Unfortunately, I've been gone much longer than anticipated.

I want to start this post with an apology. Time got away from me and I haven't been as active as I had hoped. There were many a time that I wanted to post some new pictures, share some stories, but I've been in a dark place for a while and therefore it just never happened. These pictures are from the summer; the top two from the first weekend in June (at Cedar Point in Sandusky), the others from just yesterday on a family trip to the lake (Put-In-Bay, specifically). I got some wonderful butterfly pictures, and even the pictures you see of a hummingbird! I never thought I would get the chance to photograph one, let alone photograph one when it's not even in flight. Truly magnificent. And so tiny!

Now, I'm likely not going to have time to take pictures much after this post, so my impromptu hiatus will be extending. I am a high school student, and my senior year starts a week from today (for those of you who are unaware). However, I am also a college sophomore and classes will be starting on August 20th. I am a photography major working towards my associates, and this year will be my first balancing a photography class with my other classes. So, if not this semester as I'm not taking a photography-based class, then second semester (January) I will likely post some of my class assignments.

I'm once again horribly sorry for my frequent absences. Sometimes I just can't find it in me to make a blog post. I hope you all can understand. I will return when the time is right!

Thank you all for reading.

New year, new apologies

First and foremost, as it's become a bit of a habit of mine, I want to apologize immensely for not updating since August. I wish I could give you a big explanation of how I've been exploring and taking all sorts of photos and that I have many new stories to tell, but truth be told I haven't been doing much. In fact, these photos are from October/November, if I'm remembering correctly.

In order, the first three photos were taken early one morning as I ventured out into my backyard in the twenty-degree weather to take some post-rain photos as a distraction. Distraction from what? Sadly, my heart was aching and my mind was clouded and someone very near and dear to me was leaving for an indefinite amount of time. Unfortunately said near-and-dear person had happened to capture my focus of infatuation and her departure left me in a bit of a rut. Therefore, as I do by nature in my angst-ridden state, I went out at six in the morning, barefoot in shorts and a t-shirt to take some pictures of wet leaves and hope the cold will shock some sense back into me.

The last few photos were taken on my yearly visit to Brandywine Falls, though the scenery never seems to change. Perhaps I need to start visiting more in the summer, rather than waiting for the fall to come and the cold to settle in. Shame I couldn't get many more photos to display, but my camera has not quite been on the cooperative side of life for months and I am steadily remembering that I use an outdated Nikon that is moodier than the average teenager. I am currently looking into getting a new camera, so look forward to updates on that as my search develops!

Thank you to those who have stuck around, waiting for the day that I finally make another post. I hope to make more than I have this past year, so I hope you will bear with me and my roller coaster of an updating schedule! Thank you all for reading!

I believe an apology is in order

An apology is definitely in order in regards to my absence over the past few months. (August. May? Three months, jeez.) As for my lack of pictures and stories, another apology should be added to the previous one. 

In other words, I'm really sorry you guys! I didn't plan on disappearing as I did, but life just took a bad turn and things have been pretty difficult for a while now. This summer has also been fairly boring, so I only have a couple of short, simple stories for you all about what I've been up to.

Firstly, I don't have a picture for you, but at the beginning of summer (the first weekend of June, I believe) my face went under a little. . .unplanned renovation. Meaning, I was at a hotel with my family and a couple friends, one friend and myself were swimming in the hotel pool, and I had a bit of an accident. I don't exactly recall what I was doing, I think I was just swimming around near the bottom of the pool, but since I wasn't wearing goggles I couldn't see that the incline of the pool was coming up very quickly and I smacked my face (more specifically my mouth). Now, I'm just thankful that I have some pretty big front teeth, (the only time I'm thankful for it, actually) because yes, they broke upon impact. Thankfully I wasn't in any pain and I was able to get my teeth repaired within a couple of days (a quarter of one tooth was rebuilt and half of the other had to be reconstructed), but it was quite a traumatizing experience for both myself and probably both of my friends as well. Not to mention the lisp I had for a good month afterwards really sucked.

