Sterling 47 Photography Blog

Well I finally did it! I started a separate blog just for my photography!

I had decided to call it Sterling 47 because 47 is the atomic number for Silver {get it?} and it is also the number of games that OU won in the longest running winning streak of a college football team TO DATE that my grandfather was a part of in the late 1950's.

So any who, I made a thingy at the top that will take you right to the new blog in the same way that you could go to the Random About Me or the Random History pages. :) Hope you like it!

School Daze...

Ah yes, summer school. The classes that we take for various reasons; whether to get through college faster, improve a previous class grade, or keep from working every single hour of every day.

My reasons are a little bit of all the above mentioned {to be honest}. I had taken an Intro to Sociology class when I first moved to Oklahoma and didn't receive a very notable grade {made it out with a C}. Turns out that that class is the only one on my program application that was a low grade and the director encouraged me to retake the course to bring the grade up, so I signed up for it to take this summer.

Now just for a little bit of background, the first class I took the professor told us on the first day that he had suffered from some medical malpractice that caused some neurological damage and that he would be heavily medicated some days. Great start, right? So we did not get very far in the class without multiple distractions and deviations from topic by the professor. We were asked to perform and take part in different sociological projects that usually involved some highly questionable behaviors on our parts in public. I had some issues with the class, projects, and the professor that unfortunately garnered his attention {and not in a good way}. By the end of the term, he was trying to fail me {I managed a last minute extra credit paper} and I was somehow unable to fill out my evaluation of the professor {I was the only one who seemed to have this issue}.
So needless to say I was not too keen to retake this particular class {I actually waited until the last minute to even register for it}.

I have been in this second sociology class for two weeks now and I am having the same feelings towards it as before, honesty. I seem have bad luck because this professor is recovering from a stroke that has left him slow to finish sentences and string together thoughts. We had to write a paper but he failed to tell us what he wanted out of the paper and left most of the class at a loss as to how to write it much less what to write about. I decided to write about my divorce {thinking that it would be relatively simple since I experienced it first hand}. As I was writing it I started to realize that if I had been able to separate myself from the emotions of being in love and all that warm mushy stuff, then I probably would not have married in the first place. It was a very hard thing for me to go through looking at my relationship like a scientist under a microscope and write about how we were doomed from the very beginning due to our differences. It was after writing that paper that I decided that I would do my best to get a better grade in this class but I would not put myself through any more unnecessary emotional stress in order to get an A.
This may sound silly or even childish but at the end of the day this class should be about learning and understanding why people do the things they do, not about how you screwed up your life and that you should feel ashamed for not helping people who don't want your help to begin with. Both teachers are following that same line of thought and teachings, "your way of thinking is wrong and you should be ashamed for thinking that way". 

Luckily, since this is a summer class it will be over relatively quickly and then I get to focus on more important things like the program courses that are going to teach me the skills that I will need in my future career.

{Bleh, end rant}

Flower Nursery

I love flowers, so naturally I love really pretty flower nurseries as well.
Here in Oklahoma we have a nursery called The Greenhouse and one of my favorite things about it is that they have several arrangements with fountains and benches to give you an idea of how you can pair flowers and other plants.

They have a HUGE Koi fish pond with HUGE Koi fish that I always love looking at. {Some of these fish are the size of award winning Big Mouth Bass!}

 

I am a sucker for ornate fountains, too and they have several throughout the grounds.

They also have a lot of yard art, including but not limited to statues and benches. There were four really cool statues where the main body looked like a square-ish pillar with ornate Romanesque busts of different women. They were probably made from concrete but stained to look like stone and they were a thousand dollars each. I thought they were absolutely wonderful. {If I had four thousand dollars I would have bought them on the spot!}

Anywho, I love all of this stuff and I hope I can have a beautiful yard to look at when I get my own home.
{Preferably with a husband that loves to do it or a husband that is okay with me hiring a gardener!}

It has been a while...

So I haven't posted lately {mainly because I forgot about this blog while being caught up in school and program drama} and then something made me think of it. Not really sure what, but I hope it happens more often.

