Amish Wagon; Doug turning into The Bird Man (and fortunately, not of Alcatraz)

Just a couple more shots from our Saturday drive to Bergeson Gardens, in Fertile, MN, through Amish country. On the way, I also spotted this wagon--most likely a working wagon, and not just decorative lawn art!



And this sweet guy, whom all of you know as "Doug," is, before my very eyes, turning into a Bird Man! (I'll post photos later showing what he's done to our yard!)

It just seemed to me that he was working too hard, and needed to relax more. I remembered that one year, my mom thought the same thing about my dad, and told him that she wanted to learn macrame, but didn't understand it; would he read the directions, learn it and teach her? Being the sweet guy that he was, he did! And it seemed to be a relaxing thing for him.

So I tried it on Doug. I started talking birds (not those Evil Cedar Waxwings that would make him want to take up arms and defend the homeland), but sweet little songbirds and robin-types.

And he took to this in a big way!

Too big. Every day I come home, and there's another bird feeder. But then he went to war.

It seems that he's taken it as a personal affront that the squirrels are cleverly figuring out how to open the suet-feeder-thingy, that he's designated for ONE kind of bird. And he's definitely at war with the Grackles or Gackles or whatever those big Stephen King blackbird type things are that swoop about, thump there chests, and hog the birdbath. He thought he'd designate one area to be the blackbird area, and another for junkos and cardinals and finches and the "good" birds.



Now, whenever I can't find Doug, I just look out the window and he's out there with a stick chasing the grackles, or harassing the squirrels. And there are rules about whether to open our kitchen casement window because the right window scares away the grackles, but the left window scares away the sweetie-pies. But what is worse, and most disturbing, is that he doesn't want to let Bonnie out in the yard because she might bother the "good" birds. Ha! I say, Bonnie is the Queen, and she should get to go out, in the rare nice North Dakota weather whenever she feels like it! She trumps bird rights any day in my book!



Oh, and my sweet, kind, pacifist husband has even taken to uttering words like "BB gun." Anyone got any spare valium lying around?

Embracing my Irked-ness

Even though, being a typical female socialized to feel guilty when I'm cranky, sometimes I just want to embrace my being irked about something, and cranky away, no matter how trite, and petty, and small. So here goes:

For 20 years, I've walked past this truck, 5 days a week, at the exact same time, on the way to my office. And the same two old guys have been outside the truck. Through rain, snow, (usually snow, and more snow), and occasionally sunshine, we cross paths:

They usually block the path to the building door, being all officious and security-minded, rushing their little handcart with money boxes or whatever, up to the truck. This usually forces me somewhat off the sidewalk and onto the pebbled landscape area. If we're both approaching the same space, they rush their preciousness closer to the truck, in front of me, and glare at me. This is usually accompanied by a little gun-check (very similar to a guy "crotch-check"). I usually smile, walk a wider berth around them (carrying all my own junk, many times walking with a walking-cast because of problems in the past), but having to walk further to get to the warmth of the building because of their work. This may not sound like a big deal, but when it's 40 to 50 below zero windchills here, trust me: it's a big deal! Besides, I'm lazy, and usually late, and don't WANT to walk further to get to work.

Until a few years ago, I really didn't much care--just two old, grumpy guys who looked like they hated their jobs, felt rattled by my dangerous presence, and were jumpy, (with their matching cups of coffee in the front window of their truck.)

Then one day, a "sweet young thing" came out of the bank drive-up building, and crossed their paths. Let the sunshine roll in!!!!! They grinned, and radiated joy, and slobbered with drool in their greeting and body language!

OK, no more Ms-NiceGuy from me!

Now, I don't bother to yield and take a wider berth around them. If they've intruded into my space while I'm walking to the door, doesn't matter if they've glared at me; I usually just smile back, and "obliviously" keep on walking. If they have to hurl their bodies onto their handcart to save it from me, sucks to be them! Once, I even dropped my keys on the ground, and had to stop and pick them up; so clumsy of me! And then last week, from a good-sized distance, I took this photo.

So, if I ever get shot on my way into work some morning, it'll probably be my own damn fault! Kids, don't try this at home! Guess I'll have to label this blog post with my "cranky woman" label!

