I'm a Photo Nerd Again!

That's got to sound a little weird, I admit, but I know of no other way to express the way I feel right now.

Last December, my little Olympus camera died, and with everything that came after, I never got around to getting it fixed or replaced.  You can argue my skill as a photographer, but I love to take pictures, and it's another form of expression that helps keep me grounded.

2011 was a rough year, and my opportunities for photography have been few, but that's in the past.  My Dad was generous enough to send me WalMart gift card for Xmas, and I used it and some of my own money to buy a new camera.  I got a Fujifim FinePix T190.  Real photographers will no doubt scoff at my toy.  I, on the other hand am very happy.  Thanks, Dad.

I'm on Totally Jacked Up Aircraft Photos

I love to take pictures of airplanes.  This dovetailed nicely with volunteering at the Carolinas Aviation Museum when I was in Charlotte, because it was often possible to work and shoot photos at the same time.  The museum, in its original location was perfectly sited between two of the runways, and I got lots of nifty shots.  I also got a lot of duds.  Handheld point-and-shoot digital cameras aren't really made for shooting fast-moving objects.  In the older models there's a sizable gap between when you press the button and when the camera actually takes the picture.  Taking the kind of pictures I like to take was a learning experience, but I got pretty good at it.  That said, I still take lousy pictures from time to time.

I don't remember exactly when or how I discovered Totally Jacked Up Aircraft Photos.  Suffice to say that it provides a little spot of humor in the midst of all the serious blogs I read.  At first, I had no intention of submitting anything to the blog.  After all, I aspire to taking good pictures.  Why would I want to share my failures?

Errare est humanum.

Never Surrender

Getting There

This was supposed to be my first post from Tallahassee, but things didn't exactly go according to plan. Before I get into that, let me recap the events since my last post.

Last Monday, we got the truck looked at. $1200 is a conservative estimate of the cost to fix everything. Even if I had the money, there was no guarantee the truck would make the trip, so we ended up selling it to a neighbor for $300. I booked a flight to Tallahassee out of Richmond, and made arrangements with another neighbor to get there.

Tuesday morning I went out and picked up my pre-order copy of Mass Effect 2. It is everything I could have hoped for in a game and more. It gave me something to do with my spare time between packing and sleeping last week.

Tuesday night was my last full shift at the hotel, but I made the mistake of letting them know that I had signed on to work until Wednesday, so I got dragooned into coming in for a couple of hours Wednesday night to show the new guy the ropes.

We spent Thursday and Friday packing out the apartment. You never realize how much stuff you own until you're trying to move. I packed up three or four boxes of clothes, and two plastic totes full of shoes, plus another four boxes of model kits.

Friday night saw the beginning of the worst winter storm Hampton Roads has seen since 1980. Our area got somewhere in the neighborhood of twelve inches of snow. It snowed, then sleeted, then snowed some more, and left the area blanketed in ice. Nate got the moving truck Saturday morning. We loaded all but a few essentials before calling it a day, and walked out to London Boulevard for pizza.

Sunday morning we finished packing, and Nate hit the road around 1500. I overnighted with a neighbor, and we got on the road to come to Richmond around 1000. My flight left for La Guardia, NY at 1450, and we arrived in New York a little after 1600. The next leg brought me from New York to Atlanta, GA a little after 1900.

Atlanta Hartsfield Jackson airport is a frakking zoo! From the arrival gate, I went down, and down, and down a long, long concourse back to the main terminal, only to travel down and escalator, go around a corner, and up another escalator, to reverse myself going up the other side of the terminal. I got held up in security lines, and got to my gate just in time to see the plane pulling away.

They put me on standby for another flight at 2249. Standby means you're waiting to see if there's an open seat. I was given the last seat, only to arrive at the plane and find the aircraft already full. So I'm spending the night in a nice hotel (the Sheraton Gateway), and I get to go back to the airport in the morning, and will hopefully arrive in Tallahassee a little after 0900. Wish me luck, or pray for me, or whatever you people do. In any case, I'll appreciate the thought.

I did get lots of nifty photos. :-)

Let It Snow...Not!

The blogosphere has been alive the last couple of days with writings about the nor'easter which churned up the East Coast the last couple of days. Other places got anywhere from three inches to a couple of feet of snow. Here, we got maybe an inch, and as of 0600 this morning, it's hard to tell that it snowed. There are patches and clumps of whiteness in areas that are alee, but most of what fell yesterday appears to be gone, at least around my job. There might be some stuff sticking around when I get home, seeing as it's closer to the river. Time will tell.

I'm going to walkabout the neighborhood after I get home. I'll take my camera. I was hoping there'd be more snow for photographic purposes. We'll see.

