Confessions, still and again, part umpty-ump

Excellent plan, picante! Besides we can think of all kinds of ways to celebrate the two solstices.

Yes, another excuse for a party! Woooo hoooo! And I love the disco ball...

The disco ball looks like a "must have" for you, Dahlia. I confess I am losing my eyesight trying to go through pictures for a photo contest I want to enter. It is only my photos on the new camera because I know my files will be big enough. My large jpeg files, maybe, also. But this is just exhausting. Got to mail them off Monday or Tuesday. Prints. Arrgh! It really encourages me to delete more!

Well, you must share your entries with us, digitally, Roybird, so we can cheer you on! Good luck and pictures, please! ^_^

Yes indeed, do share! And I totally sympathize with your difficulty! I am at the stage where i will take 3 or 4 pictures of the same subject and then stare at them all side by side wondering, is this better? or is that better? or is this better? or is that better?

it can get terribly obsessive and I am sure it would be tens of times worser if I were trying to enter a contest!

Still, really want to see your entries whenever you choose them!

here is my fave picture from today: or maybe it was yesterday: anyway:

Ohhh, nice dragonfly!

Thanks, everybody. I may have already posted some of the pictures here but I'm not sure about having them on DG at the same time as they're being judged in a contest. I should know by January if any are accepted. I have finally picked 6 photos to go. Now we'll see if I can get them printed and mailed in time. Kyla, nice blue-eyed dragon fly! One thing I'm learning in my photography stuff is to be even more picky and delete more. The RAW files take up a lot of space and the PSD's even more. So, a big part of it is filing and getting the pictures off the computer and on to a c.d. and independent hard drive A.S.A.P. Which I have not done very well at keeping up with.

Its a lot of work. Still easier than going in the dark room to do development.

Amen! And most computers don't smell bad the way development chemicals do.

Kyla luvly as always ^_^ Roybird I'm so excited for you I can't stand it!!! Please keep us posted on how the competition goes.

Thanks. I will let you know. Chances are kinda slim but no chance at all if I don't enter!

Roybird, what is this contest anyway? It sounds like you are entering some large field of pros or something. Does it have a theme?

I hope you do much better than you expect! ;-)

I think you are ready for the big time, roybird! Go for it!

You guys are all so sweet! It is the annual New Mexico Magazine photo contest. No $ involved but photography related prizes and having your pictures featured in an issue of the magazine, which would be the Really good thing. Categories are landmarks, landscapes, people, wildlife and Misc. Photos must be taken in New Mexico. And New Mexico is gorgeous and chock full of photographers from all over the planet. We actually subscribe to the magazine and I can tell you, it has great pictures! There are all manner of interesting photo competitions on-line and for magazines. Look at Google. The thing is that I don't want to pay entry fees And I like publications that have been around awhile. So, very competitive. Doing this is good practice with my printer, because I have to send prints for this contest, and good way to learn more about file sizes and what magazines want as far as reproduction, etc. etc. It is exactly like the art world but different in the sense that there are more opportunities for photographers than painters And plenty more of them, photographers. Mulch would probably know more about it than I do.

This sounds better and better roybird!

Oh, I think your pictures would be naturals for New Mexico Magazine! I bet if you keep entering one of yours will make it eventually -- even with all the competition. I have my fingers crossed for you.

Okay, I am on my knees for this one.

I have finally had it with the gophers. I have set traps and have now cruelly ( well, that's a matter of opinion) murdered 3 gophers. They just started in on my irises again and I kind of went berserk. Hope you all will still speak to me. I am not feeling very repentant, either.


Another confession. I also didn't feel very repentant about a ticket I got in July for failure to yield to an emergency vehicle. So I went to court and pleaded guilty and guess what? I got off! That policeman was pretty impatient and thought he could intimidate me. The judge thought I pulled over fast enough. He tried to get me to settle for a plea bargain, would you believe! I may not be very conservative, but I drive pretty conservatively! I pleaded not guilty and won. Take that Mr. Grumpy Policeman.

