Do Not Cross

Sunday night (read, 2 AM), our apartment flooded.  Cheri woke up to a noise in the kitchen and yelled to me that the apartment was flooding.  After a frantic search for my glasses I took a look under the sink to find the hose that connects the sink to the dishwasher had busted and water was flowing.  The entire kitchen, bathroom, and half the living room were soaked.

Needless to say, we shut off the water and called the emergency maintenance line.  In about 30 minutes the maintenance guy showed up with a wet-vac and soaked up the water, ripped up the carpet, removed (most of) the soaked carpet padding, and placed two carpet dryers on the floor.

Its been a few days now and the carpets are almost dry.  Hopefully things will work out so we don’t have to move or anything.  We’re just glad that we were home when it happened.

Ever since my graduation, I’ve been taking lots of photos with my new Nikon D80. Here are some highlights from our recent camping trip to Heavenly Acres in Greene County, Virginia:

This is a shot of the South River in Greene County, Virginia. We were out there camping and we stumbled across this small river while looking for some good places for pictures. I shot this in manual mode at 90 mm, 1/3 sec SS, f/22, ISO 100. I used my tripod and the time delay setting to avoid shaking the camera while taking the long exposure. I also took this at dusk so that the image didn’t over expose. I made sure to use a small aperture to allow for a large depth of field.

While we were driving around, my father-in-law’s GPS indicated we were near Greene Acres Lake. What we found was this. For this shot, I used manual at 55 mm, 1.3 sec SS, f/18, and ISO 100. Since this was at dusk and I used a long shutter speed, I set the camera on my tripod and used the time delay to avoid any shaking. The small aperture allowed me to get most of the photo in focus.

This picture was taken at Big Meadows in the Shenandoah National Park. For this photo, I used shutter priority mode at 200 mm, 1/200 sec SS, f/29, and ISO 400. In order to get the silhouette of the tree I made sure to meter for the sky. I did this by aiming at the sky (with no tree or ground in view), pressed halfway down on my shutter button to determine the needed settings, then aimed down to get the tree and ground in view. This allowed the camera to get the sky exposed correctly while underexposing the ground to give me that silhouette.

While we were on a trail that paralleled the Rapidan River, I stumbled across an area that had a lot of bumblebees and other bugs flying around. So I crouched down, set my camera to shutter priority with a very high shutter speed (to try to freeze the motion of the flying insects), and set my camera to burst mode (to keep taking pictures as I held the shutter button down). This was one of the few shots that came out. Here I used (like I said) shutter priority, 200 mm, 1/2000 sec SS, f/8, and ISO 400. Since it was a bright day out, I also had my exposure compensation dial set to -2.

You can see the rest of the photos from our camping trip on my flickr page.

Ok, ok, status updates:

1. I graduate this Saturday.

Yup, that is right. After two years of classes learning about fingerprints, firearms, DNA, autopsies, homicides, crime scenes, and the like, I will be getting my Master of Forensic Science degree from The George Washington University. I’m feeling a tad ambivalent about it though. On one hand I’m extremely happy that I’m done with school (for probably the rest of my life). On the other hand, I’m wondering what I’m going to do with myself. I won’t have classes, homework, a job, and a life to juggle. I’m fearful that I’m going to be bored. But I have lots of hobbies I want to pursue (like my photography, guitar, and violin). Maybe I’ll actually keep updating my blog consistently (what a concept!).

2. No Remicade for Me.

I visited my GI doctor last month and he decided that it isn’t the right time for me to go on Remicade (more about Remicade here). He felt that my symptoms weren’t severe enough to warrant me going on such an extreme treatment method. Instead, he upped my 6-MP dosage. Hopefully this will slowly heal my fistula. Since the visit the pain and discomfort from my fistula has dropped a lot. I’m going to set up a visit with my colon and rectal surgeon for next month to see how it is doing and hopefully see if the drain that is set in there can be removed.

3. Flickr and Twitter Updates

I have seriously become uber-addicted to Twitter lately. I’m updating at least once a day (if not more than that sometimes). I’ve also set it up so that I can update it via SMS text messaging through my cell phone. Since I don’t have an unlimited text messaging plan with my phone company (T-Mobile), I am trying to keep myself from updating via SMS only when I’m not within reach of internet access (which is pretty rare).

I’ve also updated my flickr with a bunch of pictures. Some are from my friend Larry’s wedding and some are from Cheri’s friend Melissa’s wedding. There are also a bunch of random other images as well. Here’s one of my favorite photos from this last batch, our friend Kate (left) with Cheri (right) getting ready for Larry’s wedding:

I guess I never got around to blogging about my first deer-hitting experience.

A few Mondays ago (March 31 to be exact), I was minding my own business — driving to work, my normal routine. My work hours are from 7 am to 3:30 pm, so it was pretty dark. I work on the Marine Corps Base in Quantico — a veritable venison buffet. I’m usually very careful when driving on base, since there are so many deer around and much of the base roads are not lit very well.

I was only about a mile away from my job when all of a sudden, there was a deer on my friggin’ hood. I was just driving along, rocking out to something on my iPod (P!nk, probably), and then WHAM — a doe went a flyin’. Obviously, I was really scared and freaked and worried. I wasn’t worried about the deer (which I’m pretty sure was dead), I was mainly worried about my car — a 2008 Honda Civic I just purchased in January.

[Sidenote: I was told by no less than THREE people that Virginia law states that I can keep the deer.]

I pulled over to the side of the road and called the police and then my insurance company (Progressive). I was able to get pictures taken by the police (which I don’t have, but I probably should request them for posterity’s sake). Luckily, my insurance company has a concierge service for when you need to make a claim. They were able to come tow my car, take it to a body shop/mechanic, and give me a rental. Since I have rental car coverage on my insurance, I didn’t have to pay for my rental.

I was called within 48 hours with an estimate for the damages. It turned out to be about $4000 worth of damage (the hood, headlights, bumper, panel, radiator, AC condenser, fan, plus a bunch of other little things). There was no damage to the frame of the car, so everything was replaceable. I only had to pay my $500 deductible. I got my car back this past Monday and you can’t even tell that it ever hit a deer.

Hopefully, this will be my last deer hitting experience.