Landscape of Virginia

What a beautiful day for a Parade, and there was one afterall. The Dogwood Parade was one of my first good impressions of this community back when I first arrived to this fair city. Everyone put aside their differences and problems for a day of celebration and pride in our community by walking down the Main Street of our city. I met one of our students and a teacher at the Parade route and sat with them. It was the students first view of a live parade so it was fun to see joy showing on his face. I could tell he wasn't too too involved in watching the dignitaries but he sure enjoyed the old cars and pretty princesses. Much like me actually, I enjoyed having a reason to see it.

What's nice about having a digital camera is being able to photograph anything at all without waste such as having wasted a shot on film. I still like analog film but it's so much better to use a digital camera because of the simplicity and the overall better features on a digital camera. I like fooling around with the image using photo-shop software. With an analog camera such thing were possible but you would need a darkroom and all that equipment in order to do it. It was all very cumbersome to fool around with the image once the picture was taken. All in all, these new digital cameras that are using SLR form as by-far better than anything analog cameras can do or be. Around here, some camera shops that dealt with analog items like film developing and sales of equipment well they have gone out of business. Such is the survival of the technology once the new form arrives on the scene.

It's a day to be remembered in sorrow, after getting back from my job site for the afternoon, I got the news of the shootings at Va Tech in Blacksburg. The wind was very severe today with dark dark clouds moving fast and low in the sky. I stood in the wind with my student for fifteen minutes waiting for the school bus, the wind was horrific and the sky was foreboding. I did not know at that time about the tragedy. I found out when we got on the bus to go back to Post High. It's hard to believe that it happened so near to here, I will pray for all those killed by the gunman at Va Tech today. Peace be with you all....

It really rained today, it was a heavy down pouring at times when I was driving and when I was out walking from my car to the gym. I was told by a professional biologist that weather would become more and more severe as the globe warmed up. It seemed that way today. It's only water though and I could deal with a few wet clothes, but my friend mentioned that the water in the rivers and creeks, streams and so on would crest and most likely go over it's banks tomorrow. Most people don't build in a floodplain but some do. This is when it pays not to build in one. The mountains really collect the water and send it downstream quickly yet still the effects of a heavy rain aren't really felt until the day after a storm. The rain hasn't knocked off much of the tree pedals from the dogwood or other currently flowering trees. They are heartier species of flowering trees that have their flowers out right now around here, because all the earlier flowering trees have los