All Right, Already! Take 2: Cavorting & Gamboling in a ND Fountain

Oh, you are a tough crowd to please! But you've got to understand: here in North Dakota, we tend to be fairly restrained in our cavorting and gamboling. We are an under-stated people.

But because you all seem to be so NEEDY and begged me mercilessly, Doug agreed to really loosen up and be absolutely WILD in his cavorting and gamboling. I, of course, had to stay completely dry with my precious Nikon D40.

Here, throwing all caution to the wind *, Doug approaches the sprinkler. (* not completely without caution; that's not in the North Dakotan lexicon. A fire extinguisher and ShamWow! are standing by in case of emergency.)

Here, you can see that my dear husband has become absolutely wild in his cavorting and gamboling.

And now he has given in to total abandon. . .

. . . . . . dare I say, rapture? . . . on the Northern Plains . . .



But this really was all a bit much, and he needed to retire to the lounge chair for recovery. . .

Aided, of course, by our trusty ShamWow!

NewsFlash: Mom Steals Son's Work While He Defends the Motherland

Really, when you think about it, what's so wrong about plagiarizing your kid's words? I think my son, Scott, is a wonderful, funny, writer, and I like his descriptions of North Dakota, so I'm just going to steal them and pass them off as my own. (After all, he's never sued me for anything as far as I can remember.) On his Facebook page, Scott says:

"I'm from the great state of North Dakota. Let me just answer quickly some questions you may have about it:

"So do people actually live there?"
No, no one actually lives in North Dakota. Everyone who works there lives just on the other side of the border with either Minnesota or Montana, and commutes to work each day (but not South Dakota since no one lives there either). For those working in the middle of the state in such places as Bismark, the commute can take upwards of 4 hours each way.
"Does it get pretty cold there?"
No, this is a little known fact, but North Dakota is in a subtropical climate due to the Mannitoba current which keeps the range of temperatures in the state from an average high of 97 degrees F in the summer to an average low of 44 degrees F in the winter, so most years we'll go without any snowfall at all!
"Isn't that in Canada?"
Yes. The US established the 49th parallel as the border with Canada in 1818 following the Louisiana Purchase, with the exceptions of North Dakota and 3 counties in South Carolina which technically remain within Canada.
"Is that where Mt. Rushmore is?"
Yes. Mt. Rushmore is located in a warehouse 5 miles outside Beulah, North Dakota and is projected into South Dakota via a highly sophisticated holographic display.
"What do you do for fun there?"
Most days are spent around the camp helping out with communal chores and arranging hunting parties, but if we get lucky, on Saturday night we'll have a squirrel hunt or a box social to attend. Also binge drinking, copious amounts of binge drinking."

Besides, Scott is on some boat, somewhere near South America (not in South Dakota),defending our country apparently from Peruvian sherpas, so he'll never know I'm stealing his words.

(Kids, this may be another reason not to let your parents be your "friends" on Facebook. But not you, Scott.)

I thought this photo from somewhere in ND would be fitting for this post. I used the Dirt Bag action, at full strength, from RAD to add the texture:

Proactiv Hell and their Evil Robots

Proactiv is staffed by Evil Robots! Ok, so it's a wonderful product, Proactiv cleanser. My daughter likes to use it, and sadly, once in a while, I like to use it as well. But, OMG! They have the most frustrating customer service on the planet!

Only read this if you're really, really bored!

I tried to avoid the phone call to Proactiv by going through their web site. Ha! What delusional disorder came upon me letting me think that I might escape their special brand of torture? While trying to figure out if there was some way I could just order two lousy bottles of their skin cleanser, a mystery "chat" square opened up. So, I naively asked my question:

Me: "Can I order two bottles of your cleanser? I don't know my account number."
Evil Robot: "Let's move the chat window to the bottom of the screen while we chat."

Disconnect

I try again:
Me: "Can I order two bottles of your cleanser? I don't know my account number."
Evil Robot: "Are you a member? Once you order our initial package, you can order individual products in the future."
Me: "I don't know if I'm a current member. I used to be, but stopped ordering. Can I still order two bottles of your cleanser?"

