I lied. We did end up going out yesterday! We drove for a really long time past a lot of cornfields, and landed at this really beautiful park, that looks nothing like a cornfield. We grabbed a paddle boat (ouch) and tooled around the lake. Isn’t it beautiful? It was a really nice day, and my legs are really sore now. That’s a lot of paddling!

Our squirrels were just hamming it up yesterday, this one looks like he’s doing a Sammy Davis Jr. imitation doesn’t he?

We don’t have any plans for today, how about you? I’ve already toned the paper for my next portrait, which is going to be a chalk/pastel painting (they’re actually Yarka crayons, although I have no idea why they’ve called them crayons), I’ll post a work in progress on that when I have my subjects sketched.

The Tater background isn’t dry enough for me to work on yet today, so I’ll be working on my custom blog artwork piece. That one has progressed from a pencil sketch to a clean line drawing and is now becoming a very cool and vivid graphic illustration. It’ll be neat to see it go live within the new blog design for this client! Once my main gallery layout is revised (again), I’ll add a gallery specifically for screen shots of where my E.Webscapes client work is located. That will be a fun addition to my portfolio I think!

We’ve been hearing baby chirps coming from one of our sparrow nests, and they’re finally big enough to peek their heads up! Awww, aren’t they sweet lil babies?!

The weather here is not being very nice this weekend, it’s chilly and windy, and today it’s going to rain. Bah. It’s supposed to get up into the 80’s by the end of the week, I am so looking forward to that! I’d much rather sweat than freeze. I’m like a puppy, my fingers, toes and nose all freeze when it’s chilly out. Woof.

I’m gonna be busy today, working on my next painting, finishing up my custom-blog-artwork order, and prepping my next portrait. I hope you guys are having better weather than I am!

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! 😛

Here’s a shot of a lovely woodpecker who visited our yard yesterday. She’s a Downy Woodpecker, female, and seems to be trying to find a place to make a home.

I thought this next pic was pretty interesting, too. I was out on my little morning stroll (this was a few days ago) and noticed smoke coming from my neighbors yard somewhere. I started looking around and realized the sun was hitting the moisture on the tree, and it was relatively warm out that morning, and the tree was all steamy! I’ve never seen that happen before!

I’m off to the torture chamber this morning, I’ll be squealing to the sound of a high pitched drill once again. Argh. Someone please tell me it really is good to get your teeth repaired and not just yank them all out for dentures!!! ???

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.

This was a weekend of magic at our house. Not quite Disney Magic, no. Pain and swelling was involved. 😉

In one moment, you yourself can experience the magic! Wait! Don’t go away! You’ll enjoy this, I promise! Many of you have met Chloe, our beloved pup. Well, once a year we bring her out to the center of this empty circle in the yard, as this is where we perform our magic. So here she is, waiting for us to begin.

Well typically, it is recommended that you perform this ritual with a group of 3 or more people. We just had the two of us (the girls were off playing somewhere), so we made due with what we had. So we start walking circles around Chloe, you know, doing the chant thing and stomping here and there, and voila.

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!