driving, photography, cinema, etc

and as usual i'm falling back - still am missing one post because haven't taken photos for it yet. anyways.

on saturday it was my 4th day at the wheel (of Mike's car :D ). and what did Michael have me do? drive to his parents!!! the road included a freeway.. which was the easiest part just kind of scary at first since i was going 65mph. i love driving :D. but i'm far from being on my own.. i'm so used to being in passenger's seat and looking at all the trafic, traffic lights, turns and stuff with complete indifference - i just see them but don't really notice. and suddenly all those road signs and lights and lanes are so important and i can't skip any.

Michael says i'm doing pretty good, and that i'm driving like a guy - girls are believed to be all over the road and slam the breaks at the last minute.. which i don't do. i mess up other stuff - like stopping earlier then necessary. but really the worst thing is parking backwards. and the second part of the test to take is maneuvrability - i have to park twice (once backwards) without hitting any cones.

SMILE = Seatbelt Mirrors Ignition Lights Eyeglasses
i have to adjust everything after Mike.. and he has to adjust everything back because he just doesn't fit in the driver's seat when it's adjusted to me :D like the wheel is in his mouth :D:D:D

so much about driving for now.

now what were we doing on saturday? well you can see for yourself!



you can check the date and time of photos - they were taken minutes apart - so yes Michael was vacuuming while i was playing world of war craft. ok ok i'm not that terrible - i cleaned both birds' cages on friday which was an incredible deed for me :D and somebody had to vacuum after... i hate vacuuming. and the vacuum cleaner is heavy for me (that's a lie but shhhh).

then we went to have a dinner at "Steak'n'sheak":



i liked the place and their food was great. i had a milkshake afterwards and mmmmmmmm it was so good...

then we went to a movie thater across the street. it was different than the ones in Armenia - there was a corridor with doors above which the names of the movies were lit up. every room was approximately of the size of small hall of Nairi cinema.
We went to see Star Trek and it was very very good. we are thinking of watching the old Star Trek show now :)

Sunday

this is when we went to Michael's parents. they are staying with Janet and Erik now. Mike's mom told us that they have a new pet - a turtle. they just saw a turtle walking down the street and it almost got hit by a car! they picked it up and are trying to find the owners. we went to their backyard to see the turtle and oh god! it was huge!

then i stayed in the backyard to take some photos:









i don't like this one. it was the best from the bunch but if you want to see a really good photo of dandelion go to Mary's photostream:


this is one of her best shots!


when i walked around the house to actually go inside i saw Tess. he decided to run away from my camera but it never happened:





yes very smart


and some photos from the front yard:








Eric with cones


the cones are for me - to practice maneuvrability.

then we came home but i felt like taking more photos. so i went to the Garfield park. sometimes you don't know what you're going to shoot and have no specific purpose. and it's never disappointing - there is always something to take photos of :D

this time it was.. birds. i'm so used to sparrows and wild pigeons, and ravens at maximum. here there are all kinds of birds all around:











the birds were too far and i don't have a powerful zoom... yet! hehe i'll get a new lense eventually..

there were geese with their chicks! i couldn't get closer because the parents started hissing at me :(




they decided to cross the road


the cars stopped and waited



these happens all over the place - geese constantly stand in the middle of the road - they know they won't be hit and that cars will stop in front of them. they feel so good about it.

anyway. then i decided to take photos of some ducks. they were a bit far. suddenly i heard some noise behind. i turned.. and there was another pair of ducks. the boy got interested in my camera. he walked really close and inspected my gear.

my cam setting were too light but i forgot about everything and was shooting the duck while i had the oportunity. i tried fixing images later but oh well. when a photo is over-exposed, there is practically nothing you can do about it :(

and then i was shooting seagulls in the flight:








it was such a nice day... now everything's green and the weather is warm.



some guy was fishing in the park...




...but he wasn't the only one fishing


okay i think this post was too long and i overused photos here... i need to learn to make smaller post and blog more often.

braids, glasses, photos of Armenia, and other craziness

there is one post i skipped for now.. i need photoshop to edit the photos. so i'll just go ahead and post this one first ;)

yesterday i found this calendar my aunt gave to Michael on one of his visits. 12 photos of Armenian landscapes (one with Ararat of course), and a photo of a rose with a poem by Vahan Teryan (who is probably my favorite Armenian poet). I couldn't hange it as it was for 2007... but then i found scissors and cut the calendar up. then i got equipped with scotch and went to bedroom. the walls are white - just plain white - and this has been bothering me. so as you could have guessed i put all (!) of those photos on the wall in front of the bed - so now when i wake up i will see the beauty of nature and many many bright colors :D i love it. my granny would say "vonc vor sapojniki budka lini" (means: it's like a stall of a shoemaker! (shoemakers decorate every inch in their stall with posters)).



when i woke up i felt like doing something unusual. what was it? look at the following picture. do you think it's a macrame curtain?



you are wrong... what about this picture? do you get it now?



haha yes i made many-many braids :D no i wasn't going to go out this way... you will see what purpose it had (other than me having fun). Here are some photos.. i took way too many - as usual when i get excited about something :D







all that trouble was for..



crazy curls :D i used to ask mom to braid my hair like that so that in the morning i would unbraid it and get the extreme curls. it was back when i was at second year at the university... but it was so time-consuming and tiring that i gave it up. i guess my mom was happy about it. but now i discovered that i can actually do it myself.. so maybe i will do this from time to time :)

anyway.. the other thing is i've got my glasses! yay! i can't use them inside the apartment simply because i can see things well enough and with glasses on my eyes will hurt. but if i look into far distance... it's approximately like zooming things up with my cam :D yeah i feel like an eagle looking for its prey. there is no road sign that i won't see now :D





so i guess tomorrow i will take my test and hopefully will get my learner's permit :)

the driving quest

in world of war craft (the game we play) there are characters that give you quests. at first they say for example "hey! take this letter and bring it to this other guy in this nearby city. you will receive 80 silver". you think ah i'm going to that city anyway, will do.

then you give the letter and the guy says "oh thanks now please find the box of supplies i lost and i will make you this dress to wear". you think it's great. you go do what he asks then return to him expecting to get your prize... but instead he sends you to 5 more locations with 5 other things to get. it's annoying. and is called a chain quest.

driving test quest:

1. i'll need an ID (american one) and social security number

to get social security i needed that same ID. so we applied for social security once i got the work permit. they said it would be ready in about 2 weeks and gave us a paper stating that we applied for the card. and they told us it will be enough for getting driver's permit.

