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Heavens, I think I may be actually getting better at this photography thing! I know it’s only been a short while with this camera, but I’m getting to the point already where carrying this camera around feels natural. Looking around feels natural. Thinking in terms of, “How can I capture this? What’s a neat way of looking at it?” is becoming natural. Or…at least more natural than it used to feel. This past Sunday morning I ventured up to Chestnut Ridge for the second time in three weeks. (Titling this post “The Ridge, again” might be a bit confusing, since IDown the rabbit hole….

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Some shots from my photography session down at the Buffalo Outer Harbor this past Sunday: More photos from that day, with full-size versions, in this Flickr album. By the way, I think I am now going to start using HUE as an acronym: Happy Unplanned Element. I think Bob Ross (“There are no mistakes, just happy accidents”) would approve. “Accident” still sounds overly negative in my ears, though. So, a HUE is an element in my photo that I didn’t plan on capturing, either because I didn’t know it was there or because I couldn’t avoid capturing it. Always look for your HUEs,Down the rabbit hole….

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For the last couple of years we’d heard great things about a new-ish restaurant in Buffalo called Compass Run. We finally went there a few months ago and loved it and made mental notes to get back. Last night we did…but the impetus for last night’s reservation was that Compass Run announced its closing a few weeks ago. They’re only open a few more weeks, I think. Alas! Compass Run had a Southern-inspired, seafood-heavy menu that featured quite a few celiac-friendly selections. From what I’ve read, the restaurant is closing because the owners, who already run a successful restaurant inDown the rabbit hole….

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This spring has been odd, even by Buffalo-Niagara standards. We’ve had our usual cruddy spring, but judging by how advanced the trees are right now, it must have been a better than usual spring. We’re usually not this green until around the 15th of May, so we’re a good week-and-a-half ahead of the game. There was an entire week of warmer-than-usual (including our first readings above 80 degrees) a while back…but then that disappeared and we had the more familiar weeks of dank, rainy, and muddy. However, it didn’t get that cold again, and we haven’t seen snow in quite aDown the rabbit hole….

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Alan Bedenko has the rundown on an obnoxious bit of copyright enforcement going on in Buffalo: a mural artist who painted a mural on donated exterior building wall-space, after saying that he intended it to be the kind of mural people photograph for Instagram and the like, is billing businesses in whose ad materials his mural shows up, and then suing them if they don’t pay up. No “cease-and-desist”, just straight to “Give me money”, and often directed at those with deep pockets. This honestly seems less like “an artist protecting their copyright” and more like “an artist using copyrightDown the rabbit hole….

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The other night we attended a night-time orchid show at the Buffalo and Erie County Botanical Gardens. Somehow we managed to live here for quite a few years before we finally visited the Gardens, and even so we’ve not gone there terribly often. But The Daughter bought The Wife a year’s membership for her birthday, so now we can go more often. The gardens were gorgeously illuminated in colored lights, and it was a lovely cold winter’s night as we arrived. As we walked up, Venus and Jupiter (I think) were visible in the twilight sky, hanging just above theDown the rabbit hole….

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As the Christmas Blizzard recedes into memory and melting (it’s been well above freezing for days now, so most of the major snowpack that fell during that storm is gone already), I find myself thinking about how fortunate we were to be able to retain power and ride this one out in comfort. Note my window: for about two whole days, I had no view out my own library, because the winds pushed so much snow through the screen and onto the window itself. Honestly, if it hadn’t been for the raging winds outside, this might have actually been idyllic. (ByDown the rabbit hole….

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I make no secret that my day job is doing Facilities Maintenance at a large local grocery store. At my particular location, there are two buildings. The older building, built in 1977, originally housed The Store until 1996, when the second building went up to contain the new, expanded Store. The older building now houses a few smaller businesses, but my company still owns and maintains both buildings. The new building, with The Store, is powered from the utility company via lines that connect from streetside poles to the main transformers. The old building was powered by a buried utility lineDown the rabbit hole….

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East Aurora, NY at Christmastime is one of the loveliest places I know. We were just there the other day for lunch at one of our favorite restaurants and then some shopping at Vidler’s, a onetime five-and-dime store that is now a destination in itself. I took this photo, and then applied a Prisma filter. Doesn’t this look like the kind of place where a Hallmark Christmas movie would be filmed? Share This PostDown the rabbit hole….

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Have I mentioned Post 10 here before? Hang on, let me go look…here’s some 70s-quiz show music while I look through the archives…. OK, it does not appear that I’ve mentioned Post 10 yet! Or if I have, I’ve just linked or embedded one of his videos…anyway Post 10 is a YouTuber from New England who has a lot of varying and somewhat obscure, offbeat interests. He’s very knowledgeable about municipal water systems and water flow management, and he likes to strike out “into the field” to find what he might, and even deal with issues as he finds them.Down the rabbit hole….