Disconnect

I try again:
Me: "!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Are you still there? Are you going to answer my question?"
Evil Robot: "And what was your question again?"
Me: "I don't know my account number. I don't know if I'm a current member. I used to order your product and stopped when I had too a large a back log because of your negative option program. Can I still order two bottles of your cleanser?"
Evil Robot: (long, long silence)
Me: "Are you still there? Can I order two bottles of your cleanser?"
Evil Robot: "Are you a current member?"
Me: "I don't know if I'm a current member. Can I order two bottles of your cleanser? Can you just please say Yes or No?"
Evil Robot: Thank you for contacting Proactiv. If you have any other questions, please call us at 1 800 252-7774

Grrrrr. I think about ordering it on E-bay, and why I stopped ordering Proactiv in the first place. Then I think that maybe the cleanser on Ebay is really empty Proactiv bottles refilled with baby lotion, or pee, and I call the number.

Sweet Sounding Foreign Worker from the Movie "Outsourced": "Can I have your credit card number please?"
Me: "Ummm. . . first I have some questions. Can I just order two bottles of your skin cleanser? I used to have an account but I haven't ordered in a long time."
Sweet Sounding Foreign Worker from the Movie "Outsourced" who probably lives on 13 and a half cents a day: "No. You have to order the entire cleaning system initially, and then receive shipments every 60 days for all eternity. Would you like to be billed in one or two easy payments?"
Me: "Ok, two payments. What comes in the initial order?"

Ok, so then the
Sweet Sounding Foreign Worker from the Movie "Outsourced" who knows how to make offers sound like bargains that she hates to mention but she just couldn't live with herself if she didn't let me in on this very special deal that I would be a total fool to pass up proceeded to get my agreement to I don't even know what now. Some 5 or 3 bottle system, that is either 2 oz or 4 oz, with a travel kit with 3 more bottles of I-don't-know what and a special gift thrown in. Plus in 60 days or 30 days I will receive another shipment in the mail which will also cost me some unspecified sum of money that will be of course be charged to my credit card, also for all eternity. Sorry about that little short-fall for your tuition next semester, Dianna!

Next time, I'm just scrubbing down my face with ShamWow! and telling my daughter to deal with it!


And this photo has nothing to do with this post, but what's a post without a photo?

First Step toward Recovery: ShamWow! & a Sippy Cup

ShamWow! really did come to the rescue yesterday, sopping up wine out of my printer, around all of my papers, across my book shelf with my digiscrapped albums. (ShamWow! seems to be suspiciously enthusiastic about its mission when it comes to wine; you may recall it's earlier distinction in absorbing the broken glass and wine when my husband forgot he'd bought a bottle and it rolled out the side door of the van onto the garage floor. Maybe ShamWow! is over-compensating for it's sense of Shame about Vince.)

It could have been much worse. Much, much worse. A few inches to the left and the trajectory of the WineTsunami would have hit my laptop, and my external hard drive sitting on the floor. Today, I assessed the damage further, and bizarrely, my printer is still printing! It's just as crappy as it has been, but no worse.

The good news is that only about 16 of the digiscrapped pages look wine-dipped. I managed to find the .psd files of 15 of them, and will do the necessary conversions and send the pages out to be printed (especially since I also drenched all my blank photo paper.)

So, the first step, after admitting there is a problem, is ShamWow! to sop up the mess, and then Sharon's brilliant suggestion of a Sippy Cup! Of course! If first I'm spilling coffee, then the next day wine, all over my printer/computer/expensive stuff, this is the perfect solution!

And look how well ShamWow! blots up those tears! One would wonder (if one was you, not me)if I'm crying over the scrapbook pages, or about life having come to this: drinking Zinfandel from a Sippy Cup.







My husband is a tad horrified that this same person who went on a wine-tasting tour in Napa Valley last September would sink to this. Hey! I didn't SAY I'd be bringing it wine-tasting, if we ever do that again!

Red Wine and a Colossal Mess

"Bless me Father, for I have sinned. It's been 30 (give or take a few) years since my last confession. The only sin I want to confess is my blogging addiction. Not that there aren't more. Many more."

I love to blog! I love that you read my blog and sometimes laugh at my lame jokes! (Read the genuinely funny, by the way, comments that many of YOU submitted for the last photo, if you haven't had the chance to do so.) So when an opportunity came up to take an 8 week journaling workshop at a local coffee shop, I signed up.

