December 31, 2012

• Kindle Days, God's Movie at Night!

  

  The world, er, I mean the year, is about to end. (The world was already supposed to end and didn't, again.) Sometimes I like to tell you about my day in pictures. My day went like this.

  

  I'd stayed up pretty late last night filling up quite a few digital bookshelfs with free books on the internet. (Sorry, I lied. I paid $1.99 for Willy Shakespeare's works. I was quite a Shakespeare scholar back in school, and already have two editions of his complete works. I wanted a digital edition as well.) I checked them out on my Kindle carousel when I got up. It was still pretty early, and still pretty cold. I still haven't called the guy from the heating repair company to come over and look at my defective central heating unit, so I bundled up, and began to make some hot tea. Then I walked outside to retrieve my empty trash can from the curb. The sun hadn't yet peeked his head up from the horizon, and the cloud cover was horrendous. However, it's Saturday morning, and I'm itching to get me some photos of the full moon, which was simply glorious yesterday. Of course I was working and couldn't "shoot the moon" that morning. Suddenly the moon, on it's way toward setting into the westward horizon, appeared, lighting the sky. I danced into the house, turned off the flame from under the teakettle, grabbed my coat and heavy shoes, and drove down to Torrance beach. At one of the intersections, I could have grabbed my camera and perhaps gotten a fantastic shot, but I don't like to be rushed, especially in traffic, so I kept on going.

  

  I set up the tripod when I got to Torrance beach. I chatted with a couple of early risers walking along the strand, and waited for the moon to reappear. I love mornings at the beach. One gal who approached me remarked about how cold it has been lately at night. Unlike any other winter in recent memory. Believe it or not, we "usually" have "normal" temperate 60-65° nights, not 40° nights. I told her it is winter after all, and tightened the strings around the hood of my jacket.

  

  The moon hid behind the clouds as she sank below the horizon. Shucks. Oh well. I've got my whole life ahead of me and the ocean is always right outside the door and down the street, so to speak. (One of the guys I talked to this morning walking his dog lived in another mobile home park near to me. It's a small world sometimes. We talked about retirement (his present and my future), utility bills, stubborn moons, and rainclouds.) 

  

  Across town, the sun began to rise. Looked like I might be able to get some neat sunrise shots if I could scoot over to some high ground. Got in my car, it's shiny new chrome Moon hubcaps (purchased just two days previous while the real moon was getting full, I love serendipitous events) began to spin. In about ten to fifteen minutes, I was making my way up into the hills of the Skyline Mobile Home Park (I looked to purchase a home there back in 2009 before I bought my home in my present park, but since it's on a hill, Skyline's prices are farther higher in the sky as well.)  (I'm amazed sometimes at how well I write. Aren't you?) (Also how many parenthesis I use.) 

  

  Rain began to drizzle from the clouds overhead. The air began to warm a bit, but hesitatingly, as if God weren't sure yet what kind of a day He was going to spring on us. Heck, most people were still in bed. Looking around, I could see that it was beginning to become one of those memorable SoCal winter mornings, when the sun and the clouds and the rain all seemed to be battling it out in the cosmic arena before me. (Yep, my car can clearly be seen in the middle of this photo. I just love that car.) We have more Christmas decorations in our mobile park than these guys do. Notice the bauble decorated wreath on the right, however. I deliberately made sure it was in this shot!

  

  I was adjusting the iris on my camera at about the same time God decided to do the same and that's when the rainbow began to appear through the trees.

  

  One side seemed to end far away close to downtown Los Angeles.

  

  The other end disappeared into the hills. Even with my wide angle lens, I wasn't able to get the whole thing in one shot. It isn't every day you see a rainbow. Hope you're enjoying yourselves as much as I did. (These photos are unretouched, by the way. No photoshop fiddling with my rainbows!)

  

  After the rainbow disappeared into the cosmos, I got back in my car. The sun was getting back behind some clouds, and the air switched from warming to colder. Next to the park where I took the photos in my last Photopost (on the left in this photo), the Kaiser Permanente Hospital has a five story parking garage. Here I staked out some more high ground but by now the clouds were pretty thick and the droplets of water were starting to pelt me in earnest.

  

  The sunrise looked neat, but not really special.

  

  No escape from storm clouds the other way either. Here looking north from the other side of the parking structure.

  

  Heck, since nobody was around, I parked my car at a rakish angle in front of what was left of the sunrise and at least was able to take some photos of my own "Moon" hubcaps. If you look closely in the rear windows, you'll see I even have the "Mooneyes" decals like on 1950s custom cars. I'm pretty proud of the way these shiny babies make my car look. Now hopefully someday soon the sun will come back out and I can wash the car too!