2. we go to take the driver's learner's permit. they tell us that the paper doesn't have the future number and that without it they can't give me the permit. i can take the test but the permit will be given only when i get the social security number. then they test my vision and tell me to get glasses (i'm pretty nearsighted as everybody knows)

3. so we go to get glasses. instead we get an appointment on monday to get my vision tested and get the prescription of glasses.

4. we get the social security card and go to the appointment. now... there wasn't just a piece of white paper with black letters on it that they were testing my vision on. i was asked to sit down in a chair which looked like "one-sided squid". the doctor tested every bit of my vision and eyes, and finally prescribed glasses. he was a very funny older man, and nice to talk to :D i was giggling all the time during the procedure. and at the end we DIDN'T get the glasses. they will be ready within 2-3 weeks. :( so the driver's test is postponed.. again! NENAVIJU (like Mary says)

i wanted to make a very different post but i accidentally shut the workstation down which closed photoshop... so now i'm without it yet again. i need to upgrade vista to service pack 1 to install photoshop and finally make the post i wanted to. it's gonna be colorful!

meanwhile Michael started actively training me on c#. het got me a new and very fun book. and i swear it is what they should've taught us at the universities. made in a really fun way - instead of long boring texts for summies they make fun comments, pictures and even crosswords. my home assignment for today was the first chapter (yes a whole chapter) - design a small program working with a database. which means the first lesson in the book wasn't on how to write IF ELSE conditions or FOR(;;) loops - it was a very practical lesson on how to create a windows application, create a database and how to make those two interact with each other. made me one more time mad at our university...

the other fun book is "Photocraft: cool things to do with your images" ... the name pretty much tells what it is about ;) :D i can't wait to get started on some things from there! but for that i either need a photo-printer.. or i need to be able to drive to some photo store with printing services... but yeah that will be fun. and most probably me and Nicole will get together and started making stuff from this book and from the other crafting book we got her on christmas. i can't wait for it to happen :D and Mike and Steve probably go crazy about that idea too... in a different way :D and in general - me and Nicole hanging out together usually means trouble and ULTA (which are equivalents anyway) hehe.

okay i'm off to sleep...

a flower thief.. and a nice evening at the lake

the days have been warm and everything is covered in flowers! not only the trees are blossoming, but also a lot of people plant flowers in front of their houses or apartments... which makes me go crazy as i love floristic photography. yes this is a confession :)) flowers have so much color that it always draws my attention especially when they are back-lit by sun and the colors are extremely vibrant. what can i do? i'm a color-maniac :D but the problem with that is - i can't trespass other people's property and especially i can't be sneaking around their houses and taking photos... it will be very suspicious and they will call the police. seriously :D so what can i do? i remembered that fable by Крылов - "the fox and the grapes". citation: Хоть видит око, да зуб неймет (though the eye can see, the tooth cannot try). and even more like that fox i'd convince myself that i don't need another photo of yet another flower.

then i saw this amazing and geometrically perfect and absoluttely symetric narcissus right between 2 of our apartment blocks... just like in gangsta movies, Michael stopped the car in front of the flower, i jumped out (as a bullet from the gun [russian saying again]) and in a ducking down way got to the flower in 2 long steps. picked it up and jumped back to the car and we were gone as the wind.

and you know.. it was so bright yellow, and so sunny looking, that every time i'd look at it i'd be in a better mood. it wilted in 4 days... and seriously for the first time in my life i felt kind of guilty for throwing away something that was beautiful and brought me so much joy.

end of this part

like i said - days are warm. i'd even say it was terribly hot lately - it felt like the afternoonish heat in June in Yerevan. and so people were going to get some tan at the beach! we went there too! and it was great! just laying in the sun, reading our books... it makes me so relaxed that it seems to me the time stops. and when i play with the sand i think of a giant sand-watch :)) i was really surprised when Michael said we've been in the sun for an hour! and i hadn't even turned on the back to tan :D well i had medium sunscreen on so i just got no tan at all. but since some polar bears are very white we have to get their skin get used to the sun slowly. hehe

it also made me think of Sevan and the last trip i made there with Alex, Anya, Vahick and some other kids - when at the end of the trip we were just laying on the beach and didn't want to go home and it felt like we just got there and the adventure was only starting...

anyways. the other thing the beach is awesome for... is watching the sunset (yeah i can't get up that early to see the sunrise) and eating giant ice-cream which never ends :D

unlike Sevan you can see the lake and the sky meet - no mountains, no shore... nothing in between. it's a different beauty and a very different feeling. looks like a giant desert in some ways. no more words - see for yourself:




here just like anywhere people like cooking outside on a summer day/evening, so there is a special barbeque place:



ah and also there are squirrels all over the place! they are so cute! we saw one and it didn't mind modeling for me at all :D



also there is some stuff for kids... well and not also as you can see:



okay i think it's time for me to go to bed... really... i have one more post coming up soon. just need to take some photos for it.

and i'd like to finish this post with a photo of a happy Michael who is still doing good even though i live with him :D