Southern California Day-Trippin: Orange County Performing Arts Center

As you may, or may not, have noticed, after the last post here of some of Chapman University’s highlights, I decided to create a separate blog just for Chapman. I’m frequently taking photographs there and in the surrounding area when I’m at lunch, so I decided the Chapman neighborhood needed its own page. So for more of Chapman life, see “All in the Name of Work”

On a roll, I decided to create yet another blog for the home and backyard shots in Westminster and Running Springs. I’d been meaning to start this page for a long time to accommodate Jasper, Simba, Archimedes, and Mr. Bunny stories/photos—so now that we’ve acquired a new family member, I was anxious to get it started.

What new family member? I don't want to give it away. Go ahead and take a peek at “Home Home on the Range” and you’ll figure it out (in a couple of weeks). Since the page opened with Araneidae (Orb Weaver Spiders) and an Odonata (dragonflies), I’ll provide a hint here that the newest member of our family is a …. Oh, let’s not make it too easy….let's just say, “mammal”. I've included the links to each blog in the right column of each page.

OK, back to Day-Trippin’, or in this next case, “Night-Trippin’”. Going back to July again, Don and I went to the Orange County Performing Arts Center to see a group called “Celtic Woman”. We had a fabulous time. The pictures inside the theater did not turn out so great. I forgot to speed up the ASA and, too, I didn’t realize my little automatic camera would try so hard to expose the dim areas, totally over exposing the subjects within the spotlights. I’ll toss in a few of these just for a sense of the thing though. I have not decided whether I’ll throw in the picture of Don and I that we asked someone to take. The gentleman we recruited pressed down on the shutter and nothing happened. I started to explain that the camera is slow to respond in the dark when the darn thing flashed, catching me mid word.
The concert was fabulous! The music was pleasant on the ears and the ladies were lovely and entertaining. Besides the lilting voices of the four primary ladies, one of them dances about playing her fiddle and another plays a harp. With equal stage presence and aplomb, backup singers and musicians complete the ensemble. If you haven’t heard Celtic Woman, and you like Celtic music that's a bit remeniscent of Enya, you really should find the "Celtic Woman" CD, and if you can catch them in concert, all the better!

On approach.

Outside the theater
(Maybe over exposed and a little blurry is a better look for me--my age is less obvious. The big black purse has got to go though.)

And this is the one I told you about--just when I started to explain to the photographer about the delay, the pesky thing finally worked...but isn't Don handsome?!