MAM
The Milwaukee Art Museum, designed by Santiago Calatrava is an amazing space. The intersection of curves and straight lines, the light, the starkness of the white and the cool of the blue sky - it works very very well together.
The above shot was deliberately over-exposed to achieve a "high-key" effect. I did this with the desire to focus, less on the contrast that results in the noon-day sun streaming through the windows, and more on the shape and form of the building. The people put some perspective on the size of the space and their colored shirts really enhance the high-key nature of the image.
Wisconsin Getaway
As 
helloheather recently pointed out, we made our way into Wisconsin for a relaxing weekend. We stayed at a B&B in Port Washington, WI only a few blocks from Lake Michigan. On Sunday we visited the Milwaukee Art Museum
Overall it was a fun weekend. Port Washington is a nice little town along the lake. Thanks to a recommendation from emilissima we had a great dinner at The Pasta Shoppe. Unfortunately we didn't get to the coffee shop she also recommended, but that leaves something for our next visit.
We also spent time on Saturday in Cedarburg, WI (just south of Port Washington) which reminded both of us of Galena, IL. They were having some big festival on Sunday which we avoided because of the expected crowds and very hot and humid temps.
Monday found us in Elgin at my parents for a Memorial Day/Baby Shower. And speaking of showers, there were some pretty intense ones in the afternoon thanks to all that unstable air.
I'm starting to upload photos to our Gallery from this weekend. Aside from the museum, we also spent time walking out to the end of the breakwall to see the Port Washington lighthouse and I did some longer exposure evening/dusk photography along the lakefront on Sunday evening.
Cherry Blossom Festival – Washington DC
Photos from our visit to the Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington DC are now online:
Escape to DC
This weekend helloheather and I headed to Washington DC for torapines' wedding.
I was able to leave work earlier than I had originally thought and so I wanted to try and go standby on the 3:45 pm flight to IAD instead of the 6:00 flight. Despite United customer service representatives continually telling me (on the phone) there was no way in heck I was getting on an earlier flight by way of standby, I was easily able to do so. By chance I happened to land about 5 minutes behind Aaron, Serena, and Charlotte who had spent the whole day flying from Madison after experiencing delay after delay. 
Saturday was warm and sunny with helloheather leaving me to do the bridesmaid thing at 11 am. The wedding went quite well, despite some of the usual last-minute panic of getting stuff done. The wedding and reception took place at the soon-to-be-official Mr. and Mrs. Pines' home which was a good choice for the small crowd. The weather was fantastic, the food (all from different local restaurants) delicious, and (hopefully) the photography fruitful. We spent time with friends we don't get to see very often and much in the ways of parenthood and babies was discussed.
As it turns out it was also our friend Aaron's 30th birthday on Saturday (April 1st), so a slice of wedding cake served as birthday cake (with candle, of course).
Sunday, as some left for earlier flights, a bunch of us headed into downtown DC for the viewing of the cherry blossoms. Madness of people (expected) and beauty (unexpected). I didn't realize how many cherry trees there actually are around The Mall and monuments, along the Potomac, and pretty much everywhere 
Another fantastic weather day and lots of pictures. I'm really glad we were able to go and extra glad to have Mr. and Mrs. Pines act as drivers/guides along with Eric and Paul providing commentary and companionship.
Our flight back to Chicago was scheduled for 8:00 pm Eastern, but due to weather there we were expecting delays. We didn't board the plane until 8:30 but then, after pushing back from the gate, we were told there was a ground stoppage at ORD and that we wouldn't take off for at least an hour and twenty minutes. It turns out it was a bit longer than that. We ended up sitting on the runway for 3 hours at Dulles. No food was available (thank goodness helloheather and I were able to eat a small meal in the airport) and they did serve some water. Finally, in order to avoid the more violent parts of the storm, we took a longer route to Chicago. Actual touchdown was at 11:59 pm Central and we arrived home at 1:30 am. It was a very long and rather stressful bit of traveling.
helloheather started looking through the photos last night and found a couple highlights. Hopefully we'll be able to get an album uploaded this week.
