Nightly Reading

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Just Another Day − Our days our organized around numerous small actions we repeat over and over. What’s your favorite daily ritual?

My favorite daily ritual is actually a nightly ritual: reading in bed. Usually this ritual of nightly reading lasts about five minutes because once I lie down with my head on the pillow I am pretty much history. Even if the book is an exciting thriller, or if I am close to the end, I just cannot keep my eyes open. If I read a paragraph, then don’t remember what I just read, that means I will be asleep in a few seconds. If I drop the book on my face, I’d give myself about 20 seconds. I’m lucky if I can “get it together” and place my bookmark in the book!

However, last night (this morning) I was up until 1:30am reading Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami. It was fascinating and engrossing. I was truly amazed that I was not getting drowsy and by 1:00am I was nearing the end of the story. I was in the home-stretch! Then all of a sudden, my eyelids got heavy, and I had trouble remembering what I had just read. I quickly decided to not try to power through it; it would be better if I saved the ending of this wonderful book til another time when I could fully concentrate. I felt like I owed the author that much. So, I am really looking forward to tonight’s “nightly ritual” and finishing Sputnik Sweetheart.

This post was prompted by The Daily Post from WordPress.

Texas Stars Hockey

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Texas Stars
Photo info: OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. E-PL1, 42mm, f/8, 1/100 sec, ISO1250
 Action on the Ice

Koa and I went to see a Texas Stars hockey game the other night and had a wonderful time. I had gotten two free tickets from HEB for a playoff game and I was expecting our seats to be up high away from the action, but to our surprise, the seats were second-row!

Koa's Ready
Photo info: OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. E-PL1, 14mm, f/3.5, 1/50 sec, ISO1600
 Koa’s Stoked with the Seats

Being so close to the action was really exciting and intense. You could hear all the checks into the boards and when fans banged on the glass, it was so loud! What made it extra-fun was that it was a playoff game and the Texas Stars hockey fans were so into it! The whole game was wildly entertaining, even the intermissions if you can believe that. There was a lot of dancing, t-shirt giveaways, and even a contest on the ice. In addition, there was a giant Mighty Fine Burgers Mylar blimp that puttered around the arena by remote control, dropping free burger coupons as it went by. Unfortunately we didn’t get one of them but it was still fun to see.

Shaking Hands
Photo info: OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. E-PL1, 14mm, f/8, 1/60 sec, ISO1600
 Game Over

What made it a perfect night was that the Texas Stars won the game 4-2 (including an empty-netter), and took the opening series from the Oklahoma City Barons. I’d love to go back for another game sometime, but hopefully we can score some free tickets again!

Sony A77II

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Top of the Sony A77II
Top of the Sony A77II

Sony recently announced the successor to their A77 SLT DSLR: the A77II. It looks like an incremental upgrade, definitely not enough for me to consider upgrading my A77, but there is one “feature” I really like. That would be the main control dial! I thought the dial on my Konica-Minolta 7D was fantastic and was a little disappointed when they changed it for the A77. But Sony has brought back the style of the older dial, which is cool because not only does it work well, but it goes way back to the design of the Minolta Alpha/Maxxum/Dynax 7 film SLR. I love it! In the photo below, you can see the dial on the KM-7D. It is actually a dual-dial design, while the new A77II only has the single dial.

Konica-Minolta 7D Dials
Photo info: SONY SLT-A77V, 35mm, f/2.5, 1/8 sec, ISO500
 Konica-Minolta 7D Dials

Other enhancements to the new A77II are WiFi and remote tethering, a better sensor, and better auto-focus; none of these are enough to make me want to upgrade. In fact, the new A77II loses a feature that I absolutely love on my A77: GPS. It’s very convenient to see the location of a photo, but it is also nice to have the date/time automatically corrected.

I like to think that the A77 was such a great camera when originally released that it is difficult to improve upon it. And that’s good because I really have too much camera gear already, and don’t need to spend any more money! The A77 will be my main shooter for the foreseeable future, probably until it no longer functions. Happy shooting!

Running with a Limp

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Running Shoes
My Bright Adidas

So, some good news and bad news (but mostly good news). I’ve been suffering from a sore knee for about six months now, and for maybe two months, I couldn’t do any running. Instead, I have been walking my normal route in order to give my knee a chance to get better. That’s the good news! How can not being able to run be good news? Well, slowing down has actually been a really good experience. Since I was restricted to walking, I think I became more mindful (what does that even mean?) about… well all sorts of stuff. I alluded to this in a previous post, that I give more attention to my surroundings (things like the trees, sky, weather, smells in the air, sounds of the birds and barking dogs in the distance). But I’m also mindful of  how my knee is doing, and an extension of that is to be more attuned to the rest of my body (how my arms are swinging, how my breathing is, my posture, how I hold my head). So that leads me to the bad news, which isn’t really bad news, or perhaps just temporary. I’ve been kind of running asymmetrically. That is a nice way of saying that I’m running with a limp. But at least I am able to run now! And that makes me pretty happy. And when I combine running with my new-found mindfulness (that is a strange word), I am enjoying it a lot more than I used to!

Here’s my latest running activity:

If you want to connect via Strava, that would be cool!