snow day

The irony of this post is one small, inconvenient fact. The title says “snow day.” However, we have not had any snow since the day after the sailor’s warning. That makes me a very tardy blog poster.

I can explain, however.

I post photos. Photos are fairly large files. They take time to post, especially on dial-up internet. So, to save myself a lot of frustration (and being yelled at for plugging up the phone line), I wait to post on my blog until I can hook my laptop up to some hi-speed somewhere.

This requires travel. It is extremely uncomfortable to travel when one has a 104-degree fever.

So, I’m sorry if this sounds like a big dumb excuse, but it’s the truth of the matter. I hope I’m forgiven. :)

I’m proud to be able to say I didn’t waste my snow day, however:

I spent it taking an amazing portrait shoot of lovely Hannah in a lovely dress in the lovely snow!!!



I had so much fun. It was freezing, of course (could this have anything to do with my subsequent illness?), but it we had a great time and I had a lot of exposure-adjustment-experience. :)

Not exactly glorious marble pillars looking out on a stone wall, but hey, it works.

Yes, her hands were very cold.

I’m sure you remember my Amanda portrait shoot using her big rainbow umbrella. Well, now you get to meet my black-and-white one. :)

(Note: umbrellas are not limited to use as shelters in satin-dress fantasy worlds. They may also be used as swords or other weapons of self-defense.)

Love it.

Of course, within an hour or two after this shoot, the temperature went up and the snow started to melt. It was entirely gone by the following day, and we got temperatures of 40 or 50 degrees and raining, which was glorious (besides the flooding). I was housebound for a big chunk of the nice weather, but I’m happy to report that I am out and about today, for once, and that the sun is shining for me. :)

red sky in the morning

Sailor’s warning.

I wonder if that means it actually will snow this time.


Yeah, here are the fifteen-degree-sunrise pictures I promised. Hope you all appreciate them, because to be honest, I would rather have stayed in bed that extra hour this morning!

They didn’t turn out as well as I hoped. That lovely slab of clouds you see messed up the intended outcome. No blazing red ball, and no pink snow on Mt. Adams. Guess I’ll have to try again another morning.


Not one bit of all that color reflected off Mt. Adams. Unbelievable, isn’t it?


Red sky at night, sailor’s delight. This was a few nights ago, the sun setting to the north of Mt. Hood. (Six months from now, it will have shifted to the south side of Mt. Adams.)






I don’t recall that we got any great weather as a result of this “delight,” though. In fact, it’s just been cold and gray.

Cold enough and gray enough that I just don’t seem to be taking that many pictures lately. Aside from the above, I really haven’t had any huge spurts of creativity as far as pressing the shutter goes.

But who says you have to press a shutter to create a picture? I try to be subtle when I edit photos, but every once in awhile, I just get the urge to do something wild.

Like starting with this picture…

…and turning it into this…


…and then taking this picture from the portraits Amanda took of me…

…and pairing it with the tree photo to make this!

“Very Narnian-looking, isn’t it?”

(Lucy Pevensie to Edmund at the beginning of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader)

So that’s where my spurt of creativity took me. What do you think? Too wild?

in bleak midwinter

 “November is the most disagreeable month of the whole year,” said Margaret, standing at the window one dull afternoon, looking out at the frostbitten garden.

“That’s the reason I was born in it,” observed Jo pensively, quite unconscious of the blot on her nose.

(from Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, chapter 15: “A Telegram.”)

I often adapt those lines to my own situation, in which January is the dullest month of the whole year and that’s the reason I was born in it. :) January and February are what I call the “bleak midwinter,” because in Goldendale, they usually consist of cold, fog, cold, and fog, plus a slab of ice where the swamp floods the driveway. A rather gray time of year, to say the least!



Oscar agrees with me. His philosophy is to stay on the warm side of the window, examining his handsome reflection. Let Jane and Lizzy get themselves stuck in trees if they want to—King Oscar is going to exercise more intelligence. (As a matter of fact, that’s the only thing he exercises! No dieting resolutions for him!)


I don’t really blame him. I’ve been up to walk the Loop before sunrise the last few mornings, and it is the most courageous thing I do every day to get out of my nice warm bed and step out into the dark, ten-degree January morning. But the sunrises are fantastic, so one of these days I’ll have to get it on camera for all my wonderful blog readers. :)




I hope you are all enjoying your bleak midwinters… with both the wisdom of King Oscar and the adventurousness of Lizzy and Jane!!!