Random Thought

The object of education is to prepare the young to educate themselves throughout their lives.

Robert Maynard Hutchins


Flag Counter started April 3, 2008

Sky Photography Day!

First, the sunrise was glorious!

Then, we could see the thunderheads building mid-afternoon for the storms that came later.

The lightening started up and there was still some daylight leftover, so I ran out to try and catch some lightening. I didn’t take time to set up the tripod, so couldn’t hold it perfect. I did get this shot with the twin bolts.

And this one has a little bolt to the far left. I just held down the shutter for continuous shooting hoping I might accidentally catch a lightening bolt.

This was the oddest shot! This is an untouched photo, not manipulated in photoshop! Mike and Beth, my pro photog friends, said I must have accidentally touched the zoom while doing my continuous shots along with the handheld low-light shot complications.

This one doesn’t have the degree of fade/rotation of the previous, but it’s pretty cool anyway.

Working on the Barn

This morning I took some photos of the barn just before we started on the renovation! It’s a GREAT old barn, and we are going to put red tin on it over the old, faded, shrunken oak siding boards.


Above: reflection on pond with small "pond fog."

Right: "artsy" photo of the east side of the barn. I didn’t notice until I looked at the photo there was a little lizard sunning himself on the left side of this photo!


Here’s Andy, Jeff and Richard putting nailers up on the south side of the barn.

And here they are working on the north side of the barn. They finished this side by the end of the day.

The Moon and Jupiter

Tonight the moon and Jupiter had a close encounter a little past midnight, and I stayed up until midnight trying to get a good photo. First of all, they insinuated it would look like two moons. Well, "they" were exaggerating a lot! More than a lot! It looked like the moon and a big star! But, it was fun. Click here for more information.


11:10 pm ; no zoom, slower shutter so you can see the trees.

11:46 pm; Jupiter at the bottom of the photo, zoomed in.
11:47 pm; zoomed all the way out so you can see the relationship. Jupiter not easily visible on this smaller image, but click on it to see the larger one and you can see Jupiter just below the moon. Doesn’t really look much closer than it did at 11:10 does it?

Glorious Morning!

This morning was lovely, and I just had to work outside for a little while to enjoy it!

I take . . .

I take Aspirin for the headache caused by the Zyrtec I take for the hayfever I got from Relenza for the uneasy stomach from the Ritalin I take for the short attention span caused by the Scopederm TX I take for the motion sickness I got from the Lomotil I take for the diarrhea caused by the Zenikal for the uncontrolled weight gain from the Paxil I take for the anxiety from Zocor I take for my high cholesterol because exercise, a good diet, and regular chiropractic care are just too much trouble!

[I don't really take these drugs, but I know of people who do take drug after drug to counter the effects of other drugs, which are mostly unnecessary! Think about it people!]

Anniversary Fishing!

Richard and I celebrated our 3rd anniversary with two days of fishing at Bennett Spring. I caught more fish than usual, and Richard had some of his best fishing ever! We had a room with a mini-kitchen and cooked a major feast of fresh fish! Life is great!


Richard catching a fish!

I tried some different settings for this watershot and then tinkered with it in Photoshop.

The 4th Annual Honeymoon Float was a Great Success (again!) (of course!)

Here’s the group at the 4th Annual Honeymoon Float Trip! Click here for more pictures! It just gets better and better every year. This year we had a great group of 19 people (we sure did miss Garland who couldn’t make it this year), 2 dogs and super weather. After a string of really hot days and nights, today was just 89 degrees! It was warm enough to enjoy swimming, but cool enough so we didn’t bake in the canoes.

Remember, you are all invited to the 5th Annual Honeymoon Float to be held August 21, 2011 (the 3rd Sunday in August)!

Richard’s 43rd High School Reunion, Republic High class of 1967

Here’s Richard and 27 of his Republic High (Missouri) classmates at their 43rd Reunion. We had great fun, and I got to put faces to the names in the stories Richard’s told me from his high school days.

Here is a print quality copy of this photo. You can right click the link and then choose “save as” or you can click it, let the photo load in your browser, and then right click on that and save it to your hard drive.

Clouds in Haiku

Yesterday I finally figured out how to take a series of photos at a certain interval that I determine, so I took a series of thunderheads and then put them together into a flash movie and even wrote an original haiku to go with it!

Scrumptious Meal!

Richard smoked a full pork tenderloin, a whole chicken, and 3 trout today. We ate tenderloin, fresh tomatoes from our garden, cole slaw I made, and corn on the cob from the store. YUM!!!

We will freeze the other smoked meats for later consumption!