Terry Hall is doing it right: 12th Man

Our Seahawks are in the Superbowl!! I'm honestly not a huge football fan, but I always tune in to the Superbowl. To celebrate, the dorm across the street from mine shows their 12th Man spirit at night. They're tearing the building down and rebuilding it soon, but for now it's closed so someone went in, opened a few curtains, and turned on the lights. I found a little ledge to take these pictures between the trees. 

I had to fiddle a bit with the manual to get the window boxes clear, but the lights are still a bit over-exposed. Oh well.

Happy Superbowl!

Autumn 2013

We're going to step back a few months to the colors of autumn. If nature is going to give us such beautiful colors, we must take advantage of them, right? Even if it's a few months late...

These pictures were taken on a walk with The Boyfriend a crisp afternoon. And by crisp, I mean really really cold and overcast. That's my city's definition, at least. :)

There was this row of trees across the lake we were walking around, and I really liked the differing colors. They weren't uniform at all, which lent it to such an interesting painting. Since it was so far away, I tried to keep some foreground in the picture.

Apparently mycology is very popular here in the Pacific Northwest. Unfortunately, I know nothing about mushrooms except what I find in Fred Meyers, but this was an interesting mushroom we found in the grass. It looks like a mini table.  I liked the texture of the broken parts.

So here is that row of trees from the first picture. They are even more pretty close up.

 

More mushrooms! I like these ones even more than the first. You can almost imagine what the inverted mushroom cap feels like; the sift tickle of the gills against your fingertip...

And an obligatory "leaves of fall" picture.

Hope you enjoyed autumn!

Winter Nature

My family went to a nature garden in Vancouver, B.C. in December. It was wonderful (we love gardens like this, and they had plants from all over the world; everything blooms and grows at different times).

This is a Lebanon Pine Cedar tree. I loved the bark, and the way the needles grow. They grow exactly opposite each other, in small bunches.

This black squirrel was small, black, and fluffy. It was quite cute, and stood still for awhile while I got a picture of it amongst all the fallen leaves.

Destination: Home

Hello! Yes, I'm back. I spent the last 4 months in a wonderful state of mind, and this allowed the blog to slide. I would apologize, but the past few months were amazing and so I'm not sad. I was simply busy enjoying life. However, now it is the new year, and I have a wonderfully persistent boyfriend who has been encouraging me to post more pictures here. So let's start with these!

Also, I realized that I think it makes more sense for descriptions/introductions of the pictures to be written before presenting the picture. Does it? And I'm trying out the text flush to the left. Just fyi. Anyways, onwards:

One of my good friends was in town for perhaps the last time (she moves around a lot, and my hometown is a bit out of the way), so one of my friends and I took her sightseeing and touring around the city. Honestly, this was the first time I've ever been a tourist in my city, so it was quite exciting. We all had a lot of fun together, and with the city.

It was a bit overcast (in other words, a real Seattle day) but not too cold. We started down at the Waterfront, where the new "Great Wheel" was just put in a few years ago. I'm not sure why, as I'm not entirely sure it's stable or safe (it's tall, metal, and on a pier in an earthquake zone...does this not raise red flags for anyone else?). However, the Sound was quite calm, and offered a really nice reflection. One of our iconic ferries was coming back as well. If you've never been on a ferry, please ride one. You don't even need a car. It's so much fun. And if you take it at sunset, it is beautiful.

And of course we had to go to Space Needle. By this time, we were being spoiled by the sun which decided to grace us with its presence. It made for a beautiful blue sky, and very very cold temperatures (there's always a trade off, isn't there?). We actually went up the Space Needle, which was really fun. As "locals" it was fun to point out our neighborhoods (my friend even found her house).

I really like that in this picture below, you can see all the trees surrounding and framing the Needle. I find it representative of Seattle, which is ridiculously eco-friendly, and the balance of the city with nature (Washington is the Evergreen state).

I also like the composition of the clouds and blue sky. It is quite pretty, and draws your eye up the Needle.

We went a few other places as well, but I couldn't let my friend leave without showing her this gorgeous view of the city skyline. The lights at night are beautiful, and this is my favorite lookout point. The light was a bit green/yellow, due to the clouds coming back in and oppressing all the light. But nonetheless, it is still quite lovely. I love our skyline.

Hope everyone is having a wonderful start to 2014!