By keeping a personal (hand-written) journal, I’ve found a different method of venting my thoughts and ideas. Unfortunately for this blog, it’s the thing that has suffered from it the most; I just don’t post as much stuff as I used to. I had an idea to remedy this while scrolling through pictures I’ve collected over the spring/summer. I realized there are a few things I’d like to share that don’t necessarily warrant an entire post unto themselves so I thought I’d just make a compilation of random pictures and things…

(Remember to click on each picture to embiggen!)

I’ll start with this picture of a thought I had while writing in my journal. If you were to make a timeline of your life, where would today be? How far along the line are you? And, does it even matter? I think for some people it matters more than others. I know everyone thinks about it at some point in their life for sure. For me, I think it’s good to know and have an understanding of it but it’s very important not to dwell on it.

I snapped the above pictures while sitting on the porch enjoying one of the (many) rainy days we’ve had this season. I really like the color, dynamics, and textures. To continue with the rainy-weather theme, here are two complete, full-sky rainbows I was able to get pictures of… there were many more. (The bottom one is my crude attempt at a hand-edited panorama. You get the idea…)

This is one of many storm fronts that rolled over us this year. I took this picture out the window while I was at work.

The weather wasn’t all bad this year. There were a few breaks in the clouds and on one occasion, we were able to do a little backyard camping. I love the outdoors. It was a great time and the kids had fun as well. Next time, we’ll have to take them out to the woods and do some real camping. Can’t wait!

This last week was particularly notable since it was the only week yet with amazingly clear, dry skies. Unfortunately I missed the opportunity to take advantage of the uncommonly starry skies and didn’t make it out to the observatory. (Oh well, there’s always next time right?) I did, however, get a few cool pictures on a couple of my morning commutes. While the first picture doesn’t even come close to conveying how beautiful some of these mornings were, it’s one of the better representations I captured. The second picture below is of my dew covered car displaying wind patterns; a “morning dew wind tunnel.”

After a particularly heavy rainfall one day, Ella and I stumbled upon this tadpole frog while taking a stroll around the pond next door. It was a relatively big frog with a huge tail! I don’t think I ever saw one with a tail that large before – I thought the tails were gone by this stage of their metamorphosis! The next photo was taken during one of our trips to the Columbus Zoo. The snake had molted and the zookeeper was removing it while trying to keep the snake at bay… and we got to watch! Pretty awesome…

This butterfly had caught my eye and was kind enough to let me get an up close shot of her. Moments later she was adrift on the wind spending what fleeting moments she had left in her short, short life. The wasp in the next two pictures wasn’t so lucky. I caught this guy in my basement and kept it there until it died. It was small (about half an inch long) but under the microscope you could see the beauty of evolution at its finest. Take a look at the complexity and detail in those eyes! Amazing…

Here are a few more pictures of the Micro World. I found these tiny guys crawling on me and around me and I didn’t even realize they were there! Luckily with my zoom and good focus I was able to see them up close. Every time I see a tiny insect up close it just blows my mind. They are just so intricate on the tiniest of scales. How can they be so delicate and robust at the same time?

These three pictures illustrate just how dynamic and interesting a ‘plain-old’ daytime sky can be. A mighty storm rolls in, serene brushstroke clouds, a solar halo… These beautiful displays happen on a daily basis but most of the time we’re too busy to stop and look up and appreciate what’s right over our heads. The sky technically takes up half our field of view yet we spend most of our time looking down, blatantly disregarding half of our world!

Lately, I’ve been really into rockets. I recently designed, built, and launched my own rocket complete with a science data payload. While waiting for parts to come in or just on the weather to clear up, I’ve been passing the time by building scale model rockets of the 1950’s-1960’s era, i.e. Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo. This is my first real ‘adult’ attempt and building scale models for display; I remember building them as a kid but never took my time to make them right. So far, they’re turning out great! While thinking about the actual size of these beasts, I threw together a photoshopped picture of the downtown Columbus skyline with the Saturn V moonship to scale. It’s as big as a building! Can you imagine flying a building?!… to the moon?! So awesome.

Alright, that’s enough for now… I have plenty more that I could add but just realized how long this post turned out to be! (Maybe I should have made separate posts!) I’ll end with two random pictures that I thought were just simply pretty. They speak for themselves…