Up in smoke and mirrors

Friends help friends move, so my Saturday included boxes, packing tape and a trip to the U-haul store to pick up a 17-foot truck. With a broken mirror.

When I looked into the glass and realized it was broken, I knew I had good subject matter for “distorted,” this week’s WordPress weekly photo challenge.

Actual unretouched photo

The pile in the green bag sitting in front of the house? That’s a Bagster filled with trash. The Bagster® bag is “a dumpster in a bag,” a Waste Management product designed to get rid of contained messes (and you thought there could be no innovation in the garbage industry).

Part of the distortion here is that all that stuff in the Bagster was once deemed necessary to make a home sweeter. Now it’s just a whole lot of unwanted junk.

Warning: Objects in mirror are closer than they appear.

Sun worshipper

Surrounded by piles of receipts and tax records on the living room floor, I tackled the taxman’s demands this morning. I was preparing for an ominous meeting with our tax preparer on Tuesday (yes, my Beloved scheduled a romantic rendezvous over the tax code on Valentine’s Day).

The little bearded lady, meanwhile, was chasing the sun. From one chair to another,

she moved locations as a shaft of sun did. The best location, though, was down on the floor with me. And my paperwork.

Well, at least one of us enjoyed our Saturday morning.

Must see sights in Chicago, even in December

If it’s gonna be cold anyway, you may as well find a way to enjoy it. That’s certainly true here in Chicagoland, and tourists – and residents, for that matter – can find lots to enjoy here, even in December.

A colleague is planning a weekend in Chicago later this month (why not? it’s not beach weather anywhere in the U.S. right now), and she asked me for advice on places to eat and see. Here’s what I shared for adult-oriented must-sees right now in the Windy City:

• You can spend days at the Art Institute of Chicago. It’s filled with art to amuse you, wow you and make you think. Definitely worth visiting.
• At Christmas, even if you’re not shopping, you should walk down the Magnificent Mile on North Michigan Avenue. The Christmas decorations and window displays are beautiful at Christmas.
• At the end of the Mag Mile, you simply must check out the Marilyn Monroe sculpture and get a picture with/under it (400 block of North Michigan Avenue). It’s a sight to see. Click here to see the view last summer.
• If large-scale public art is your thing, click here for a map to a number of installations in Chicago. You could walk to some of them or take a cab. Cloud Gate (No. 7,  in Millenium Park) is also known as “The Bean,” a great place for a Chicago photo-op.
• One restaurant you must visit is Lou Malnati’s Pizzeria (there are a lot of locations, but downtown, we go to 439 North Wells Street, Chicago, IL 60610). This is true deep-dish Chicago-style pizza. Laid back atmosphere, great food. Get a chopped salad, too.
• Ethereal Confections is some of the best chocolate ever! It’s made here in Illinois (great for take-home gifts). They have suburban locations, but according to the website, this chocolate is available at South Port Grocery. I’ve never eaten here, but it looks interesting. Might want to check it out.
• Not that a library is a big tourist destination, but I brought my mother and my sister to Newberry Library when they came to visit. This is the setting for some of the scenes in “The Time Traveler’s Wife,” if you’ve ever read that. They have a tour, and excellent exhibits, and it’s known as one of the biggest genealogical archives outside of Utah. It’s a private library.
• Since you have limited time, I wouldn’t bother with Navy Pier. It’s a tourist trap in my opinion (might be nicely decorated for Christmas though).

Do any of my Chicagoland friends have any other suggestions?

God’s flocking

First snow of the season fell last night.

At least, it was the first snow of the season for me (I don’t know if it snowed here in northern Illinois last week when I was enjoying the balmy humidity of Mexico’s west coast).

I captured this flaky drapery during this morning’s walk around the block, and it even adorned the top of the water tower as the sun rose, but I suspect it’ll be gone before the day is.

Dust of Snow
By Robert Frost

The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree

Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.

Not the crow's nest, perhaps, but this perch made me glad for my down jacket and knitted gloves.

A new blog about enjoying your photos

As I’ve traveled around Chicagoland, the blogosphere and online in the past three weeks for my new job with the Association of Personal Photo Organizers, I’ve discovered all kinds of new ways to enjoy photos.

Since I’m brimming with ideas and avenues, I’ve started a new blog to show off some of those ways.

I’m calling it “Clickago.” Click, as in a camera’s click, plus Chicago equals Clickago. Since I’ve named this blog “Minnesota Transplant,” I thought I ought to give a nod to the state of my current, and for the foreseeable future, residence.

For a look at my new wedding album, check out today’s post.

I’ll be updating Clickago twice a week, but it’s unconnected to Minnesota Transplant, so if photography and enjoying your pictures interests you, bookmark this page or better yet, subscribe.

Thanks for reading!

New job, new opportunity to tell stories

October 24 was a red-letter day at Minnesota Transplant’s house.

The term originated in Medieval times when the church printed its calendars with saint’s days in red. Special days came to be known as “red-letter days,” and a week ago Monday was indeed a special day.

I started a new job.

