Scattered Thoughts . . .

A s I mentioned in my previous blog entry, we spent the day out for Sheila's birthday.  Most of the day was really nice while some of the day was pretty disgusting as will be described later in this blog entry.   The drive up to Burlington was nice...  the sky was clear and it wasn't snowing for a change!  The mountaintops clearly have snow but the snow at our lower elevation was mostly gone over the past few days and wouldn't return until the following day.   Sheila had gone for a massage in mid-morning in Waterbury so we were heading up to Burlington a little later than we normally would have started out.  She enjoyed her massage so that is good.  By the time we arrived in the Burlington area, it was a bit later in the lunchtime hours so we were pretty hungry.  We had decided to have lunch at a new Mexican restaurant in Willison called "Casa Grande" since we had never been there before and we do like Mexican food.  I think we visi...

Y esterday was Sheila's birthday.  She had already opened one gift a few days before her birthday (a good pair of ear buds) but she had another one to open on her birthday.   I had purchased a new ring for her...  the main stone is aquamarine (her birthstone) and it is surrounded by white sapphires... Shooting photos of jewelry isn't something I do all that often.  I had forgotten how surprisingly difficult it is to get a sharp photo due to all the specular highlights reflecting off the jewelry.  To compound this primary difficulty, you need a lot of light coming from many directions which makes even more specular highlight reflections.   Another problem I had with this particular photo is that a ring is quite small.  Since it is small, you need to try to get as close as possible which then results in a very shallow depth of field putting most of the ring out of focus.  I resolved that problem but the specular highlight issue is still a ...