Saturday Snaps

 I totally forgot to put the Trail Cam out this week.  And apparently, I forgot to blog this week, too, so I didn't want to leave this to another day.  Here are some snaps I've taken over the years from various locations.

I call this one 'We Three Squirrels' (taken 1/1/12 in Colorado):

Here's an interesting shot (Colorado 2/19/13) of a hawk and its prey, except the silly, and perhaps young, hawk doesn't notice the prey sitting right behind it:

This is from 2013, too, and it's a shot here if Scarlet and her baby Sammy:

Flash forward to 2018 - the year I hung oranges for the orioles, and wasn't disappointed:

(Every other year I've hung oranges, I didn't get any orioles.  Bummer.)

And with that, I'll let you go.  Here's hoping I get the damn trail camera up this week so you can see new pics.  I hope you still enjoyed the old pics.  Have a great, day.

Saturday Trail Cam Fun

 Hello again.  I don't know how you feel about it, but this trail cam stuff is fun.  

Anyway, here I am, checking out the placement of the camera...

This one shows pretty much all of the regular deer visitors to the feeding area:

I call this one "Is that a camera?"

You might not be able to see this guy.  He's doing such a good job of hiding behind a tree:

Another instance of 'is that a camera?' but this time it's Scout - son of Sissy and Lumpy's grandbuck.  He's such a good boy, but he got deer snot on my camera.

And from last night, I got a a good one of two raccoons.  If you blow it up, you can see one watching something in the distance while the other one is crouched behind him playing 'Stealth Raccoon'.  

I've also gotten some snaps of opossums, but none of them worth sharing.  Oh, and I got this shot...

...but I have no clue what it is.  I'm speculating that it's an opossum, but for laughs, I'm calling it a chupacabra.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed seeing some snaps from the trail camera.  Like I said, I know I'M having fun.  

Thursday This n That

I'm in some kind of mood this morning because I keep getting the urge to argue with morons on FB.  And it's about stupid stuff.  For instance, there was this math problem, and there was this guy arguing that the answer had to be 6 because when you broke the math problem down it was basically 2(2+1), but the first part of the problem had 6 divided by 2.  In what alternate universe do you ever get two goes into six two times???  I want to think he did that on purpose to see if anyone caught his mistake.  (No one arguing with him did, btw.)  It had to be that or else he's a total putz.  Maybe he's a total putz either way.  

At first I thought the division sign in the problem was a plus sign and I couldn't figure out how anyone was coming up with nine - including the calculator the poster posted an image of.  Glasses, you dork, wear your glasses.  LOL

Getting older blows.

Hubs has been leaving a special little pile of seeds by the iris bed just for Chester Chipmunk.  I made Chester a theme song.  "Chester... Chester Chipmunk.  He's the chippiest chipmunk of them all."  It works better if you can hear me sing it.

There's Chester on our front porch.  Isn't he darling?  I want to snuggle him up.  Of course, if I got my hands on him, he'd bite the hell out of me.  Wild things don't understand snuggling.

We have all these woodland creatures.  Why the hell aren't they cleaning my house?  Damn you, Disney, for giving me unrealistic expectations of woodland creatures.

I wandered the yard yesterday taking pictures.  Here's one from my front door, looking across the porch at the yard.  

The yard is great until you have to mow it.  And that's just a fraction of the whole yard.  With trees you have to mow around scattered throughout.  

Yes, we have a ceiling fan on the front porch.  Don't look at me.  I didn't put it there.  It was here when we bought the house.  Now, it's mainly a place for birds to perch while they're waiting for their chance on the suet cage.

We do so love the little birdies that we give them this to perch upon.  ;o)

Anyway, I'm running late today, so I'd better get my buns in gear.  Got anything to add from your this n that lists today?

Thursday This n That

Hubs and I both really hate the phrase "Appreciate ya".  As much as the word(?) mybad.  The first negates 'Thank You" and the other negates "I'm sorry" - both of which are necessary to society - so we've turned them into joke phrases.  They deserve to be laughed at, so we do.

I washed the car on Tuesday.  There was a tiny tree growing in my license plate holder.  An elm.  I was tempted to leave it and just keep motoring down the highway with a tiny tree leading the way.   Alas, the tree had to go.

Oh, and while I was washing the car, I sliced my damn right index finger right at the tip, like a big papercut.  What a pain in the... well, fingertip.

BTW, papercut should be one word.  Jus' sayin'.

I'm actually going to my BFF's house for coffee this morning.  This probably isn't a big thing for you, but for me, it's major.  We've been friends for about 8 years and have never been to each other's houses.  Hell, we almost never even talk on the phone.  I just talk with her at her job.  So, yeah, major.  If you know me, you understand.  I feel like I ought to have baked something.

Since I've seen pretty much every episode of everything I want to watch, I'm back to watching old reruns of REBA and LAW & ORDER.  And sometimes even those are irritating.

In case I didn't post a picture of Rockette Raccoon here before, here she is...

...munching on crunchy corn kernels.  Ain't she cute?  She's been coming by almost every evening for about a week.  Hopefully, she'll bring her kits by at some point.  (And no, I don't for certain this is even a female.  And I have no way of knowing, so as far as I'm concerned, she's a girl.)

