Photo of the week: January 24, 2012

A hint of snow descended on the Baltimore region over the weekend. Even better is the fact that there is still a bit of the white stuff lingering around. It appears I purchased my new Hunter Boots at the right time because they are getting a serious workout this winter.

Ugh, I woke up this morning and all the snow is gone! Stupid rain.

Photo of the week: January 17, 2012

I was enamored last week with this article I read on the Digital Photography School titled, "How to Use Zoom Blur to Add Action In Your Photos."

Sunday morning I found myself over at M&T Bank Stadium for the Raven's playoff game. I hope to post more pictures tomorrow, but for now here's my photo of the week where I was messing around with my camera in the fourth quarter while freezing my bum off!

I took a few other pictures with slower shutter speeds, but was focusing on the players as they lined up over center. I quickened my shutter speed up to 1/50 for the photo above. In hindsight, I wish I would have kept it slower around 1/20. I think that was a nice amount of blur, but focusing in on the large Ravens field graphic would have worked better than focusing on the players.

(1/50 above)

(1/20 above)

How about you? Have you played around with your zoom while taking a picture? On purpose? Any suggestions?

The difference between men and women

Way back in early September the hubs was getting ready to begin one of his fantasy football drafts. Unfortunately, this was a draft with real live people and not random strangers on the internet. One of the dudes couldn't join in at the last minute and the guys were about to lose their draft time slot if they didn't have someone else join their league.

Enter: hubs' red head and tom-boy wife, who has never played any type of fantasy sport.

I won't go into details of how the hubs was guiding me through my draft choices and he said, "no, don't take that guy." Then, he proceeded to take that guy .2 seconds after I picked someone else.

All is fair in love and fantasy sports it seems.

Flash forward 14 weeks and I beat my own hubs in order to secure the fourth and final spot in the playoffs. The hubs didn't even make the playoffs :)

First week of the playoffs I take on the #1 seed, who just happens to be my brother-in-law. Yeah, I squeak out a nail biter and beat him by 1.28 points. There was some play in which a penalty that is never called on a field goal was called and the team received five yards and later drove down the field to score a touchdown, which took points away from the kicker, but gave me the victory.

Weird stuff like that happened.

Then, the during the final days of the championship week I ask the hubs, "do I get anything if I win this thing?"

"Yeah,, $160."

Buddy, that changes everything! That's some serious coinage for my shoe budget!

In a very odd twist of fate, I had to play my own brother, my ginger blood, in the championship. He actually beat me, until I checked a few days later and there was a stat correction and it turns out I beat him by .44 points. Yeah, it was absolutely ridiculous.

At the end of the season, I was the only girl in the league and I took down all the boys.

Not too shabby.

Now what did I do with my winnings? I bought a pair of Hunter Boots! I've wanted a pair for years, but could never stomach the $125 price tag. So two years ago I bought a pair of $25 rain boots from Target and called it a day. Yeah, they sprung a leak after a season and then when I kept wearing them it looked like I wasn't even wearing rain boots on my one leg.

I figured it was probably time to join the big leagues and buy a proper pair of rain boots. I've read the reviews and these bad boys tend to last for much longer than a season. If I can get a few years out of them, then they were definitely worth the investment.

But let's be honest, I don't pay full price for things. Neiman Marcus, of all places, slashed the price on select colors to $80 last week. I called customer service to ensure they were the Original Tall Gloss and once confirmed I placed my order.

Just in the nick of time too! It's been raining all day and the rain is forecasted to continue for the rest of the week.

Dress - Banana Republic

Cardigan - J. Crew

Tights - Target

Boots - Hunter

So really the moral of this story is: Guys, if you invite a lady to join your sports league or whatever and there is money on the line, I suggest you don't get upset when you find out her winnings went towards shoes and not beer. Sure, I only spent half my winnings, so I'm definitely up for buying a round or two at the next happy hour with the guys, but if it's raining I'm definitely wearing my boots and showing them off to the guys.

As the hubs said, "they're the best looking rubber boots I've ever seen."

He was being sarcastic of course!

Photo of the week: January 10, 2012

I swear, the intention of this photo of the week series isn't to have yet another excuse to post pictures of my dogs.

I had a nice photo picked out to share this week and then it went and snowed on Monday. I mean, quasi real, sticked to the ground for a night, fluffy stuff. By Tuesday's sunrise the white dandruff of the gods had quickly disappeared. On Monday night, though, I had two polar opposite dogs - Jax was in heaven while Jewels was in hell!

Another "goal" of mine this year with my camera is to get more comfortable shooting in manual mode. When it comes to shooting something quick or shooting when I'm with a group of people I tend to favor my camera's standard shooting mode. I just don't trust myself yet enough to shoot fast in manual if that makes any sense. So, Monday night when the snow was falling I relied on my T2i's action mode to capture Jax's crazy behavior as he sprinted through the snow and leaped the desk's steps before crashing into me. True story. He hasn't quite figured out how to use the stairs and instead his preferred method of coming into the house is to charge into the house and slide across the den carpet to slow him down before crashing into a wall or human being.

