Share Your World -2016 -Week#30

Sharing My World This Week

Do you prefer a bath or shower?

Normally I take a shower in the morning. It’s quicker and I prefer to wash my hair in the shower. However, when it comes to relaxing you can’t beat a nice long bath. I enjoy taking baths but have to admit I’m getting a little nervous about getting out afterwards. It may be time to install a handrail in the bathroom.

If you had an unlimited shopping spree at only one store, which one would you choose? Why?

There is a famous toy store in London called Hamley’s which I would love to have a spending spree in but not just an ordinary one. I’d time travel back to the early days of the store to see all the toys of the Victorian era and the first half of the twentieth century. I’d love to see dolls houses, forts, Noah’s Arks and toy trains, not to mention the dolls of course. My last stop on my time tour of Hamley’s would be 1965 where I could buy all the Sindy dolls and outfits I wanted when I was little. If my time travel journey could take place at Christmas that would be even better.

 

If you could be one age for the rest of your life, what age would that be?

I enjoyed my thirties, not one particular year but that decade.My hair had not yet started to go grey and I think I probably looked my best then.I had grown out of a lot of my shyness around strangers and was working in a job I knew I was good at.

List at least five movies that cheer you up. 

All the movies in this list are ones that make me feel good whenever I watch them.  You will notice that none of them are new.

By KO Creative – Impawards, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=22130990

• The Muppet Movie
• Star Trek IV
• The Dish
• Dave
• Crocodile Dundee
• To Sir With Love
• The Big Chill
• Priscilla Queen of the Desert

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6680285

 

Bonus question:  What are you grateful for from last week, and what are you looking forward to in the week coming up? 

Last week was cold and wet and as I have started volunteering at the local Op Shop I was grateful for being picked up by my co workers so I did not have to walk there. I was also grateful that my heater has a timer which could be set to turn on just before I got home.

Naomi and I went out for lunch yesterday but the rest of the week will be spent around Geeveston at the Op Shop or doing chores at home. I had thought about going to see the new Star Trek movie but have not yet decided if I want to go all the way to Hobart just for that.

 

Snapshot Sunday – Posy

A posy from the Hobart Flower Show last summer.

It’s cold and grey outside so here is something to brighten things up.

Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge – Tracks and Trains

Tracks and Trains

This is a subject that is right up my alley as I’ve been taking pictures of trains almost  since I first picked up a camera. Here in Tasmania it is a bit of a challenge as we have no passenger railways and only a few freight trains. There are a couple of railway museums and tourist railways though. This first picture was taken in 2014. David and I were driving up to Oatlands in the mid north to visit Naomi and as we headed up the main road out of Hobart we were held up by a freight train at a level crossing. We didn’t often get a chance to photograph them so as we knew we’d get to the Derwent river crossing before the train we decided to stop and wait for it. We did so and  then went a little way ahead of it to take a few more before continuing our journey. As it turned out that was the last time we did railway photography together.

Tasmanian Railways diesel engine.

These next two photographs are not good quality, they are scans of old prints. The first one is a photo that David took. He was working in the old railway yards which no longer exist. The small blue  timber building in the photo to the left of the diesel was his office. He often took pictures of trains and buildings which seemed odd to me at the time. I used to ask him why he took them and he said that one day they might not be around any more. Well, he was right, they are gone now. About ten years later I worked in that yard myself, David was working elsewhere by then. I too photographed the trains and the people in my workplace. My photo was taken when I was on night shift, usually the best time as the big bosses had all gone home. I took this photo of one of the railcars being serviced during my break.

South Australian Railways diesel in the Adelaide rail yard. Photo David Jensen between 1977-81

Diesel railcar in the Adelaide Railcar Depot sometime between 1987-98.

This is another old one. I can tell from the headboard that it was taken in 1988. As part of the celebrations for 200 years of European settlement of Australia this steam engine from New South Wales ran all the way across Australia. Of course we went to see it in Adelaide and were lucky enough to take a trip behind it.

Bicentennial Train 1988.

As I’m writing this post there is a railway program on television. “Joanna Lumley’s Trans- Siberian”. This reminds me to include a photo of a Russian electric locomotive taken when we made that journey in 1990. This was taken out of the train window.

