Well, as mentioned previously, I've been highly limited in my hiking opportunities, and this limitation will continue through mid-May. I'm supposed to limit my time on my feet, and stay out of the sun. Despite that, I've been pretty fortunate. I've been hitting my fitbit goal of 16,000 steps most of the time, the last few weeks. Most of that is either on a treadmill, or in a mall. More on that, later. I've also been heading out some evenings, and on overcast days.
I took these shots on Sunday, November 27. But I've made some pretty frequent trips recently, both to the Huntington and to the nearby Los Angeles County Arboretum. I may post some pictures from those trips at a later date, but possibly not. It's a "been there, done that" sort of situation.
This particular trip worked well -- overcast, and a little rain in the morning. Also, I had recently purchased a Sigma 105mm macro lens for my Nikon D3200. On this trip, they're all dslr shots, although I do tend to resize and reduce the size of those files, usually down to a third or less of their original size.
The shots that weren't taken with the macro were taken with an 18-140mm Nikon lens, which I also purchased recently. Those were my, "Hey, you're still alive, and it's sort of Christmas and your birthday, so you should buy yourself something to celebrate" things.
It was still a little early for peak Ginkgo color, but the leaves still looked nice. But, mainly, as you probably already noticed, I amused myself with the drops of water on the roses. I shot drops of water on other plants, but the roses presented the prettiest. Meanwhile, with the 18-140mm, the Ginkgo were the stars. That, and the barrel cactus, of course. They were like nature's little lens sharpness test. ;D
Anyway, in addition to getting this post up today, I also worked some on my Cape Final post, from back in June. That one never got posted because I was having some issues with editing my pictures, right after Windows 10 got installed. Although I'm only using Windows Office Picture Manager (which came with my student/teacher Office Suite, I assume), the shift from Windows 7 to Windows 10 changed the way the pictures behaved when you resized and rotated them.
So now, I just have to get used to editing them "sideways" if I shot the picture vertical. I suppose I could also rotate and edit them "right side up," then rotate them back when I save them, to get them to display properly on the blog.
In addition to working on the Cape Final post, I also took a short hike yesterday in Rubio Canyon. Not a lot of interesting things to see or tell, but I'll get that one posted within a few days I think too. I was also thinking of hiking before my evening shift at the Observatory, but my feet are feeling a little tingly, at the moment. It's a side effect of the oral chemo drugs I'm taking, which is why I am supposed to watch my time on my feet (and, as additional side effects, stay out of the sun because of increased sensitivity to the sun. Also, it turns out, it can, at times, affect your coordination, which also limits where I'm willing to hike!).
Still, I'll have some time to able to make a few more updates to this blog over the next week, which, because of recent events, has been pretty dead, recently.
Oh, yes, the other change that may make catching up on the posting easier is that I finally got wi-fi. Up until last week, I was using AT&T regular dsl and a landline, but was getting annoyed by the nearly eight dollars a month that was costing (yeah, I know!). Now, I'm on AT&T's "Uverse" (fiber optic cable) and digital phone, which, for the next twelve months, is supposed to cost me $50/month. So, in addition to saving $26 or $27 a month, I also get "free" wi-fi with the provided modem/router. Annoyingly, they won't let you just buy your own modem/router, so I need to pay $10/month for that. But they're discounting me $10/month for the first year because of my "bundle."
After a year, there's a pretty good chance I'll finally feel comfortable completely leaving the landline business, and just port my number to a mobile phone that'll I'll almost never check, just to keep the number. We'll see.
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