Today I finally have a few follow ups to all your fabulous comments from the past few weeks.  🙂 I’ve actually been trying to post this for a while, but every time I work on it some more, I seem to run into a computer or internet problem. So, I’m going to just post what I have, and try to reply to more recent comments via the comments area itself in the future. At least that’s my intent. 😉

As a general reply to everyone, thanks for all on-going positive feedback on the pictures on the blog. Glad you’re enjoying them, and it’s always nice to hear back that people like seeing them. 🙂 In the rest of this post, I will try to answer questions or add updates to some of the posts from the last month.

Tracks in the Snow -©Kathy: Your name for that kind of snow sounds better – thanks for the idea! I think I’ll adopt it (sort of) and change my name for it to “snow pearls”. 🙂 I’m still waiting for the next storm so that I can try for a good photo of it

@Ashley: You’ve seen this type of snow in Vancouver? I don’t recall it from when we lived there. Of course, my memory of the snow there is influenced greatly by this photo I took of it after a storm (click on the image to see it larger):

A Winter's Night Light, Vancouver, December 2007

Scenes From an Exhibit and Tonight at Seven: Thanks so much for all the kind comments and feedback on both my photos and also on the photos that Chris took of the opening. I have been having fun exploring a slightly different side to my photographic work recently – glad people have noticed! @Karen, I did have a lot of fun at the reception – it’s always a bit of work to put the shows together, but then you get to have fun, when people come up and actually want you to blather on about your work. I like it. 😉

@Stan – thanks for all the kind thoughts about how much progress we’ve made here in just a few months in getting integrated and settling in. It has been fun to be getting the opportunities to both meet folks and have the photo show.

Lamplight – @Kathy: I know the kind of camera filter you mean, but I tend not to use filters, for the same reason I like to use 18-200 zoom lens, rather than the “prime” lenses that are just one length. Simply put, I don’t like carrying all the different equipment, preferring just to carry one thing. 😉 However, I agree that a certain type of filter could have potentially helped for getting rid of some of the glare when shooting into the sun.

Lucky You – I hope everyone noted Ashley’s information about the Chinese New Year, and didn’t wash your hair on the Chinese New Year, in order to have luck. If not – make a note for next year. 🙂

Starting the Year – As Karen and my mother noted, the notion of a floating lantern can definitely be a fire hazard when it lands in the wrong – or unintended – place.  In fact, Chris has read on the web that in many places – in Italy, as well as Germany, the practice is actually banned. Not in Verona, apparently, At least, not this year.

Bedroom furniture

@Karen – thanks!
@Stan – I’d call it silk in texture, but it’s cotton, I believe.
@Ashley – Well, since we have moved many times in the last 10 years and discarded clothes each time, perhaps that has kept our closet requirements down. Instead of a New Year’s resolution to declutter, maybe you need to pretend you’re going to move. To another country. Where you have to pay the shipping costs yourself. I’m just saying, this is a good way to declutter… 😉

Up on the Roof – @Ashley – as you noted, if I can flip trees upside down, and put ducks on their heads, why not tilt a whole building. 🙂

Sweet – @Dovie and @Kathy: I recall having kettle corn once or twice in the U.S., but many years ago. My recollection was that it was super sweet – the stuff we have tried here so far is just marginally sweet, and not in a good way. The version in that package in the photo I posted as not really coated in the toffee sugar, like a Cracker Jacks popcorn is, either. In the interest of research, we have vowed the next time we go to a movie theatre, we will buy some popcorn to see what they have there. Truly, this will be a sacrifice, unless it is much better than the packaged stuff. But, you know us, dedicated to these research pursuits. 😉

Ich Esse Ein Berliner – Speaking of food research, a progress update on my other current research agenda. I have discovered that the ones with the weird colored icing are done only for Carnival time here; the rest of the year you can usually find a granulated-sugar covered Berliner. Which in my opinion is better than the oddly yellow icing ones. But that may just be a personal preference – I was never a huge fan of weird colored icing of any type. Icing in general, yes; bright pink or yellow colors that would never be found in nature, used as the color for my food, no. Call me old-fashioned, but for me the food itself can be odd — donkey-meat, anyone? —  as long as the color is something found in nature. 😉

They call the cold air Cooper –  One final thought about the cold weather we’re having here at the moment. I finally got that other wind song out of my head when I read this morning that with the wind it would feel like -20º C/-4º F.  In otherwords, it’s getting seriously cold.

Anyway, that Celsius temperature can be read as “20 below”. That expression trigged a song lyric that lingered in my brain as I shivered my way through town to class this morning.It wasn’t until later that  it finally dawned on me what song contained that lyric. It’s called Going to the Dance with You. It’s a song which sounds like it should be from a Broadway show, but according to a quick internet search, it may not be.  The lyric running through my head this morning was the 3 line:

The rain may fall,
the wind may blow,
it may get down to 20 below,
I don’t mind, I’m going to the dance with you… 

Here’s a link to a clip of Kristin Chenoweth singing it – the song starts around the 1:00 mark in the clip.

Now, personally, I’d rewrite the lyric:

The rain may fall,
the wind may blow,
it may get down to 20 below,
I don’t mind, I’m staying inside tonight with you... 

Even though there’s no rain, with that wind it’s way too cold to go out to a dance, IMHO. 😉