Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Bermuda Triangle

Weird things have happened out here in BFE. You would think we'd be insulated from craziness but we're not. We attract it.

1. Once a runaway from a troubled girls home ended up at our house having an asthma attack. She walked 10 miles on the tracks, passing countless farms and chose this place to be the one she got hauled away from by the authorities.

2. One chilly October morning a man knocked on my door at 6 a.m. He'd been at the bar in K Town the night before and took his tried and true gravel route to M town and ended up in the ditch. He was considerate enough to sleep in his car and wait until morning to knock at my door. He was no where near the gravel road route to M town.

3. One evening a crazed, drunken man knocked at my door needing me to call his wife to come and get him with the horse trailer. And a winch, I guess. He had been riding along the dredge ditch and his horse had gotten mired in the mud.

4.The topper (the tip of the triangle,if you will) has to be the guys who took a left turn onto the railroad tracks near our place, hanging up their car. The sheriff's office was called, the deputy arrived and Crab and Deputy Bill worked at pulling the drunken idiots out of the car AS A TRAIN WAS BARRELING TOWARDS THEM. I stood in the road with baby H in my arms watching the train smash the old Chevy down the tracks and wondered if Crab, Bill & the drunks survived. (They did.)

I don't miss the errant drunks and runaways but it's hard to keep the Bermuda Triangle feeling going if nothing weird happens. Now I have to settle for the 2 roosters that showed up a couple of months ago. No hens, just roosters.

Tonight I went for a short walk. The weather was turning and there was a near triangle experience.




Sun on K Town




November Surprise











Weather



Nest


Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Retrospect

It seemed serendipitous to find a Facebook friend with twenty five pounds of tomatoes she did not want. I didn't can anything this year and I jumped on those tomatoes so fast the other FB friends were eating dust.

I am still in the middle of a canning mess. The sad part is these aren't real tomatoes, they are greenhouse grown and devoid of tomato aroma, texture and flavor.

I think my day would have been better spent on plan A, which was defrosting the deep freezer.

Sunday, October 17, 2010

Labor Pains

My camera worked on Labor Day. I got some nice pictures. The next time I picked it up everything I snapped looked like this:


Nice lines and color!


That's Molly, the little firecracker I rescued from a stupid, stupid woman who was giving all of her flea-bitten, wormy cats and kittens to the shelter if no one took them. My neighbor took 2 kittens, too, so Molly has siblings just down the road.

I guess I don't have much room to talk, stupid wise. I was on duty when Hey Bob escaped. I still dream about her and want her back even though that would exceed my 2 cat limit.

It has taken Skittles a little longer to warm up to Molly than it did Hey Bob. Maybe because Molly is such a fearless feline. She does not know when to quit and gets in moods where she decides the dog's tail is the ONLY toy worth playing with even though the dog snaps at her.


RAWR! I hate that kitten!


Oh, yeah. I got a new camera, too. I am still trying to figure out its nuances and I wish I were as steady as a tripod but it's a big improvement over lined, magenta tinged images.


Cat fight!


Testing the zoom on my lens. I took these from the same spot.


Wide angle



At the end of the optical zoom



Digital zoom


Testing the macro:


Pansy


Jetsam and flotsam from this morning's walk:


 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 


Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Change In The Weather

The weather is out of the sticky hot summer mode and into the glorious fall mode. The cats have noticed. Last Monday I would have banged their heads together if I would have been able to catch them. They ran and chased each other from room to room and up and down the stairs.

Hey Bob escaped last Tuesday morning and eluded me all day. I finally got her in the house before Crab came home in the evening. She got a stern talking to and responded by settling into my lap and purring.

The next day things were pretty quiet. Snotty Pants is getting fat and lazy and Hey Bob was still recovering from Tuesday's romp. Before I went to bed I put the dog out to do her business. The cats ran to the porch. When I opened the door to let the antique dog in both cats bolted for the lawn. No biggie. It's happened before. Besides, I get up to pee at least once in the night. And Hey Bob is newly spayed so at least she wouldn't come back pregnant.

When I woke up at 2:30 I went out with a flashlight. Snotty Pants raced for the safety of the porch. Hey Bob danced in the light and completely dodged me. Fine, I thought, she will be more than ready for a warm, dry house when I wake up.

I haven't seen her since.

Saturday, August 28, 2010

Chit Chat

To those of you who know me, even if just in cyberspace, you know that Thursday night was my first night of the league bowling season. I was less than excited to start a winter sport during the height of summer and kind of hoped that my team had had a private meeting and kicked this old broad out. No such luck.

I went. I bowled. I kept score. I sat and waited my turn. And when I wasn't keeping score, bowling or waiting I kept my eye on team mate Chit Chat, who was boring holes in the brain of our potential new sub with a constant stream of mindless blather.

I watched the bowlers in the rotation and evilly eye-balled Chit Chat when it was her turn to bowl. Often it was necessary to shout "CHIT CHAT -- LANE WHATEVER!" The rest of us agreed that we were happy that it was not our brains that being drained of vital fluid.

One of my team mates brought up a good point -- that it was a "talent" to be able to ALWAYS have something to say.

Team mate said she was in situations all the time when she never knew what to say. I had to agree. That is me all the time. I've seen Chit Chat accost people who barely knew her and engage them in long conversations. Such a talent would never keep me from funerals (well, except for the churchy part) or wedding receptions where the only person I knew was the groom's mother.

When bowling was over Chit Chat commandeered a conversation from another bowler about the attempted suicide of her sister and turned the light on herself. Isn't it also a talent to know when to shut the fuck up? When to listen? When to put the keys in the ignition and drive away?

