Here are my Celebration highlights (in no particular order):

One Man Star Wars Trilogy (I think this was the best part – if you ever get a chance to see it, I highly recommend it!)

Mark Hamill interview

Anthony Daniels interview

Robot Chicken panel discussion

Watching kids (younglings) go through Jedi training and then seeing them each fight (and take down) Darth Vader

The costumes!!!  (Star Wars fans are super crafty!)

Storm Trooper helmet art exhibit

Lifesize Jabba and Max Rebo band, lifesize AT-AT, lifesize TIE fighter

Legos everywhere!!!

Toy dioramas!

Toys in general!  I could have photographed just the toys for two weeks straight!

Droids moving around the Celebration – I have decided that I need my own R2 unit to be my assistant at weddings.

Here are a few of my favorite photos from the Celebration.  Enjoy, and May the Force Be With You!

Mini hot-air balloons with wishes written on them.  It was absolutely beautiful!

On the following day we walked around Alma a bit to check out the low tide.  The tides on the Bay of Fundy are very dramatic, and vary significantly from low to high tide.  We happened upon a boat that had been in water the previous night and was now on land.  I walked to it through the mud so that I could get a close wide-angle shot of it, and I felt like I was walking on quicksand.  Small islands started appearing in the bay, and we decided to get a closer look.  As the tide kept getting lower and lower, the little islands eventually formed a walkway out into the ocean!  From there we headed to Cape Enrage, which is an awesome cliff with a bed of rocks below it.  We were then onto the Hopewell Rocks, which were amazing except for the mud and the fact that, as usual, I was without appropriate footwear.

After the rocks we began our journey to Nova Scotia.  We had a nice dinner in a town called Truro, after which… wait for it… our car starting acting crazy (battery light went on, other lights were flashing, the engine started overheating, etc).  Under normal circumstances I’d have been very concerned.  In fact, I’d have been angry.  Instead of feeling nervous and angry, I felt grateful and relieved.  For the previous two hours of driving in Nova Scotia there was nothing.  Absolutely nothing.  No people, no houses, no streetlights, no cell phone reception.  Nothing.  We happened to break down approximately 1/4 of a mile from a VW dealership (we have a 2007 Rabbit), which happened to be right next to a Comfort Inn.  I looked it up, and there are only seven VW dealers in all of Nova Scotia.   If we’d broken down anywhere else during our drive through Nova Scotia we’d have been stranded without cell phone reception, light, or a place to stay for the night.  It was cosmic.  We drove to the VW dealership, abandoned the car, and stayed at the Comfort Inn for the night.

We woke up early the next morning and went to the dealership.  Turned out something was wrong with our alternator belt (something about pulleys and tension).  The battery wasn’t charging, and basically the car was shutting down.  Since the shop wasn’t open until Monday, we left the car behind, got a rental, and headed to my friend’s wedding!  The wedding was at a lodge in Liscombe Mills, on the east coast of Nova Scotia.  The drive there was lovely – once again we drove through beautiful land and coastline, and saw signs like “Last Restaurant For 45 Minutes.”  We arrived at the wedding site starving but happy!  The wedding was so much fun!  It was slightly different from an American wedding, and had FIVE FULL HOURS OF DANCING.  Amazing!!!

We ended up staying at the lodge again the following day since there was no point in leaving since we were without a car.  I did a whole lot of nothing.  I read a book on our room’s private deck overlooking the river, went kayaking, ate lots of food, and watched Something Something Something Dark Side on my laptop.

On Monday we headed to the dealership to retrieve our car, and they said “We rush ordered the part – it will be here tomorrow afternoon” and we freaked out, because my husband had a ton of work waiting for him in MA (and also we didn’t want to be stranded in Nova Scotia – as I have already mentioned, there’s a whole lot of nothing and while that is nice for a while, at some point one wants to do something other than sit in a hotel room).  The owner of the dealership (much like everyone in Canada) was super nice, and offered to take the part out of one of their cars.  Yes!  We waited for about three hours, and were on our way back to the States.  We crashed at a hotel in Bangor on Monday night, and came back yesterday.

