1. Today was something like the fifteenth straight day of rain in the greater DC-opolis and I decided to venture out anyway and take some pictures. I continued in my determination to learn how to take pictures appropriate to the possibilities of my Tamron 28mm manual lens and today I snapped away at the Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens. It was my third recent workout with this lens and, at this point, I'm not quite ready to reveal my pictures on this blog -- but, I am keeping a record of my attempts to take good pictures with this lens over at my flickr site -- and if you'd like to see evidence of me trying to get the exposure right and figure out the composition possibilities using this lens, just go here. (I post all my pictures on flickr -- everything, no matter if the pictures are horrible, is included -- having all my pictures stored here helps me a lot as I try to learn how to take pictures I like.)
2. When I was last at the Aquatic Gardens on April 24th, park rangers set orange traffic cones in certain areas to warn park visitors that geese were protecting nests of eggs and to leave the geese alone. Today, I got to see a bunch of the babies that had hatched from those eggs, walking and swimming, in an orderly file behind an adult. I also saw one gaggle of goslings learning how to climb a pond's bank, out of the water, back to a park trail. The adults watched the goslings struggle with finding a good place to leave the water and watched their awkward attempts to climb out. The adults never intervened and it was fun to see these goslings overcome their failures and finally join the adults back on terra firma. By the way, the geese are protective of their goslings, not just their eggs. I kept my distance, but even as careful as I was, my presence inspired a few of the geese to hiss unambiguous warnings aimed at me.
3. Allie is taking care of Ana, David, and Olivia while Hiram and Molly are at a family wedding and she is picking up a cold from the kids. I had volunteered to fix dinner tonight, so I went to my Pinterest account and did a search for soups that are good for a cold. I found a recipe called Asian Chicken Noodle soup and I liked the looks of it. It's simple: chicken, chicken stock, onion, garlic, ginger, soy sauce, and fish sauce. I added cilantro and a jalapeno pepper -- about half of its seeds -- I wanted some heat, but not a lot. I fixed rice sticks separately from the soup and, once boiled, added them to the broth and meat. Each of us squeezed the juice of a lime slice into our bowls of soup. I don't know if the soup was physically medicinal, but both Allie and the Deke loved it and our souls were definitely nourished. The recipe is here.
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