Posts

Posted on

Did You Miss Me?

So, I haven’t posted anything since last Thursday. It’s been five days. And no one, not one single person, said, “Why haven’t you updated your blog?”

Hmmm. Think that should tell me something? Like maybe I don’t have nearly as many faithful fans as I’d thought?

Oh well. I’m not easily discouraged. When it comes to doing creative stuff anyway. Especially when I actually have something interesting to write about and new pictures to share.

Hubby and I spent the weekend at the WV place with our three grandchildren.

There’s Brianna, who is going to turn eight at the end of December…

Then there’s Gaige, who turned five a month ago exactly.

And finally, Joey. At 16 months, he’s the baby of the bunch. But he’s hardly a baby anymore. He walks. He talks (a little). And he’s all about having a good time.

It was an interesting weekend. They kept Hubby and I hopping, that’s for sure! After spending any length of time with the three of them, we both wonder how our daughter, their mother, maintains her sanity. Especially since her Army husband has been off training for EIGHT months. Which in essence means she’s been a single mother of three.

Wow.

Don’t get me wrong, they’re fabulous kids. But they, or at least one of them at any given time, require attention pretty much every single second that they are awake. I guess Hubby and I have just gotten soft in our old age.

Despite the chaos, we did manage to have a pretty good time. Check out this little video to see for yourself. It’s a low-resolution .mpeg. If you’d like to see the higher resolution version and have the patience (just under two minutes with a high-speed connection) to wait for the 16.7 mb .exe file to open, CLICK HERE.

Maybe I’ll share more details later. But only if I get some comments so I know people really are reading this.

Posted on

Make a Spherical Collage

I just discovered a really neat tool thanks to a Flickr friend of mine.

If you go to THIS WEB SITE, you can create an image similar to the one you see above just by entering a tag (keyword, like “Maine” or, as I did here, “Frog”).

The Web site pulls images from Flickr that have that tag and displays them like this. You can use your mouse scroll wheel to zoom in/out and drag your mouse across the screen to turn the globe. You can also click on an individual image to see it close-up or go to the original Flickr page.

If you do like me, and give your pictures unique tags for the sole purpose of having them pulled for the sphere, you’ll get a sphere full of your own images. For example, I tagged all my New England photos with “x13197y.” So if you CLICK HERE then enter x13197y in the little white box, then click on GO, you’ll see a glowing neon sphere. Click on the sphere and it will pull 259 images to load.

That’s all there is to it.

It’s one of those neat but not really useful things one stumbles across now and again on the Web.

Let me know if you try it and whether it works for you.

Posted on

Now That It’s Over

When I stepped out of my office yesterday to go to the bathroom, something down the steps caught my eye.

I had to take a closer look.

Yep, dog legs and tail. Once I walked a bit further and looked down, I saw this.

It was Meg, sound asleep, on the landing. That’s one of her favorite spots. She doesn’t usually lay on her back, though. She usually reserves that position for softer places, like her bed. Or my recliner. But Meg’s crazy, in a good way, and one never quite knows what to expect from her.

Of course, the other thing that caught my eye yesterday were the news headlines that pretty much all said the same thing, “Obama Wins.”

Thank God it is over. It was the longest campaign run in history (I think I remember reading somewhere that it was 21 months). Twenty one LONG months.

Now maybe we can get back to the real news. I wonder what Britney has been up to? And Lindsay Lohan? I hear Brad Pitt has been stepping out on Angie. With his latest co star. Now that is justice.

Posted on

What Happened to Fall???

Doesn’t this picture just make you COLD?

I think it’s an awesome shot. I didn’t take it though. It was taken by one of my new “friends” (pen pals, really) on Flickr. She (Janet) lives in Sterling, Alaska, which is southwest of Anchorage on the Kenai Peninsula.

When we visited Alaska, it was Seward I really fell in love with. That’s on the Kenai Peninsula, too. So I am living vicariously through Janet.

This photo was taken on October 29. I can hear Hubby now saying, “See? I told you it would be too damn cold to live there!”

But it is pretty. Although there are occasional road hazards, she also has quick access to scenery like THIS.

Songwoman, Pam, takes COOL PICS, too. (She and her hubby, AK Dave, also live on the Kenai Peninsula. AK Dave’s pics are restricted to Flickr members for some reason.)

I’m so glad they post great pics for me to enjoy. That’s what friends are for, right? I wonder if they’ll mind me popping in for a visit…

Posted on

Election Day is Finally Here

I am really, really, REALLY glad November 4 has finally arrived. Not because I’ve been chomping at the bit to cast my vote, but because I am so sick of reading about it in the paper/on the Web, hearing about it on the radio, seeing billboards, etc.

I couldn’t resist posting this video, though. My Mom sent it to me. It’s cute. And timely. And is great fodder for my Blog.

I just haven’t had much to say since my last post on Halloween. Not that a lot hasn’t happened. Just not a lot of Blogworthy stuff.

Although I guess I could mention that autumn has finally arrived in my backyard. Saturday, despite the fact that it was oddly warm outside (about 75), I took some pictures. I’ll share a few here.

At left is the “bigger picture” view.

Nice, but not overly dramatic.

You have to get out there. Look closely. Stop and appreciate the spectacular color while you can.

My yard really isn’t all that big. Just under 1/3 acre, I think. But by actually going outside, looking closely and from different angles, I got some pretty cool images.

Like this one…

This is a close-up of a beautyberry bush. From afar, it is quite unremarkable.

I like all the greens in the image below.

And here’s a close-up of a dwarf burning bush.

CLICK HERE to see the rest of Saturday’s photos.

Posted on

Trick or Treat

Last night, Hubby and I made the trek north to hang out with Amy and kids while they did the trick or treat thing.

We can never seem to time our arrivals properly. Amy doesn’t live too far away, but to get there, we need to drive through the Harbor Tunnel and up I-95 during rush hour. The drive that should take 35-40 minutes, took us about an hour and 10 minutes. Because of traffic.

So, while we’d really, really hoped to get there in time to help get the kids suited up and get some decent photos in the daylight before they were exhausted, we didn’t make it.

That’s why they look a bit disheveled in the picture below.

But we still got to help out while they trick or treated. We actually went to Amy’s church where they had a huge outdoor “trick or trunk” party for the kids. People came, decorated their cars, and kids walked around the parking lot to get candy.

Amy’s church is HUGE. There were tons of people. I was amazed at how into it the people with the cars were. Cars were really decorated, people were dressed up and role-playing. It was cool. Some woman even brought her goats for the farm scene she had going.

She had baby goats with her that were really cute. This little one was smaller than my smallest cat.

We didn’t stay at the church long. Amy, who inherited her father’s “love” of large, noisy, chaotic masses of people, was getting a bit claustrophobic. So we headed back to her neighborhood for some good, old-fashioned, door-to-door trick or treating.

Even little Joey (a dinosaur), who is just under sixteen months old, was getting into it.

Hubby carried Joey from house to house, then handed him off to Amy to take him to the door.

You wouldn’t think a kid that small would trick or treat. But he’s got terrific older siblings as role models.

Speaking of older siblings, here are Brianna and Gaige back at the house, waiting for Amy to finish inspecting their goodies.


Joey, meanwhile, was helping with the inspection…

…and loving every minute of it.


I hope you had a fun night, too!

Oh yeah, if you’d like to see the rest of the pictures, you have to go to my Picasa album.