currently

grab yourself a cup of coffee, it's time for another life-catch-up session. here's what I'm currently up to...

adventuring: all over Taiwan. Husband's cousin and one of my NJ friends are here visiting this week, and we've been trying to show them everything Taiwan has to offer. we've already devoured some xiao long bao and taken them for a ride to Maokong on the Hello Kitty gondola, and this weekend we will be traveling to Taroko Gorge for some hiking.

loving: that the weather is starting to cool off [at least a little] here and the grocery stores have imported some tiny pumpkins. obviously, I had to buy one for the apartment. it's kind of turned into a tradition these past few years.

editing: photos from Hong Kong, photos from Taroko, photos from this summer... ok I still have a HUGE backlog of pictures. I've been doing my best to not take SO many this week, but it's difficult when faced with mountain views and colorful dragons.

struggling: with scooter issues. our scooter decided that it was going to break down this weekend while we were all the way downtown and it was pouring rain. we took a cab home, and Husband and I went back the next day and thankfully found a shop nearby that could fix it. [until the next day, when the scooter we were borrowing from a friend broke down on our way to the train station.]

lifting: Husband and I have been keeping up with our weight lifting, and I was really impressed that I increased my max deadlift by 10kg in one month.

creeped: by the old man at a nearby temple who made the cut-throat gesture at us while we were visiting the other day. I have no idea if we did something wrong or offensive [we weren't even taking pictures] but the four of us walked away as quickly as possible.

geeking: over the blog I designed for Husband. if you're a teacher, or have interest in world history and geography, you might want to check it out.

reading: Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice. I've mentioned before the shelf over at out school full of books left by past teachers... this was one I grabbed because I had heard of it and never read it. how do I say this? it was more depressing, and less sexy, than I had expected. not that it was bad. it was just different from most of the other vampire-related things I have read.

grateful: for the comments you all left on my posts about blogging with heart and my solo travels in Hong Kong. have I mentioned lately that I love you guys?

blood moon lunar eclipse

yesterday morning [Taiwan time] the internet was flooded with talk of the upcoming "blood moon" lunar eclipse. the last eclipse was not visible at all from Taiwan, so I really wanted to try seeing this one and shooting some photos. [the next one visible here isn't until 2018!]

according to the internet, the eclipse would be happening between 6:30 and 7:30pm. normally, we would be at the gym during that time on wednesdays. but a series of events led us to cancel our gym plans and re-create In-N-Out Burger's animal style fries for dinner instead. #sorrynotsorry

I went up to our rooftop just before the peak of the eclipse. to the bare eye, the moon didn't look all that red. but I was dealing with a lot of light pollution [and some regular Taiwan haze.] if I had more notice, I probably would have tried to scoot out into the hills somewhere to shoot away from the light. the situation was a bit of a challenge. BUT it was something really interesting to see, and I would probably have been happy even if all my photos didn't turn out.

this shot above was an 8 second exposure, while the rest in this post are 2 seconds. I shot everything at ISO100 and f/2 with my 50mm lens. ideally, you would want more of a zoom lens [200mm or maybe more] to shoot the moon. I wasn't able to get a lot of detail, but when I crop the heck out of the photo you can kind of see some craters.

it was also really windy. I set up my tripod and started shooting, while keeping a hand close in case it decided to tip over. I definitely had some issues with camera shake and focusing. the tripod was definitely a must! I used the 2 second self timer to help keep my hand from adding to the problem.

I really love that while I was watching the eclipse wednesday night from Taiwan, others [maybe you?] were watching wednesday morning from elsewhere in the world. don't laugh, I think about those kinds of things a lot. were you able to see the eclipse where you were? did you get some good photos?