Yes, after four and a half months of unemployment, a hundred job applications and five job interviews, I landed a position with the Association of Personal Photo Organizers (Appo) as a training specialist.

I remember the first day of all the jobs I’ve held in my adult life:

• July 2, 1990: First day as a reporter at the Middletown Journal newspaper in Middletown, Ohio. Two days later, I earned my first paid holiday on the Fourth of July.
• March 11, 1994: First day as a copy editor at the St. Cloud Times newspaper in St. Cloud, Minn.
• Nov. 10, 1997: First day as marketing coordinator at Creative Memories, a direct selling photo album/memory preservation company in St. Cloud, Minn. A week later, I was in Cincinnati helping with the filming of a training video.
• July 19, 2007: First day as a field development manager at Homemade Gourmet, a direct seller of food mixes headquartered in Canton, Texas. That day was the first day of the company’s national convention. Talk about baptism by fire!

And now, today: Oct. 24, 2011, first day with the Association of Personal Photo Organizers. It’s not a newspaper, and it’s not a direct selling company, but I know I will draw on all I’ve learned in those past roles to rock and roll at the Appo. My parents asked me if I felt better about myself after being employed again for a week (like I was some sort of hopeless loser on the dole for a whole four months). “Nope,” I said. “I’m over the whole work-is-where-I-get-value attitude.” I was a workaholic in my 30s, and it didn’t get me far. I am, however, happy to be working for an exciting new venture in the technology sector that values people and relationships.

The Appo is a non-profit association integrated with a start-up company called Linea Photosharing, specializing in technology and other products to store and share digital images and printed photos. I’ll share more about the Appo and Linea in future posts, but the members of the Appo are here for anyone who takes photos and wishes they could enjoy them more, rather than feel guilty about how they’re lost in a drawer or a hard drive.

Photos represent stories, and the common thread that runs through my resumé is that I help people tell stories. Stories should be told — in a newspaper, in an album, around the dinner table or online (if I had been around before the printing press, I probably would have been telling people’s stories around a fire). Storytelling makes a difference, and I love the opportunity to make the world a better place!

Watch this space

Been working on a project today that has to do with this stream of photos. Do you have photos like this? Can’t wait to share more on my project next week. Stay tuned!

Sun sets, moon rises

From the highest vantage point in Hampshire (a hill of dirt piled under the eastern-most water tower), the sun sets over the village, courted by clouds. Because we live within forty miles of the world’s fourth busiest airport at O’Hare, one often sees jet contrails crisscrossing the sky.

Clouds be darned, I’ve been meaning to capture a sunset for a week, to fulfill the weekly photo challenge.

An hour later, the nearly full moon rises over the neighbor’s house. Beware the lunacy!

She’s cute, but is she the cutest?

Chloe models her pink parka on the autumn fashion runway.

The bank is sponsoring a Cutest Pet Contest, and the deadline for entering is tomorrow. Think I can win bragging rights and “one of many fabulous prizes”?

Raise your hand and be counted (or, possibly, tackled)

The cover of the program for the high school football game two weeks ago featured a shot of a huddle cheer, players’ arms thrust in the air.

I grabbed the program on my way into the Edina, Minn., football field and immediately opened it to Page 16 to find my stepson listed as 5-foot-10. Yup, he’s finally as tall as I am, and he’s pretty stoked about that (a lot of men aren’t as tall as me; if you value height, you’re getting somewhere when you’re as tall as I am). He also outweighs me by 30 pounds, and he’s a sleek football machine. Pretty stoked about that, too.

The game was as exciting as regular season high school football games get. The stadium was packed, nearly 100 testosterone-flooded young men roamed the sidelines, the marching band featured at least 300 musicians, more than 30 cheerleaders filled the track, the Hornettes pom team did a little ditty after the band’s halftime show and the team beat Minneapolis Southwest handily — 38-0. As a middle linebacker, Caswell played a lot for an 11th grader, and we saw him cause a Southwest fumble. A great evening under the Friday night lights.

When I got home to the RV in which we stayed during our visit to Minnesota, I threw the program on the table and forgot about it.

When I was cleaning up the next day, the hand most prominent on the program cover caught my eye. The distinctively wide hand was attached to an arm that was the right shade of flesh with just a hint of reddish hair. It was holding a helmet at just the right angle to show off “Edina.”

“This looks like it could be your hand, Caswell,” I remarked.

“It is,” he said nonchalantly.

The featured hand on the cover of the Edina football program belonged to none other than my stepson! Of the hundred young men holding helmets in a hundred huddles last year, the photographer captured Caswell’s distinctive hand and put it on the cover of the program.

He got those hands from his father, and since I love his father’s big, meaty hands, I love Caswell’s hands, too. Besides heft, their structure has a certain elegance, too. A formal wedding photo of Caswell’s deceased grandfather — Tyler’s father — shows he had those broad, strong hands, too.

Caswell’s characteristic hands will be put into service again tonight high-fiving it, roughing up jerseys and pushing defenders aside when Edina (2-1) takes on Minnetonka (3-0).

Let’s get fired up! Can I get a big hand for Edina? [Spontaneous applause! Yay!]