My zucchinis are blooming.  I really should take pics and post them on the gardening blog.

And that's about it in my super exciting life.  Yeah, about that... I forgot to post a Sunday Update, but that's okay because nothing much has been going on.  I'll try to remember this week.

What's on your this-n-that radar today?

Thursday This n That

Videos of police lip-syncing and dancing... I think they're awesome.  Those guys do so much for us and their jobs are so stressful, they deserve to have a little fun.  Every one I see makes me smile.  (I watched a new one yesterday morning where the lip-syncing was so horrendous it should've been a crime, but it was still fun to watch.)

I took pictures using my phone for the first time.  They didn't turn out too bad.  

This is of the new boulders they put at my favorite fishing spot and in the foreground is the approximate location where I fell on my ass.  (I took the pics so Hubs could see what they did to the place.  Note: I am not happy.)  You might not be able to tell, but some of those gray rocks are 2-3ft across/high.  

I have static in my phone.  Sometimes.  I thought it had cleared up and then I was talking to someone and it started back up again.  I really need to call CenturyLink.  But I hate calling them.  I really wish someone else in my neighborhood would make the call, but they don't.  It seems like I'm the only one who ever bothers.

By the way... if you ever talk to me on the phone or in person, I have this thing I do where I stop and start and pause a lot.  It's because my brain is searching frantically for the next word.  And sometimes, in its haste to get a word out, it inserts whatever word it came up with, even if it's the wrong word.  The longer I talk, the worse it gets.  Hubs and Mom are used to it.  To everyone else, I probably sound like a moron.  This is partly why I rarely get into long conversations.  

There's a new gal at the bank.  Okay, she's been there for a few months now.  Anyway, I took my RHI proof with me to the bank to show my BFF and happened to take the time to chat with the new gal.  Turns out she's a voracious reader and wants a copy of Duke, too.  Yay.  

Speaking of copies, Amazon said I'd have my author copies between the 14th and the 16th.  I got a shipment notification from the Big-A last night.  They sent one book and it won't be here until the 20th.  The other 4 books I ordered?  Who the hell knows?  I have three books already spoken for.  Dammit.   (Okay, I just looked at it again and NOW it says they sent 4 books.  Derp.  Where's the 5th?)  I wonder what they would've done if I'd ordered 100 books.  *

Anyway, I probably should go start my morning.  Hubs already has laundry going and I feel like a slug.  More coffee!  Stat!

What up in your world?

*Okay, I think I figured it out.  There are two shipment notifications.  One for one book and one for four books.  They shipped them all, but in two different packages.  Maybe.  I guess I'll find out Tuesday.  :eyeroll:

Thursday This n That

Last night, just after I sat down to write, a thunderstorm rolled in.  So my word count for yesterday was 133 words.  And that was all fixing part of the scene I wrote the day before.

I decided what critter was going to attack the band of intrepid characters and it ended up being one of my own design because nothing fit what I had in my head.  So, I wrote the scene.  Then yesterday, I realized the beastie needed to be beefed up a little in the description and it needed to be gray rather than black.  And it ended up being a battle scene without any battle.  Beasties defeated by cunning.  I thought my solution was rather brilliant at the time.  We'll see if I still feel that way in edits.

For a guy who didn't want his magic or any kind of leadership role, Aryl's pretty good at both.

On the way to go fishing, a little hawk flew across the road in front of me carrying its prey.  Not sure what kind of lunch it would be having, but it was definitely something small and furry.  Too small to be a squirrel, too big to be a mouse, too dark to be a chipmunk and the tail was wrong for a chipmunk anyway.  :shrug:  Eat hearty little hawk.

With the time change, I've been getting up at 4am.  Which is good because the cat expects to be fed at around 4:30 (she used to get fed around 5:30, but time change).  The worst part of it is that getting up at 4 means that by the time it's time to call the office at 8, the coffee is almost gone and I don't want to make another pot just for a twenty minute call.

Speaking of the time change, where is this extra hour of sleep I was supposed to be getting?  Total rip off. 

Can anyone tell me why people vote YES for new taxes?  I wonder if it's because they don't think that whenever they vote for new taxes, they will also be taxed.  Maybe they think the taxes will only hit the other guy.  I mention this because we voted on Tuesday and while we voted against the new tax thing, it passed - by a slim margin, but still.  Blerg.  I guess I shouldn't bitch overly much because some of you out there are paying outrageous amounts in taxes and Missouri is still pretty low.  But I want to keep it that way and apparently others here don't.  Double blerg.

Speaking of which, our property tax bills arrived this week.  Umm, yay?  Most of it goes to pay for our shitty school system, which we never used and never will.  I wouldn't mind helping pay for the education of our youth if the education I was paying for was actually worth something.  Know what I mean?

The bucks have been stopping here.  (Yes, I went there.)  We've got some really gorgeous boys this year.  If only I could get some pics. 

Speaking of pics, I really need to wash my windows.  It's hard to get a good photo when the glass you're shooting through is dirty and has spider webs strung across it.

Wow, I've been kind of chatty this morning.  Thanks for reading this far.  I'll let you go for now so you can get on with your day. 

What's up in your world?