Lest you think I have an alcohol addiction, let me tell you that I often drink a glass of wine with dinner. As a fairly anal person, I've literally marked with a Sharpie marker where 5 oz comes on the glass so that this is the amount I drink. (But how can I be SO messy???? Or maybe that's what anal actually means. . . )

Tonight was the first meeting, and I was rushing to eat dinner and get there in time. And given that I was a little anxious about this workshop, I didn't mind having a glass of wine with dinner.

Yesterday it was a spilled cup of coffee, all over my printer paper. Today it was the glass of wine, horribly spilled directly into my awful-anyway printer (which already turns everything pink).

. . . but also spilled all over some very cherished scrapbooks with digital pages. And that's what the photo above is showing, with pages separated by Kleenex--pages that took hour upon hours to make. I don't think it's really salvageable. . . .but, what do you think? Do you think red wine would meet the standards of being acid-free for archival purposes?

*sigh* . . . and of course I was late for the journaling workshop. And I smelled like a brewery (although my sweet husband pointed out that I actually smelled like a winery, so who is it who's really the anal one, after all?)

Wildlife Battles; Maybe We Should Even Keep an Eye on Bambi: Subtitle--Where's Homeland Security When You Need It?

OK, at risk of being permanently banished from boarding airplanes because of my reference to Home Land Security, I'd like to suggest that there's a threat to our homes from the Bambi-like creatures looking all innocent Amongst Us.

First there was the deer that smashed through my church windows. (Very ugly and messy. And my attitude about the Bambi-Bamboozlers really did change as person after person in my neck of the woods was taken down by sweet appearing deer smashing through their windshields. Seriously. I grew up in the Chicago area, and we didn't view rodents as pleasant Disney-esque buddies. Deer are like rodents, only bigger.)

And then there were the Cedar Waxwings, looking beautiful, (but masked), and eating my house. (They're gone now.) And the dead squirrel in my driveway, which I'm not CERTAIN had to do with the Waxwings, (and I did so appreciate the duck that showed up to stand watch after that.) (Ok. Ducks are on the "good" list.)

Enough with the preamble. Wouldn't you like to chomp on a nice, bright, yellow tulip bulb? MMMMM, tasty!!!! Feel free to just take one bite, --and most definitely, leave the stem.

The prize:

The fiend:

OK, Easter Bunny Imposter, I'M KEEPING MY EYE ON YOU! And don't even try the cute stuff; my daughter has you beat by a mile, what with how she used to practice, in the mirror, her "puppy dog eyes" before begging for her little ole heart's desires. I'm immune to that now.

"Good People Drink Good Beer," Hunter S. Thompson

Do you remember Hunter S. Thompson? He wrote Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, "gonzo" journalism. Apparently, this is a line of beer in honor of him. I'm not sure what's more fun, photographing the bottles, or drinking the beer!

I put them in my window to photograph, so I could blow out the backgrounds. My neighbor across the yard watched me, probably wondering what I was doing. But I don't care; there's nothing that I could do that would be weirder than these neighbors. These are the same neighbors that gave my husband a bag of dog poop one day. The man-neighbor rang our front doorbell and handed my husband a paper lunchbag. Doug said, "what's this?," looking inside, probably thinking it was donuts. The guy said, "I think your dog left this in my grass."

Well, I hate to dispute his poop-identity forensic skills, but the beautiful Ms. Bonnie only frequents our thoroughly fenced-in back yard. In her younger days, she might escape out the front door and race across the street (opposite direction of poop-neighbor), to the pooch parlor to check her email, but I usually was in hot pursuit with a dog treat (or piece of styrofoam because I could fool her.)

We just don't walk our dog through other people's lawns. Doug just looked at poop-neighbor and said, "OK" with a look and that tone of voice that also says, "What are you? Some kind of crazy nut, addled fool?" and walked the poop-present to the garbage.

I'm not sharing my Hunter S. Thompson beer with the poop-neighbor even if it was an innocent case of mistaken excrement identity, and Hunter would agree with this!

I See Owls. Everywhere.

I always wanted to be part of a secret society. Not a creepy, wear white robes, do bad things, kind. . . but one with secret handshakes and mysterious signals of recognition, letting each other know that "Shhhhh. . . . I'm one too. . . . Act discrete. . . . " Preferably organizing to fight Evil. That kind.