St. Pat’s by way of Indy
We headed to Indianapolis this past weekend.
Highlights:
1) I only flooded one bathroom with toilet water.
2) I picked Ketel One over Christiana in the vodka tasting.
3) Scotch Eggs at the Broad Ripple Brew Pub.
4) Our A80 rolled over the 20,000 exposures mark.
I miscalculated due to the fact that Canon cameras roll over at 9900 not 9999. As this will be our second roll over, I forgot that I need to subtract by 200 and not 100. Our current image count is 162 making the total number of photos so far: 19,962)
5) helloheather's car rolled over 75,000 miles.
6) Babies!
7) A Singapore Air 747 only a couple hundred feet above us as it took off from ORD. (Hey, it was neat and loud.)
Lots of friends.
9) Listening to my Best of SXSW - 2005 mp3 CD during the drive.
update deserved
I've seen the "how many states have you visited" meme flying around again, so I thought I would update my own map:
Blue: visited
Green: not yet visited
Exceptions: I've driven through Delaware, but didn't stay there. A couple hours on a highway doesn't really count as "visited." Similarly, I've flown into Buffalo, NY and immediately driven out and into Canada. Again, doesn't really count as a "visit."
edit/update: fixed the map.
Following
Another image I'm particularly happy with from the Georgia Aquarium.
The yellow fish follow behind the larger fish for protection. If they get in front of him, he'll likely eat one, so they make sure they stay behind his gills.
Atlanta weather made me soft
People in Atlanta said it was cold this weekend.
To me, it was nice. Cool enough that jackets were required, but not cold enough that they had to be zipped up all the way. But now that I'm back in Illinois, the cold is killing me...
The Georgia Aquarium is really neat and the big tank (all 6.3 million gallons of it) is so big you can't see the other side. I'm still sorting through the boatload of photos I snapped. How I wished for a DSLR and a wide-angle lens.
It seems like every time I visit Andy, the flight home is crazy. This time, thanks to a more than 12 hours of continual rain and storms, flights were delayed. Very delayed. By the time we got to the airport in the evening our flight was more than 2 hours delayed. With a little investigative work by Joe, we managed to grab the last two stand-by seats on an earlier flight that had also been delayed. The upshot of which was that we only left about 20 minutes later than our originally scheduled flight. Go us!
Flying into Chicago at night is always a treat. We flew just south of Valparaiso, IN and I was able to see the lights from the VU campus as well as the helicopter light at Porter Memorial Hospital. The lights of the megalopolis that is Milwaukee/Chicago/Gary along with the stark contrast of the darkness of Lake Michigan is an amazing feast for the eyes.
Super Bowl Sunday
I'm down in Atlanta this weekend, hanging out with my friends Andy (who lives here) and Joe (who's from the Chicago area). The temps have been decent (upper 40's) and so far it's been a relaxing time. We finished setting up the pool table room (mounting the stick holder to the wall, adding a dart board) and have been hanging out playing a little PS2.
With any luck, tomorrow we'll go to the worlds largest aquarium, The Georgia Aquarium. I'm really looking forward to that, as the GA has two whale sharks in the largest of the tanks, in addition to 500 other species of animals. Hopefully going tomorrow will mean a slightly smaller crowd than on the weekend.
Check out todays cetan.org post, and see if you can spot yours truly in the shot.
Reasons to start playing the lottery…
http://luminous-landscape.com/workshops/aa-quest-pre.shtml
20 days in the Antarctic.
edit/update: Here is a rather nice trip report (first link) and photo essay (second link) of the most recent trip Luminous Landscape organized to the Antarctic. It was an 11 day trip.
http://photoshopnews.com/2005/12/20/antarctic-trip-report/
http://photoshopnews.com/feature-stories/antarctica-expedition/
How the weekend played out
So, a bit of an update from my rant on Thursday
First, I was able to get an appointment at my eye doctors Thursday afternoon. Thank goodness for cancellations. He was able to fit me with some disposable contacts, except he didn't have the right prescription for my right eye. So, I've been slightly dizzy since Thursday. Hopefully I'll have the correct prescription before too long. I am pleased with the disposables though. The last time I tried them, they didn't fit right, but these seem to be a good match.