Onto story number two! This one actually refers to the last two photos and isn't too much of a story, but later in June I had a job doing the photography at an acquaintance's sister's bat mitzvah. Long story short, I was on my feet for five hours straight, dealt with extremely loud music and obnoxious people, and the only enjoyable part of the evening on my end was when I had a lovely conversation with some elder relatives of the acquaintance discussing my camera, photography as a hobby, and a little bit into the inner-workings of the universe and what it entails. But I don't think I'm going to look into getting hired for any more party gigs anytime soon. (Oh yeah, and the two photos I snapped up above were of the party favors. I just really liked how they turned out!) 

And last-but-not-least, the top five photos were from a little day-trip up to Geneva-On-The-Lake so my sister and mother could partake in my cousin's bachelorette party (my sister is a bridesmaid for the wedding later this week! She's really not excited, though, which is a bit disheartening, but we're all still very excited for my cousin nonetheless. She will make a beautiful bride and I hope that her marriage will be happy, healthy, strong, and flourishing.) Anyways, as I wasn't able to take part in the "festivities" of roaming about to winery after winery, my father and I headed up to Geneva-On-The-Lake so we could see what might be going on up there. Sadly it was a rainy day, so most of the fun things weren't running, but we still headed down to a nearby park and get some lovely photos of the lake in the rain (the top two photos are just a couple of what I captured that day). Another bummer was that we got caught in the previously-mentioned rain. (Normally I'm a big fan of going out in summer rain storms, but I'm not so big a fan when I have a fragile camera out in the open and it starts to downpour. The camera came out unscathed, thankfully!)

Anyways, the last three photos from the five were from the church-turned-winery we went to so we could pick up my mother and sister and make the gruesome, nearly two-hour trip back home in more rain. I'm a sucker for close-up flower photos (the one isn't quite close enough to be considered macro, I don't think.). The beautiful vineyards were also a plus to the scenery. It was really quite beautiful.

Sadly school is starting back up in a couple of weeks for me, which means that I'll have less time to explore (despite how little I do already) and even less considering the fact that I'm taking more difficult classes this year as well, boo.

I hope to get back to you all soon, though, so until then wish me luck! 

Thank you all for bearing with my absences and thank you for embarking on my journeys with me, despite how few and far between they may be!

Back to NYC!

As stated above, I have recently returned to New York City for a trip with my school's choral department! We were there from April 30th to May 4th and the trip was . . . interesting, I suppose. Not the best trip I've ever been on, and certainly a very stressful one, but nonetheless I made the best of it and have returned to you all with many new pictures and stories to share! These, of course, are only a dent in the pictures I took on my trip, and are also all from the very first day that I was there. Also, the fourth picture (the side-profile of the red-haired oddity) would be of myself; odd, I don't think I've ever actually put a photo containing even a portion of my face on this blog before! First for everything, right?

Anyways, the first three photos were taken the morning I arrived in the city, and seeing as it had rained all night it was very foggy. I could relate to the foggy, drowsy feeling of that morning, too because we'd driven on a bus all night to get to the city and I got very bus-sick from sleeping for four hours on the vehicle, so the beginning of the day wasn't the most enjoyable, but by the time the last four photos were taken I was feeling much better and was ready to re-explore the city. Truthfully, I missed New York, and once I was back out in the hustle-and-bustle of the streets I felt like I'd never left.

The buildings in the fifth picture are two that I wish I could get an infinite amount of pictures of, because they are so beautifully built and detailed and their structures just always leave me wanting more. They were located across the street from F.A.O. Schwartz and the underground Apple store, and I remember them vividly from last year as well. 