Well, maybe I am! Everywhere I look now, I see Owls. . . my neighbor across the street has one in her yard, on top of her playground equipment. . . .I always wondered about that!

And yesterday, I picked my husband up at the airport, and there, right above both entrances to the terminal (it's a small airport in Grand Forks), were Owl Decoys! Like Sentinels watching over comings and goings. . . .

And I know they're on my side!


I reworked both these photos in Lab mode to see what color could be captured, and I'm finding that I like the technique more and more!

Here's a strange video talking more about Lab, by Deke McClelland. I've been working through one of his classes at lynda.com, and this is a sample video. But, he's not anywhere near as frenetic at the lynda.com site as he is on you tube!

After you watch this video, you might want to do an intervention and remove caffeine from his house! Don't Fear Lab!

Lab or RGB?

An editing question for you. . . which version do you prefer. . . AND do you ever edit in LAB mode rather than RBG? I signed up for a month of lynda.com lessons, and have been working through some RBG photo editing suggestions and a course on LAB editing.

The 2nd photo was edited with very basic, and minimal, LAB editing; the first in RBG. It's not actually a completely fair comparison, because the settings in RAW in the two are different. . . I left more contrast in the LAB version, added it more after RAW in the RBG version.

SB800 flash, Manual mode, f/4.0; 1/40; ISO 400, 28-75 mm lens at 75mm.

And here's a bird update! After putting up Hedwig (thanks Shirley!), the next day, I looked out the window, and there were about 20 cedar waxwings in the trees all lined up and Staring at my house! I kid you not; they were all facing the house, not looking left or right or dangling upside down from the branches.

But they stayed away!

The next day, I looked out, and The Birds were now all in one tree, looking at the house, and a squirrel was in the other tree.

And THEN! The next day, there was a dead squirrel in my driveway!!!! (aren't you glad there's no photo?)

And then today, two birds crashed into my window in the front of my house, (not the back, where the Cedar Waxwings have been massing; and I'm not sure the kamikaze birds were waxwings --I haven't checked for corpses yet.)

Huh. There's a war of some sort going on, and I know Hedwig, my Owl, is so far being successful.

My Owly Protector

See my protector? After my phone conversation with the County Extension Office yesterday, I went out and hired an owl. He agreed to work for free, dangling from my window by duck tape.


Look at what the Cedar Waxwings did to a corner of my window frame! You can't quite see it, but if you look directly under the owls eye, toward the inside of the window, you'll see a hole bored into the frame. And then all that chipped and chewed up part of the wood is also from The Birds. There was some paint chipping prior to their attack, but not anywhere near this much!



My friend, Claudette, said that Cedar Waxwings like to eat mock crabapples and can get drunk, will hang upside down on branches, fall to the ground, stumble around etc. Sometimes they line up on a branch, and pass the fruit to the back of the line until everyone gets a piece of it.

No sign of them today, but I know it wasn't just Tuesday that they were around, but it was the day they were the most numerous and relentless (about 50 to 75 in my yard!)

I'd like my house to stop being under attack, now, for awhile. . . not by air (birds), sea (flood water), land (EXCEL exploding plastic gas lines) or even any hauntings, should that occur next.

I'm sorry, Florida. . . and Evil Birds

Today we had beautiful weather! It got to 65 degrees!!! There's a reason, I'm afraid. . . I took Doug to the airport this morning. I'm so sorry, Florida!
I hope the tornadoes stop soon.

But all was not sweetness and light in Grand Forks. It seems that my house is being attacked by these evil birds:



Don't be fooled by their cuteness. They have been systematically dismantling the frame around my kitchen window! WTH!!!! I don't believe "mi casa es su casa" when it comes to being an avian woodchipper trying to tunnel into my kitchen.





Anyone knows what these Alfred Hitchcock wannabes are? And how I can discourage them?

A Drug-Related Mystery Solved!

The Evidence:

First, this mysterious pill appeared on the desk in my office (not in my house.) I was totally baffled by it. I decided that someone else must have dropped it in my office, and the cleaning staff put it on my desk. The "L" was intriguing: Lipitor? Lorazepam? Lomotil???? I had no clue, and threw it out, hoping it wasn't someone's very expensive prescription. I told Doug about it, and he had no idea either. . . .


