The Wayward Celt

In lieu of more interesting topics which require proper words, I thought this week would be a good time to show a few images which I captured over the holidays; specifically when we visited the Lan Su Chinese Gardens in downtown Portland:

These were all taken with my Canon EOS 60d using the 18-135mm kit lens. All images have undergone some relatively heavy post-processing using Snapseed on an iPad2. I’m actually quite pleased with Snapseed as an image editing tool, as it is fairly intuitive and easy to learn. The only downside is no way to add a watermark directly, so I have had to import into Google Picasa, and then export with the appropriate watermark set.

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Admittedly, this is an odd topic for me to be posting about.

This isn’t about overt negativity (though that is a problem as well, just not one I wish to tackle here and now), rather, this is about the passive, subtle, invasive, and far more difficult to accurately identify negativity. Negativity which manifests itself in such common ways as to be virtually unnoticed let alone identified as negative.

I’ve been working on the concept for this post in my head over the past three months now. But today it came to me from such a different perspective, that I’ve had to stop and re-evaluate how I put this out there. So let me be clear here: everything in this post stems from bits I don’t like about myself, things I see as a reflection of me elsewhere in the world both on-line and off.

I’ve noticed in the past 37+ years of my life, what I will call a personality trait geared towards negativity. Some may call it pessimism, and at times it is (lord knows no one has ever mistaken me for an optimist). At other times, I’d go as far as to call it a sense of entitlement or selfishness. But, most often, it is just a subtlety of verbiage which casts a grey pall upon the mundane; a way of simply missing the positive in a situation and instead focusing on a down-side, problem, or general dislike.

With the abundance of over-sharing on the social web, this negativity is highlighted and brought into greater focus. Complaints, or simply negatively tinged updates run rampant and, by my guesstimation, likely make up as much as 65% of all posts on social sites. Obviously I am shooting from the hip here, with no real data to back this up, just observation over the past few years, but regardless of actual numbers the sentiment stands: there is constant negativity around us all. And it is getting worse. (See what I did there?)

Something as simple as lamenting what that doughnut your boss brought in for the team at work is going to do to your diet seems innocuous enough as single status update. But, when combined with all the other updates coming across your wall/feed/dash, and in such numbers from the same people, you can’t help but be affected by it all… sooner or later that negativity will get to you, even when (or perhaps especially if) you are one of the worst offenders of it all.

Because I am as much of a perpetrator of this problem as I also observe it, I’d like to challenge you to take a moment with me and look at our own posts/status/updates over the past week and try to see them from a different perspective: are those posts tinged with a negative slant? Are the positive ones actually born of a negative perspective? Is there a way to shift the complaint to a win? Join me and let’s work to shift our perspective to the positive and see what happens!

I figure if I try and change the small stuff, the Tweets/ Facebook statuses/ G+ updates/ Blog posts, those things which I have editorial review over before clicking the share or publish button, perhaps it will become habit and bleed into other areas in my life. Perhaps, just perhaps, a slight adjustment here or there will have more dramatic ripple effects and the people around me will soon find me to be more pleasant to interact with and not as negative a person as I’ve been for the past few decades.

I’ll tell you, tough as it is for me, I feel better already.

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… but…

I WILL be back to blogging once per week in 2012. The latter three months in 2011 became a bit hectic for me which resulted in an emotional depletion of energy, which in turn meant I had no energy left to write. This became overly evident to me in my vain failed attempt to do NaNoWriMo this year. I’d thought that forcing myself to write would jump start me back into the habit, but alas, it just proved too much this time round and I ran out of gas by day 15 without hopes of completion, nor inspiration to continue.

Odd, though, since I HAVE been inspired to blog and write… the muse has been working in my head, just the time and energy seem to have found other venues. Wouldn’t it be nice for the muse to bring her own energy reserves along for the ride, so that when inspiration hits you also have the energy to put the words to paper? Ah, to be so lucky.

