depart the Washington Navy Yard, and these opportunities to capture this elegant ship in the place she's been moored for the last thirty years or sow will sail over the horizon probably never to return.

The next three shots are similar to the one from yesterday, but I was particularly struck by the reflection of the buildings and sky on the surface of the river.

Anacostia River Sunset with Blue Heron in flight

The backdrop of this photo is my least favorite of the last three, but being able to catch the Blue Heron in the foreground in flight was a special experience.  I wasn't even trying to get that part of the shot, and didn't realize I'd captured it at all until the final results were delivered to me.  I've deliberately tried to create this kind of shot on a number of occasions, but the results have been far less satisfactory.  I guess it was finally time...once I stopped trying to get it done and just let things unfold.

Anacostia River Sunset - Reflections on the River

The quality of the light from the sky and the river is just stunning in this picture.  No filters, no real effort on my part other than triggering the shutter.  I don't know what to say other than I'm grateful that I get the opportunity to experience this kind of beauty almost every day.

Anacostia River Sunset

The clarity of the reflection of the building under construction makes this my favorite shot of the evening. This picture is even better in a larger format because the details really come through.  The wind had laid down just a little bit more from the previous shot, and though not quite as smooth as glass, the water and the sky merging into each other was a special gift to wrap up the day.

Failure to Sync

Today, the timing of things has just been a little bit off.  It could be related to the weather which has seen the longest sustained period of relatively cold dry air making an assault on the senses this fall.  I suspect that's not quite it at all.

Walking went alright, although most of the bipedal motion was conducted during the darkness.  A few photos got taken, but most of those were repeats of the same general scenes that have come to represent the small number or routes that have become my habit.  I did notice a pretty neat view down a side street from my normal route, so I tried to set up a panorama.  No real way to tell if that worked, since my phone seems to be having some difficulty syncing up with my normal off device storage.  For some reason one of those side street shots did get uploaded, but this is the only shot that did make it as of the time of this writing.

Side Street View along my usual walking route

I really do hope that the backup eventually works, and a panorama of the entire scene is born.  I suspect it will be pretty spectacular, but who knows.

Even my brief stint at meditation was slightly unsettled. It almost feels like there is some sort of breakthrough in the works, and it's just not time yet for whatever is about to manifest itself.  Sometimes it gets like this, and the only real way to deal with it is to apply just a little patience and see how things play out. I'm looking forward to finding out how this all gets resolved.  It will be interesting, on that I think we can count.

Quiet Sunday

Today was pretty laid back.  Cooking breakfast, watching a movie, and taking a nap took up all of the morning.  Later in the afternoon there was a little bit of around the house clean up (with more that should have been done...by me), and then the daily walk.  This time, I bit it all off in one chunk doing two laps around the older parts of Annapolis.

Alumni Hall with the Last of the Autumn Foliage from Fitch Bridge

As autumn progresses, the fall colors on trees are becoming increasingly rare.  A week or ten days is probably all that remains before the deciduous trees revert to their naked state for the winter.  This row of trees bordering Worden Field are really that last real hold outs in the immediate area.

Fitch Bridge looking toward Hospital Point with the Severn River Bridge in the Background

The beginning of the walk started sunny, but a pretty thick, low overcast moved in about two miles into the distance.  The wind picked up, the chill got more pronounced, and the water started to look like rough cut slate.  Still, the architecture is fantastic, and the changing of the seasons, though waning, still adds a spot of color here and there.

Fitch Bridge looking up College Creek

This shot was taken on the second time around the loop with the sun nearing the horizon.  My hopes for a great set of sunset shots were pretty low at this point because of the cloud cover.

Sunset Reflected in the Window

As the walk progressed, the prospects for a sunset seemed to be looking up a bit, but it still wasn't clear that a truly spectacular one was going to materialize.

Sunset Developing over Annapolis with St Mary's in the Background

The pinks and oranges developed slowly at first, but the dividing line between the clouds and the sky started to shape up to potentially be interesting.

St Mary's Church and the Flag in the Center of the
Downtown Annapolis Roundabout at Sunset

This just goes to show that I'm not much of a fortune teller.  Given my earlier pessimism, the battery in my phone (and camera) were far to low to adequately capture the glory that was about to unfold.

Gate 1, Canoe U. at the Height of the Colors

The most stunning sunset in recent experience unfolded right as I was passing through downtown Annapolis. The colors were remarkable, and I remarked on them several times to Rory who was on the phone with me at the time.  The sky was truly breathtaking.

I never really know what I'm going to encounter out on the road, but I'm always surprised and rarely disappointed. In fact, I'd venture to say that any disappointment is all the fault of the observer. The universe always manages to deal something up that's fantastic as long as I can be present enough to appreciate it.