The Mystery Intensifies. . . the Drugs Multiply . . . Paranoid Precautions are Taken:

The next day, I found these two pills on the floor in my house! Doug also looked at them, and then we looked suspiciously at each other.

(Was my husband secretly a drug-abusing klutz, dropping his pills? Did DH have a dread disease that he was keeping from me? Did I really have a multiple personality disorder, and one part of me engaged in active drug-seeking behavior?) My husband suggested that maybe he walked in his sleep???????? (That made NO sense!)

We thought about calling my sister, MaryAnn, and describing the pills. . . she might at least know what they were. . .

I checked the tread on the bottom of my shoes, thinking maybe I had walked on a pile of pills in the snow (and they didn't dissolve?) but got stuck on my shoes, leaving one in my office, two at home. . . . But the tread was too smooth. . .

Finally, we did what any rational, law-abiding, smart, middle-aged empty-nesters would do if they were being stalked by a trail of "L" drugs:

We called our daughter at her college and told her that if we turned up dead or missing, to call the police and give them the clue that we had been being stalked by these pills and it was probably related. . .



The Guilty Party Identified:

And you all think Bonnie is just a sweet, innocent dog! But now you'll learn about her sneaky and secretive side!

I walked over to the kitchen counter and picked up the bottle of baby aspirin. Every day, Doug rolls up a little pill (A Little yellow pill with an "L" on it! How much more of a hint did we need, given that Bonnie is a yellow lab!!!) in a ball of peanut butter and buries it in her breakfast. She usually gulps down her food, slurping it, licking the bowl clean, moving the bowl all around the kitchen floor. And we feel better thinking that she'll have less aches and pains with her arthritis, and that this will protect the slightly enlarged heart of our 14 1/2 year old pooch.


And apparently, over the last 3 days, after she'd gobbled down her breakfast, she'd slink into the living room and surreptitiously drop the pill, sucked clean of all the peanut butter, onto the floor or onto the bag I carry to my office.

So if you have anything amiss in your life, think Bonnie! . . . because it turns out that she's much more clever and less innocent than she looks!

Oh, Woeful Day! ShameWow :( Evil

Is nothing sacred? It's with heavy heart that I write this post. I am just crushed! My good friend, Jeanne, wrote in yesterday's post comment about Vince, the ShameWow:( LowLife, that there were news announcements that Vince had been arrested for allegedly beating up a prostitute (one who wouldn't let go of his tongue.) Eeewwwwwwwww! Now, this is NOT something that can be cleaned up with a ShameWow:(.

I don't know what to think. My bubble is burst; my illusions are destroyed. Will there be a morning after?

I find myself looking suspiciously at ShameWow:(, and suspecting that there's Actual Evil inherent in its spongey yellowness.

I combed my recent photos, and think I've found further evidence of its Nefarious Influence. Look at these two, perfectly fine, sweet, intelligent, upstanding individuals, who would normally give you the shirt (ShameWow:() off their backs:



ShameWow:( turned them into Vicious Hounds, tearing at each other, tooth and claw, to win the Precious ShameWow:(. Oh, the horror of it all!

Why, oh why did I not listen to Dylan the ShameWow:( Detector (and son of Sheila)? He was right, all along, about Vince.

Excuse me, now. I have to stop writing. And go wash my hands. :( :( :(

Oh, and the GOOD NEWS is that although the river is now at 49.5 feet, we still seem to be doing fine in Grand Forks, ND!!!! Hooray! We should have our first crest soon, and then apparently a second crest later this month. But I know it's going to be tough on Fargo, once they assess their damage.

"Eat your heart out, Dylan," says Sheila (mother of the ShamWow! Detractor)

This is my good buddy, Sheila, who is a very nice person, although she is the mother of the ShamWow! Detractor. Sheila agreed to pose for me outside our office, demonstrating a recent snow mountain. These mountains seem to appear suddenly, overnight, and we never have a Good Explanation for them: Here's one possibility-- earth-moving equipment comes during the night and builds these structures to toy with us because someone's GPS system SHOWS Grand Forks to be filled with mountains, and then tries to make reality conform to digital pixels. Grand Forks is, in fact, so flat that the horizon extends beyond the contours of the earth an extra 20 miles in all directions from the city.

