so, make cookies

I made some cookies a couple weeks ago, and it seems time for a sweet treat around here. Especially with Valentine's Day around the corner! These are pistachio sandies. I think what I was really craving were sand tarts,  like I remember my grandmother's sand tarts. What I remember of my grandmother's sand tarts are paper thin cookies (at Christmas time) sprinkled with red and green sprinkles. What I also remember is my grandmother saying that you should have seen her mother's sand tarts. She rolled them so thin you could see through them. Mom, am I remembering this right? Anyway. That's not what these are.

These are sandies. Usually sandies are the pecan variety, but I wanted something different, so I sleuthed around and found this recipe. Hey guess what! It's gluten free! But I got stuck at the grocery store and couldn't find several of the ingredients. Fortunately Google comes to the grocery store with me (how handy!), and I found a non-GF version for all the little people. You can find it here. You'll have to scroll to get to the recipe, which I had to tweak a bit, so if you decide to make it, shoot me a line and I'll let you know what helped me out.

They were good.

Up next? Sand tarts. Grandma's version.

i can see clearly now?

Charleston, December 2014
Fuji Superia shot on a Pentax K1000

I can't take a break without thinking of that Friends episode where Ross and Rachel were "on a break." I may have been on a blog break, but I wasn't really on a break. No rest for the weird, my girlfriend Sarah and I used to say. I could use another, I think. I'm not sure my outlook shifted all that much. Let's be honest.

The first class in my Intro to Digital Photography course is really overwhelming. I can see the fear and frustration in the eyes of my students, and I remember exactly how I felt that first day. You really think, "What the hell made me think this was a good idea any way?" For some of us, it's worth muscling through, and for others, we sit out the class, glean what we can and that's that. It's all good.

One of the things we learn off the bat is the exposure triangle (and I remember thinking, MATH? NUMBERS? Nobody said!), and I try to explain the concept of digital noise to my students. You get digital noise in an image when you've increased your ISO (akin to the old film speeds) too high. ISO increases the sensitivity of the camera's sensor. Sensor too sensitive? Too much noise.

Ah. Another metaphor for life. For me, there's been too much digital noise lately. I've been feeling bombarded by input, much of it not of my choosing. So I felt restless and cranky and vulnerable in a way that doesn't feel good. I'm a fan of vulnerable when it leaves you open to new ideas and people and experiences. I don't like it as much when it leaves you feeling tender and uncertain and disconnected.

So I pretty much shut things down (except for National Signing Day when I was glued to Twitter to see how the college football team we follow fared), and it was really good. I liked it. I'll likely do it more often. But I missed you guys too. And blogging. I missed that. I have such, such ambivalence about blogging and where it fits with my life right now, but honestly? Where would I be without you? I missed our connections. So I guess it all comes back to balance, right? My own little exposure triangle. How much of myself to expose? How sensitive to make that sensor so I don't get too much digital noise.

There's a beagle on my lap and a fire in the fireplace, so bottom line? It's all good.