See ya!

I have big big plans for the weekend, so I won't be blogging. I know. I completely ruined your weekend (except for my sister, who actually will get to see me in person. Like ratsinlabcancer but louder and weirder. ) But don't worry, I will post stuff from my weekend! (I will use that little cheater Post Options button to back- date them, so I don't mess up my Blog365! Yes! I am insane!)

So expect photos and coke-snortingly funny -- I meant you will snort the CocaCola you are drinking all over your monitor, not that other kind of coke snorting! -- stuff from my weekend! Or at least hopefully mildly humorous stuff and pretty photos of San Diego!

So don't forget me while I am gone. Check out some of the blogs <= in my blogroll (and let me know if you want to be added to it!), and then go outside and pick up some trash so you can blog about it on February 11 for Sarcastic Mom's big event!

(I myself will be blogging about how I have started using shopping bags instead of paper and plastic grocery bags, complete with reviews and photos! It's gonna be huge. February 11, Baby.)

What Happened on Wednesday?

Yesterday, which for the purposes of this being my What Happened on Wednesday post, must have been Wednesday -- okay, I just freaked myself out a little bit there, wondering if it really is Wednesday today. Yes, I freak a little bit easily. -- I took some photos of clouds and the mountains. The Rincon Mountains, I think.

This is not a great photo. There's too much going on -- the clouds, the power lines and poles, the road and street signs. The cars over to the left...It looks like a snapshot, with potential that was not realized...Then I used "sharpen" and "black and white" and "crop" on them until it looked like this...

and this...

Did I mention that I love crop and sharpen and b&w and glow and blur and saturation and contrast and shadows and fill light and....I love playing with my photo edit programs.

Later in the evening Tess and I were driving home, and I was being only slightly unsafe taking photos with the camera on the dashboard...I really like the floating headlights in this one -- you can't see the car at all, just the headlights.



Then Tess took over the camera and got these really fun shot of the Fry's grocery store shopping center near our house...it was a 1.6 second exposure taken from the back seat of a moving vehicle.



I really really really love my new camera. I haven't figured it all out yet, and I still can't get it to take the photo every time (last night it wouldn't take some photos because it couldn't focus -- that is a definite drawback to this camera, but now that I realize that is the problem I can work around it by using the manual focus option.) I think I have taken photos pretty much every day since I got the new camera, and I take it with me a lot of the time....but how many photos of the desert and mountains around Tucson are too many? Probably about 100 fewer than I have already taken...

If it's Tuesday, it must be.......

Takin' It To the Streets Tuesday!

I live in a community of subdivisions. Ten or twelve years ago where I live was open desert. (I know, very bad. I don't like that at all.) Now it's 10,000 or thereabouts people, almost all living in subdivisions. Subdivisions with names like Horizons, Sunrise Meadows, and Rancho Antigua. And street names, well, street names that frankly suck. A lot. Pale Blue Opal Drive? That is just sad.

Tess and I took photos yesterday of some of the street names in our neighborhood. Really rather horrible and not so very bad, weird and long. Really long names, some of them...

First there's the semi-precious streets:

I especially like this one -- Yogo Sapphire. I googled it and found it is a sapphire mined in Yogo Gulch, Montana. Woot.

Then there are the long and sometimes hard to pronounce names, the Spanish and the huh? Where did they get that name and why would they choose it? Like this one...

I like Via Elemental, but Paseo Del Parque? I googled, and apparently Parque means park. Did you know that? Neither did I. I also don't know how to pronounce it, but I bet it's a pain to get people to spell it right...

I like some of the Spanish names, and they make sense, since we are in Tucson, but still. I would hate to write them as my return address. I used to live on Elm St. Five letters. My current street has four times the letters (and is a "gay" name, according to certain rather sometimes juvenile members of my family):

The other streets in my subdivision are Hummingbird Meadow, Canyon Meadow, Sunrise Meadow, and Sunset Meadow. Do they have meadows in the desert?

There are some that seem to fit Tucson...

And some that are more, well, generic.

We may be revisiting this on future Tuesdays, since I have barely scratched the surface of um...different street names...

Bald Eagles in Eagle River, Alaska.

On Sundays they feed the bald eagles in Eagle River. Last week Mark sent me these photos. And yup, that is raw meat...

I am really excited about having completely new things to photograph...I am so "been there, photographed that" in the desert...