  

  I went back home. Almost as soon as I got my car safe under the canopy of the carport, the heaven's opened, and drenched the southland. The rain pounded hard on my metal roof. I felt this was a good time to bundle up in my comfy chair, heat up that cinnamon tea, "Fire" up my Kindle, and do some reading. (The blue tarp is hiding my Mikivity scene which shows through the front windows at night, and hides the lights for when I'm watching my bigscreen. (Or, now, the "little screen" of the Kindle)

  

  After about three or four hours, I'd zipped through about 100 pages (well, they're not really pages on an e-reader, but there is a handy "page" notifier to tell me where in the "real book" my electronic bookmark is being placed.) of the Stephen King novel "11/22/63". It's one of those books you just can't put down. I have to tell ya, after three days with my new Kindle Fire, I'm getting quite good at using it's many features. (Except for the keyboard. I learned to type on an old Underwood, and the digital keyboard on the Kindle, even though it's QWERTY, is too fickle for my fingers. (and I'm almost afraid of the feature which second guesses which word I'm about to type next!)  A combination holder/case and bluetooth keyboard is on it's way from the good folks at amazon.com. Then I took a nap. At around 2pm, I awoke. The rain had stopped. Mr. Sun came out from behind the cloud cover, which was dissipating. I drove down to the local 99 cent store, got some marked down Christmas ornaments, came back home, prepared a salad and sandwich, then took my lunch and Kindle outside for a meal and another chapter of King's excellent novel. This one is looking to be as powerful a piece of work as my favorite King novel, "The Stand" of which I have three editions!

  

  As the sun began to set I decided to take another trip to Torrance beach, in hopes that what I like to call "God's Movie" would provide some inspiration, solace, and natural beauty. Of course, I took a few cameras with me!

  

  As the sun sets in the beautifully cloudscaped western sky, I hope you are able to enjoy the majesty of nature's wonder as much as I did.

  

  Rich textures of sky, sun, surf, and sand.

  

  I don't just snap pictures, you know. I want to give viewers of my photographs a sort of sense of the awe I encounter sometimes. When I used to go on photo expeditions with Liz, I would sometimes drop down on the ground, or hang from a tree, or twist myself in some other strange position, camera, in hand, in order to frame exactly what I saw in my eye and in my mind. I took a dozen shots of Jonathon Livingston Seagull here, on what I like to call his "birdwalk". I choose the best for you to see.

  

  This is a composited work of "art" and uses elements from four different photos, including the one above. It's getting late now as I post this rather intricate entry, one of my "productions" which would really be neat to see at the top of top blogs tomorrow morning! (Hint hint, I don't "ask" for recommends, now do I?)

  

  Hmmm. Let's see if I can get the reflection of the sunset in my eyeglasses!

  

   As the sun sinks, the birds always get anxious.

  

  It's hard to get them to "pose" sometimes. 

  

  God's Movie is going to end in about 20 minutes.

  

  The birds settle back and watch the "movie". 

  

  I shot some of these with a sunset filter, including this one.

  

  Really low in the sky now, the golden disc begins to rim the edges of the clouds in shades of pink.

  

  Some lifeguards stop to admire the show.

  

  The setting sun is framed by a vacant lifeguard station.

  

  Going.

  

  Going.

  

  Still going. A few brave surfers are trying to catch a wave on the right of the photo.

  

  Almost gone. A glowing pink haze rims the horizon.

  

  "Dreaming of the Kiss", a memorial artwork for Sandy Walker. (A Torrance philanthropist.) The little (well, not so) frog dreams of becoming a prince. 

  

  Here's a more detailed view of the sculpture shot away from the sunset. Well, my day didn't exactly end with the setting of the sun. I came back home, by way of Best Buy, and got "The Bridge on the River Kwai" in widescreen blu-ray, a David Lean epic I fondly remember from watching on TV in my youth and can hardly wait to see. However, after composing this blog entry, which took about four hours (I took over 400 photos today) even drinking some of my "energy" rum smoothies, I'm getting a bit tired now at nearly 10:30p.m. So my day will probably end pretty soon. I sincerely hope that your day ended as gloriously, and if it didn't then at least you were able to share mine with me here on Xanga. I shall bid you well, and wish you a heartily whole new year. Mine is just around the corner. It's been a wonderful day. 

  

  Posted: December 29, 2012 8:32 PM

  • 11:06 am
  • 32 Comments