Okay 1969 must have been the year of boxed costumes for us. While I was in Tennessee being a cat that rarely wore her mask, Mike was in Ohio being a little devil. Lots I could say about that but lets just each fill that blank on our own shall we. Not much else I know or can say about this one so I’ll see you next Thursday with another Throwback Thursday Halloween Costume edition.
That’s me. See I always got cats more than dogs so much so I wanted to be one. That’s me about 1969. Yes remember those quality boxed costumes? This is one of them complete with the grey elastic that was stapled to the mask and always had to be repaired with that tying onto that staple? This is the only one where I was wearing the mask. (more…)
Last week I introduced you to Happy the outgoing cross dressing yellow tabby. Well this week it’s his dignified loving bigger brother Secret. (more…)
That’s my Mom, Sylvia Bright. It’s her birthday today and I ask that you go give her good wishes on her Facebook page. She’s there often. We live about a 13 hour drive apart so I don’t get to see her often. Still I’d like to make her birthday special so stuff her comments with well wishes. If you aren’t sure let me tell you a bit about my mother.
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I’m a cat lady and I came by it honestly. I’ve always loved animals. However, I have always had a special connection with cats. I’ve been the proud caretaker or play-with-er for many great felines. I have very fond memories of all of them. This one was a Tom named Happy. He came to live with us on Jennifer Street in Greeneville Tennessee bringing along his less gregarious brother Secret. (more…)
Okay here’s something I’m going to try to do. Throw back Thursday posts – old things I have that I’ll share. Some are to laugh at myself like this one here. Others I imagine will interest me enough to share for other reasons.
Here’s what I know about that picture – it’s me! I’m in my maternal grandparent’s house in Laurens, South Carolina’s guest bathroom. That potty was wooden. Which at the time I thought was odd. (more…)
Okay ladies I know you’ve been wondering where the perfect man went. Well search no more, he’s mine! Mike, my soul mate and best friend, has a birthday today! I won’t say how old he is because age bothers him more than me. Suffice it say, he’s like a fine liquor and gets better with age.
If you know him or follow him on Twitter, Facebook, and such please stop by and wish him a great day. If you don’t but want to leave good wishes for the best husband ever – you can do it here. I’ll be reading them to him tonight as he opens presents and eats cake.
MMMMWAH! Love ya honey! Happy Birthday!
This is the first year of gardening without having a dog. What do the two have to do with one another? Well, read on and learn how a dog lazing in the yard helped the garden’s yield.
It all started this spring when Mike was ranting that the rabbits were eating the peas down to the dirt. (Yes my husband does a great Mr. McGregor of Peter Rabbit fame impression.) However one day when I was going to the garage I spotted the real culprits – not rabbits but baby squirrels.
Cut to earlier this week. I was sitting here at my desk working. My office window was wide open as it was a warm day. Outside I hear messy eating sounds, slurping, smacking… I look and on the end of our fence near my window sat a large squirrel holding one of our good big red tomatoes just eating away. He’d hit a seed pocket and SLURP it up then look up with seeds on his cheeks and a pink tongue darting about to clean his whiskers.
Then yesterday again heading to the garage I scared a passel (yes you fellow Southerners know how many I mean, the rest of you it’s kinda like bunch) of squirrels from the garden. Some chomping roma tomatoes, others nibbling peppers – heck one had the guts to take a whole big bell with him while his compatriot ran off with a green beefsteak tomato!
It’s bad enough that they are raiding us blind of veggies and our rabbit fence does nothing to stop this climbing buggers – but now they are waking me at three am with their arguments, drunken singing or whatever in the hell it is that possesses squirrels to scream and chitter amongest themselves at that hour! I kid you not! I can set my clock by it. There’s barking like calls, then chirping, then screams followed by barking again. Mike says Mr. Squirrel comes home drunk and Mrs. Squirrel is giving him what for. It reminds me of the BBC ad where the ground squirrel keeps barking “Allen, Allen” then he says “That’s not Allen that’s Jack! Jack, Jack, Jack…”
We’ve had issues before with them. One year when our apple tree had hard knotting apples due to the drought, they threw the apples at us. No, really I’m serious. They would sit on the awning over the back door and when we opened the door drop the apple that would roll down and hit us in the head or shoulders. We learned that season to just wait a moment for the apple to fall before proceeding out the door.
Now back to the dog and the garden, you see when we had a dog the squirrel raids were limited to the apple tree. The doggie scent about the yard kept them from dining upon the produce. Now dear Belle is long gone and this is the first summer without Rappy… and the squirrels are taking over.
As I’m typing this I see one run the phone line with a small pepper in his mouth. I hope it’s a ghost pepper and it burns his mouth and gives him heart burn all night long – as long as he doesn’t shout about it at midnight to wake me twice tonight…
When I got up this morning it was -6F and the temperature was to fall from there. It is but we haven’t reached the predicted -20F yet and I’m hoping that we don’t.
