I took my walk last night wandering the city with my camera looking for something of interest to photograph, but I added to it a challenge. I bought some adapters for macro and zoom images. I used them first a month or two ago when I first got them and wanted to throw them across the room in frustration. Really frustrating.

Anyway, it was my challenge for the night. I took a lot of crappy pictures and totally annoyed Christie with my constant stopping. I deleted most of the crappy pictures. But here are a  few that I liked.

Yesterday I went to my favorite beach for a morning walk, because I do that kind of stuff now; I walk in the morning before work. Just thinking of the idea of it makes my head hurt. I park my car, get out my camera, and start walking.

Then I hear them, 3 loud obnoxious trophy wives who are also walking on the beach with their 3 loud obnoxious expensive small trophy dogs. The miniature poodle and the jack russell were playing, ie attempting to dominate one another, loudly; while the corgi simply looked distressed and kept walking away from the hot mess, which incidentally is what the corgi's owner was doing as well, clearly they were both dragged along to an outting that was supposed to be fun but ended up in one dog/trophy wife attempting to dominate the whole group.

Meanwhile I'm not headed anywhere onto the beach because none of the dogs are on a leash and only one of the women is making any sort of attempt to control her dogs; except the corgi's owner who's appeared to be containing herself but heeled on command.

It's 5:30am and the loudest of the group has a Starbuck's cup. Now I know for a fact that only one of the starbuck's in Beverly open before 5:30am and it's not the one on this side of town so, either this woman is traveling to the ghetto for her coffee, or is washing and reusing her cups OR she's sipping cold coffee from the day before. Since she's on foot I seriously doubt that she travelled to my hood before going to the beach. I'm not judging either way, but how about she get a reusable mug?

The whole scene made me grumpy. I wanted to take some sun rising pictures of the far end of the beach up close. Instead I had to listen to loud talking woman with her mystery coffee, who became louder when the group saw me, and their obnoxious dogs barking.

Anyway. The whole thing made me feel like this:

The dog has taken to walking up 2 or 3 stairs, milling about there in a confused fashion until I get up and turn lights on so she can get down… She starts this process around 3am. This does not excite me and I'm sure she doesn't understand why I'm more grumpy than usual when I first wake up.* If not for the fact that I went to bed early last night I might be wearing new fuzzy slippers. Somehow this dog does not want me to get more than 6 hours of sleep on a week day.

Enough griping about my dog. Last night I went for a walk. Afte the wind and rain of the weekend it was gloriously sunny and perfect weather, not too hot and not too cool. Perfect. Which is also a sign that fall is near and I'll be wearing a parka before too long. Sigh.

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On the weekend I like to get up early and walk around town. The streets are quiet and it's me, my camera and maybe one or 2 other people; usually joggers. I've also taken to walking after work if I'm not dead tired. One of these days I'm going to go for an evening stroll and get some shots of the really cool old signs. On my list of places to get a picture of is a cool old neon sign  that is a giant cactus. That will require a drive.

Some pictures from the nice side of town and one from my 'hood.

Part of the reason I've been walking so much is pure enjoyment and secondary is getting to know my camera. I used to ride my bike for exercise and just the pure enjoyment of the ride. Now I need a reason to walk, and luckily my camera has given me a reason.

Normally when  hurricane/tropical storm runs through New England I'm in the area that gets whalloped. This time the storm went further inland and we simply got a bunch of rain and wind. The worst I was worried about was losing some of my pears due to high winds, and I did lose a few, but not many.

The western part of the state and other areas did not fair so well. We're texting and checking on FaceBook to check in with family members and friends in other locations.

We were lucky.

Somehow the traffic gods have been smiling on me, I suspect there is some sort of evil plan in which all the time I haven't spent in traffic will come back to me and I'll end up sleeping overnight on I95. Let's not worry about traffic karma, and take a look at these pictures. I get to work early and I'm not at all motivated to go in the building so I drive down to this place:

Then I get out of my car and go for a walk. With my camera. So it's not like I'm getting a lot of cardio in before I go to work. Instead I'm stopping and starting and taking pictures. The air has a chill that only early AMs in August have, the mosquitoes are thick, ticks are a plague, and I walk. It's been makming my mornings wonderful. Here are a few more pictures:

Nothing like peaches preserved in jars for winter months. I grew up learning how to can vegetables with my mom. We always canned tomatoes, peaches, and beans for winter. The peaches and tomatoes came from NY, until my father expanded his garden and was able to grow enough tomatoes for canning. Technically you can can any number of cans of fruit or vegetables, but for anything less than a full pot its a total pain in the butt.

This is a particularly exciting moment in that the peaches came from the tree my father and I planted. Canning fruits and vegetables is hot work but well worth it, it's also relatively easy to do.