Congratulations Sean & Heather!

More photos to come...soon, hopefully! =)

Merry Christmas!

I hope you and yours have a safe and happy holiday!



I must share a Christmas Eve story. I went to Walmart today to pick up some last minute things as a favor to my mom. I had 24 items, four too many to go in the express lane, so I headed to the regular lanes and started waiting. It took 35 minutes to get through the line. But I didn't much care, because I was so sad for the people in front of me. They were trying to get some groceries with their WIC voucher. Well, the store was out of the "correct" size cereal boxes, so they had two boxes of cereal in a smaller size. But since it wasn't "correct", they couldn't get it. The manager had to go exchange it for a different cereal in the "correct" size. Now certainly they were grateful for what they got, but sheesh, don't you think they could get what they want in a smaller size and it wouldn't be a problem? They also couldn't get the milk they wanted because it was the wrong size. Same thing with sliced cheese. You might think "Oh, why didn't they get the proper size?" As a fellow shopper, I can vouch for the fact that the store was barren. Empty shelves all over the place. Undoubtedly, they just didn't have the "correct" sizes in the items they were trying to get. I offered to buy the milk and cheese for them, but they politely declined. Maybe that wasn't the right thing for me to do, but I felt so bad that they couldn't get their food. If you're the praying type, please say a prayer for that family and their kiddos, that they may have a blessed and bountiful Christmas!



Then pealed the bells more loud and deep
"God is not dead, nor doth he sleep,
The wrong shall fail, the right prevail,
With peace on earth, good will to men!"



Peace to all, and Merry Christmas!!!

It's a...

...beautiful day!



Look how blue the sky is:



Seriously. I didn't do any color correction. It really is that gorgeous today.



The flowers are even glowing:





I think the weather is celebrating the fact that finals are over. ;)

Tree Lighting!

Today was the annual lighting of the LSU Christmas Tree:

Before:


Snacks:


Army of Chocolate Santas:


And the Snowmen to back them up:


Bet you've never seen Purple & Gold Christmas decorations:


Nutcracker Preview:

(Sorry she's blurry!)

Lens Envy:


Memorial Tower:


Chancellor O'Keefe, about to push the button:


After!:


Closeup:


Bokeh!:


Now back to work!

(I figured that since I finally gave in and got Flickr Pro, I'd give them a try for hosting blog photos, especially since Picasa/Blogger's been a bit wonky lately. Any thoughts?)

(ETA: I had to widen the field of the posts to fit the pictures at this size, but I don't know how to widen the background image - I'm CSS-impaired, despite my attempts to learn - so please bear with me until Christmas break when I can learn CSS and fix it! Gracias!)

Picnik

I found a fun new website today! It's called Picnik, and it's an online photo editing site. You can do normal photo editing stuff (color correction, cropping, etc.), but the coolest part is that you can add stickers/shapes, thought bubbles, text, etc. Hopefully I'll have some time to play around on it a bunch over Christmas Break, but for now here's a fun one:



And another:



Hehe. Too fun!

Meme'd

I got tagged for a meme by Nin the other day, and I'm really excited - my first meme! One problem, though. I have to say eight things that are weird about me. There are so many weird things about me that lately this has been my motto:



Hide the crazy, Ashley!

So I'm working hard on the meme, trying to come up with eight sufficiently weird things (hopefully with photos to match) that don't scare y'all into never reading again and blocking me from commenting. Stay tuned. ;)

My first published photo!

Ok, well sort of published, but still. =) The past five summers, I've worked at Philmont Scout Ranch, in Cimarron, NM. It's one of my absolute favorite places on Earth, and the source of many of my favorite photos. There is an organization called the Philmont Staff Association comprised of current and former staff members that exists to support the Ranch and the current staff, and to keep former staff in contact. They maintain a website that has a photo masthead that changes with the season. The webmaster was looking for photos to use for this winter, so I submitted a few, and one got picked!

Here's the original:

(as always, click to embiggen!)

And the screenshot of the page:


Woohoo! I am so excited! I took the photo, along with many others, when I visited the Ranch for New Years Eve 2006/2007. A huge snowstorm had shut down the state (literally) and so my travel plans were...well...slightly different than planned. Flights canceled, roads closed, hotels overbooked, etc. Luckily, when I finally made it, I was rewarded with some awesome scenery. It pays to persevere. =)