Good for you Pajarito. On both counts.

I think when it comes to iris eating gophers, you gotta do what you gotta do. And good for you on standing up for yourself and winning in court!

Thanks guys, but I pleaded **not** guilty. Probably you guessed that. I am quite proud of getting off. I thought the policeman was out of line.

Good for you! I don't know how it is in Los Alamos, but in Santa Fe almost any time a person goes to court to fight a ticket they end up getting off. Probably the judges are so impressed that anyone would willingly go to court to try to defend themselves that they really do give them the benefit of the doubt. Don't tell me you went to traffic court and killed gophers for your birthday! Hope you did something fun, too.

Brava dear paj re: the ticket! I think too many people just pay them. Most here who fight them get off too. I also think that as dear Brenda says, you gotta do what you gotta do with varmits. Otherwise you'd have no iris.

Hmmm ... gophers or irises, gophers or irises? I think I know what Piper would pick.

Here's a confession of a completely different nature. I tried to make pesto today. I guess you could say I did make pesto today. I had quite a bit of Italian basil and I made one third of a recipe using the blender and it came out Way too salty. So I added a little more olive oil and now it is way too salty and oily. Plus, I had forgotten that I don't much like garlic, so to me it tastes utterly horrible! Fortunately there isn't much of it. I had to soak the blender in hot water with lemon slices to get the smell out and I'm drinking green tea with ginger slices and lemon to try to get the taste out of my mouth. I hope. You could flavor a bushel of potatoes with a teaspoon of this stuff! Glahhh! D.H. is going to think it's pretty funny, that is if I didn't burn out the motor in the blender.

Pesto is very personal. I think everyone likes it different depending on their tastebuds. roybird tell DH that it could have been worst: you could have redecorated with pesto. Once I was whirring a fruity smush and it whirrrred its way out of the machine up to the ceiling. Very prettiful up there but it did not stand the test of time. A fruit smush plopped down on DHs shirt when he walked under it. So your DH should be happy cuz there could be pesto plopping all over the place. The blender motor seems a relatively minor detail IMPO.

edited: edited cuz I was speaking some other language that even I couldn't understand. Maybe Plutonian.

This message was edited Sep 16, 2009 4:09 PM

Some recipes are best served to the compost pile.

You have a good point, Dave. The blender is o.k. D.H. added spinach to the pesto and blended it up more. He thought the problem was the salt, which was a problem with the recipe. He says it tastes good now. I won't touch it! It will probably be alright to add to some pasta when I get home from class tonight. We'll see how hungry I get. Dahlia, it was a good thing it didn't end up on the ceiling. That might've put us both over the edge.

We once had grape glop all over the kitchen. That was from using a grape transporter disguised as a juicer. We've since learned the difference, and now use a juicer.

Fortunately, it (the glop) didn't attack anyone from its occupied territory. Plopping glop would have been too much. I'd have called 911. Sh-sh-shudder.

Why, just a couple weeks ago, a magpie plopped on a neighbor and that caused a case of near-hysteria for everyone involved, except ... her dog was completely calm throughout the entire incident, and saved the day.

A dog often has the Answer to plopping food and plopping guano.

ROTFLMAO! Sorry about the pesto, Roybird. but it is making for some funny responses!

My DH doesn't like pesto -- I think because it often has nuts in it and he is allergic to nuts. So we never have it. I would probably have loved you pesto on paste, roybird. Once you toss it with pasta, all that salt gets spread around and it isn't too much anymore. But your DH was very wise to put spinach in it to reduce the salt proportion -- delicious and healthy. And for me, there is no such thing as too much garlic. Well, almost. I made a dish from Cataluna called chicken with 40 heads of garlic. Really! It was from a cookbook by Coleman Andrews who supposedly knows everything about Catalunan cooking. That was too much even for my DH and me. But we had no trouble with Vampires after that -- or before for that matter. Twelve cloves of garlic in a dish sounds great to me. Just not 40 heads.