After finally coming home from the eye doctors, we decided to drive up north. We were really only two hours later than our planned departure time, so all would not have been lost. Except, when we tried to leave, we discovered that the left front tire on helloheather's car was flat; really flat. After filling it at the closest service station, we drove out to Rockford on it. By the time we got there it had lost five pounds of pressure, so we turned around and headed home. Friday morning we headed to the tire place where Heather had these under warranty. They discovered an internal tread separation (rather dangerous) but because the tires are an odd size, no one ever stocks them. They placed an order for the tire and we had to drive home on the donut. We transferred all the gear to my car and finally we could leave for Wisconsin.
The drive was uneventful and we arrived around 1:30.
Our plan was to go skiing up at Granite Peak during the evening run (4-9pm) but due to a combination of very cold temps (10-12 deg) and equipment problems (helloheather's ski boots were so tight she was nearly in tears) we abandoned that idea after only 1 run. Back to the cabin for spaghetti and movies and warmth.
Saturday we met up with helloheather's dad and step-mom for lunch then onto the church for the wedding. The ceremony was nice and it snowed out which made things very picturesque. The reception was lots of fun and, due to the fact that it was at the hotel where we were staying, something of a blur later in the evening
Sunday was mostly a travel day after breakfast and was pretty uneventful.
So, that's the weekend in a nutshell. Rather hectic at the beginning, rather nice at the end.
Photos from Atlanta
I finally uploaded some photos from the weekend in Atlanta: http://www.bernhard.us/photos/atlanta05
Hail Atlanta!
helloheather and I, along with our friend Joe, were in Atlanta, GA this past weekend visiting our mutual college friend Andy.
Andy is the regional manager of IBM's hosting facilities. He manages their facility in Miami and their two sites in Atlanta. Lots and lots of drool-worthy equipment. There's something inherntly geeky and cool about standing in just one cage in the data center with $20 million worth of equipment all around you.
So, we flew out eary on Friday morning, bummed around the office on Friday and eventually ended up at dinner at a nice italian place whose name escapes me at this point. I'm pretty bad with names. Saturday took us to Stone Mountain. Part theme park/Southern version of Wisconsin Dells, part "here are some heros of the Civil War, from, you know, the 'other' side," and part funnel cake, it was fun. We wandered everywhere, took a train ride around, and a gondola ride up, the mountain as well as a boat ride and DUCK ride on the lake. Andy had booked a comedy murder/mystery dinner at Agathas. Quite a large under-taking with probably 150 patrons and only two actors. Everyone was given different parts. I was, along with Joe and a group of about 20 others, a beggar. In the 3 intermissions we had to get together and pick a popular song and come up with new lyrics to describe a specific main character in the performance. Our group picked a do-wop hit and had some pretty clever lyrics. I wished I had saved the napkin they were written on
Sunday was a relaxing day of brunch at a cajun restaurant (I had a really good shrimp, lobster, crab omelet), a viewing of "Batman Begins" on Andy's amazing home entertainment system and a game of pool that featured an easy loss for yours truly.
Our flight out was delayed 2 hours for unknown reasons. We got bumped to a new gate and had to deal with almost no communication from the American Airlines staff. Oh and the Burger King in the airport doesn't have cashiers. They have 3 touch-screen kiosks for ordering food. It takes about 4x as long to order something due to the rather inefficient user interface.
Photos forthcoming.
15 seconds of love
The cat of a neighbor of 
somebodystrange and davesanngel stopped by while hilhas1, Aaron, and I were outside. Hil got the most love and I took a 15 second exposure. The leading lines were entirely by accident, but they work so very well. Click on the photo for a larger (and better) view.