The beauty of spring came at us this year with little to no warning and has been especially spectacular to me.  Not sure if it is due to spring genuinely being more beautiful or rather because I am looking at it through new eyes – the lens of my camera.  But either way I have been inspired to go out lately and take more pictures than usual.

Here are a few of this year’s captures so far:

A Brightly Blooming Tree

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Dogwood Blooms

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LadyBug

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Tulip Flowerbed

Description [from www.goodreads.com]: “Three ordinary women are about to take one extraordinary step.

Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would normally find solace with her beloved maid Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared and no one will tell Skeeter where she has gone.

Aibileen is a black maid, a wise, regal woman raising her seventeenth white child. Something has shifted inside her after the loss of her own son, who died while his bosses looked the other way. She is devoted to the little girl she looks after, though she knows both their hearts may be broken.

Minny, Aibileen’s best friend, is short, fat, and perhaps the sassiest woman in Mississippi. She can cook like nobody’s business, but she can’t mind her tongue, so she’s lost yet another job. Minny finally finds a position working for someone too new to town to know her reputation. But her new boss has secrets of her own.

Seemingly as different from one another as can be, these women will nonetheless come together for a clandestine project that will put them all at risk. And why? Because they are suffocating within the lines that define their town and their times. And sometimes lines are made to be crossed.

In pitch-perfect voices, Kathryn Stockett creates three extraordinary women whose determination to start a movement of their own forever changes a town, and the way women—mothers, daughters, caregivers, friends—view one another. A deeply moving novel filled with poignancy, humor, and hope, The Help is a timeless and universal story about the lines we abide by, and the ones we don’t.”

MY REVIEW: An amazing, well written book that captivated my attention, curiosity, and my desire to learn.  An insightful look into human sociology as it could have been during one of America’s most trying eras.

I feel that I related mostly to the character, Skeeter.  I think if she were an actual living person, I would admire and look up to her.  She took a stand on what she felt was the right and stuck with it even when the going got tough.

The book club that I am a member of read this book and I am glad to say that most of the women that read it had nothing but compliments for the book.  We typically rank the books we read from 1 – 10, with 10 being the best.  There have been a select few books that have earned 10 rankings from several of the ladies, and this book was definitely one of them.  (If memory serves me, the only other two books that elicited multiple 10′s were Ahab’s Wife by Sena Jeter Naslund and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows)  One lady even said that she gave it a 9 and not a 10 only because she was upset that she had not thought to write it herself!

All in all, I recommend this to anyone and everyone!  Hope you enjoy it as much as my friends and I did.

Day 5 (December 14) -  We awake on our last day at the Hilton Waikoloa Village Resort, and while I am busy getting ready, somebody goes and gets me a white mocha coffee – what a happy surprise! Then we go to eat breakfast at Spoons, where I try a pretty icky combination of cereals and candy (corn pops, cocoa puffs, M&Ms, and gummy sharks).  It was not good, trust me!  Then we pack up our stuff and say a sorrowful goodbye to the nice resort.

Our next leg of the trip includes two nights and three days on the Hilo side of the Island.  Once we arrive to the Hilo area we first decide to find someplace to eat lunch.  We first go to a place highly recommended by our (now) friend Andrew Doughty [author of the Hawaii's Big Island guide book we used for the entire trip]; however, when we walk in there is nobody dining at this quaint little Italian restaurant.  Thus, we decide not to try it and find a little place called Puka Puka [which literally means hole hole, which I found amusing since it really is a whole in the wall type of place] which served Mediterranean style food.  This restaurant was packed and the food was amazing!  Upon leaving the restaurant, we realize that we are still to early to check into the inn, so we decide to go ahead and do some sight seeing of the area waterfalls.

We first went to Rainbow Falls.

Rainbow Falls.

Then we went to Boiling Pots and Pe’e Pe’e Falls [apparently not pronounced Pee Pee Falls...unfortunately].  And finally we went to see the most amazing waterfall I have ever seen, Akaka Falls, which falls a whopping 422 ft.

Akaka Falls.

Fortunately for us, but unfortunately for the volume of water in these falls, the Hilo side was going through a dry spell why were there and we did not even see a drop of rain.

It is now time in which we can check into our Bed & Breakfast lodging, the Palms Cliff House Inn.  We are instantly amazed by the beauty of the B&B and the hospitality of the lady working there.  We are given a tour of the house and shown to our room.  We settle in and then go to eat a great dinner at Ken’s Pancake House!