I could have used Piper to take care of my gophers. My dogs aren't allowed where they live because they -- the dogs-- run off to have an adventure forgetting completely about the gophers. Apparently coming when called is not an easy thing to teach dogs. That explains which I thought, for years, was deafness in my dogs.

More about the police later!

Okay, I found the already dead gophers on Monday after I went to court. My birthday was Tuesday and was great fun all day long, though DH had a project due today so we couldn't go out and celebrate on my birthday, but we did go out and I didn't have to cook. We will have a real birthday dinner in Taos after I return from Denver.
My birthday was fun. Today was very busy. No gophers in my traps this morning. I guess they took a day off for my birthday -- or maybe I have cleared out that particular bunch.
Concerning the Los Alamos police. I don't know anyone who has ever contested a ticket that they have given out, but they have a reputation of being bullies. I plan to spread the word about the success of my not guilty plea, but I have to credit my fellow defendant's partially for my success. They did tend to have far more major crimes than I did -- one had several bench warrents out for failure to appear, 7 as I recall. One came in in stripes and chains -- yes really! He was already in jail but the judge mumbled a lot and I couldn't hear his crime. Nevertheless he had his wife and mother in the court room and the wife was pregnant and she and her MIL were claiming she was in hard labor and would give birth any minute and the guy in stripes was crying that he wouldn't see his baby born. And there were other wild cases as well. The judge actually said that after all of those, mine looked pretty trivial and that he found me not guilty. The officer looked crestfallen -- heh heh!
It was a good day before my birthday. On my birthday I was totally lazy and hedonistic!

Paj, I agree wholeheartedly, about your ticket. An overly active State Patrolman issued me a ticket a couple of years ago in very early spring. I was coming home from Wenacthee (130 miles) when my pickup hit a patch of ice in the shade and i went up a bank and down across the hwy. Luckily not much traffic so no one else involved. Injured my pickup, so that i could only drive to a wide spot. Luckily a nice man with a cell phone came along and called AAA for a tow, My AAA pays for 100 miles towing, and it was 90miles to my town.

anyway a Patrol car came along while I was waiting for the tow. Gave me a ticket for crossing hwy and DUI, this is at 8:30 am, and I don't drink. The fine was $90.00. Totally wrong so I fought the ticket. Cost me a trip to Wenatchee but I won because the judge dismissed the ticket and not on my record.

Happy Belated Birhday

Donna

Good for you, Donna! What was he thinking? DUI at 8:30 am with no breath test. He sounds like he was related to my police officer. Some days, they just shouldn't go to work. Maybe all of them for some policemen.

Here is a picture of my Heptacodium, Seven-Sons Shrub, It is planted at the south-west corner of my deck, Shade until mid-afternoon. It is probably 20 feet tall now at 10 or 11 years, loaded with bloom this year. Zone 6- so it has done well for me.

Donna

The pesto ended up to be quite good once it got some parmesan cheese mixed in and was put on pasta. It had pine nuts in it, by the way. I am still not a huge fan of pesto but a little bit is fine.

mmmm roybird I luv that combo on pasta. Picante I think glop plops would indeed be more dangerous that smush plops and you definitely would need to call in backup if they attacked. I have not tried to smush grapes yet. I think I will stick to pre-smushed vintage grapes in the form of refreshing beverages.

Donna that shrub is very pretty and obviously very happy in your garden.

I confess that I feel pretty much the same as DwiD about thorny plants and sharp ones. There were two roses here when we moved in. Now there is one. His name is John Cabot, and he gives us beautiful plentiful flowers ... but for a price. Apparently he doesn't like being pruned, as I always emerge scathed. Sometimes he draws blood. I wish I could have him declawed.

Just think, picante: You could have another, equally beautiful, plant in that spot - a plant without any thorns that wouldn't bite you when you needed to take care of it.

While I don't like spikey plants either, I maintain my love for Roses, as they are roses. Their gift is far better than their thorn, their bloom longer lasting than any memory of slight sting.

Dave, you are quite an anti-rose campaigner aren't you? :o)