Fail

So, yeah. Obviously I failed at posting daily in June. It's ok. I've just been too busy.

I might still check out their prompts and do a couple more. Don't know yet!.

Enough...

Ok...even I am getting tired of our current weather pattern. I keep forgetting it is nearly summer. Our long days are being wasted on stuff you can only do if it's raining instead of stuff that is good to do when it is dry. Very annoying, to say the least. I'm a Washingtonian and I normally love the rain, but this is just too much. I wanted to be way more productive this summer. I need to grade the dog's yard with a bobcat and need dry weather to accomplish that. I need to take things to the dump and want dry weather to do that. I want to sell and give away things on Craig's list and want dry weather for that. I don't care if it's cloudy, but does it really need to rain this much? Is this the fault of the volcanoes that spewed this past year? Is it just natural because we live in a rainforest area? Will we be regretting complaining once it does ever get warm because it will get way too hot?
These are the questions that have no answers.
Or answers I might not want to hear. Or answers that really don't matter. All I know is that I am ready for some sunny weather with some blue skies that last more than a day.

Not like this.

Like this.

Then and now...

So Honey Maid graham crackers aren't what they used to be. I don't have any "then" pictures, but I do have some "now" pictures. As you may or may not be able to see, the cracker is now much smaller than it used to be. I had noticed the box wasn't as wide, but didn't get it until yesterday that it is because the crackers are not as wide. In the old days the crackers made squares when you broke them in half. So you had two very square pieces. These are the building blocks for the ultra delicious "S'mores" camping dessert. However, the new crackers do not make squares. They make rectangles when split in half. If, indeed, you can get them to break in half. The perforations are also not what they used to be and it is very difficult to get a clean break for the halves or the quarters. (see illustration)

The new smaller graham cracker by Nabisco.

The box still shows the version which makes square halves.

The way most of them break up these days. The perforations don't go deep enough into the cracker.


Either way, I love them drowned in milk until they are soft. This can be done best if the glass is big enough to dunk the 1/4 pieces in the long way. To get it just right (for me, at least) you have to hold the 1/4 cracker piece under the milk until the bubbles stop. This make a soft, mushy wafer that melts in your mouth and exudes the great graham flavor. If you wait too long, though, it will break away and become debris in your glass of milk. The debris doesn't bother me. When I am all done with the dunking and eating, I drink what's left in the glass, debris and all! Yummy!

I would rather have these for breakfast than any cereal out there. I have found that I can only do this with Nabisco Honey Maid graham crackers. For some reason the other brands don't work as well. They don't bubble up like the Nabisco brand as they fill with milk. They don't get as soft and they also don't have the strong graham flavor of the Nabisco brand. They might be smaller, but they are still mightier! Some of the "off" brands still come in the regular size and can be broken into squares, just FYI. Even so, they will never be Nabisco!

Yesterday down at Port of Tacoma

It was a gray day yesterday, with rain and dark clouds, but I took some pictures anyway, while waiting around at the Port's medical clinic. It is a very noisy place, with semi-trucks whizzing by constantly and the cranes lifting and dropping containers. It was interesting to me that, as the trucks rolled by me, the sidewalk actually bounced. It felt like mini-earthquakes.

There is a place next to the clinic that grinds up log leftovers into beauty bark. It smelled really nice. It was chilly enough that the bark was steaming as it came out of the grinder shack and onto the conveyor belts.

Conveyor belt delivering ground bark to the pile.

The steam coming off the bark.

A little shack behind the grinder shack.

The container cranes that take the containers off the ships and also put them on the ships.

The truck that lifts the containers onto and off from the semi-trailer beds.

I love to watch these things work. I miss working at the boat.

Another view of the cranes. I love these things.

I need to find out what these are because I want some. They are growing on a bush.

Again.

A rhododendron at the clinic.

I have some thing for now...

but I will finish this blog later. I want to go out for awhile and I may not be back before midnight, so here is my place marker for today's blog. More photography?

How about Logan trying out my reading glasses?
I already changed my mind. This is good enough the way it is.

Just some tidbits

Didn't have a chance to play with my new camera today, but I did start working on wiring the rust off the old milk can I picked up on one of last year's free Craig's list runs. I am a little bit excited about that because it is way more solid than I thought it was. I can't wait to get it done and painted. I am trying to decide if I should try removing the lid or not. Who knows what could be inside? Maybe it is best left a mystery. Knowing me, I will probably try to pry it off, though. Here is a picture of it that I took yesterday.




Ok...that is the only tidbit I could think of right now. Maybe I will add more, later.

Pictures from my new camera

I'm not sure I like my new one as well as my old one, but maybe it's because it's new and not feeling familiar yet. I got a lot done in the yard today even though I spent quite a bit of time playing with the camera. So glad it's my Friday!

Setting the super macro manually.



Macro manually set to get the bee using continuous shooting.



Fading rhody flower.



One of my next projects is to wire brush this and use rust reformer on it.



Using camera's scene detection where it picks macro all by itself.



Zooming to the bird on the roof.



Bird on a wire. Zoom plus close-up.



Beer can kids left across the yard.



Blue spruce with macro chosen by the camera.


Super macros chosen by me.



Macro chosen by me.


Macro chosen by camera.



First picture taken sitting on my bed.

Today's macros

I have this rhody bush out front. I moved it there from over by the house when I first moved back to this house.


It didn't bloom for several years after I moved it because I trimmed it back. For some reason, every year since then, I think it doesn't bloom, and then, every year, I remember that it has a very small flower and doesn't make the big clusters like all my other rhody bushes. I go look and sure enough it has bloomed. I just don't notice it because the blooms blend into the bush.
I love the little white blooms on this bush. It's amazing to me that they start out this really deep reddish pink and as they grow and open they turn white with no hint of pink or red. I also included a few pictures of my buttercups, which are running rampant in my yard. If you're sick of macro photography, you should leave now!

Very pink buds.



As they begin to evolve to white.



Starting to really open.



Initial blooms still have a brushing of pink.



Almost completely white, now.



I had to get the stamens and pistil.


The Buttercups. (Ranunculus)
Not quite all the way open, yet.



The seed that is left after the bloom expires.


A seed and a bud.



Fully open buttercup.

Since the subject is "now"...

here are today's macro shots. We actually have sun and warm weather! It's a miracle.
I was trying to get a bee hovering, but these bees were so fast that even with continuous shooting I kept missing them. I had to quit because they started getting too close to me after awhile. I was shooting through the lens finder instead of by using the LCD display. I get better control actually looking through the lens finder.


Not a very clear picture, but you can see the bee is loaded with pollen.


Gathering the pollen.



I did catch one hovering, but it is blurry. I need a clear one.



I was trying to get a view where you could see all the pollen on his butt.



Hello grandma! Whatcha doing?



Blowing spit bubbles.



Mini Iris.



Mini iris again.


Stamen and pistil in the rhody bloom.