It's probably a government program of some sort. Unfortunately, these bureaucrats may order more raw material, because we are being told that a potential blizzard is brewing to the west of us. Ever notice how things are often blamed on Mother Nature?



Now, innocent looking though Sheila may appear, she exacted a heavy price from me for her cooperation. Look what she made me let her do!!!!









These are NOT technically great photos, but I blame it on Sheila. She was in such rapture as she got to hold Shammy (I mean, ShamWow!), that it was hard to be in her presence and hold the camera still. (She even put Shammy through his paces and made him perform for her, soaking up water in the sink!)

FYI: The current Red River level is now at 48.91. Whether the blizzard hits here in Grand Forks, or just in Fargo, to the south, we're likely to see that moisture in our part of the river, as it makes its way north. Apparently, the Army Corps of Engineers has assembled a team of experts on ice jams. Experts on Ice Jams! Who Knew?

In Oslo, MN, there've been efforts to break up the ice jams with helicopter suspended wrecking balls smashing into the ice. I kid you not! Ok, I have a flood suggestion: with all the antsy Grand Forks people who don't get to sandbag (because of the "permanent dike solution") how about if we shovel all these mountains of snows onto railroad cars and ship it to drought stricken areas of the country? Who cares if it melts en route, as long as it hits some place drought stricken?

Grand Forks Flood Patrol and a Texas Lake and ShamWow!

What's wrong with this picture? Here's this beautiful lake boat house. . . . at my brother's house in Texas . . . Wasn't I suppose to live at a warm place like this? In my next lifetime, I'm really going to pay attention to geography in school, and understand that ND is a cold place before I move there. . . .




But here's where I live . . . as the city tops off the dikes along the river, adding protection against the spring flooding.






We seem to be doing fine, holding our own against the potential flooding, although our neighbors 90 miles to the south in Fargo, ND, are being much more challenged. After the 1997 flood that devastated our city, we built a pretty extensive dike system; Fargo doesn't have this, and are desperately filling sand bags.

If the river tops the dike system, not even ShamWow! will be up to this! But speaking of ShamWow!, I'm sure it's been on all your minds lately. And I have a progress report giving it an A+ (unlike the grade the Shameless ShamWow! detractor might give it!) My husband opened his van door in our garage this past weekend, and out rolled, and broke, a bottle of red wine. (He doesn't normally drive around with a van filled with bottles of rolling around wine, but sometimes things just happen . . .) Anyway, ShamWow! sprung into action and sopped that whole gloppy mess up! We celebrated--not with a bottle of wine--but by giving the sweet little darling a bath and laying it out to dry. I should have taken a photo of it in action, but ShamWow was just to anxious too please and strut its stuff for us, that the mess was vanquished before I had a chance to grab my camera.

Als, someone asked about yesterday's photo and ISO. I used my 50 1.4 lens at f/1.4 and ISO 800. The fact that there were so many neon lights really helped to illuminate the shot, although it was still a little tricky not getting the light blown out, and losing all the detail in the shadows. A little tweaking in Camera Raw really helped!

Angela and Her New Purchase

aka: ShamWow Bliss!

Isn't this exciting! How did all of you not guess this? I was so excited when the UPS man came yesterday, I practically tackled him in the driveway (but Bonnie beat me to it. Sorry about that leg; I hear they work wonders with prosthetics these days.)

I know; I know. . .you're all thinking that this was kind of reckless, and foolish, what with the economy and all. (And besides, what the heck exactly do you really do with a ShamWow?) But you've all seen Vince, right? On the late night infomercials? Who could resist the sheer magnetism of ShamWow and Vince?
My husband is so jealous of this new love and passion in my life. But he had his chance. Was he increasing his attentiveness, and showering me with gifts, (this week, maybe a new camera lens; you know, because of the cataract thing, before I go completely blind, and have to operate my camera by braille)? No, not really. So when ShamWow! appeared on the scene, could you blame me for wanting to cuddle up with this, and dancing for joy?