Palms Cliff House Inn, stairs leading up to the room we stayed in!

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A view from our Balcony at Palms Cliff House Inn

Day 6 (December 15) -  This day in paradise started out in the best way possible – with an amazing home cooked breakfast!  We were served pork & mango sausage, a banana nut muffin, breakfast quiche, and local fruit.

With full bellies we then went to visit Volcanoes National Park.  We were fortunate enough to arrive at the Visitor’s Center when a very knowledgeable and amusing guide was explaining the five different volcanoes on the island and how the volcanoes ‘work.’  He explained that the current eruption from Kilauea has been occurring since 1982 and that there were high levels of sulfur emissions that day.  Portions of the Park were closed, but we were still able to see plenty of really cool things.  We saw part of the Kilauea crater steaming, many other steam vents, cooled lava, a volcano museum, and even got to walk through a lava tube!

Kilauea Volcano steaming.

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Me in the Thurston Lava Tube.

Once we left the Park we headed to a famous orchid ‘farm’, Akatsuka Orchids, so that I could send home a couple of orchids.  All the flowers in this place were amazingly beautiful and I believe that my Grandmother greatly enjoyed getting orchids from Hawaii!

Then once were back at the B&B to get ready for dinner, I happened to be standing on the porch when I noticed the blow spout of water from a whale in the water right in front of me, and then out of nowhere the whale sticks his tail out of the water and begins smacking the water like he is playing, which was amazing to watch.   Then we went to Ken’s Pancake House for Taco Tuesday dinner!

Day 7 (December 16) -  Our last day in Hawaii.

So we headed back across the island towards the Kona Airport (with a brief stop at the Hilton Waikoloa Village to pick up the camera battery and battery charger that I forgot to get out of our room, lunch at the Kona Brewing Co., Borders visit, and one last look at a totally weird McDonald’s menu with items like spam for sale) to begin our long journey home.  I was sad to leave the ‘Big Island,’ for it really was an amazing experience full of excitement and beauty!

MAHALO HAWAII!!

Paradise!

Over the 2009 holiday break, I spent a week on the wonderful Big Island of Hawaii with a very special friend!  And even though it has been several weeks since we went, I am pretty sure that I still think about the amazingly enchanting island almost every single day.

Here is a brief overview of our trip and some pictures from paradise!

Day 1 (December 10) – Flight to LAX; ate at In-N-Out burger (an amazing west coast burger joint); checked into our hotel; spent the night hardly sleeping from the excitement of being in Hawaii the next day

A view of Los Angeles from our hotel.

Day 2 (December 11) - Spent much of the day in a plane going from Los Angeles to Honolulu and was thoroughly enthralled by the in flight entertainment options we had.  I found it absolutely amazing that I could watch movies, live television, play trivia games against fellow passengers and even watch the progress of our flight as we zoomed over the Pacific Ocean.  I decided to spend my time watching 2 movies, “Post Grad” and “Four Christmases,” and playing trivia while occasionally checking in our flight map.

Our in-flight map as we are approaching Honolulu.

We landed in Honolulu with a couple of hours lay over in the Honolulu Airport until flew on to Kailua-Kona (more commonly known as just Kona) on the Big Island.  The first thing that we were greated by in Kona was what I like to call the “landing on the moon” effect – landing on a large black lava field.  This experience was rather neat and personally lived up to my expectations from reading others’ descriptions.  Also the Kona airport is like no other airport I have ever seen – completely open!!  Guess you don’t need an enclosed building when the weather is amazingly beautiful all year round.

Soon after getting a rental car we headed to the resort that we stayed at for 3 nights – the Hilton Waikoloa Village Resort.  Waikoloa Village is absolutely stunning and I really look forward to being able to stay there again someday.

A view of the Lagoon area at the Hilton Waikoloa Village Resort.

Day 3 (December 12) – On this day we decided to check out the Northern part of the island.  So we started by driving north along the ridge of the dormant Kohala Volcano.  I had read that we should be careful not to honk our horn so as to not awaken the volcano…but I was a deviant and wanted to try it out – so we honked our horn…but nothing happened. (apparently geology doesn’t quite work that way)  On this drive we saw amazing countryside and mountain views (with horses and cows!) and a beautiful valley with a black sand beach, Pololu Valley.

View of a mountain on Maui from North Kohala, Big Island, Hawaii.

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A view from above of the Pololu Valley (black sand) Beach.