Thank you for your consideration, I think

I took a walk through Olde Towne this afternoon. I had to drop a couple of pieces into the mail (model parts for friends in England and Wales), and decided to trek through the neighborhood on the way home. I spotted this sign in front of a Baptist church/private school I attended when I was a child.

Their spelling is atrocious, but I suppose it's the thought that counts.

One more from Halloween

I promised I'd post another photo as soon as I could find them. I hereby nominate myself for "Girl Most in Need of a Waist-cincher".

But for the witch hat, the entire outfit came out of my closet. The corset top, black lace tank and the boots are from Torrid. The skirt and stockings are from Hot Topic.

Halloween Epilogue

I wasn't able to get online at all yesterday after I left work, and I only had a few minutes to check my email at home, so this post comes twenty-four hours late, so I've had time for a little more analysis than I might've posted in a raw recap.

Friday wiped me out. Between sitting up all morning waiting to get paid, then running around all afternoon paying bills and stuff, then getting too little sleep before going back to work, I was exhausted. I had my Halloween costume assembled, but I had to put a few finishing touches on myself. I'd made a half-hearted effort to shave my legs Friday night, but my heart wasn't in it, so I resolved to wear black tights with my costume.

Getting ready Saturday evening, I remembered that I had a pair of black-and-white striped thigh-highs that I picked up at Hot Topic a couple of years ago. I think they're meant to stay up on their own, but I wore a garter belt anyway, just because. I had trouble fastening the rear set of tabs, so I enlisted Nate in hooking me up. I told him he could scratch an item off his bucket list. The expression on his face was priceless.

I ditched the "Eris" makeup in favor of something I thought was Halloweeny, a Revlon palette of smoky greys and green. The polish I bought turned out to be more of metallic onyx, but it worked with my outfit, and it matched the tone of my star earrings almost perfectly.

By the time I was ready to go, Nate had our neighbors all psyched up to see me in costume, so I strolled across the street for a photo op before rolling out. Because I forgot to bring along my camera, the only photos of me from this excursion were taken by other people. A few of them have appeared on Facebook and elsewhere, so I'll try to find one or two to post here for everyone's edification and entertainment.

The party at Mike & Mark's was great. I am not a party person, in the usual sense. I like to meet and hang out with people, and maybe have a drink or two, but that's all. That's the main reason why I don't spend a lot of times in bars. That, and I can only put up with so much cigarette smoke. This party was different, somehow. I only knew a couple of the people there, but the others I met were very friendly. There was dance music playing on Sirius. There was a big cooler outside filled with beer and wine coolers, and the fixings for assorted mixed drinks in the kitchen. There was food - I've seen wedding receptions that had smaller spreads.

I think I was the only trans person there, though I wasn't the only one in a female costume. There were three fellows from the Hampton Roads Men's Chorus, dressed as the Golden Girls (they had a female friend dressed as Rose to fill out the set). Towards the end a carload of friends showed up dressed as assorted dead people, including a guy dressed as Jackie Kennedy on November 22 (a pink Chanel suit covered in blood) and another dressed as Anna Nicole Smith (wearing stripper shoes that looked impossible to walk in).

Towards the end of the party, I was talking to a woman dressed as a fairy. I think she was a little drunk. She asked me what I was dressed as. I asked, "The hat doesn't give it away?" She told me she loved my costume, but I should ditch the witch hat and tell people I was a hooker. OH NO SHE DIDN'T!!!

I tried to explain how demeaning that was, both to me and to women in general. I told her about the people I have known who turned to sex work because they couldn't find regular employment. I told her telling folks I was a prostitute could get me arrested. She would not be dissuaded. I broke off the conversation and found someone else to talk to.

The picture above shows me, Tiffany and her girlfriend Danni.

Pictures of Mom, Part 2

This one dates from about 1982. Coincidentally, Mom is now (in the photo) about the same age as Granny in the previous photo (and I was ten or thereabouts, too). She's sitting at the teeny table in Granny's kitchen. You can see that infamous hostility towards the photographer. I'd like to think I look half so evil when someone rubs me the wrong way.

I never thought of it this way before, but Mom could have used a little pressed powder. Her face is too shiny. If anyone reading this thinks I'm being too harsh on my late mother, the first time she saw a photo of me en femme, she told me my lipstick was too red. And I was wearing a berry shade!

Anyway, Mom is often in my thoughts. Much of the time I see her as she was at the end. It's nice to refresh my memories of happier times.

Pictures of Mom, Part 1

I was sorting through some things this morning when I found a couple of photos I thought I'd lost forever. When Mom died two years ago, there was a mad scramble amongst my cousins and other relatives to divvy up the family photo albums. Dad kept a few that had pictures of their wedding and early married life. In with some things I wasn't interested in, I found a couple of Mom.