All in all, it was a positive trip.  I am sort of bummed out because the “Return” portion of our road trip, which was supposed to be on Sunday and Monday and involve stops in Maine and Acadia, didn’t get to happen due to our car troubles.  But it could have been far worse, and the bright side of this story is really really bright.

I didn’t take many photos on the trip.  Lately I’ve been focused on having experiences instead of documenting them.  Plus, this was mostly a scenery trip and landscapes have never been my forte.  Nevertheless, here are a few of my favorite photos from the trip.  There are some photos of Cape Enrage, the Hopewell Rocks, and the cool ocean walkway that formed before our eyes in Alma.  Enjoy!

I went up to NH this weekend with my husband, sister, and two cousins.  My  grandparents have a cottage up on Lake Winnisquam that we don’t visit as much as we should.  My plan for the weekend was simple – read books, catch up on magazines, drink wine and take photos.  My book-reading and magazine-catching-up plan was thwarted by a very loud ski lodge.  The wine-drinking was foiled by, well, just forgetting to drink it!  And the photo-taking was defeated by ridiculously cold weather.   I did manage to take a few frames this afternoon during our walk to the beach.  I feel like there should be penguins… maybe I’ll Photoshop some in!

While we were there, my brother took us to Grounds For Sculpture where he now works.  It’s an absolutely beautiful sculpture park, and I was happy to take my point and shoot out for a ride since it rarely gets used.  Enjoy!

I spent a few hours in Philadelphia last weekend and went straight to Reading Terminal Market, one my favorite places in the world.  I’d used my camera for work on my vacation, so I wasn’t too excited about taking photos.  I forced myself and came up with some of these images.

This next photo is a remake of a photo I took like four or five years ago in Reading Terminal Market.  I only had a 3 megapixel point-and-shoot at the time, and it just didn’t hold up when I tried to print it at a decent size.  Unfortunately this new one can’t compare – the old one was SO much better.  I don’t really know why – I think the old one had a long shutter speed so there was almost a motion to it because the camera’s flash fired.  I didn’t want to fire the flash this time because I was already super conspicuous with my giant camera and lens.  So disappointing!  Maybe some day when I am rich and famous I’ll set up an array of cookie cutters in the studio and get it just right.

I only took about 20 frames in Reading Terminal Market, because I ended up encountering this joyful woman playing classical piano.  I plopped myself down and listened for about half an hour while I let myself decompress for the first time in over three weeks.  It was marvelous.

Outside the market.

And finally some COLOR – chocolate covered marshmallows on a stick!

This past weekend I met up with Nell and Chidozie in NYC for an engagement shoot (stay tuned!) in Bryant Park.  It was marvelous to be in NYC again although, as usual, I was conflicted.  I know it’s not right for me but I miss it so much!!   It was hot and chaotic and its energy was an inspiration.

I like this next shot because it captures the rare species known as quiet in NYC.

As part of the engagement shoot, we decided to go on the carousel in Bryant Park.  This is a photo of the guy who ultimately kicked me off the carousel (more on that later)!

After the engagement shoot, I had a few minutes to wander around NYC before I had back to my brother’s place in Princeton, NJ.  I headed straight for Times Square (after purchasing my Flight of the Conchords t-shirt at the HBO Store) to check out the new “pedestrian walkway.”

I had such high hopes for this!  I really truly believed that there would be less people, or, the same amount of people but less chaos due to a lack of traffic.  But there was the same amount of chaos + traffic (so traffic apparently still flows east/west so its not truly a walkway) + people sitting in lawn chairs.  It’s nice that there are finally places for people to sit – especially on lawn chairs! – as NYC is notorious for not having enough places to sit.  But I can’t imagine wanting to sit down in Times Square.

That’s about it from NYC.  Photos from Philly soon!

We were in Austria for three days. We toured the city briefly on the first day after our flight. We took a train to Salzburg on the second day to take the tour (I will spare you those photos – I will assume that you do not care about The Sound of Music as much as I do and don’t really need to see 10,000 photos of the gazebo). On the third day we toured the city again, went to the Freud Museum and the art district, saw 12 billion statues, and concluded that Vienna is the best city ever. I think I may be Austrian at heart!

Enjoy some of my favorite images from our time in Austria!