Camp Life - Hansel and Gretel

Eva's class put on a play for the parents last weekend.  It was a poetic version of Hansel and Gretel and it was very cute!  I had to edit waaaaay down to get it short enough for even family and friends to watch.  It ends with Free to Be You and Me.  Anyone who went to Orange Hunt with me will remember singing this in music class. Turns out that I still know the words!

Posted via email from Cathleen Phelps

Camp Life - Diving

Camp Arcadia's lake is Pleasant Lake and it really and truly is pleasant!  There is a dock shaped like an H and the girls have lanes roped off there for swimming and there is a diving board.  Eva learned how to do a regular racing dive which is GREAT because she didn't know how to do that at the beginning of the summer.  She was working on her side dive and is hoping to learn a back dive by the end of the summer.  It was very difficult to capture this on the teeny weeny Flip but I did my best.

Posted via email from Cathleen Phelps

Camp Life - The Horse Show

Bill and I spent last weekend visiting Eva at Camp Arcadia.  She is having a fantastic summer and we enjoyed meeting all of her friends and counselors and seeing the different things at camp that she likes to do.  Bill took care of all the still photographs (which is why I don't have any) and I shot a bit of video.  Here's a short clip of the horse show.  I don't really know anything about riding horses except that you couldn't pay me to wear those tan stretch pants.  Additional video is coming!

Posted via email from Cathleen Phelps

One Man Lord of the Rings - Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company

> Will and I went to see One Man LOTR tonight at Woolly Mammoth in DC. This was a performance by Charles Ross who also developed and performed One Man Star Wars (which we have also seen). > > While I would say it was amazingly creative and well performed, I think Star Wars lent itself better to the 'one man' hour long format. LOTR is a much more complicated story, with many more characters, plot threads and nuance. This performance was developed from the movies, and if you had not seen the movies - multiple times - it would have been hard to follow. > > In fact, Charles Ross asked for a show of hands of people who had seen the movie and/or read the books, then those who had done neither. About six people had neither read the books nor seen the movies. He was a bit incredulous and kept poking fun at them for even coming to the show.
> > Overall Will and I enjoyed it, I think Will more so given his superior memory for the movies. >

>

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Eva Learning to Dive at Arcadia

Eva is much more enthusiastic about swimming this summer than she has been in the recent past. She is also learning to dive, and we saw great improvement even in just the couple of days we visited. She did very well diving off the side of the dock, and even went off the 1 meter diving board (which looks more like 4 - 5 feet off water).

Via iPad

Posted via email from Bill's Photos & Miscellany

Best. Breakfast. Hot Suppa! - Portland, Maine

We were visiting Eva this weekend at Arcadia in Casco, Maine. We stayed near Portland and made it into the city for breakfast on Saturday. Two years ago we randomly discovered Hot Suppa! and were instantly addicted. We have since discovered that it is deservedly a foodie institution.

I would not expect great biscuits and gravy north of Virginia, but Hot Suppa! has them. Also (of course) blueberry pancakes, great omelets and the signature corn beef hash with eggs. Currently they are only open for breakfast and lunch, but after some renovation in August they will be opening for dinner in September. It is definitely worth a detour if you are near Portland.

We drove up to Portland from Logan Airport, and stopped for lunch at Giuseppe's in Newburyport, just off 95N. It should be in any guide to 'just off 95' restaurants. Any trip to New England requires seeking out local pizza and subs, Giuseppe's exceeded expectations. We split an Italian sausage sub that tasted fresh and homemade from the bun to the sauce to the sausage.

Via iPad

Posted via email from Bill's Photos & Miscellany

Lyra - Master Baker

Lyra loves to help cook, and cinnamon rolls are a special favorite both for eating and helping. Lyra gets to mix the cinnamon brown sugar filling and then scrape the leftover filling off the pastry cloth and eat it. She enjoys kneading the dough, although she gets annoyed about it sticking to her hands (as do I).  

Via iPad

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Fresh Joseph's - Alexandria Farmers Market

No trip to the Alexandria Farmers Market is complete without fresh squeezed orange juice from Fresh Joseph.  He also sells great fresh mozzarella and bread, but the juice is the best, and all hand pressed.

We are having a discussion about whether the farmers in farmers market is plural or possessive (or both).  I can make an argument either way.

Cath wanted me to try and Photoshop out the rope running top to bottom through this photo. I decided that was in the 'too hard' category.     