Photos of Mom are rare, because she didn't like being photographed. She treated anyone (even relatives) with cameras like celebs treat the paparazzi. I lost an entire box of photos during my move from Charlotte to Virginia. Thus I only have a few I took in the months before she died, and these two from out of the family trove.

This photo is from April of 1959. Mom was a couple of months shy of her tenth birthday. Her mother, my Granny, stands behind her. (It's hard to think of anyone so young and vital as "Granny" isn't it?). Mom was a cute little girl, wasn't she?

Fleet Week

We now return to our regularly scheduled blog, already in progress.

Today marked the beginning of Norfolk's Fleet Week. Norfolk is a big Navy town, and I've always felt like it's Fleet Week all the time, but this is the first time I've noted the actual event. I suppose they've had it before; I just never noticed.

As part of the festivities, there's a guided missile destroyer tied up at the Nauticus Pier, the USS Nitze (DDG-94), and they're offering free tours. I have a lot of friends who are interested in naval subjects, but live far away from major bodies of water, so I took it upon myself to catch the ferry over and take pictures for their benefit. I'm a military hardware geek myself, so it wasn't any hardship. For anyone here who's interested, I'll have the best shots up in a gallery tomorrow, and I'll put up a link.

The event concludes next weekend with the Air Show at NAS Oceana. By some miracle of scheduling, I managed to get next weekend off, so I'll be able to go. The Blue Angels will be there, as well as Canada's Snowbirds and a number of other performers and static displays. I will most likely attend in my male guise, because it's safer that way.

Not So Fast!

A week ago, I was all jazzed about the prospect of my brother going back to work. He started yesterday, and I am enthused. It's just that in the interval between then and now, I've had my plans disrupted by cold, harsh reality. I said I was hoping to have enough money to get my nails done last weekend. It didn't happen. I paid part of the rent, the past-due electric bill, and put two tires on the truck.

I broke down and gave myself another DIY manicure/pedicure. I used OPI Strawberry Margarita on my toes, and OPI Makes Men Blush on my fingers. Strawberry Margarita is really bright, eye-popping pink. Makes Men Blush looks a soft pink in the bottle, but it goes on very sheer. Looks good on me, though.

I'm getting off work in about twenty minutes, and I'm going to be off today and tomorrow. I'm trying to plan some sort of outing for myself for Wednesday, but Nate's gonna have the truck. I'll probably stroll through Olde Town and down to the Seawall again, but if it's not too hot, I'll go en femme.

Shoes!

It looks kind of haphazard, but I uploaded some photos to my Photobucket account, and up popped this app for posting a slideshow of them to my blog, et voila!

I tried to set up the photos in some sort of order. The first shows my flip-flops, then my flats and sneakers, pumps, other heels, and last my boots. The sad part is, once I put everything away, I realized that I left out a few pairs. Frak!

Yes, I am shoe queen. Every pair in these photos has been out of doors at least once, but some of them haven't been out since. When you have as many shoes as I have, and you're not living full-time femme, it's hard to wear more than a few of them multiple times. I live in flip-flops, so those have gotten the most usage, followed by my Skechers. I left out the shoes I wear for work, because they're the most masculine-looking shoes I own, and who wants to look at that stuff?

If I get to proceed with my on-the-job transition, that may change. Time will tell.

Edit: Since I posted this, I read the results of a little poll from the cover of USA Today. The question was "Who owns more shoes?", and it listed the averages for Americans. For the men: 7 pairs. For the women: 15 pairs. Hah! I got 'em both beat.

Hello, Moon

Here I go, moaning about my camera again. There's a full moon tonight. I've tried to take photos of the moon nearly every cycle for the last year or so. The moon in the header tonight was shot with my Dad's Olympus D-550. It's just an empty circle, utterly featureless. Maybe it's the angle, but previous photos I've taken of the moon show shadows, even if only faintly.

On the other hand, empty is about how I feel right now, so I suppose it's wholly appropriate.

Photos

I'm still trying to work out the hows of posting my pictures from Photobucket, so I'll just plop in a link to the set.

http://s78.photobucket.com/albums/j94/MsJaye/Sightseeing/

The first photo is an artillery piece from Fort Nelson Park, next to the Portsmouth Naval Hospital. There are little placards scattered through the Park, but none of them are sited to identify any of the historical objects located there. This gun looks to be either a coastal gun or one dismounted from a ship, sometime from early in the last century. There's a sign at the base of the mount that proclaims the weight of the piece to be 49,000 pounds.