Since I could not afford the loss of more brain matter, I got in my car and drove away.

Anti-Social

I sloughed off yet another funeral today. Sorry. I don't do church well. Tonight I am avoiding a wedding reception after avoiding the wedding this afternoon. I would feel bad about that if the bride or groom could pick me out of a line-up, but neither could. The mother of the groom (who is responsible for me getting an invitation) could but I'm hoping she is sufficiently soused and will not remember if I attended or not.

My neighbor called a while ago to invite me over for a few brewskis. Her husband is gone. Crab is gone. It is a beautiful night to sit in the yard and gab. I could go for a one-on-one gab session with an old friend but she said one of her sisters was coming over. If there's one sister, there's three and that's three too many.

It is Saturday night. If I had my druthers, I'd be out with the 30 something bachelorette party that I wasn't invited to. It's just as well as it is nearly past my bed time as I write.

So -- blah.

Thursday, August 12, 2010

August 7, 2010


Bright



Heart of the matter



Droplets



More Droplets


The day went down the toilet after this.

Wednesday, August 04, 2010

Coupon Lady

I got stuck in line behind the coupon lady from hell today. I was so intent on getting my mission accomplished that I didn't realize it until it was too late.

I pushed my cart into an aisle of the grocery store that did not have the "open' light on. I looked at the checker dude and asked if he was still open and he assured me he was. I didn't realize at the time that he was so distracted/busy with coupon lady that he couldn't take the time to flip a switch.

I got up there and since the woman was already firmly ensconced at the station where one divvies up cash/charge/debit I didn't look. I assumed I was close to getting my stuff scanned and paid for. Boy, was I wrong.

I put up my reusable grocery totes and then started throwing my heavy crap on the conveyor belt. Checker Dude looked at me and told me Coupon Lady wasn't done unloading her cart.

THEN I looked. THEN I realized her cart was half full. She hadn't been paying -- she was leafing through the store ad and shuffling through approximately 1,279 coupons that she had in an envelope. And she was contesting every charge that came up on the screen by going through the ads and her coupons -- which weren't well organized.

To help I started taking things out of her cart and placing them on the belt. But there was more!! She had shit on the shelf below the main basket. Holy crap! When her merchandise actually moved along, I saw the bag of grapes was open and the movement caused one to fall on the floor between our carts.

Checker Dude was flustered, but kept his composure. He complied with every request she made to check the ad, the coupon, whatever. Even when things had already been scanned, couponed and checked she called him on some two cents she was due. Checker Dude had Bagger Boy find and remove contested item. Sometimes he had to call corporate for a judgment call, I swear.

To pass the time I looked at magazines. I didn't know who any of the people on the covers were, big surprise. Bigger surprise -- I looked at magazines and did not cold cock this penny pinching hag. Biggest surprise -- it amused me to watch Checker Dude being pushed to the limit and not cracking. Kind of reminds me of my waitress days when patrons did not die of their obnoxiousness and left a tip besides.

Coupon Lady finally gave up on her penny pinching because her ice cream was melting. Then she pulled out two 100 dollar bills to pay for her purchases. Checker Dude nearly cracked since he did not have much for change. Coupon Lady settled for 5's and 1's ("How many ones??") I guess her melting ice cream took precedence since she accepted them.

Coupon Lady apologized to me for the delay. I told her I would remember her and never get behind her again. When she was gone I told Checker Dude he was a prince, which he was. He reminded me of the store motto "a friendly smile in every aisle".

As I was leaving I told Bagger Boy and Checker Dude that Coupon Lady lost a grape and would be back for it. I could hear their sphincters snap.

Sunday, August 01, 2010

The End Of July

I managed to get some decent shots of one of my favorite insects. I can't get enough of nature's little helicopter.


Blue sky / dragon fly



Hairy belly -- who knew? (Besides Crab)


My friend, Hulles, is back in Iowa caring for his ailing mother. We got together Friday night. On my way out of the house Crab called to me, "Have fun on your date!" And I did.


Date night with Hulles


Crab mowed on Saturday while I was upstairs digging dust bunnies out. Warning to my future guests -- I'm sure I did not get them all. Please do not look for them. When I came down and sat at my desk I saw this stuck in the window.


Mowing day surprise

Wednesday, July 28, 2010

WTF

I consider myself somewhat computer savvy. You may not think it to look at me, but I am not a total idiot. Not constantly, anyway.

Tonight Captain Crab sent me a YouTube link that I cannot open to save my life. YouTube wants me to prove something, though I'm not sure what. My age?? How bad can a video about a Winnebago be??

Google and YT must be in cahoots now, yet YT does not know me. I know I have a YT account, I know I have a Google account and yet the twain are not meeting. I tried several times to get in, to have YT tell my Gmail WTF I was doing wrong, all to no avail.

And the captcha, there to confound non-humans, has totally confounded me. Here are the last 5 of the approximately 1,239 attempts I made to access one stupid video.
















I give up.

Saturday, July 17, 2010

Office Kitties

Hey Bob's gender became obvious a few weeks ago. Since I did not get HER into the vet for an operation I can expect another display of cat misery soon. When she is her normal self, she likes to help out in my office.


Office Kitty Is Too Big


Snotty Pants likes to help, too.


Snotty Pants Paper Weight

Storms

Wednesday was a hot, hot day with a "heat index" of 114. The humidity was brutal. A cold front moved through and the ensuing storms moved around me, barely getting me wet. But they did leave a rainbow.


Rainbow


It's there, take my word for it. To the West the sky was brightening.


to the West


Somewhere last night got pounded by rain and wind. I swatted mosquitoes and photo stitched. No sewing required.


Panorama