This was one of many electric locomotives we saw.

This last one was taken in Queenstown, Tasmania in 2012 at the West Coast Wilderness Railway. David and I had driven there to spend the weekend with our friends Gillian and Bruce who had come from Melbourne.

Train departing Queenstown Tasmania, West Coast Wilderness Railway

 

As you can see trains have always been a big part of my life. I met David on a steam train trip, he proposed to me on one and trains were also part of our wedding. Needless to say I will never think of trains now without thinking of him as well.

 

Share Your World – 2016 – Week #29

Sharing My World This Week

What is the perfect pizza?

The perfect pizza has plenty of tomato sauce on the base which can be thick or thin. There is a lot of meat, ham or bacon and pepperoni. I like some red  and green capsicums for a bit of colour and mushrooms because I love mushrooms. Last of all there is plenty of cheese on top; nothing too fancy, I like mozzarella, maybe swiss cheese or even a sharp cheddar is fine The perfect pizza does not have olives, anchovies or oysters on it.

This may sound a little bland and boring to some but pizza is comfort food to me and I like it to be warm and familiar.

By Joe Parks from Berkeley, CA – Jupiter, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=26551014

What is your favorite time of day?

I like mornings. When I was at school I used to like to get up at sunrise to have some time alone to start the day. Years of having to get up at sunrise to go to work rather cured me of that but I do like the first part of the day. Drinking the first cup of coffee, looking outside to see what kind of weather we’ll have and having the whole day to look forward to. I generally achieve more in the morning too. If I start major jobs in the afternoon I often don’t have the enthusiasm to finish them.

Show us two of your favorites photographs?  The photos can be from anytime in your life span.  Explain why they are your favorite.

Like many other people who have responded I have far too many photos to choose favourites in a meaningful way. Many of them are in photo albums or are slides and although I do plan to scan many of them I don’t want to pull out random pictures to scan or I’ll just mix them up.

The photo below is an all time favourite though. It is of Tessie, Cindy’s predecessor, and I think it was taken the first day I met her. Tessie was a Corgi/Cavalier King Charles spaniel cross and every time I see this picture I just go “Awww” because she was such a gorgeous puppy. She was a wonderful dog and we had her for twelve and a half years.

Our dog Tessie as a puppy.

This one is a favourite too.It is The Great Wall of China at Badaling.  I took it in March 1990. I like it because it is not a staged tourist picture. I had wandered away from our group although I didn’t know it. I thought they were in front of me but in fact they had turned back long before they reached this less busy section of the wall. David had chosen to stop and rest his feet and I had gone on alone. This was taken from one of the guard towers. Getting lost and enjoying this walk was actually the best part of the day.

Complete this sentence:  I’m looking forward to….being able to sit in my garden in spring and see all the new growth in the trees and shrubs I’ve planted in the past year and especially to seeing my dauntless daffodils which I thought had not survived the hot summer and all the disruption caused by landscaping. They are poking out of the ground already and I’m so looking forward to seeing them again.

I did not expect to see my daffodils and jonquils this year.

 

Bonus question:  What are you grateful for from last week, and what are you looking forward to in the week coming up? 

We have had some pretty crazy weather for the past couple of weeks. There was snow but it didn’t amount to much around here, just a dusting on the hills. We had high winds which caused a lot of power outages due to fallen trees and power lines. The Huon River flooded at Huonville 20kms from here and there was water all down the main road inundating local businesses and homes near the river bank. This was apparently the biggest flood in over twenty years, certainly it was the most water I’ve seen in the fourteen that I have lived in the Huon. I am grateful that there were no deaths or serious injuries that I’ve heard about. I’m also grateful to live in a community that always rallies around to help anyone who needs it.  As for me, I was fine, no snow, no flood, no wind damage, just a couple of short power outages that didn’t affect me because I was out during one and asleep during the other.

Huon River in flood at Huonville. photo from ABC news.

Next week Naomi and I plan to have a Christmas in July lunch at the Casino so we are both hoping that nothing happens to prevent it this time.