Mark was using his point and shoot digital...I am expecting great things when he gets his hands on my new SLR with the zoom lens.

Weekly Winners!

(I did several photo posts this week...the Mr Potato Head photo shoot on Tuesday, and the new glasses on Saturday. I linked to them under the representative photo here.)

Thrilled.

The first are full moon photos. I am still experimenting and trying to figure out the new camera, so they are not quite there yet. I do like the palm tree and the ring around the moon in this one...

You have to squint at this one. It looks better that way.

The 'Tato Head photo shoot.

Abe had surgery again this week.

I got new glasses. I like them a lot.





Making Valentines...

That's my week. Thanks to Lotus, the instigator of WW. There are lots more terrific photos and people right here!

Favorite Photo Friday. On Saturday. The Abe version.

I used to have a photo of Abe looking rather deranged in my header, but when I switched templates that photo didn't work any more. It looked kinda like this one...

Abe is Tess's dog. He's very goofy. This expression here -- surprise and confusion -- is pretty common for him.

Abe with a week old bagel. He and Mojo, our other big dog, are really tough on toys. They shred vinyl toys, they eat rawhides in under an hour. They don't like hard rubber toys, probably because they can't destroy them. So we are always giving them random things to play with -- water bottles, cereal boxes, dried out bread. They particularly like those little yogurt drink bottles, probably because the bottles taste like strawberry yogurt...

In November, Abe started limping. He had a congenital deformity in his left hind leg and his kneecap was wiggly. Very gross. He had surgery. I gave him little puppy sedatives for a while while it healed...it was weird to see Abe not his usual agile self. He was finally starting to get back to normal, running and playing with Mojo...

Unfortunately sometimes dogs need a second surgery to make sure the kneecap is solidly in place. So this past Thursday Abe had that second surgery to tighten up those ligaments. He's not very happy to be back in the bandages. (As usual, he has a goofy expression.).

So this is my favorite photo for Friday. Posted on Saturday. Abe is asleep in my Suburban. Not like a normal dog, of course, but rather with his face wedged in between the seats...

The Great Unveiling....

Last weekend I got new glasses.

They are green. They have wider plastic frames. My old ones were copper and wire rims. And bent, from Mojo smacking his enormous dog head into them repeatedly.

I have tried a couple times to take photos of them, but they were blurry. I don't think I was trying very hard...taking photos of myself is not my favorite thing. Here's a photo of Tess -- she is doing a pretty good job of portraying how I feel about photos of me.

But I did it.

And since I have a brand new camera (YAY!) that I need to learn to use, I used the setting for multiple photos, and since it was flashing in my face, I couldn't help but blink and block the flash...

Eventually I got rather into it...

So there they are, my new glasses in all their glory. I love them! And they are very very comfortable!

Man, do I need a haircut...maybe next week.

Here's the space!

I guess yesterday I really should have said "watch the space that theoretically will appear just above this one tomorrow."

On to the blingage! I have been the happy recipient of blog bling from several wonderful bloggers that I have "met" lately. And now it is time to pass some of it along...


First one has to go to Donna (her blog title -- a grownup, really?-- captures exactly how I feel about the whole grownup thing too!) who was the first person to actually have a link to my blog in her blogroll! So this one's for you, Donna!

Tasina definitely rocks my crib -- she has been the source of much amusement, although she has also probably made people think I lock my children up in cages! Ooh, and some really yummy recipes, too. Her blog is part mom, part foodie, part insane!

Kim of the frog pond, and Veronica of the sleepless nights, are always interesting and funny and caring and lovable (plus they are the mum and grandmum of the ever adorable Amy) so to them I bestow this bling...

And Dawn, of Alex year one -- funny and interesting and kind of a kick in the pants. Perhaps even the seed that made me choose the green frames for my new glasses...

And last but definitely not least...Jientje of Heaven in Belgium, who takes wonderful photos, and reminds me with her stories of life in Belgium of when I lived in Europe, and who always has something interesting to say!

Okay...now the problem for me is that I am HTML impaired, so I don't know how to link these, or how to credit the bloggers who created them in the first place, or how to give them to you, other than to assume you will grab the image from here, the same way I grabbed the images from other blogs...If anyone wants to tell me how to post these better, different, the proper way, I am ready to be schooled!