Unintentional Hilarity

So, I was watching the 720p Star Trek trailer (yeah, I'd only seen it on my iPhone), and the brief -- very brief -- scene with Sarek and Amanda made my eyes pop out of my head.

Why?

Could it be that Ben Cross bears an uncanny resemblance to Mark Lenard?

Nope.

It was, rather, that the profile of Ben Cross as Sarek bore an uncanny resemblance to Andreas Katsulas.

Bwahahahaha.  Sarek as previously violent then enlightened and passionate religious leader.  Bwahahahahaha.

Disneyland Halloween Time Photos

Once I made the momentous discovery (Tripods rock!  And my dad had two!  And you can attach them to a wheelchair with a bungee cord for easy carrying!) a few months ago, I've been enamored of night time photography

A couple of years ago, I went to Disneyland and took lots of photos of Disneyland's Halloween decorations.  I regretfully noticed that they looked gorgeous at night time but knew I'd never be able to hand-hold my camera well enough to get good shots.

Enter the tripod and my other new best friend: my remote shutter release.  ('Cause, really, do you want to put it on countdown mode and wait 10 seconds for every shot?  I thought not.)

It took some time to cull the best of the best out.  For one thing, though I'm having lots of fun, I'm still not certain of my ability to expose correctly, so I took about three exposures of each shot.  For another, I did mess up on the exposure quite a bit (all the lighting on Main Street threw off the metering, I think) so I had to spend some quality time with Aperture.

The full-quality gallery is here, but to my knowledge, you must have a current version of Internet Explorer or a relatively current version of Firefox.  If you don't, here are the low-quality versions.

Also included are some wanderings around California Adventure, and some night time shots of Paradise Pier, because going on Midway Mania before going to Disneyland is Patrick's new Routine.

(And, yes, a Routine carries enough importance to Patrick that it must be capitalized.)

For the Candy Corn Acres pictures, I was on a mission not to take normal "snapshot" touristy shots.  I was actively seeking out unusual compositions.  I hope I succeeded.

The one pumpkin head I missed last time around, in daylight:

My camera did not like the reds here, but I included it because I haven't seen many photos of these decorations out and about on the Internet.

The beginning of trip number two: the soon-to-be-gone Sun Wheel.  While the new entry plaza looks cool, I'll miss it.

Still working on how to expose sunset shots, but good for me:

The gondolas are missing! :-o  Actually, I just liked the pattern of all the steel supports.

When hinges creak in doorless chambers....

Oh, look.  It's light pollution.  I saw a magazine in the store the other day (Time? Newsweek?  Something reputable, at any rate.) that had an article titled something like "The Loss of Night."

Is it sad that I stood in line to take a picture of Mickey and not to take a picture of family or friends in front of Mickey, like everyone else did?

Hmm...what to do while Patrick rides the train?  Oh, yes.  Take pictures of the station.

This might, just might, be my favorite of the bunch.

Interestingly enough, its daytime-equivalent from a couple of years ago was my favorite of that bunch.

Yeah, so I actually stood in line twice to take pictures of nobody.

 
Christmas pics will be coming...well, if the Halloween ones are any example...probably sometime in January.

Respect

When recently researching the various side effects I've had from having mono as a kid, I came across something that surprised me: that mono is in the Epstein Barr family (which I kinda knew) and that it's believed that Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is as well.

Well, let me tell you, after two flare ups in six months or so, I have enormous, everlasting respect for someone who has CFS.  I don't know if I can explain how tired you actually feel, but let me try:

1.  Every morning -- every morning -- during a flare up or when really sick, I wake up and immediately list in my head the things that *must* be done that day.  Not "really should."  Not "ought to."  Not "oh, I'd love to write a little tonight."  Nuh uh.  It's: "Wake up, get dressed, work at school, type next week's journal, dinner, SLEEP."

2.  My ability to multitask is utterly shot.  A couple of weeks ago, I successfully ran a group consisting of Elastigirl, Bart, Bulldozer, and, I think, Smiley.  Today, it was all I could do to keep track of PH and Bulldozer this morning.

3.  My attention span is nil.  I accidentally wrote "November" on four or five of Elastigirl's labels (she matches the name of the month) for next week.  I counted wrong when making labels for M to do math with.

I lived through about six months of this in eighth grade.  A week of it is driving me insane now.

So if any of my readers are diagnosed with CFS, I bow down to you in abject humility that you manage to function in the long term at all.