Now, the very last photo is of my friend Katie, who is one amazing girl. She'd dyed her hair right before the trip so it would be half-blue-half-black for when we went to NYC, but the black dye actually made her hair a bit darker, so she worked with the results she received and I, personally, from the perspective of someone whose hair is now bright red, think it looked great! (Past tense because the dye has since come out and her hair is no longer blue, but still just as terrific!)

So that's a bit of the stories of the pictures and my opinions on them, and again, this is only a small dent in the amount of photos I took, so look forward to more pictures and, as they start to come to a close, a longer entry about my trip in its entirety! For now, however, I'm about to go out with my mother to celebrate Mother's Day a day early at dinner. Thank you all for reading!

Back with some writing! (Sorry for the unscheduled hiatus everybody!)

(Disregard the picture that's obviously from December)

The Stages of Spring

I.    Autumn's presence

      Nothing but the crisp smell of 

      Fallen leaves and the in-and-out

      Patterns of warm days laced with chill

II.   Snow storms in March

      And April

      Cold and ice when and where

      It just shouldn't be

III.  Lengthening days 

      And screwed up sleeping schedules

      As night comes later

      And an hour is lost from the day

      Try not to have an early schedule that week

      Because deep regret will follow with the first morning

IV.   Flowers blooming and birds returning

      Trees coming back to life with buds of pink

      And chirps of winged beauties 

      Blessing the steadily-warming mornings

V.    Sunlight

      Warmth of the oncoming summertime

      And grass flowing lush and green

      Once the April showers have been chased away

      And this part of the world

      Has come back to life

Hi everybody! I'm just going to give a quick update for you all so I can explain myself and my two month hiatus that was clearly not forewarned. (Sorry for that, by the way!) Life has been, to say the least, inconvenient for my as of late and distractions have kept me from writing and taking as many photos as my little heart can handle, and I apologize dearly. Many things have happened that have kept me from returning, such as school work, issues between friends and family, and not to mention a pretty terrible break up of my own, seeing as it was my first relationship and had lasted about four years, but most of those things have led me to new doors that are opening into new opportunities that I hope to share with you all as they enter my life! 

Now, for the poem above. It's different from what I would usually write, but this morning as I was walking outside, I found that the words just came to me and wouldn't stop flowing until I had finished. Spring seemed like it was going to finally bring itself about, but sadly tomorrow we're supposed to be getting more snow (boo). As for the stanza on the time change; yes, I have a very, very busy schedule this week and next, of which is requiring me to get up at five every morning and that's not fun when five should really be four. Wish me luck with everything life's throwing at me, and I hope you understand my past and possible future breaks between entries. I hope that I'll be back with another post soon, so until then, thank you for reading!

Hello there, everyone!

This is going to be a very picture-heavy post today, because I've been mighty busy in the past month or so!

These three here are from my adventures super early in November, when the leaves were still falling and the weather was fairly nice out. Also, this was during the beginning of NaNoWriMo, of which I successfully finished as of yesterday with a final word count of 50,019 words! (A lot less than last year's novel, but I'm planning on polishing it up and fixing things within a few months or so). Anyways, these photos were taken at Brandywine Falls, which is a lovely forty-five minute drive from my house and was horrifically freezing when I finally arrived at the falls themselves, bundled with a coat, hat, gloves, the usual. Turns out it was much warmer up in the sun and I highly wish that there was more on the platform to view the falls. All-in-all, though, it was a fairly successful trip and I really want to head back sometime this month or next when it's all snow. (I'm already regretting this decision, I am going to freeze.)

And lastly, these photos were taken about two weeks ago when I spent the night over at a friend's house. The lovely person playing the piano and starring in both guitar photos is my lovely friend Ruby, who was also the cause for dying my hair a temporary shade of red (that, since I have incredibly short hair and I wash it not frequently, but more than enough, faded within a week and is as of now completely gone from existence. Who knows, though; I really enjoyed the coppery tone, so I may just have to call up my hair dresser to see about furthering that experience!) and also dyed her own hair and my other friend's, Tara, who stars in the second-to-last photo with Ruby once again. My friend Ryan also stars in a photo (can you guess which one?) and soon we're planning on taking some more photos of solely him as well, so you can look forward to those as well! And, lastly, you can find me in the final photo, in which I was laying on Ruby's bedroom floor and decided to put the camera behind me and just snap a couple of photos for good measure. (Gosh, my arms look tiny! They aren't really that small, I believe it was just because of the way I had them bent backwards to steady and snap the camera and photo!)