That all said, my 2011 goal was to blog once per week, and in general I almost accomplished that… here… If you add in the 3 Drunken Celts blog, and my work blog (in which I posted on average about 3.75 times per week), then I think I actually blew my goal out of the water. But I can’t, in good conscience, claim my work blog as part of the goal since the spirit of it was to blog personally and flex a more creative muscle than I am able to at work. So, I’m maintaining that goal for 2012 as well: one personal blog of some substance, per week, all year, no exceptions, no excuses. If 2012 shapes out to be as interesting as it seems from my present viewpoint, I shouldn’t be worrying about a lack of topics to discuss or experiences to relay.

I am hoping that with some added focus I can make this coming year the year of “Very BIG THINGS” for me, see some of my efforts start to pay off, and possibly become one of those few critical pivotal years in my life…. we shall see.

I’ll leave you with this: one of my recent photographs taken from within my home office on a rather chilly day, the ice had built up a bit overnight on the roof below my window, and then the sun peaked out… perhaps this will also be the year in which I take my photography to a new level as well…

A study in texture:

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For most people a spontaneous trip on the weekend may occur within hours of the idea… us? Well, sitting at dinner on Friday night we checked some internet sites as we began talking and researching a weekend trip out to the coast. Knowing that this was also 75% of the rest of Oregon’s plan, we figured a jaunt out on Saturday and back on Monday to a lesser frequented area would likely get us the best rate with the fewest people… and we were right!

We ended up at the Salishan Golf & Spa resort a few miles north of Depoe Bay and a few south of Lincoln City. With the full intent of ‘doing nothing’ on our agenda, the smaller towns didn’t matter much, as the resort’s restaurants offered just what we’d need between a Saturday mid day arrival and Monday midday departure. I have to say, the chef and service staff in the Steak House, the Attic Lounge, and the Clubhouse Grill were outstanding and the food was of impeccable quality. In all honesty, I was a bit surprised at the high quality, being a ‘resort’ destination I expected the typical banquet type kitchen fare and quality. Not so. The kitchen for the Steak house and Attic was putting out some standard dishes with decidedly non-standard exceptional quality. And with a 40 page wine list, how can you go wrong?

So, plus one for great food… and plus two for the other part of our plan: get out of a 90 degree weekend in-land. The coast is THE place to be when Portland just into the 90′s, and this past weekend it didn’t disappoint. Saturday treated us to a comfortable 71, then Sunday was bobbing around the mid 60′s, and Monday didn’t top 57 degrees by the time we left around 1pm. Ah, climate bliss. Which actually scores a third point for us as well: avoiding painting the hallway/guest bath/pantry/loft in 95 degrees. Avoidance achieved!

The only real down side to the whole trip was the unavoidable traffic to and from. What should have been an easy 2 hour drive stretched into 3 going out and 3.5 coming back. Of course I DID expect it, so it wasn’t too rough. Still traffic isn’t exactly fun, so it wasn’t a nice drive either.
And, because our whole intent was to do nothing this weekend, I didn’t get many photos of the area or sights. I’d had hoped to get some good shots of Depoe Bay entrenched in fog as it normally is, but by the time we got there Monday on our way home, the fog had already dissipated to just a gray pall. Not really the dramatic effect I’d been looking for. On the upside, however, we stumbled across another covered bridge sign on our way out to the coast, and made a point to swing by it on our way back. We can now cross off Drift Falls covered bridge from our list of covered bridges to see in Oregon…

In any case, I leave you with some shots from the weekend:

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Finally had time to get my head above water after the past few weeks here and took some time this weekend to download photos, do some editing, and write a brief post….

As you likely have seen in my other various social site postings, my sister-in-law and mom-in-law visited for ten days between Aug. 13 and 22nd. We had a wonderful visit and ran ourselves (as well as them) ragged. We headed out to Timberline Lodge one day (noted in the prior post here), out to the coast for a nice day driving from Tillamook to Astoria then home via the Columbia, and capped off the trip with a jaunt out to Maryhill winery through the Columbia Gorge and a stop off at Multnomah falls since it was such a gorgeous day. In between, mom and sis took a side trip out to Culver, Or. to visit a friend on the east side of the Cascades. With all that driving I am sure they are both sick to death of cars! That said, we all had a great time seeing so much of what Oregon has to offer!