Since it really isn’t fit for man or beast out there I wisely stayed in. I worked on my novel I’m going to pitch in March (hopefully). Then I decided to the files. Normally I do new files for our personal finances every year. However last year I intended to but still recovering from surgery in November I never really felt like it until today.
Okay you got me… I did feel like it before then but well 2013 was getting filed with 2012. So why mess up a working system eh? Sure the drawer was getting stuffed but it worked. So yesterday and today I cleaned those out of the drawer, moved them to a lower drawer and made new files for 2014. Ahhh a new start always feels so fresh!
I bought some more beads at end of year sales. Now I’ve got to get them all into inventory so I can use them. Started some work on that. Anything to avoid the cold!
Also my new camera came today. It is fully charged so I’ll get to know it.
Which gives you a short pointless post today. Hope you are keeping warm and don’t have to brave the weather if it is bad where you are.
Until next time.
If you have followed or browsed my blog you know I like to take pictures. This is partly because I have no talent to draw something, but I can take a picture of it.
I’ve been doing photography for years. It all started when my parents built a darkroom in the basement for printing black and white photographs. I became my high school’s photographer.
Over the years I’ve dabbled in and out of it but honestly it took the digital age for me to really enjoy it. In those intervening decades from basement darkroom to paintshop I developed a few things I like in a camera. I actually developed two types of cameras I like to use.
The first one is the SLR with fully adjustable settings – I can do what I want with this one. I like the feel of focusing, playing with depth of field, using sensitivity (ISO used to be ASA) and aperture to get the effect I want, and controlling shutter speed. All these are factors in creating the image I want to capture the moment. The digital SLR I have I saved for it over a year with discretionary income. I love it. It’s what I take with me when I go out to shoot photos most of the time. Alas here is where the WOE comes in – The battery for it no longer holds a charge. **SIGH** Yes I know get a new one. I will I promise and soon! But plate full thing and even though I enjoy it – it is winter with below zero temperatures so there’s no rush as I’m not going out to make pictures any time soon. Heck I’m not going out unless I HAVE to do so.
Second the compact but versatile point and shoot. It only takes one day of wagging around a big SLR at a theme park to wish for a small light camera you can tuck into your pocket. (Yes, yes I know phones have good cameras today but I don’t like them – more on that next. ) Except I don’t want to give up some adjust ability. So I look for ones with settings – Image stabilization is a must on these. First off the viewfinder has all but disappeared from point and shoots. This takes away a very stable body position for making pictures. Yes holding a camera to you face to look through that tiny hole had a purpose – it brought your arms in and braced them against your head and possibly your body thus giving the photographer a more stable stance / less shake. Sadly it is now only the pervue of the upper end models not ones you want to take on the roller coaster at Universal. Also if I’m going to spend that much I want an SLR where I look out the actual lens rather than an above the lens where there is the issue of parallax distortion. BUT for snapshots and fun photos that’s not a concern. Bonus is that in an affordable model I can get the same quality as far as megapixels and processor speed as I have in my SLR. Also they have enough body weight to help with stabilization and give this old photographer a sense of the shot I’m taking. Also the weight of the body suppresses the camera’s susceptibility to shake from the photographer’s natural breathing which would start to show up at 30th of a second or so for me on these (more sturdy SLRs it’s a bit slower – psst lean on a wall with camera to the face to help with this when at slow speeds). So it’s photos for quick fun where the camera thinks and I just point and shoot.
Now for another tale of WOE – my point and shoot after years of faithful service has given up the ghost. It turns one zooms then makes various chirping and tweeting sounds and dies. It is the fourth one I have literally worn out. BUT not to fret a new one is ordered on Christmas gift money (Thanks Mom & Dad, still supporting my photography habit after all these years) and will be delivered soon. If the snow storm doesn’t delay it.
Finally my take on cameras on phones – Okay in a pinch. I don’t like how they feel in the hand – too light too subject to photographer shake from even natural breathing. Also adjustments on the screen so again more prone to unwanted movement. Finally no viewfinder only LED screen that when you get in sunlight turns black – also a downfall of the newer point and shoots. This as become the most frequent reason I have my SLR with me and set on automatic – I can see through the viewfinder in bright light. So for me the lack of knobs/buttons, the screen issue, and the extreme light weight of it are all reasons I shun using it except in a pinch. It’ll do and the processor speed/megapixel quality has improved greatly – yet to this old dog it still doesn’t FEEL like a camera.
So for now I’m reduced to the phone which means I do little to no photography this holiday season. But soon – yes soon – I’ll have a new camera to play with in my spare time that is currently used to sit – stare into space while eating bon-bons. Yeah like I got LOTS of that time – pfft.
Until next time which will hopefully be sooner rather than later!
Mary Louise Eklund 