I came out with several really good pictures from my spring break trip to Florida but I haven't gone through them all yet {I had to get right back into school when we got back}.

Here are some of my favorites so far though!

Okay, so these are all from the first full day that we were in Florida.
Our first stop was Pass-a-Grille, which is a little town on one of the gulf "barrier" islands which bares the same name. Mom had been told about this beach, that there would be shells galore and great food as well.

Walking up to the beach was a great sandy path at the very end of the island and a bench that gave you a beautiful view of the sand and water below. {These ladies knew where the best seat in the house was!}

 I loved walking along the beach and seeing kids playing in the sand; building sandcastles, burying their younger siblings {hoping to leave them behind, possibly?} and teens and adults lounging on their beach towels, enjoying one of life's simple moments that only a beach can give you.

 The town had several rental houses, condos, shops and restaurants along the middle of the island so when we were starting to feel a bit peckish we strolled along the sidewalk towards the restaurant that Mom had heard about. Such fun and eclectic sights presented themselves to us; bronze beach bums in skimpy bathing suits, biker chicks with Mohawk helmets and this row of bicycles {some old and some new}, chained and rusting in the salty air.

 Ah, at last we reached the restaurant amply named The Hurricane. It was a beautiful building, my untrained eye thought it looked rather Victorian but sturdier to better withstand those rough gulf storms. We sat out side on a quieter side patio enjoying the cool breeze and people watching the public park that was across the street. We ate conch fritters, fish tacos, and crab cake sandwich from a 1940's family recipe. The food was wonderful.

 Along the inland side of the island we came across a something that I presume was the remains of an old dock or wharf, perhaps. The sun-bleached pillars now supported resting Pelicans and other sea birds and boy were they a sight to see. This particular beauty was just letting the wind run under his wings, not going anywhere but enjoying the sensation of flight {or at least that is what I imagined}.

There are so many more great pictures from our trip so I hope to post more soon. :)
Oh yeah and we did end up finding A LOT of great shells on this beach, but not on this day, so that is for another time!

Seriously...

The weather needs to start acting right and give me some heat and sunshine.

I really want to wear these without freezing my bum off, just saying.

Valentine's Day...

Is annoying.
That is all.

Almost as annoying as this girl....

Weather, School and Dating...

Here in Oklahoma it is cold. Yes, I know it is early February but dang-it I am used to short winters in Texas. Yes, the snow has been beautiful but people do not know how to drive in it. I am by no means a perfect driver but I am not afraid to drive in "bad" weather.
I am so tired of the cold.

School is going well except that I am a bit bored which can be a bad thing for me. When I get bored my mind will start to wander and I will not be as disciplined as I normally would be about outside of class studying. Why am I bored? We are going over topics that I have previously studied in other classes making this class feel like a big review. Granted we are going into a bit more detail with these topics but still nothing mind blowing enough to completely hold my interest.

I joined an online dating site {something I said I would never do} and have met one guy and am "emailing" a handful of others. The first guy I met had {in my opinion} great promise until he decided that we were not on the same page in our lives because I was in school and he was settled in a career already. Fine, your loss dude. I'm supposed to go meet another guy later this week for coffee, I'm a bit skeptical about this guy mainly because I'm not sure he is at the maturity level that I am looking for. I have been emailing another guy that is actually overseas right now in the Air Force and he won't be back state-side until August. We seem to share a lot of things in common as far as our interests and hobbies. I just worry that we will become really close over email and then meet in person later and discover that it wouldn't work out face to face. Oh the hassles of dating in this modern time. He did ask if he could write me actual letters which I okayed quickly mainly because I love writing physical letters and wish people did that more often. The hardest part about all of this is that I am a very physically affectionate person and I want to touch and hold the people I care about, with this guy being overseas that part of me is being neglected.

This is why I need a dog of my own that I can cuddle and pet when I need to be affectionate.

Well I guess I better get back to the grind of things. Bleh.