Well, with all of that said, here is the (incredibly long, text-and-photo-heavy) post that should hopefully make up for my (unnecessarily long) absence! I hope those who celebrate had a wonderful Thanksgiving, and to those who don't celebrate, I hope you had a wonderful Thursday nonetheless! Thanks to all of you for bearing with me, and I hope to have another post for you all sometime soon! 

Hey there, everybody!

Just a cat picture here, but there's a twist as this one you haven't seen yet before!
Drumroll. . .

Welcome to our family of misfits, Navi! This little babe here is our newest addition as of last month, who has been named Navi (as you read previously), named after the little fairy in Legend of Zelda. She was a stray my sister's friend found at the campsite her family goes to a lot and over the course of a month she saw Navi every time they went and people fed her when they were there, sure, but she was really malnourished and bloated and her front paws are crooked from an old fracture wound. Her ear is nicked in a couple of places, and she's very affectionate.
Now, she was planned to only stay one night so my sister and her boyfriend could get her to the vet, since initially she was meant to go back to his house. Of course, that's not how it went. He did name her, however, but after a few days of her staying with us, we finally got her to the vet and the man thought she might be pregnant, so whoops, she's gotta stay with us for another two weeks before we can tell anything and she can't get any shots until then.
So, after the two weeks, it was clear my sister wasn't going to take responsibility for her, so my mum and I took her to the vet. She wasn't pregnant (thank god), but there's a little problem I forgot to mention earlier.
This affectionate, bubbly, dopey cat is 100% deaf. Both ears. Can't hear a thing.
So we looked up some information and we've begun to use visuals to get her attention, we leave a light on every night so she won't start screeching to try to find people when we're asleep (she did it for the first two weeks we had her until we knew for sure that she had been in heat on top of her being deaf- woo), if we take her outside it's always on a leash and we always have her in sight, and we deter the other guys' grumpy behavior away so they don't try to hurt her when she doesn't hear them growl and continues to sit there being her happy-go-snuggly self.
Since she was brought home for the first time, she's gained at least a pound from our last checkup at the vet's, her fur is no longer scraggly and tattered and is now quite downy and fluffy, she's stopped screeching throughout the night (though in the morning on weekends, if I'm not up by six-thirty she'll start meowing, since I'm normally up at five every day for school), and as of Thursday we finally got her fixed and she's been a sleepy, snuggly mess since we brought her home. Oh yeah, during her surgery she also got a broken canine tooth removed, so that's a good thing.
Anyways, let's all give Navi a warm welcome to the family in the form of snuggles and silly faces, since she won't be able to hear your greetings and will probably just stare at you with her pretty eyes until you pet her anyways.

There you go- a nice story to go along with our newest addition! Also, a little extra photo. . .

She had woken up right after I took the first photo and I was taking another as she was looking at me and she blinked and this was the aftermath, so of course I had to keep it and include it here!

Also a little update: to my fellow NaNo's out there, NaNoWriMo is creeping up again and I've set myself up for November by beginning my character designs and my outline, as well as putting up the synopsis on the official website! You all can find my account on the website here , and you should all also expect to see some updates throughout the month while I'm writing! And if I'm not updating here, I'll most certainly be updating on my Tumblr, which can be found here!
Anyways, that's it for now, I suppose! I'm off to try to sleep, since I start my week bright and early again tomorrow and sleep is essential if I want to be able to function properly tomorrow.

Thank you all for reading, and I hope to be back with another update soon!