Image for 3/18/11 - Fire Good!

We had our first fire for the year in the chimenea tonight. Nothing like a Friday night fire on the patio to kick-off the weekend. It was very warm today, eighty degrees, about twenty above normal for this time of year. Everyone has spring fever.

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Image for 3/17/11 - Happy St. Patty's Day!

On my way home from work, I had stop  off for one pint at my favorite watering hole, "Sarah's Irish Pub" in Phoebus (Hampton), Va. Sarah's is run by Trish (to the left) and Frank, too of the happiest people I know. They throw a legendary St. Patty's Day party every year complete with green beer, corned beef and cabbage, live music and, of course, a leprechaun (pictured below). The place was packed out by the time I stopped in and I was lucky to score a Guinness and find a rail to lean against. The band started off with a cover of The Beatles, "Back in the USSR". Must of been an inside joke. The crowd didn't seem to mind.

I got to admit that I've only become a fan of St. Patty's Day since I lived in Ireland. Now it makes some sense to me; helps me to reconnect with those years I spent wandering the green and rocky hills of the Burren in the west. It also helps that green is my favorite color.

Sláinte Gaelach!

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Image for 3/16/11 - Sidewalk Hieroglyphics...

I did a quick two mile hike after work tonight. My usual roundtrip from the house up to Shore Drive. I was walking along feeling bored with all I saw. The uninspired, soulless colonial ranch and vinyl sided duplexes that dominate my neighborhood were not providing the kind of photo opportunities I was hoping for then I looked down and saw these markings on the sidewalk. Some kind of utility tags. I see abstract art, abstract tags, subterranean hints of another world.

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Image for 3/15/11 - Red Skies in Morning...

It was a rosy dawn, fire across the eastern sky. Daylight savings makes it much easier for me to enjoy the rising sun. True to the saying, "Red skies in morning, sailor take warning", we did have some mildly bad weather today, just a little rain. The ships out in the bay are empty coal freighters waiting to coming into the marine terminals for a load. I'd prefer to see wind turbines or wave turbines instead.

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Image for 3/14/11 - Mr. Lizard-Man...

Alright, I'm gonna lean on another pic from Key West today. It was a boring Monday and I felt uninspired, so better to remember being back in Key West on a hot Friday, hiking along the moat for Fort Zach Taylor and coming across this fellow. He was about three feet from nose to tail tip and looked well fed. We startled each other pretty good, but he hung around long enough for me to get one quick snap before he jumped into the green water and disappeared.

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Image for 3/13/11 - Another Key West thing...

I walked around all day today with the camera in my pocket, but never saw anything worth shooting. So I'm going to dip back into the pile of photos from the Key West trip for today's image. I took this at an interesting place called the "Pelican Poop Shoppe" that is in a great old building called the "Casa Antigua" and is purported to be Ernest Hemingway's first home in Key West. Now it's somebody else's private residence with a gift shop in the front. If you buy something in the gift shop they give you a tour of the courtyard, which is where I found this weird fellow. The courtyard was wonderful, full of tropical planets and a pool in the middle. A secluded outdoor space within a town. That's a design feature that I think needs to come back.

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Image for 3/12/11 - Goodnight Starling

Out hiking today (seven miles, thank you very much) and came across this beautiful European Starling carcass along Shore Drive. Click the image to enlarge  and better appreciate the iridescent feathers which, according to my bird book, are only seen in the spring. A dead spring bird; the edge between winter and spring; death and rebirth.

Weirdly enough, I saw a second bird cadaver half a block from this one, but it was in the shadow of a telephone pole; badly lit for a photo.

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