More Later

I liked the cartoon The Tick and also the tv show

Somehow, the ticks keep coming up. I mean over and over and over.

We took a stroll today. In the woods. There were lots of other people strolling too, the path being well marked and part of a large botanical garden. We sat on a bench a took some family shots with the self-timer. We walked into a large field. We saw the first tick. I think we pulled a total of 5 or 6 off ourselves. It took 2 hours or so to find all of them. We would find one. Pull it off. Walk some more. Do some family stuff. Find another one. Pull it off. Etc.

K. says that ticks are something he wouldn't mind seeing extinct. Perhaps ticks have some vital purpose in the bigger picture, but it doesn't seem like it.

Caption: We had just pulled a tick off Z.'s leg and so were checking her. We stripped her down to her diaper in the middle of the crowded conservatory. Such is the power of the tick.

I'm Full

Well, my laptop is full.  It is so full that I can't upload any more pictures to it!  So I'm going back to a picture that I took a couple months ago.  I was at my doctor's office.  I think I was there for her to look at the stye that I had.  That has to be it, because that was the last time I was there.  For some reason I brought my camera and took a photograph of my feet while waiting for her to come in. 

Did you notice that they are the shoes that I wore instead of flip flops recently?  For anyone reading this other than Amy, she recently told me to NOT wear my flip flops on a trip, that nobody would be wearing flip flops.  Everyone was wearing flip flops!  But really, she did me a favor, because remember my uber long toenail in my first post?  These shoes saved me from embarrassing myself from showing off my scary feet.  So you see, Amy, your advice was good advice! 

I did it.

I finally met John.  Finally.  And yes, I love photography again and I am pretty psyched about having private lessons or a mentor or whatever you might want to call it.  I love his photos, we have similar interests, and I love his style.  (As for me, I don't yet have a style, but I'm imagining our styles might be similar or at least compatible if I did have a style.)

I was feeling lovely after having talked about photography with someone for 2 straight hours (heaven!) and I took the exit to get on the big lousy highway that is always a parking lot and stopped dead.  We crawled and crawled and crawled.  I was bored and finally I got out the camera.  The guy in the car next to me found this quite amusing.  Me too.  Suddenly I wasn't that bored.

Optimize Image

Yo, Cous, I went to the Nikon d200 class last night.  The picture above is from the class.  There was a screen like this for every single step we went through.  I learned a lot, but I need to go through everything again or I'll forget it.  In fact, as I write this, I'm feeling a bit of panic wondering what I've forgotten!

As soon as I sat down for the class, I started to worry about having to pee.  had settled in with my complimentary Coke and a glass of water and I knew that it was a bad idea because it was a two and a half hour class.  And I didn't want to miss anything the instructor had to say.  So right from the get go, I kept hoping that I wouldn't have to pee, but I knew I would.  And I did.  And it got pretty intense.  And then it got down to a half hour left in the class and I was learning a ton about my camera and breathing through it.  But then, my chance came!  The instructor started to go into Nikon's version of Photoshop and all at once several people popped up and ran to the restroom.  Phew! 

Oh my, did I really just write you about having to pee?  Yep, I did. 

So glad you had a good day today! 

don't tell K.

Can you see what the plate says?  It says "YO COUS".  Yo, cous.  The funny thing is the guy driving the car was at least late 60s/early 70s.  At least.  Does "Yo Cous" strike you as a young man's plate, or is that just me?

And I took this while I was driving.  With the kids in the car.  Sometimes I can't help myself.  I am getting worse and worse, pulling the car over at random intervals to shoot birds, trees, crap on the side of the road, whatever it is that takes my fancy.  E. says, "Mom, do you see a shot?"  Yep.  Pretty much always these days.

Yay!

Yeah, I know I said I would clean my room too.  Did I?  Of course not!  But I got around the dirty by taking a picture of my feet in front of the tv.  Ray had just brought Zorba in from her room and put her in bed with me.  Little Bear was on the TV.  You can see that my toenails are too long.  Note to self:  cut toenails.  It looks dark in my room, doesn't it?  It was 8:00 am, but it was raining outside.  I had to bump up the ol' ISO to 800.  And I had to beg Zorba to quit jumping on my arm so "mama could take a picture." 

Hmm, that is not the actual color of green on your walls?  When I saw the photograph I thought, "Ohh, nice shade of green."  I love that you are in love with the color of your room.  That must be a good feeling. 

I am almost done with March GYCO and need to start on April and now May GYCO.  Oh, the shame. 

Tomorrow night I'm going to a class where a Nikon rep is going to explain the d200.  I hope it helps.  Especially since I just now learned how to change where my camera focuses.  I'm sure, no, I KNOW that I'm missing out on a lot of what my camera does. 

We did it!  We finally started our blog.  Yay, Us!  Okay, more later.

hey...

So guess what M.?  Do you think I picked up the bedroom like I told you I was planning to so that I could take a good shot this morning?  Hmmmm?  You know, so we could get started off on the right foot? 

No, I didn't.  The story of my life.  I am starting off on the same old foot I am always on—somewhere between 3 days and 3 months behind where I need to be.  The bedroom, it is still a mess.

I was hoping that these two birds that always chat on a branch in the tree by my window would show up this morning and I could get a shot of them, but it was not to be.  They must be off working on the nest or something.  So you got a shot of my *clean* and *folded* laundry waiting to be put away in my pretty green room which is very, very messy right now.  I want every bedroom I have for the rest of my life to be this color Green.  At least today.  [The green on the screen is most decidedly not the True Green.  Sigh.  Must work on color correcting among other things.]

The April GYCO project is waiting.  More later.