stephanieNY

It's officially blizzarding outside.  So fun.  Although it's as if New York's never gotten snow before.  Yesterday morning, they cancelled all public schools for today...like 18 hours before the first flake fell.  Strange. 

So apparently there were some coyotes on campus last weekend. Reports say that the school sent out a campus-wide email warning us. I didn't get it!! Good thing I worked from home on Sunday. It's pretty funny though, right? Coyotes in the city? What bridge do you think they took to get here?

This guy was quoted in this article, "It's not uncommon at all, and it's going to increase in frequency," Dr. Stanley Gehrt of Ohio State University said of coyote sightings in cities.

REALLY?!  It is?  Shouldn't you tell us more, if that's the case?  What a cryptic statement to leave us with.  Is it a change in their migration patterns due to global warming? or is it a population boom? or are coyotes just modernizing?  And what should we do to stay away from them?...or rather, maybe to become their friends??  I don't know! 

I found some time to cook something up this weekend and so I made butternut squash soup again.  It's got squash and carrots and celery and fennel and potatoes and onions and garlic.  It's gooooood.

Pre-blend:

Post-blend:

I've been in the market for a new camera for-ever.  With all the hemming and hawing I've been doing about it, you'd think I was buying a house or something.  I've been reading all these reviews on digital SLRs and now the new micro four-thirds cameras.  For a while, I was being woo-ed by the simplicity of the solid retro body of the Olympus e-p1:

But let's face it, I need to take good pictures, not look good taking them.  So, my photography class and my impending trip to Brazil put a fire under my butt, and I finally made a move and ordered one today.  It'll be here on Wednesday...and I don't know if I'm gonna make it that long. I want to play with it right now!  I had dinner at a friend's last night where we talked shop on cameras, and I tested out a few they had in house...it was a dream. After shooting with my point and shoot the past few weeks, I think a good camera is going to be life-changing. 

Anyway, here it is.  It's sort of the "baby's first" camera of DSLRs but I'm pretty sure it's just what I need.

The view from my desk in studio this semester:

Today is my blog's 1st birthday.  One year ago today (or one year ago the other day) a pigeon slipped on a patch of ice, and I thought people should know about it.  A blog and it's first post were born.  

Happy Birthday.

Last week I had my first assignment due for Architectural Photography that we presented to the class. I had heard scary things about the professor, so I was kind of nervous. But I think I like her a lot. As I silently flipped through my images one by one on the projector, she said..."yes, no, no, yes, no, yes, no, no, no" and she was totally right. She liked my interior shots and thought I was uncomfortable outside. Yup.

Here are some of the "yes"es.

You've probably been wondering what I've been eating lately. Well, normally at the beginning of the semester I do a bunch of cooking in the free time before school gets too crazy...soups and sugo and such. And then I live off of that stuff for a while. But things got crazy early, so I haven't been able to muster up the effort to chef it up when I get home from school at night. Instead, I rely on salad bars, ramen noodles, and annie's mac and cheese...and always peas:

However, lunches haven't suffered. This week: cucumber, fennel, grape, and cheddar salad topped with a veggie burger (not pictured). My level of motivation peaks in the morning hours.

I completely front-loaded my semester. I registered for a few half-semester classes that happen to take place in the first half of the semester. So I essentially have two extra classes right now. I think it's all gonna feel something frantic like the first year. But guess what...I'll have a real comfy second half when my photography class, my rendering class, and my history class are all over. Here's to not getting burnt out before then.

I google-earthed Sao Paulo for hours today.