We also stopped in Hawi to eat at the Bamboo Restaurant (amazing food and interesting art gallery), see the statue of a Hawaiian chief, and do some souvenir shopping at local shops and at a farmer’s market.  And to my delighted surprise there were so many turtle goodies on the island; I ended up collecting a turtle soap dish, a turtle key chain, a turtle bookmark, a turtle notebook, and probably other turtle things I can’t remember!!

That evening we also took part in watching the 180 sec Hawaiian sunset at Buddha Point at the Waikoloa Village.  Breathtaking.

Sunset in Paradise.

Day 4 (December 13) - Today was the “big” day for us.   We had gotten tickets before our trip to take a snorkeling boat trip on the Fairwind II out to Kealakekua Bay (“K” Bay) where Captain Cook’s Monument stands and is home to a beautiful reef and lots of wildlife – including a WHALE!!!  We saw the whale surface several times while were out on the boat and even once, only about 100 yards away, while we were in the water with it!!!  The boat had slides and a jumping platform, served us food, caught an Ono en route, and gave us directions and equipment in which we could really enjoy a view ‘under the sea.’

"K" Bay, crystal clear waters with snorkelers viewing the reef and wildlife.

After we sailed the ocean blue on the Fairwind II, we drove down to Southpoint, which boasts being the southern-most point in the USA.  Here we saw the beauty of the ocean beating up against rocky cliffs and enjoyed the breeze that the windmills to turn constantly.

Water hitting off the rocky ledges of Southpoint, Hawaii.

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Southpoint, Hawaii windmills.

That night, our last night on the Kona side, we enjoyed a nice meal on the famous Ali’i Drive in Kona on the ocean front.  I had fresh clam chowder and it was amazing!

Whoa…I have been remiss in updating my blog! Here is what I have been up to lately though:

1) Graduate School – homework, research, quizes, tests – the whole gamut which is keeping me pretty busy.

2) Photography – haven’t gotten to do much of this, with the turning of the colors I was so hopeful to go out and get some great traditional autumn colors photos; however, when I had time to go out and shoot, it was raining and now the colors are almost gone. Yet I am still hopeful that I might catch a few good picture still yet!

3) My other hobbies – sitting undone. Except for reading. I am a member of a book club and I have sorta been able to keep up with that as well as reading a few books in between that I personally really wanted to read.

I have plans of a follow-up post to sorta review the books I have read recently, but here is a list of what I have read and my quick rating:
1) Bel Canto by Ann Patchett – 3/5 Stars
2) Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See – 4/5 Stars
3) Guilty Pleasures (Anita Black, Vampirer Hunter Series #1) by Laurell Hamilton – 3.5/5 Stars
4) The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown – 4/5 Stars
5) The Other Queen by Phillipa Gregory – 1/5 Stars

This past weekend I went to Las Vegas, Nevada for a little Labor Day getaway! Got to hang out on the Strip as well as taking a little trip out to local State Park: Spring Mountain Ranch. All in all the trip was really amazing – and I believe that I am finally catching up on my sleep.

It appears that I am having some issues with uploading my photos; however, in the mean time anyone may view my photos from my trip at www.flickr.com/photos/astrogrl.

As promised here are some tips for photographing the Perseid Meteor Shower:

* What you need to observe them:

1. Darkest skies possible. If you can, get as far away from the city (and any lights) as you are able.

2. Despite it being summer, it gets chilly late at night. Bring a jacket, blanket, etc.

3. Bug spray.  Don’t want to miss the shot because you are swatting away a pesky bug!

4. I suggest bring a lawn chair or a blanket to sit on.

5. Bring a red-filtered flashlight, if you’ve got it. The red light won’t ruin your night vision like a white-light will. You want your pupils to be as dilated as possible to see as much of the sky as you can.

* Photography tips:

1. Use a semi wide-angle lens. Not too wide, because the meteors will look really tiny in your images.  I suggest something around 28-35mm.

2. Use manual focus, and make sure you are focused on the stars. That means infinity. Now, I’ve found that lenses for DLSR’s have a “range” for infinity focus. Just turning the focus ring all the way to the infinity stop won’t work. If you can, focus on a radio tower or some other bright objects far away. If you can focus on a star, that’s even better (Live View works great with this). Take a few shots and look at the image on your LCD screen, zooming up to see if the stars are pinpoints.

3. Because the stars move across the sky during the night, you will get star trails. Keep you exposures to around 5 to 10 minutes or so. This means you will more than likely need a remote release.   On DSLRs you will need to set the camera to its “Bulb” setting.

