AaronSpruit

Coming back from St Joseph, MI, there’s a scenic overlook off of the Red Arrow Highway.  I had wanted to snap a couple of pictures on the way there, but then didn’t because it was an overcast, boring day.  However, on the way back looking over Lake Michigan towards Gary, this is what you could see.  The reason for the red-orange glow was because in Chicago there was actually no cloud cover (yay lake effect), and the sun was setting.

**Update**
Just dropped off my camera here in town.  Yay to having an authorized repair place in the loop.  Anyways, for $150 the LCD will be fixed, and I should have it back by tomorrow!  He’ll also take a look at the Nikon F I’ve got too, and hopefully clean it up.

It’s cold.  Very cold.

Ah, beautiful MI in the winter; overcast.  Heck, later in the day it even flurried.  How I miss living in West Michigan.  Amazingly for the time of year it was when I took this, there was no ice in Lake Michigan.  That is not the normal.  Many times I’ve gone to the lake, you wouldn’t even be able to see that lighthouse because of the ice flows that pile up along the beach.

As I mentioned yesterday, I broke my camera.  Thankfully, it still mostly works, but the top LCD, the one that gives me all the settings information, is toast.  I was attempting to get my tripod to basically be on the ground for some night shots, and so I had to take out the center column.  Well, to do that, you have to unscrew a piece which is connected to where the tripod head is connected.  Not realizing which end actually came off, I unscrewed it and then my tripod head was on the ground.  However, on the way down it must have hit the top of my camera.

At the time I didn’t realize it, until I wanted to adjust the aperture.  Needless to say, I couldn’t see anything on the display.  That day wasn’t going well already, and this was definitely the cherry on the top.  At least I got a few decent pictures that night, but gave up in frustration for a few shots I wanted to take.

Sorry about not putting any update up yesterday.  I had all intentions to on Wednesday night.  However, we had a work gathering of sorts, and I didn’t end up getting home until around 2 AM, slightly drunk.  Needless to say, I didn’t feel like processing any images.  I promise I’ll try to do better.  It doesn’t help that it’s been so cold too, it really has a tendency to sap all my energy, among other things.

Speaking of cold, I figure this is a good picture for as cold as it’s been lately.  It was taken when I was up in St. Joe a few weekends ago for a, belated, Xmas lunch.  For as much ice as their was on the pier, I was somewhat amazed how there was no ice at all on Lake Michigan.

Oh yeah, I guess I haven’t really said anything about my vacation to AZ.  It was good.  It wasn’t quite as warm as I’d hoped it would be (only wore shorts once, and that was when I went running), but it was nice to get away for awhile.  Unfortunately, coming back from vacations, no matter how short is always a pain in the office.  Thankfully as of yesterday I actually got completely caught up.  Granted, I did come in 1-2 hours early Monday-Wednesday and then didn’t leave until around 7:30 each day.  It feels a lot better to be back on top of things though, that’s for sure.

Yeah, and I broke my camera.  I don’t want to really go into it today, but I’ll be sure to post something about it tomorrow.