in which I find cool stuff and set other stuff on fire

I went for a walk in the woods with a friend today.

I found a speckled egg. It looks blue in the picture, but appeared white in real life. I did a wee bit of research online to see what kind of bird this is, but I don’t have any answers for you.

I also saw a toad…well, I saw that there was a toad to be seen, but my friend actually found the little bugger.

WHAT A GREAT PICTURE! Boy, someone nominate me for the Best Blog Photos of All Time award! I took this with my cell phone with my left hand, which apparently has a tremble in it, because the egg pictures were equally impressive.

On the other hand, check out this awesome, right-handed picture:

Completely blurry! The whole thing! Woo-hoo! That’s my friend’s dog. Since I haven’t even let on to said friend that I have a blog (you do realize this is a top-secret project, right?), let alone that I would be posting today’s pictures on it, let’s just call this dog “Buddy” to preserve his anonymity. He’s a great dog – obviously an old soul.

Let’s go back to the whining channel. My dear sweet husband whom I adore beyond all reason, measure, or words, has offered up a new camera as an early b-day present. Hooray, Kevin! So now I’m researching point-and-shoots. I think it’s fair to say that a point-and-shoot is likely to meet my needs. I ain’t that fussy. If you have a suggestion, drop me a line. Seriously.

They make cameras now that will actually detect not only that there are people in the shot, but whether or not they’re smiling – and it will take the picture only then. And you can even program it for how many teeth showing, counts as smiling. That is evil. I don’t need that. I need something that can take a decent close-up of flowers’ naughty bits. And I’m kinda in love with the idea of something that can do a panoramic sweep. (But so far, it looks like only Sony does that in my price range (<$200) at least, but then the experts bitch about the overall picture quality, so….hmmm…) And definitely something that can zoom, but I don’t really know how much zoom I’m going to want. 4x? 7x? 10x? I don’t think I need to be able to manually over-ride everything – not with this one.

At any rate, given that what I’m working with now has no zoom, a non-functioning LCD panel in the back, and a whopping 3.2 megapixels, just about anything I get will be a massive improvement.

Then what.

This evening’s culinary excitement consisted of a sing-along with the smoke alarm. It does harmony very well, so long as you don’t vary your own melody, as it can only manage that one ear-splitting high note.

 

 

Oooh, you can tilt pictures, how cool.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Uh, yes, so I was roasting some peppers I got on sale – they were a wee bit past their prime – so into the flames they went. BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP sang the smoke alarm. “STFU!” I replied, and pressed the magic “hush” button. It’s like a snooze button: “Yeah, I set the kitchen on fire, but I just want fifteen minutes of peace and quiet, so hush”.

AND! The week’s CSA haul included a generous bunch of basil – so I also made pesto. I had trouble finding a spot in the freezer for the resulting ice cube tray of pesto deliciousness because of the TWENTY FIVE POUNDS of blueberries that are taking up a lot of room in there.

And now, from the way-back machine, one year ago today, this is how I started the post:

The long awaited views from the second floor!
This will be the view when lying in bed.

Yep, that’s the view alright. Sheer heaven.

Oh god, I’ve got to run again tomorrow. It’s supposed to rain. But alas, I have no excuses, what with owning a treadmill and all.