By the way, there is one Fly in the Ointment, so to speak. It's come to my attention that there's a ShamWow! detractor running about, exercising his freedoms and liberties. Check out his link here, but trust me, it's just sacrilegious: Shameless ShamWow! Detractor
I'm thinking he's become so. . . damaged. . . and distorted in his thinking because of his toddler's pathological use of his credit card: Wild Child

The British Museum, Rosetta Stone & Lost

Journal for Thursday, Feb 4, London late afternoon and evening

We split up, after lunch, and made our ways separately through the Tube, and back to the hotel (sort of.) I headed off to the British Museum. Originally, I'd planned to spend much time here, but had only an hour or so, because I wanted to be sure to get back to the hotel to meet up in time with Brian, Dianna & Emily to go to Wicked.

This is the lobby of the British Museum:

And a sculpture:

And someone dead a very long, long, long time. The British Museum has tons of antiquities. Of dead things.

The one thing, I really, really wanted to see, was this. It's the Rosetta Stone. This was the stone which helped decipher hieroglyphics. This baby was written (chiseled?) in 196 BC (a tad earlier than Word), and then discovered in 1799.



Shhhhhhhh! If you look closely at line 8, you'll see all the passwords to my foreign bank accounts.

I kept an eye on the clock while I was here, because I was worried about getting back in time. I had plenty of time, but I'm intimately acquainted with me, and my very sad sense of direction. The sun was beginning to go down, and truthfully, once it gets a little dark, I can't read street signs well. (keep that in mind next time you make me the navigator on a trip )(which I actually like to be.)

And I didn't have a compass with me.

And then I discovered something which made my blood run cold, ND cold, and alter time as we know it: the map I had with me didn't include our hotel.

Now, before our trip, I'd made many copies of Tube station maps for everyone, had acquired London maps from all kinds of brochures, had highlighted every map in my 3 guide books showing where our hotel was. . . and didn't have any of these with me. Except one lame map showing everything south and west of where I happened to be, lost in the universe.

I headed first in one direction. Then the other. I walked down streets that looked roughly familiar, because we'd been on them over and over over the last 4 days, walking when the buses weren't running. . . but they all looked . .. . different. Different as in, before I just wanted to take pictures of this and that; now, I just wanted to know which way to walk.

Ok, I took a deep breath, decided one direction was probably roughly northeast, which was probably, roughly, where I should go, in some kind of deranged zig-zag fashion. And walked and walked. My camera didn't feel so light any more.

Finally, I decided to start asking people, but pretty much no one had heard of the little street I was looking for. And with every other little building being a hotel in London, my hotel name didn't mean much. Eventually I went into the lobby of the British Medical Association, pointed out roughly on my lame map where my hotel should be. . . if the map extended, and a very wonderful, angelic, keeper-of-the-wisdom-of-the-universe took pity on this pathetic foreigner and downloaded and printed a much better google map for me. And pointed out a short cut for me to take to the hotel.

Remind me to never accept the words "short-cut". They always lead you to the edges of Oblivion, or possibly a sidestreet in Deliverance. Anyway, I was lost again. I asked a Random Unhelpful Guy in the street, showing him the map, trying to reconcile the street signs with where I was at. . . and he basically had no clue, but gave me wild sounding directions to ask some security guard how to get there.

I decided to skip his well-intended wild goose chase, and retraced my steps all the way back to the British Medical Association, and tried again.

This time, taking the EXACT SAME ROUTE took me SOMEWHERE ELSE!!! (how does that happen?) and it happened to be right in front of the hotel. Right in front of the hotel, at the exact moment that the same Unhelpful Guy walked by!

Yeah, no pictures of THIS fun little jaunt. Just in time for me to collect my (geographically-impaired, frazzled) wits and head off to Wicked with my family.

And Wicked was so , so worth it! The best part of the day! And yes, Kerry Ellis plays Elphaba and she was great!

I'm not sure if it was because of the weather issues this week, but the theatre was not full at all. I wished we'd gotten the half-price, same day tickets at Leicester Square. But what we were able to do was move up from our crappy, way in the back, off on the side seats, to much closer up and center seats. But if you ever go to London, consider the same-day tickets. Which is what I'll do if I ever get to go back. That and bring a map for every frickin' pocket of my clothes. And one for each shoe.(2)