Moon Phase: Waning Gibbous
Weather: Blue sky and surprisingly warm

I had a good xmas. I of course celebrate the winter solstice and not Christmas, but my atheist/agnostic parents like to celebrate xmas on the 25th, even if they don't particularly care about Jesus' supposed birth. Quakers traditionally didn't celebrate Christmas, because they said every day is sacred and celebration is unnecessary, but nowadays most Quakers do Christmas, at least in our branch. So my family does the tree and the decorations and the presents and the visits with relatives. We have traditions that I still love�going out to dinner xmas eve, then coming home and lighting candles and reading A Visit From Saint Nick and The Polar Express, drinking egg nog (well, soy nog in my case�I'm no longer vegan but I just can't stand milk anymore) and eating xmas cookies. On xmas we get up and open presents: I got a digital camera, an Olympus C765, with 10x zoom, 4 megapixels, and pretty good manual controls.

So, onto the pictures, the first ones I've taken with my new camera:

A couple of pictures I took from the car on the way to my cousins' in Virginia on xmas. I really like the way the telephone wires are angled, which was just pure luck. I decided to turn that one black and white because it has such great lines.

Monday morning I woke up early so we could leave for my cousins in Philly, and when I looked out the window I saw that beautiful golden light spilling over the buildings onto the trees, that specific shade and intensity of sunlight that you only see in early morning. So of course I had to take some pictures of it. I never see sunrises; I'm never up early enough. But when I do they just blow me away. Visually, the light of a sunrise is probably exactly like that of a sunset, only backwards, but it feels very different, because I'm still just waking up.

A couple of pictures I took at MLK park in White Oak, where there's a lovely little pond. This was around 3 in the afternoon, but you can see the sun is already setting, turning the sky yellow. Canada geese (no, not "Canadian", Canada) are one of those bizarre native species that have capitalized on the suburbanization of the landscape, have grown tremendously in population and become something of a nuisance, much like invasive non-natives. They just love the Maryland suburbs and they land in parks and leave their crap all over the place. But I still like them; they've got a sort of earthy grace.

Last week I was up on Rockville Pike with my mother doing xmas shopping, and the sky was just amazing. It had been raining off and on and the clouds were starting to thin out but the sun was setting, turning all the clouds into lovely mixtures of red and purple, with bits of blue sky in between. Over in the east, there was a rainbow for a bit. I wanted to take a picture, but I didn't have a camera with me; after all, why would I ever bring a camera along to a place as ugly as Rockville Pike? But I guess even a place like that can bring unexpected beauty.