Tomorrow's Weather: Ready the Ark

According to BBC Weather, nearly all of the United Kingdom will be underwater by ten o'clock tomorrow morning.

Photo du Jour : Fun with Pub Names

Yes, this pub is called what you think it is.

Photo du Jour: Postman's Park

I decided to use the overcast day as a reason not to wander too far from work today to a place I really like, the Postman's Park.

As usual, you can read all about it here on Wikipedia.

The Postman's Park is home to the Memorial to Heroic Self Sacrifice which recognizes the acts of kindness made by ordinary citizens who lost their lives when saving another's. It was first created in 1900.

The walls of the memorial are covered in tiles, which name the late hero and the brave action which lead to their untimely death.


The most recent tile was added in 2009



I hadn't noticed flowers at the Memorial before, but today, there were two sets, which prompted this shot on the left.

I shot 15 frames today, and this picture on the left was my first. (I was saying to a friend yesterday that my first shots are never what I want, compositionally).

As I didn't post anything yesterday, and because it's really hard for me to only post one picture because there's so much to take in, here's another (right). The stories captured within the wall are all so varied, that I'll have to come back again to share more.

Photo du Jour: Canary Wharf

As Mondays are never good dasy to drag the camera in, I'm using another of Sunday's.

Canary Wharf is home to some of London's tallest buildings, as a number of rules have ensure the survival of London's protected views and skyline.

Photo du Jour: In the Chang-Dowdeswell Kitchen

Today we went to visit our friends, Vera & Roland, at their snazzy new flat in East London.

The visit was worth the ride on the Jubilee line and not only for the company, as our kind hosts also cooked a delicious dinner which included noodles with pork and scallions seared with lardons.

This was my favorite picture today.
I like how they're stirring in synch, both looking intently at their respective pans.

I'm looking forward to our next delicious visit already!

Photo du Jour: My New Project

This morning, I decided that I was going to learn to knit.

My Grandma Rosa tried to teach me to crochet when I was little, but I really never progressed beyond making a very, very long string.

I headed over to Stash Yarns, and with a good bit of help from the staff and other customers, I picked out this turquoise yarn to go with these expertly suggested knitting needles.

I'm going to try to pick this up using KnittingHelp.com, but I've also ordered a copy of The Stitch 'n Bitch Handbook, which came highly recommended as well.

We'll see how it goes. Perhaps I'll become knitting mad and abandon the gym in favor of this knitting group.

Photo du Jour : Strawberries

I worked from home today in order to take the cat to the vet.

The perks of working at home for the day may include a fridge full of berries, and fortunately, such held true for today.

In taking this picture, I decided to take advantage of the natural light pouring in from the living room windows. (Yes, more evidence of London sunshine!) I took the colander full of berries and put it on a plate on the rug, right in the sunshine.

All was going to plan until the cat walked over and proceeded to take a seat at the berries.

He wouldn't budge.

Being able to crop a photo is key, I just never thought I'd need to do it to remove cat legs from a picture of fruit.

Photo du Jour: Ladybugs @ Barbican

Today, I took advantage of the springlike weather and wandered over to the Barbican Centre, thinking there would be plenty of things I'd like to take pictures of.

Indeed, there were; however, all but one are there every day.

One of the elevated, brick walkways was covered in ladybugs, or as the English call them, "ladybirds". There were so many, it was impossible to quickly walk along the sunny pathway without stepping on them.

It's a bit late in the season for them. I snapped this one, having just ventured into the sun.

Here's a neat bit of trivia about ladybugs from the wikipedia link above:
In Dutch, the ladybird is called lieveheersbeestje, translating to Our Dear Lord's little creature.

Photo du Jour: at Gray's Inn

It might seem that I've been slacking a bit on my plan to take a picture everyday.
I'm not. I have other excuses!

Anyway, today's shot was taken from the Western edge of Gray's Inn, which is one of the four Inns of Court in London. In the UK, students of law specialize as either Barristers or Solicitors, and all Barristers must belong to one of these four Inns.

The Inn consists of a series of buildings, connected by gardened paths, called Walks. According to Wikipedia's entry on Gray's Inn, Francis Bacon, one the Inn's most famous members, was to be paid £7 for "planting of trees in the walkes", in 1597, according to records.

Training Update: 21 October 2009

I've been steadily trekking towards the showdown, but I've had a bit of a setback.

My last running evaluation showed that I'm still doing the hip rotation thingy that I'm not supposed to do, although it's significantly better than it was when I first began this process of learning how to run again.