We saw them off back home Monday morning the 22nd, and since then I’ve been busy at work preempting any sort of post here. Thankfully this weekend we had no plans, allowing me some nice downtime to recharge the batteries and get some pictures posted for you all… so without further ado, here’s a few shots from the past three weeks:

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This past weekend my sister-in-law and mother-in-law arrived for a ten day vacation.  Saturday was spent relaxing around the house, but Sunday we decided to take a quick day trip up to Timberline Loge on Mount Hood for lunch and a trip up the mountain on the chairlift.

I don’t recall much of the chairlift as my eyes were closed for the larger part of the ride up, and even more so on the ride back down… still I was able ot get a few good pictures on the trip:

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Our anniversary present to ourselves: saving our backs. We did that by hiring a landscape crew to do our yard cleanup for us. Some of the best money we’ve spent! Here’s the proof…

Side by side comparisons of before/after the cleanup… sadly, it isn’t quite as dramatic in the pictures as it is in person:

Now all we need to do is maintain it… shouldn’t be too hard, right? RIGHT?

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(as couched in the verdict levied today in the Casey Anthony trial)

Here is the problem with the media being so intertwined with our justice system… After watching the Casey Anthony case, the public at large now thinks they have the right to judge and and lay down a guilty verdict upon her, regardless of the court proceedings, and regardless of how the jury came to their verdict.

While the media filters ‘facts’ through their ratings tinted lenses, we all seem to have forgotten that 12 jurors had to deliberate, vote, and lay their determination based on the proceedings and facts presented. Is it so difficult to believe that perhaps the media has skewed our perception of what may really have happened? Do we all really think we know better because we saw a 30 second spot on TV or read a 3 paragraph news article? I’d love to hold the media as greatly responsible for the deep distrust society has for our system, but really, I can only blame our own arrogance;  our own belief that we know better because we have a little knowledge.

I know I wasn’t on the jury; I have no place to lay blame or judgment. I, for one, can only identify 12 people who DO have that capability and responsibility. The rest of us get to trust that their decision was more well informed and thoughtful than ours ever could be with only the media to influence our perception of the case.

The media has served to thoroughly break our trust in the system time and time again by providing tidbits of information disguised as fact. And, once broken, that trust is near to impossible to regain… even once we realize that cherry-picked facts never provide the whole story; that our condemnation of the accused may have been misguided by poor journalism standards and partial truths.

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And no pictures to post this time either. For shame. While I could go on about how work has monopolized my energies these past few weeks, that is only a partial truth. All be told, my muse just isn’t here right now. But I am hopeful. There is light on the horizon.
Whiskies of the World is upon us! Next week I’ll be in flight to my yearly pilgrimage to San Francisco to attend the annual Whiskies of the World expo and sample some of the new drams coming out of my favourite distilleries, as well as learn some more about craft distilling this year in one of the additional classes being presented. I’ve not yet decided if I want to bring my new camera along, as I’m not sure I want that extra concern in the environment, though it would help me document each of the drams I taste and take notes on. We’ll see. I expect a lengthy report to come of this year, just as years past, so look forward to another chapter of “The Gospels according to Seamus” to hit the 3DC website in the week or two after the grand tasting.
I have other things I need to get done as well, like finish my hand crank phone conversion and blog about it, but that’s stalled out for the time being while other priorities take precedence. I also have grand plans to write more, which will hopefully come to fruition as spring descends upon us. I’m fully engulfed by the motorcycle road trip itch again, so likely that will lend to some fun travel blogs as well in the coming months. Just gotta figure out where to go

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My parents visited us last weekend, which prompted us to take some touristy day trips with them. Since I’ve been exhausted since then and work ramped up activity too, I wanted to at least get out some of the pictures from the weekend and get that weekly blog post done. I may write up something more, but for now it is just visual.

I present these mainly untouched photos (a few have been mildly altered) as the best of the weekend either by my choice or my Dad’s (as we looked through them and he pointed out his faves).

Evergreen Air and Space Museum, Canon Beach in Oregon, and North Head Lighthouse on the Southern Washington coast:

As always I welcome your comments critiques. I know there’s a LOT of photos here, so don’t feel the need to comment on any/all… I hope you enjoy them in their ‘raw’ state!

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