ABC Wednesday: O is for...

O is for Basil.. no, really!


Oops, I am so very late for ABC Wednesday - it's nearly Friday here now! Can I get this posted before the stroke of midnight?

Yesterday, I inadvertently learned my basil plant's scientific name while browsing websites on how to care for it: it's Ocimum basilicum :)

This morning when I opened my blinds, they managed to grab my Ocimum by its leaves and pull it straight up out of its jar! I have it in a jar of water to sprout some roots, which it is doing beautifully. It is a cutting from Central Market, that grocery store of recent Picture Each Day fame.




More ABCs at ABC Wednesday!

The culling of the herd & My neighborly bane

The baby peppers had had their true leaves for several days and were getting bigger and bigger, so on Sunday I finally cut back all but one on each little peat pellet. I was sad to have this little pile of dead seedlings afterwards :( I didn't post the picture on Sunday because I wanted to use Photomatix on it, which I finally did tonight. I have been pretty lazy about photos and the blog this week in general. Sorry about that, loyal readers.

There are some birds working on a nest in this little drain opening (is that what it is?) outside my apartment. This morning I heard them wiggling in and out of it every minute or so, so I went outside to try to sneak a picture of Mama Bird going inside. After I'd been outside for about 30 seconds and snapped this practice shot, Mr Bangs-Around-All-The- Time-Since-Moving-In-A-Few-Days-Ago Upstairs-Neighbor came outside and stood at his balcony rail. And there I was, pointing my camera in his direction while sneakily hiding halfway behind a brick wall. Well, it was too early in the morning to try to explain myself. Plus, I am a little afraid that if I ever open my mouth to say anything to him, the words "Why are you so LOUD all the time?" might fall out before I can stop them. Possibly with some slightly more colorful language inserted. So I just ducked behind the wall and went back inside to get ready for my day. Hopefully I'll catch Mama Bird another day.

The babies emerge!

Isn't it funny how things seem to show up sometimes in a place you're sure you checked a hundred times already? Today I found my key card for my apartment complex's walking gate in a stack of papers that I leafed through on multiple occasions over the past few days, looking for that very card.

Also today, these pepper seedlings appeared, in the exact place that I've looked for them for days! Eerie ;)

Sunrise over the Mexican Caribbean

Aha! I went to the doctor today (thank goodness for coworkers who can recommend a good doctor - I HATE having to find a new one in a new city, especially when I'm already not feeling well!) and found out that I have Bronchitis. Fabulous. But now I have an inhaler, which seems to help, and an antibiotic, which will hopefully knock this out quickly.

They drew some blood and ..er..other liquids.. which they will test to figure out what this stomach problem is. In the meantime, the doctor gave me a list of foods I should avoid, which list is:

* chocolate
* peppermint
* caffeine
* tomato
* fatty foods
* citrus

Let's compare this to a portion of my normal menu for a day:

* chocolate
* peppermint gum
* coffee and tea
* quesadillas with salsa OR homemade pizzas on tortillas
* fatty frozen breakfast sandwiches, egg rolls, pot pies, etc.
* citrus lozenges (because I have a cold, you see)

Good, glad I will not have to avoid anything I would normally eat. :P

Anyway, enough of that depressing talk of not eating chocolate. Today's images come from last Tuesday. On Monday night we went out to Señor Frog's, which was much more enjoyable than I expected it to be, due in part I'm sure to the tequila I consumed. As usual after a night of revelry, I woke up early Tuesday morning and didn't feel like going back to sleep. Since it was just a few minutes before sunrise, I instead went for a walk on the beach. The sand was FREEZING at that time of morning! This is very different from the sand in North Carolina, where I lived one summer, which gets very hot during the day and does not get cold at night. The Cancun sand did not get hot during the day, even under the baking sun, but apparently nearly freezes overnight. Weird.





Also weird: there were no shells on the beach. Well okay, there were a few, but I picked up every shell I saw and a few pieces of interesting coral, and I barely had one handful to walk back with. Where are all the shells??









Later that day, our friend the pelican was back on his pier, this time fishing with a companion. Every time the pelican dove in after a fish, the gull would fly around over his head hoping for scraps. I don't think he got any.

Chocolate!

I thought these chocolates sounded interesting so I bought them, but I have to say I'm not that crazy about them. The chili one is too spicy for a chocolate, in my opinion, and the lemon-lime is too sour for me. BUT there was a third one that I bought, white chocolate with blueberry in it, which was AMAZING! The reason it's not in this photo is that I ate the whole thing almost immediately. I will probably not buy either of these again, but that blueberry one.. I'm going to have to stock up.

I actually took this photo yesterday--such a cheater. Well, really multiple photos, but then I did the HDR processing today to make them one photo. I am still wildly entertained by the Photomatix program and this whole HDR thing, even for simple photos like this one. In case you are interested in it, the post where I first tried HDR is here. In that post I linked to the awesome tutorial that first got me interested in the whole thing--you should look at the tutorial for some AWESOME examples!

View of the courtyard..

..from my apartment balcony (I love that I have a balcony :] )





It's empty at night, but on afternoons and weekends there are usually kids out on the playground or playing ball on the grass. It makes me feel at home, since my garage apartment in Houston was above the garage of a Montessori elementary school, so every day the kids literally had recess out in my backyard. I miss seeing them.

ABC Wednesday: C is for..

C is for Colorful Cow

Well, it's really Tuesday here, but tomorrow I'll be driving all day, on my way to Dallas for my new job!

This lovely cow lives in the town closest to my parents' house. My mom loves it! I have to admit, it does brighten my day every time I drive by it. I would have liked to get a closer-up picture, but I decided not to trespass on private property just for my picture of the day ;)

To see all the blogs participating in ABC Wednesday, visit:
http://abcwednesdayround3.blogspot.com/

Looks like a stormy sunset

Winter sunrise

Bed time

Echo Mountain

This is where my sister and I took a skiing lesson today, while her boyfriend and our brother did a snowboarding lesson. I now have sore glutes and a sunburned nose, but I also feel like I'm a little less likely to kill myself (or others) on a ski slope.





Someday soon I'll pay for the program and get rid of the 'Photomatix' watermark, I promise.

More HDR!

This time flower pots instead of a landscape. Click the thumbnail image to the right to see the original non-HDR image.

HDR Photography

Today I read this tutorial on HDR (High Dynamic Range) photography. (You should click on the link to see some REALLY gorgeous examples!) It is a really, really cool technique, combining multiple photographs at different exposures to really bring out the details in the image. At a high exposure, the camera records the details in the shadows, but the highlights get blown out, and vice versa at a low exposure. The Photomatix program puts the images together so that we can see all these details at once--much like our eyes and brains are able to process all the details we see, light or dark, at the same time. I cannot justify spending the money on Photomatix right now, but I did download the trial version. Since it's just a trial, it left a Photomatix watermark on my image. But here is my first little attempt at an HDR image:



(the best of multiple 'before' images)




(after--the HDR image)


It's amazing how much more detail is visible. It truly is much more like how the eye sees the world. Here are zoomed in portions of the two images so you can see the detail a little better:



(before)




(after)