What this has meant for me is reducing the rate with which I increase my run. I took a week off from the treadmill, and I've been stuck in week five of Couch to 5k now for an extra two weeks. The 8 minute run/ 5 minute walk is fine, but the 20 minute run is where I lose endurance and my hip starts to go. I expect I'll have another week or two doing intervals with an eight minute run before I can increase it.

In the meantime, I've been enjoying these Annie Barribal works in the Tube stations. The one pictured to the right seems creepily appropriate in a city under constant camera surveillance.

Photo du Jour: Relaxation

Today was a quiet, lazy day, among the highlights of which was this bath.

Photo du Jour: View from the King's Road

I snapped this while doing a bit of shopping on the King's Road. I liked the colorful mix of houses on this sidestreet.

As you can see, the weather was a bit more fitting of stereotype today.

Meanwhile, I'm finding that my camera bag makes for a reasonable purse; although, a third hand to hold my shopping while I fuss with the camera would be even better.

Photo du Jour: ..or not

Photo...or lack thereof, really.

Despite leaving the memory card out near my wallet, I managed to leave my apartment today without it.

I'll be acquiring an extra over the weekend to further reduce the odds of this turning into a blog about cat pictures.

Photo du Jour: Smithfield Market

Today I managed a brief escape from work around three and headed over towards Smithfield Market, where I snapped these two phone booths.

Smithfield is still a working meat market; however, by this time in the afternoon, business is done for the day.

The English Phone booths were designed by Giles Gilbert Scott, who also designed the hospital adjacent to my house.

On that note, it's past my bedtime, but I'll elaborate more on Smithfield & Scott another day.

Photo du Jour: St. John's Gate

Taking a picture every day generally means I need to leave my office during the precious daylight hours, so this morning, I wandered around nearby St. John's Lane in Clerkenwell.

This picture is from inside of the archway of St. John's Gate. This 16th Century Gatehouse once formed the entry to the Priory of Clerkenwell, but now hosts a museum dedicated to the site's history.

I hadn't expected to pick up neighborhood history while doing this, but that seems an inevitability. The Wikipedia links above share an interesting story.

Photo du Jour: My Nazar

Today I dragged my camera around all day, only to find that I was without a memory card. Oops.

I've been in a bit of a funk lately, and my husband bought me a very tiny nazar as a surprise to scare off my bad mood and any potential evil eyes.

I decided to take a picture of it!

From this experience, I have learned that trying to take large pictures of very tiny things is quite difficult!

Photo du Jour: A Night Shot

After a failed attempt at another cat picture this evening, I went outside.














This is a road not too far from my apartment.

Photo du Jour: Meow!

Our cat, Oscar, has diabetes.

Much like a diabetic person, a diabetic cat will consume lots of water. After waking to find him drinking from our water glasses at night several times, we upgraded him to this dog-sized water bowl.

I expected that he'd be a willing subject, given a fresh bowl of water, but much to my surprise, he just sat there looking surly.

I'm not as happy with this picture as I'd like, but I can try again tomorrow, as Monday won't be a bring the camera out day.

(We've also put a lot of pictures of cats that resemble him around his water bowl, but perhaps that's a tale for another day. It's only one picture and one big magnet, in our defense.)

Photo du Jour: Miracles Happen

This is my favorite picture from today.

While Richmond Park is incredibly scenic, it pales in comparison to the event documented here.

After more than five years of trying to convince my dear husband, Darren, to ride a bicycle, he finally relented and did it.

(You can see some of the Park's many deer on the right.)

Photo du Jour: Hyde Park

Today was one of those days where taking the camera wasn't really an option, so I've decided to relive my day off by sharing another photo from Hyde Park on the 8th.

The trees have just started to turn, but not so much in this picture.

...and some people think it always rains in London!

Photo du Jour: The Project & First Picture

My new plan is to try to share a picture every day for at least until the end of this month, reason being that I keep relegating my DSLR to days off and vacations, and there's no reason for that.

The picture just has to be something I like, and I have to post something, even if it's awful.

The only exception days will be those where dragging around an SLR wasn't a reasonable option, such as Mondays. These days will be established in advance. On those days, I might use a picture taken within the last few days.


This is a picture of the Eastern edge of the Serpentine in Hyde Park, here in London, where I spent a bit of a very glorious day off from work.

The Serpentine is named as much because it actually looks like a snake from above.