Back to the photo, perhaps I should have moved the outdoor chair that was casting a large shadow in the middle of my photo. There is a solid chance that's where my camera was focusing and reading a large dark spot there the camera decided to use a slower shutter speed. Or, maybe I shouldn't try to take action shots in a poorly lit night time setting.

However, I did want to try to capture Jax's reaction to the first real snow in the new house. Even though he's blurry, you can tell he's happy.

Even without the night time issues, action is such a large part of my life that I need to get better at capturing these motions. My life is far from static and therefore I need to get better at documenting those crazy moments in life. At least that's my goal to work on this year.

2012 Race Calendar

I haven't signed up for too many races yet for this racing year, but here's what I'm thinking for right now. Any other fun races in the Baltimore/Annapolis/DC area I should look to add into the mix?

March:

3/4 B&A Half Marathon - need to sign up soon

3/11 Kelley St. Patrick's Day 5k - already registered

April:

4/1 Cherry Blossom 10 Miler - already registered

4/15 Clyde's 10k

May:

5/6 Cincinnati Flying Pig Marathon - registering this week

June:

6/16 Baltimore 10 Miler - registration opens in March

August:

8/26 Annapolis 10 Miler - registration opens later

September:

TBD Parks Half Marathon - registration opens later

October:

10.28 Marine Corps Marathon - registration opens March 7th (already have a calendar appointment created)

November:

TBD Annapolis Half Marathon - registration opens later

Wild Cards:

I really want to run the Baltimore Half Marathon again, but I don't know if doing a race that close to Marine Corps is a good idea. I'm going to mull that one over for a bit. I can always sign up for the half at a later date.

I also really want to run a turkey trot and a winter 5k in December. I missed running a 5k this past Thanksgiving, but at only four days most-marathon it probably wasn't the best idea to race.

The only thing that is really depressing is how much it costs to sign up for that many races! I'd love to do a race a month, but the money really does add up. I think the hubs is going to start to deduct my racing fees from my annual shoe budget. Good thing we have a rule of thumb that athletic stuff isn't calculated into our personal budgets for the year! That's what happens when you have to jocks in the same household.

Yeah, the more I look at it I need to pick up another half marathon. Right now I only have three really planned and four just sounds better than three. Although, I only did two half marathons last year so maybe the smart play is to increase it to three this year.

Have you made your racing calendar yet for 2012? Any races you can't wait to run this year? Any new distances you're trying? Anything else you want to share?

18 Weeks Out: Up next Flying Pig

After a disastrous showing at the Philadelphia Marathon, my bestie and I verbally committed to running a spring marathon. A quick look at what was available in May 2012 led us to finalizing our decision on the Cincinnati Flying Pig Marathon. Darn, that is a mouthful. She's going to call it Flying Pig and I'm going to call it Cincinnati.

However, just a few weeks ago we were talking about our different training plans and I commented, "you know, 18 weeks out from Cincinnati is the first week of January."

Echoing silence.

It's a amazing how quickly these things sneak up on you!

As I thinking up this post last night, I was sitting on the couch, wrapped up in a warm blanket, watching tv with a hot water bottle puppy at my feet. Outside the wind was shrieking and I thought to myself, "bring it!"

Running in the cold may burn my lungs and chap my lips, but I can always throw on another layer of clothes run hard enough to warm myself up. Running in the dead heat of summer makes me melt faster than Frosty the Snowman in the desert and it's not a pretty sight. Perhaps training for a spring marathon will go better than training for a fall marathon.

No matter what happens, signing up for a spring marathon should prove to be much more beneficial for my health than any New Year's resolution. I can resolve to give up Chick-fil-A until I'm blue in the face, but I know if I'm running the next day I can't get moving with that sludge in my body. Mmmm, no wonder most runners are so damn skinny. I think they're on to something!

Anyone else gearing up for a Spring 2012 marathon? Which one? What training plan are you following?

I'm going to post my tentative 2012 racing calendar in the coming days as more inspiration to get my butt in gear.

Photo of the week: January 2, 2012

I'm starting a new blog series on this little ol' blog. I've decided that I'm wasting my camera by not playing with it more often, so in order to kick my butt in gear I'm going to start posting a photo of the week. I'm kind of cheating because I took this last Sunday, you know, on Christmas. So in my very first entry I'm being a bit liberal in the timeframe of a week.

The picture above is of my Aunt's Christmas tree. I absolutely adore bokeh.

In these new weekly photo postings I hope to accomplish two things:

1. Attempt to take more creative pictures and possibly less dog pictures. Don't get me wrong, I will still take a million and one pictures of my dogs, but maybe I don't need to take 50 on a daily basis of them doing the exact same thing.
2. Get feedback on my photos. I'd like to get better with my camera and any and all help would be greatly appreciated.