I am now officially on vacation…
August 22, 2008, 7:02 PM
Yes, today marks the beginning of vacation. I am excited, and looking forward to it. And the last day at work prior to vacation was exciting, as we had an all-staff retreat at our executive director’s house. That was a lot of fun.
And so now I get to clean up and pack. I need to finish the milk in the fridge, since that expires during vacation (and we don’t like spoiled milk), do my laundry, and then pack for the beach.
And then the beach is going to be exciting, too. I’m taking both cameras – Duckie and the Kodak. Duckie will be used for some in-the-water shots, and then the Kodak will be used for the stuff on dry land. I’m taking my tripod, and I’m going to be giving the Kodak its first experience with night photography.
I’d hoped to practice locally doing night photography on the Kodak, but stuff happens, and I never got a chance to. One of the things for my to-do list is to do some night photos in downtown Silver Spring, since it’s so close to me. I also want to eventually cover the memorials at night – start at Jefferson, and then do the full circuit, going from Jefferson to FDR to Korea to Lincoln to Vietnam to World War II. I would love to take a friend along for that shoot – mainly so I can have someone to talk to while I do my thing. My JMU photo shoot in December was one of the loneliest photo shoots I’ve ever done, because due to my schedule, the shoot had to be done over Christmas, and the campus was deserted.
But at the beach, the Kodak’s first foray into night photography, I plan to at least go out on the boardwalk and photograph some, plus I want to get a sunrise or two. Every camera of mine has to have a sunrise in its early years, it seems. The original Mavica shot Sunrise at Virginia Beach in 2000, a mere two months into its somewhat short tenure. Then Big Mavica was used to shoot Atlantic Sunrise in 2004, during its second year. Now with the Kodak, we’re still in the learning-curve phase, and so I’m not yet confident that I’ll come up with awesome stuff yet, but I’m going to give it the old college try, and see what I come up with.
Plus I intend to post here about my experiences. I’ll have the Lappy with me, and there’s high-speed Internet in the hotel where I’m staying (the same hotel as in 2005, by the way). So no having to go to the public library and write with a library-imposed 30-minute time limit like I did last time. I’m taking my own setup on the road this time. Besides, this is my first real out-of-town vacation in three years – my last one was my 2005 Virginia Beach trip, where my sunrise was obscured by clouds. The trip was fun, but the sunrise unfortunately sucked.
So the next time you hear from me, will I be at the beach? No… I probably won’t, because I’m probably going to post photos from the retreat we had today before I leave DC. One of my coworkers (you know who you are) asked me today while we were on a hike why I hadn’t posted in nine days. I was quite honest – nothing to say, no post. I’ve written on weak topics before, and with those, I usually would end up “ripping up” the Journal entry in progress because I realized I had nothing much to say about the topic.
So until next time…
Song: "Delicious Cheeseburgers" by PlasmaP. I ripped an MP3 of it for my iPod, and played it for a coworker on the way out to the retreat. I love it because this is a spoof of a love song, and in the song, the singer insults the woman he's seeing, and proclaims his love for delicious cheeseburgers (not hamburgers!).
Quote: I'm on vacation! Yaaaay!
Categories: Travel