For The Journey Not just the destination…

Do you ever get into one of those ruts where you just don’t get out and visit your friends?  Thomas and I do.  We spend time with each other, but sometimes you just need the company of others too.  Since we were in one of those ruts this Spring, we’re making a special effort to get some time in with our friends this Summer.

A couple of weekends ago, we went bicycling with Chris, Nui, and Young on the Silver Comet trail.  It was a really nice paved path with plenty of shade and no hills.  The entire trail is over 60 miles long and ends in Alabama, but we only rode a few miles.

(More Silver Comet photos on Flickr)

Last weekend, we joined the same group, plus Jane, Bill, and Moon for a picnic at Sope Creek. After eating, we checked out the mill ruins and cooled off in the river. We tried to play Frisbee, but it’s not as easy when you’re hopping from rock to rock in a river.

(More Sope Creek photos on Flickr)

Friday night, Thomas and I went for a walk at Cochran Shoals Park after work. I really like this little park – it has nice dirt trails that are great for biking, it goes along the Chattahoochee River, and even though there are usually a lot of people, you can sometimes see some nice wildlife. This time, we saw a Blue Grosbeak and some beavers working on a dam.

Thomas and I both took our cameras along:

• Dallas’ Cochran Shoals (12 photos)
• Thomas’ Cochran Shoals (6 photos)

Saturday, we had a casual Italian dinner at one of our favorite local pizza places.  I brought my camera and while waiting for our dinner, we played with the manual settings to capture the nice window light. We used the technique we learned in Me Ra’s DVDs to set exposure for the dark area in Manual mode.

Then we tried the opposite, setting exposure for the light area in Manual mode, to see if it would take a silhouette shot. This week’s Exposaroonie challenge is Silhouette photos, so since figuring this out, I’ve been trying this all around.  We need to get one of my face and Thomas’ face together and see what kind of vase we make. :)

We also played with slowing the shutter speed enough to capture a spinning coin.

And finally our pasta arrived – yeah, that’s my husband…Mr. Manners.

You can see the rest of the photos on Flickr:

• Casual Italian Dinner (18 photos)

One really weird thing that happened while we were there…the waiter noticed our camera and told us about his Nikon (he pronounced it Nee-kon) and two lenses that his aunt recently gave him.  He said he didn’t know how to use them and didn’t have the money to invest into a photography hobby, and offered to give us the equipment if we wanted it.  We declined, but it was really weird to offer that to a complete stranger.  I don’t know if it was digital or not.  Anyway, his coworker overheard and said he’d take the camera gear off of his hands.

This last weekend, we puppy-sat my friend’s dog, Maisy. Maisy is a shih tzu, just like Clover, but as you can see, they’re very different.

Maisy has poise.

Clover has no class.

Maisy doesn’t do stupid dog tricks.

Clover sings with a little prompting.

Maisy has gorgeous, long eyelashes.

Uh, Clover has green lips!?!

They got along, but they didn’t really play together. Clover tried hard to get Maisy to chase her or sing with her like her sister Bailey does, but Maisy just sat and watched her like she was nuts.  Still, we had fun with her visiting.  More photos are on Flickr:

• Petsitting Maisy (23 photos)