 

Cee’s Compose Yourself Challenge _ Black and White: The Basics

Composing myself for a Challenge

This month Cee’s Compose Yourself Challenge is about black and white photography. This is an area that I don’t wander into much. I bought my first roll of colour film in the early 1970s and after that had little use for black and white. I do appreciate the dramatic quality of some black and white photographs more now that I am older but generally I want to portray the world in living colour. I do sometimes use black and white to create a more retro look or if I feel that the colours in a photo don’t work I’ll try black and white before I dump it. Sometimes it works out better.

I have not really used RAW before either and after consulting my camera manual to find the RAW button went out to take some pictures in the garden. Sadly it appears I did something wrong. I guess you have to press the button before every shot, I ended up with jpegs after all and changed them to black and white with Picasa which is my preferred editing software.

I set out to take more abstract pictures than usual looking for texture and detail. It was a bright sunny day so not ideal for what I wanted to do.

My original photo

after editing.

I have cropped  and straightened some photos and either used the Black and White feature or filtered black and white. For the next one I used a feature called Holga-ish which I thought was more interesting. It not only turns the photo black and white but gives the effect of being taken with one of those old plastic cameras.

My original photo

After editing.

 

The original

The edited photo.

 

The original

The edited photo

Conclusion

I do think that using black and white seems appropriate for an old, slightly scruffy house like mine. The sky certainly looks better. I love to see a bright blue sky but in this case maybe it is a bit distracting because there is so much of it. On the other hand I did prefer the colour version of the one with the bench as I liked the bright reflection in the window surrounded by neutral colours. I am not sure if I quite “get” digital black and white photography yet so I’m glad we are continuing with this subject next month.

What’s New At My House

Readers of my doll blog may be familiar with a series of posts I call “What’s New At The Tammy House” in this post I will show you what’ s new at my house.

Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home. My house spring 2015

I’ve mentioned several times in the past few weeks that I was having new front steps and a path put in the front garden. My old front steps were made of concrete and apart from being ugly I had been getting more and more hesitant about going down them so initially I had thought of getting a handyman to install a grab rail. In the back of my mind I thought about doing away with the concrete steps and having some new wooden ones put in but I thought that it might be difficult for “the garden guys” to demolish the old steps and the builder I’ve used for other jobs  in the past is like the Invisible Man these days. He’s getting extremely hard to pin down to a date to come and look at work I need done.

I wanted a new front path because I wanted to redirect visitors who have always cut across the front lawn and down the path between the rose bushes to get to the front door. As my photinia hedge grows taller and thicker that wouldn’t  work very well, the old roses were straggly and the concrete path was cracked and stained.  While discussing this with Jason and Brodie one of them came up with the suggestion of new steps down to the path. They assured me that they could do the work. I knew they could, they built the pergola. As for the concrete steps, no need to demolish them they would just build over the top of them.

“Make it so.” I said.

Although the weather has made photography very difficult I’ve tried to record the stages of building as I usually do.

The work begins.

We decided on a timber boardwalk path like the one at the back and the guys commenced work during some truly horrible weather. The old rose bed was shortened and the paving removed. Nobody would mistake it for a way to the front door now.  An unpleasant surprise was when I was told “You know those posts supporting the veranda? Well, they aren’t.” They were rotting at the bottom as was most of the decking on the veranda so the lot had to be replaced. I wasn’t that surprised really as the gutters had to be replaced a few years ago and when it’s wet there always seems to be a lot of water around the front of the house, that will be fixed too.

The shortened bed

The new timber

The steps

The work is nearly finished.

My new path.

It took a few visits and I was without the use of the front door for a few days but slowly things came together. I didn’t really miss using the front door that much as I had been avoiding doing so anyway but now I think it will be my preferred entrance as it will save me walking down the driveway to get to the back door.I’m looking forward to spring when we can finish by planting some new lawn and shrubs.

In the meantime there has been some activity indoors. I had some new flooring laid in the laundry and back room where I feed Cindy and Polly. It had been bare concrete and very hard to keep looking nice so I bought some slate patterned vinyl. My next job which I may attempt to do myself is to paint these rooms. I’ve been washing walls and getting ready to do the job as soon as I buy some paint and a better step ladder.

Slate patterned vinyl is a big improvement.

A new look for the pet area.

Snapshot Sunday – Black and White

Here is Polly in the garden. I was taking photos for Cee’s Compose Yourself Challenge.