Posted via email from Bill's Photos & Miscellany

Alexandria, VA Fireworks Photos

We attended the Alexandria fireworks last night at Oronoco Bay Park to watch the fireworks and listen to the Alexandria Symphony. We can walk to this event, which makes it a lot easier than the National Mall fireworks and they actually have vendors selling lemonade and stuff, which for some reason the Park Service does not permit at Iwo Jima where we saw the July 4th fireworks. As I suspect others will write, this was not a great year for the fireworks. For some reason the fireworks kept starting and stopping, to the point that when the music stopped for good someone came on stage and said the crowd needed to wait because the fireworks were not over yet. Fireworks should be a logical progression toward a finale, not a series of 5 - 10 minute pauses to watch planes fly by (which seemed to be the reason for the delays). We don't remember the air traffic control causing problems in the past, and if that was the reason it was not well planned for, because the choreography between the music and the fireworks was not as smooth as in prior years.

Will was generally is a bad mood, but one understandable issue that really set him off was a nearby cigar smoker. I think a letter to the city will be forthcoming about banning smoking at public events. Cigar smoke smells foul, and I can't comprehend the level of selfishness and bad manners required for someone to smoke one in a crowd, especially a crowd of mostly families with children. A number of people sitting near us were also disgusted. The smell eventually drove Will to leave early.

The constant delays and my bad choice on where to stand made photography challenging. I thought shooting over the bandstand would create some context for the photos, but it was not a good angle and the bandstand was too bright in relation to the fireworks and is over exposed. I had initially thought of shooting near the water, and that would have been the right move, except I did not figure it out soon enough. I also had my tripod packed up when the music stopped and people started to leave, and had to scramble to get it set up again when the announcer finally said the fireworks were not in fact over. I do think the last couple of photos I took over the water, while not great, were the bast of the evening. All of these photos are processed with Photogene on my iPad. It is GREAT software. It is not as powerful as Aperture (by a wide margin) but it is a lot better than 'good enough' for quick edits. I did try one of the Photogene pre configured 'effects' on an overexposed photo, and I like the result.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Via iPad

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Amtrak Worker, Union Station, Washington

There is a plaque at Union Station in Washington honoring Amtrak employees killed on the job. This is from the bronze above the plaque.

Sent from Bill Phelps' iPhone

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Washington, DC Fireworks Photo Series - No. 3

> This is taken at the beginning of the finale. I like the layering of the blasts, from the blurrier background to the sharp foreground, and the red streaks falling at the bottom in what looks like a bird foot pattern. >

>

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Washington, DC Fireworks Photo Series - No. 2

> This photo was taken about two thirds of the way through the fireworks display. As soon as I saw it on the camera back I knew I had a keeper. I love how you can see the rocket trails showing the launch path of the rockets carrying the fireworks. >

>

Posted via email from Bill's Photos & Miscellany

Washington, DC Fireworks Photo Series - No. 1

We went to watch the DC fireworks this evening at the Marine Corp War Memorial in Arlington. This is the park with the Iwo Jima Memorial and the Netherlands Carillon. All of the fireworks photos are taken from base of the Netherlands Carillon.  

I took several photos that I really like. On this one I think it is cool that you can see that the fireworks are being shot in front of the Washington Monument, but behind the Lincoln Memorial as the fireworks 'rain' down obscuring the Washington Monument. 

Via iPad

Posted via email from Bill's Photos & Miscellany

Eva's Writing Blog - http://livelearnlovewrite.wordpress.com/

Eva loves to write and her facility with words is amazing, at least to me. She started a blog and I was afraid it would be dormant for the summer while she is off at Camp Arcadia. So far though she has been mailing poems and stories to us that Cathleen posts for her on the blog. Hopefully at some point Eva will have access to the Net and can see the results of her work. Via iPad

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Licking Up the Eton Mess Leftovers - Photos of Lyra

I love the Australian food and wine magazines. The June 2010 issue of Australian Gourmet Traveller had a recipe for a desert called Eton Mess I have been wanting to make. Eton Mess is essentially strawberries tossed in whipped cream mixed with crumbled meringue. I had fresh peaches not strawberries, so made a peach version. It was good but strawberries would have been even better.

I gave Lyra what I thought was going to be a small sample of the uncooked meringue. She wanted the spatula, beater and bowl to herself. We made a deal that she could lick the beater if she would let me take photos. I think it was a good deal.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Via iPad

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