Next up is what is called a "First Order Fresnel Lens". It was once mounted in the Hog Island Light, a lighthouse that was torn down in 1948. It now sits in this glass enclosure on the Portsmouth seawall. The lens is one of the largest of its kind, ten feet high and weighing 2,500 pounds. I like how the light comes down through the facets.

On High Street, there's an apartment building that used to be the YMCA. Outside is a vintage fallout shelter sign.

A little further up High Street is the Hotel Dinwiddie, first opened in 1946. Maybe it's the "HOTEL" sign down the side of the building, but this always reminds me of the "Heart O' the City" dump from The Matrix.

I didn't stop to see what church this was, but I like the Gothic touches, and the oxidized copper trim is beautiful.

A project I have planned for the future is to wander through Portsmouth and take pictures of all the churches. It probably sounds odd, what with my feelings about religion, but you can hardly walk a city block in Portsmouth without tripping over a church of some sort. I think it would be nice to catalog all the different architectural styles.

Because Everything's Better with Kitties

I changed my header again, to an old photo of Spot. Ain't he cute?

After not really taking photos for months, I decided to wander around my neighborhood and the environs shooting photos of whatever took my fancy. Dad's Olympus D-550 is a clunker compared to my FinePix A330, but it's a serviceable camera. It only holds 21 photos, the merest fraction of what I could cram into the Fuji, so I had to carefully select my photos.

I mostly took pictures that I thought would be of interest to my guy friends (ships, a helicopter and an Aston Martin Vantage), but I managed to take some touristy stuff, too.

There were supposed to be some photos below here, but Blogger's not liking my inline Photobucket stuff, so I'll have to see what I can do to resolve the situation and fix it later.

Had an Accident

I had a little accident this morning. Last night was, as I think I mentioned before, the last of eight worked in a row. Due to a combination of circumstances, I was not relieved at work until 1030 in the morning. Sometime over the course of my shift, I came down with gastroenteritis, one of those 24 to 48-hour stomach bugs. Three different times from 0400 to 0900, I spent time in the restroom making donations to the porcelain god. I went one more time before I left the job. I was feeling tired and drained, but I was okay to drive. Or so I thought.

It was very warm when I left the hotel this morning. So warm that I should have let the truck air out before taking off. Alas, I had been at the hotel for nearly twelve hours, and I was sick, and I just wanted to go home. I rolled the window down, blasted the fan, and cranked the radio. In an ironic turn of events, one of the songs that played on the way home was Lady Gaga's "Just Dance", with that line "I can't see straight anymore". I was a mere mile from home, exiting the Western Freeway onto London Boulevard, when I blacked out and hit a guardrail.

There's nothing like a sudden burst of adrenaline to startle one into wakefulness. I think I OD'd on adrenaline. I couldn't stop trembling. I managed to drive home, where I discovered that I smashed the left front parking light and the left rear turn signal/brake light.

I was uninjured, but the adrenaline on top of my stomach bug just made me queasy. My brother and a mechanic friend of ours are going to pick through a junkyard tomorrow to see if they can locate replacement parts. Unfortunately, this puts paid to my airshow trip, because they won't let you onto any military base in a vehicle with that sort of damage. My gastro thing seems to have run its course, but I'm not sure that wandering around the ramp at an Air Force base in the hot sun all day is such a good idea anyway. If I'm feeling up to it, I might wander down to the riverfront and play tourist for a bit, taking pictures of statuary and boats and whatnot.

Sometimes a Girl Can't Catch a Break

In lieu of anything really going on in my life, I have spent some of my most recent posts griping about work. This is more of the same.

I don't mind working weekends if I have to. For a long time when I worked in Charlotte, I couldn't get a weekend off to save my life. It reached a point where I stopped thinking of weeks the way most people do, because my breaks always came midweek, rather than weekend.

Since I took over the full-time auditor slot at this hotel, I've had most weekends off. I lost my regular part-time relief auditor almost two months ago. A part-time person filled in the first weekend after that, and I have worked every consecutive weekend since. I just looked at the schedule for next weekend, and discovered I am working yet again.

A month ago, I put in a request off, so I could attend the Airpower over Hampton Roads airshow at Langley Air Force Base next Saturday or Sunday. I'm set to work Friday, Saturday and Sunday, so it looks like it's not happening. I suppose it's just as well. I haven't been able to secure a decent camera since my A330 died, and attending an airshow without a camera is an exercise in futility.

Messing Around With the Blog

Don't get used to the photo at the top. I'm just playing with the layout a bit. I have scads of photos on my computer, but I don't have very many that I've taken, that don't have jets or machines or fuzzy creatures in them. I've dabbled in landscape photos a bit, and this one was taken in 2007, when I was still living in Charlotte. I call it "Angry Sky".