4. Point your camera in the general area towards the north-northeastern sky. As the night goes on, you might want to shift where it is pointed. The closer you are pointed to the radiant (where the meteors appear to emanate from) the shorter the meteor trails. Also, if you notice an area where meteors are more frequent, you can point there. Try different areas of the sky.

5. Start with an ISO of 400. If you can, and your camera gives good results, you can boost it to 800, but I wouldn’t go any higher.

6. Shoot as close to wide-open as you can. I would suggest ½ stop smaller than your widest aperture. Many Perseids are faint, and you need to wide-open aperture.  There are really bright ones as well.  Also, you may need to adjust the aperture smaller if you are experiencing local light pollution.

7. If you get one or two going through the field of view (you think), just stop the exposure and start a new one.

8. Use NR at your discretion. Remember, if you take a 10 minute shot, you will get a 10 minute NR exposure as well, so you’ve wasted 10 minutes. You can always do your noise reduction during post processing.

9. Watch out for dew! Depending on how much humidity is in the air, your lens will dew/fog up. Have some way to clean off the lens.

10. Make sure your batteries are fully charged.

11. Have a nice sturdy tripod.

*Some information from KJ Photography via Flickr.com

Apparently some people have already spotted the beginnings of the Perseid meteor shower, even though it is not supposed to peak until later next week (night of August 11).

The Perseid meteor shower is a result of the passing of the comet Swift-Tuttle by Earth many many years ago (the most recent known debris release from Swift-Tuttle is reported to be from 1862 – during the Civil War).  The meteors originate from these particles that have been ejected by the comet as it passes the sun.  This meteor shower is called the Perseids because of the area in the sky in which one would look to see the meteors – directly towards the constellation Perseus.  At the peak of the shower, one can expect to see 60+ meteors/hour.

To effectively view the meteor shower you should keep a few things in mind:

1 – try to position your view area as far away from ambient light as possible – aka away from the cities!

2 – It may be summer and hot during the day, but remember it can become quite chilly at night so I suggest you bring a light jacket

3 – Bug Spray!

4 – You may want to bring binoculars – however they might not help you when view the meteor showe; you are more likely to miss meteors this way

5 – A more than quarter full moon will be present in the same area of the sky – do not look at it for long periods of time for you will loose the acclimation to the low light that your eyes have acquired and will inhibit your viewing of the meteor shower.

For more info:

For more information on the Perseid Meteor Shower click here.  For more about meteor showers in general and general viewing tips click here. For more info about how to capture these spectacular night shows on your camera click check out my next post that I will be publishing shortly!

Here is an artist rendition of the area of the night sky to look at to see the Perseid Meteor Shower:

Looking northeast around midnight on August 11th-12th. The red dot is the Perseid radiant. Although Perseid meteors can appear in any part of the sky, all of their tails will point back to the radiant. Image copyright: Spaceweather.com.

I only have a few weeks left in my internship this summer so I have been spending the last couple of weekends trying to get in some more of the local attractions before I leave.  Here is a sampling of the places I have been in the last week and a half:

Assateague Island Pony

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Assateague Lighthouse

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Dorie Fish at the National Aquarium

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Fan at Chelsea vs. AC Milan Exhibition Soccer Game

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U.S. Capitol Building, Washington DC

Some of my friends at work told me about this site where you can go and see how many people share your name and this is what I got (which of all my friends that I tested to see, there are more of me in the world than anyone else!)

This is how many people in the US share their name with me!!

So you should go check it out as well…it was quite fun

I am so excited about getting to go see the new Harry Potter movie tonight at midnight!!

And lately I have been taking a ton of pictures, preparing for several upcoming photo competitions so I thought I would leave one on here today that I am particularly fond of for some reason. (Btw I have a photo deadline tomorrow for a collection of 10 bird photos…once I am done choosing my photos and I submit them I will be publishing them on here!)

I am really busy with work, so I am a bit overwhelmed right now. But I would still like to take a couple of minutes to help me and my readers relax, by posting a photo of a beautiful sunset!!

Sunset over Harbor in Annapolis, Maryland

This year celebrates the 200th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birthday! Born February 12, 1809 to Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks in Hardin County, Kentucky, Lincoln is best known for leading the United States of America through one of her darkest periods in history, the Civil War, as the 16th President.

In honor of one of America’s greatest heroes:

Lincoln Memorial, Washington DC, USA

The Man Himself, Abraham Lincoln, Lincoln Memorial

Was walking around tonight taking some photos when I came across this little guy!!

Wonder if his name is Testudo??