Originally uploaded by Martin Gordon.
I'm back and settled in for my last semester of school. Needing only two credits to graduate, I am only taking two classes, which means I have class only on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I realize many people would kill to have this much free time, so I'm forcing myself to take advantage of it.
My first project for this semester will be sorting through, processing and uploading the 1500+ photos I took on our 10 day trip to Spain over the holidays. It was an action-packed trip, and we were exhausted most of the time, but we saw a ton of stuff, had a wonderful time and met some great people! Definitely something I won't forget for a long, long time.
Being free five days a week means I'll have little excuse to not blog. FWIW, here are my blog stats for 2006 and 2005 (thanks to Alex King for the SQL queries).
2006 2005 ==== ==== Number of posts: 162 100 Posts per day: .44 .27 Days between posts: 2.25 3.65 Average post length: 1428 1362 Total length of all posts: 231,413 136,295
I almost doubled my frequency on 2006 and I think I can definitely double it in 2007.
More goals/projects as they come up. Talk to you soon!
Technorati Tags: blogging, 2007, stats, vacation, trip, Spain, photography, photos, family, school, college, graduation
Child of the Corn
Originally uploaded by Martin Gordon.
This is one of my favorite pictures from the corn maze outside of Boston we went to when I visited over fall break a week and a half ago.
Very creepy and very fitting for Halloween IMHO.
Technorati Tags: Halloween, corn, corn maze, scary, photography, photos, travel, vacation, Boston
I'll spare you all the typical Happy New Year post only because we're already half way through January. A lot of things have happened since the last time I posted, in fact, more than I could completely list right now.
Without a doubt the most notable thing that happened has to be our trip to Italy. I met my parents and sister at O'Hare on the 21st of December, and from there we were off to Rome by way of Zurich. We stayed in Rome, Siena, Florence, and Venice over the course of 8 days while visiting several tiny medieval towns along the way. We spent a day and a half in London before flying back to Miami on the 31st.
Seeing as how I took over 1100 pictures over the course of the 10 days, I'll spare you all the details I don't really remember and instead invite you to visit my Flickr photostream where I am slowly uploading the photos I took during the trip. It's taken me a bit to get the pictures up only because converting from RAW and then tagging/naming the photos is such a time-intensive process.
Technorati Tags: vacation, holiday, photography, photos, italy, europe, london
Gulf of Mexico Sunset 22,
originally uploaded by Martin Gordon.
I've added a photoset of 27 photos to Flickr that were taken of the sunset over the Gulf of Mexico on my birthday, August 20th. I hope you enjoy looking at them as much as I enjoyed taking them.
Technorati Tags: flickr, photography, sunsets, vacation, travel, gulf of mexico, marco island, florida
I finished work last Friday and the family and I went to Marco Island to spend my birthday (which was Saturday). We drove down Friday night and stopped at the first restaurant we could find after getting off Alligator Alley. It turned out to be Cracker Barrel, which we had never been to despite passing one almost daily when we lived in Gainesville. I was really excited to try it, especially after seeing some interesting things in the general store and the fascinating decor on the walls in the dining room. It's too bad the food wasn't up to par. After dinner we continued down Collier Blvd, which I later realized has very few posted speed limit signs, until we reached Marco Island.
On Saturday we spent some time down at the beach (what we could bear with the heat index being so high). The beach wasn't like it is here on the east coast. Instead of being 100% sand, most of the beach is covered in shells. In the afternoon, we also drove to Naples and on the way looked at the bazillion dollar homes in the area. Suffice to say, downtown Naples is not suitable for people under 40. there were way too many art galleries and old people clothing stores for me and my sister's liking. There were also no buildings taller than three stories in the area. Southwest Florida is very sparsely populated and much more southern than the east coast. The area also seems to have the highest number of Walgreens and CVS stores per capita in the world. On almost every corner, there was either a Walgreens, a CVS, or both. To my delight, the one Walgreens we did stop at had a Delorean (of Back to the Future fame) parked in the lot. We came back to the hotel ust in time to see the sun set over the Gulf. I snapped a lot of photos which I still haven't processed yet. I'll hopefully have them ready for today or tomorrow. We ate dinner at a restaurant called Konrad's, which was a block away from the hotel. It was a typical steak/seafood joint but with an entire menu page dedicated to German specialties. Feeling a bit risky, I had the sauerbraten, which turned out to be a good choice. It was a roast marinated in a type of red wine sauce with spaetzel (small, rice-like pasta). It was good and I'm glad my risky departure from the standard steak and potatoes paid off.
On Sunday we spent some more time at the beach before check out. Either the sun was harsher or our skin was already decimated from the day before, but it hurt a lot more to be out there. Slightly crispier than when we left, we headed home in the early afternoon. A nice, relaxing vacation (as opposed to the kind where you come back "needing a vacation from the vacation") was a great way to finish off the summer.
You can see some of the photos from the trip here. Keep checking it over the next couple of days as I add those sunset pictures and the pictures from the other camera.
Technorati Tags: vacation, travel, photography, marco island, florida
