Leanne the Photographer
This week, the moon is the lowest-hanging moon we’ve seen in 18 years. Well you know how I love a challenge, I took my camera and tripod out and attempted to get some very neat shots of Mr. Moon. Here’s the first one, the rest of my faves are hiding so you’ll have to “read more”. I’m going to have to start saving my pennies for the super zoom lens, I’d like to get more clear pics of the surface of the moon, but the glow is just fine for now. 😉
WAKE UP!!!!!!
Okay finish rubbing and sqwishing your eyes together before you go on. That was a pretty punchy head-on view of our sunrise, huh? Since I’m working on something “top secret no works in progress allowed” right now, I’ll just show ya what’s going on in My Big Back Yard.
We have one peony blooming. This is it. She’s beautiful, and this was how she looked when that morning sunrise hit her yesterday morning. (I’m still sqwishing my eyes from resizing these down from full size. I know how you feel.)
Here’s Mr. Moon. My daughters both have fits that Mr. Moon doesn’t go to bed when the sun comes out, so I dedicate this one to them. Just because I like to confuse and bewilder my children.
Here’s our Fat Bird. Kindof like Fat Albert, only it’s a Cowbird. He’s not quite matured, hangs out with the sparrows on the ground around the feeders, and all he does is – well – guess. Eat. I don’t know how he manages to get his butt off the ground, but he does. He even waddles, like a duck! What a funny little bird. It’s so sad that they grow up to be parasitic, egg-thieving, nest hoarding birds. Nature’s order I guess, but I don’t have to like it! 😛
Caitibug spent over an hour reading my blog lastnight on daddy’s laptop. She was giggling and kept reading my entries back to me and telling me how funny I am. Well hey, at least I can amuse an 8 year old! She would like to see more pictures of herself on my blog. I had planned on posting this one today anyway, so now when she gets home from school and checks in on me she’ll be a happy little camper. So everyone say “hey” to Caitibug! I’m sure I’ll have some great pics of her over the summer since she’s a little fish. You’ll know her by her goggles and snorkle.
Update: I remembered this pic, so I scanned it in, look at how much she’s grown!! Awwww.
I’ll be finishing up Sissy’s portrait this morning, then working on Taba’s mouse, and sketching out my first order for E.Webscapes! So it’ll be another busy day here!
It’s been a nice (long) weekend, and now it’s time to get back to work. I have a ton of stuff to do this week! I updated my project calendar as well so everyone can see what I’ve got going on. Things have moved around a little bit, and those 4×4’s, well – I’ll work on those when my clients orders are fulfilled.
😉
All I want to know is, why Purple? They’re not purple. Harumpf.
Update: Well, hm. Not only are they not purple, they’re really not “Purple”. I asked someone at Cornell (Project Feeder Watch) and she confirmed that these are House Finches. Now I know. And so do you. It’s pretty hard to tell them apart!
Thank you, mommy & daddy finch, for posing so nicely for your pretty picture. I love my backyard.
But practical, and an even better term, innovative! Because everyone here who enjoys raking, raise your hand!?
I was gonna rake, I really was. But how long would it take to rake a bunch of rotten seed? And who wants to see pictures of my birdies dead on the ground from some wierd intestinal tract infection from my rotten seeds? And he thought I was wierd. “What on earth?!?!”, he said. “What’d we buy this thing for?!”, I said. It’s a shop vac, so why not?? And it worked. Brilliantly I might add. And so I proceeded to use it to vacuum the helicopters lying around that have been bothering me. And now they’re gone. And I feel smart. And he sat in a chair and took pictures. (And when I saw some of them I said, “you pervert!” and laughed. Because perverts are really cute, when you’ve been married to them for 15 years.) And he said “you’re nuts. you better blog this!”, and so I am. How much you wanna bet that he realizes the benefits of my ingenuity when he cleans out the gutters today? hehe.
Now for some real eye candy. I spy, with my little eye, something soft and fuzzy clinging to a tree! Do you know what it is???
OH yuk, the bad part of the day yesterday, malware and spyware and viruses, OH MY! I had used trendmicro diligently (house call, scan for stuff) for a very long time, but lastnight when we returned from running errands I had some strange thing asking for permission for access to the internet (I use ZoneAlarm). It’s a program called WildTangent. Apparently not a good program, even though it claims to be a tool for viewing media. Hm. So it’s filled with spyware and junk, and I uninstalled it. But it left pawprints in my registry, so I deleted that. Then I found a helper place online (which I’ll link to when I can remember the site name), and they recommended scanning your computer using Panda (link here, opens in new window, select “free online scan” in the top right corner, or purchase active scan pro.). I did. It found SEVEN infected files. I purchased the online pro scan (which removes all the junk if you don’t know how to remove it manually from the free scan results, and it was cheap for a scan/removal tool, 6-months at $8.99). I’m re-scanning now after manually removing 4 yicky infected files.
So, please, everyone scan your systems with this thing, I’d hate to think of anyone losing all their data, because if it happened to me, I would cry. Really hard. And become a hermit and never talk again. So GO SCAN FOR YICKY BUGS.
I’ll be painting today, on cam perhaps, so check out my cam status later. Come back many times. Check often! My blog will still be pretty, and you can watch me vacuum my yard! It’ll be GREAT Sunday fun!
To sum it up, we had a great vacation, the girls were amazingly well behaved the entire trip (all kajillion miles of it), and now we’re back.
I’m going to get into great detail now, so when you “read more”, be warned we’re going extremely graphic heavy for you dial-uppers so I can show you some of my favorite shots from the last couple of weeks! Some of these pics are repeats if you’ve stayed tuned-in during my absence. If you’d like wallpaper of any of these just give me a holler. I’ll throw the wave I caught up here as a link, that one is a larger one for desktop wallpaper. 🙂
**one more warning about multiple images, you may want to click it and let the page open for, I don’t know, 2 hours ought to do it!**
This robin looks so proud of himself. Worm hangin from his beak, that ‘don’t mess with me’ look on his face. He’s a tough guy, you wormies better watch out! That second bird, the speckled one, he’s new. I think he looks like a finch, but I can’t find anything on him anywhere. Anyone know what he is? Imma gonna have to paint that one, his pose is just too cute!
