Da Boids

Here are some bird photos I took at Dad’s house. I don’t have a lot of photos of birds, and I will say that taking pictures of them is a LOT harder than taking pictures of bugs, and especially of plants. With bugs I can get pretty close, and plants pretty much stay still unless with wind is blowing. Birds on the other hand, always move with quick jerks. They never do anything slowly. Must be a metabolism thing, I dunno. Birds also don’t let you get close to them, so macro photography is right out (unless the bird is dead, but I don’t really want dead bird photos).

Most of these photos were shot from some 30 feet or so away, and all had the zoom pretty much maxed out. Most were also through glass. I did clean the glass first, but I also missed a few spots here and there, and they all show up (not in these necessarily, but in some of the others). Anyhow, here they are:

Indigo Bunting

Redwinged Blackbird

White-breasted Nuthatch

Chipping Sparrow (left) and Goldfinch (right)

When I get home I intend to remove a screen, pull back a curtain, and set up a bird feeder. Then I need to buy some sunflowers and maybe a suet block. We’ll see what happens!

 

Working Vacation

My brother is starting a business. He has a contract to make wooden bases for trophies. At first he was planning to do the work from his garage, but then the orders started coming in, quickly outstripping his garage’s capacity. So he’s building a shed in the backyard to house some of the equipment he bought for this enterprise.

Since we are almost local to him right now, we went to his place on Wednesday. Dad was already there, and he was cutting rafters for him. I got to work doing some wiring. Most of it was done already, but not the lights (there was no roof, and thus no ceiling when the previous spate of wiring was done). I also added a 220V circuit. Then I cut some limbs out of a locust tree for him (they were into the power lines and they were in the way of putting up the fascia).

I climbed the tree with the aid of an aluminum ladder. I cut the limbs with a bow saw. Everything went swimmingly and no one was electrocuted or anything, yay!

But cutting those limbs just about wore me out completely. I came down and rested a bit, but the wind did not return to my sails. So we headed on back to Dawson.

Today we visited more relatives, and I guess we’ll do more of that tomorrow as well.

I’ve been taking pictures of birds at Dad’s house. Some of the shots are OK, especially if one considers that I have next to no photos of birds anyhow. I can see plenty of room for improvement though. For one, I’ve been shooting through the glass, and even though I cleaned it first, it still has several unfortunate reflections that distract from the final image. For another, I’m zoomed in to the max, which on my camera, makes for a grainier photo.

But I’ve gotten several birds. Dad has been telling me what they are, but I know I will quickly forget. In fact… I already have. I’ll have Dad help me tag them when I load them onto my laptop. Maybe… tomorrow?

 

Goo goo, gah gah

We arrived in Dawson Springs today. After checking in to a hotel, we went over to my parents and visited for a bit. Then we went to Va’s dad’s house and visited him some too. His step daughter has a new baby that he is just crazy about. I guess all of my kids were fairly well taken by her too, as this photo so evidently indicates:

My kids gooshing over a baby

Penny was afraid of the baby, but I guess that’s a good thing.

We stopped at a mall in Crossville TN on the way here. We do that pretty much every time we drive by it. Va went shopping (which is why we stopped), and I addressed a problem we developed with our roof bag. It is apparently not waterproof. It is also apparently not water resistant either. I had about 10 pounds of dog food in there, plus four gallons or so of water. The water soaked through the bag and dissolved it. So the dog food was loose and soaking up the water. And let me tell you, when that stuff gets wet and sits in a roof bag in the sun… it stinks like carrion.

So while Va was shopping, I hauled the bag off the roof, removed the dog crate, pillow, and various dog toys. Then I emptied out the stinky dog food into a ditch. There is a little pond across the road from the mall, so I took the bag there and rinsed it out as best I could. Then I took the dog crate and gave it the same treatment. All as well after that, except that the roof bag is now known to not be water tight. Dunno what to do about that other than not put things in it that I need to stay dry.

 

More Travel

Yesterday we went for a hike at my old stomping grounds – the Manassas Battlefield. When we lived in Manassas, I took the boys hiking there probably 20 times per year, all seasons. Things have changed there for the better I would say. Back then, you would hardly ever see a park ranger. Now the place has plenty of them, and they offer guided tours.

We used to go to several places in the park. Deep Cut, Stone Bridge, Chinn Ridge, The Old Post Office, and a few other places whose names now escape me. We went to Stone Bridge first. Then we went to the Old Post Office, which was about our favorite place. The Bull Run flows there, and it’s pretty far off the beaten path. In winter we would cross the ice to the other side. There was a ford there, so even if the ice broke, the water was never more than a foot deep. The boys skipped a lot of stones there.

Then we headed off to Harrisonburg and got a room. In the morning, we hit the Green Valley Book Fair. Then back on the road again.

The rooftop luggage thing is apparently not water tight. It rained pretty much all day, and when we would come to a stop we could hear it slosh forward. Bummer. The only thing in there that was not water resistant was a bag of dog food. Yeah – it got wet.

Now we’re in Knoxville, TN. David, Beth, and I just got out of the pool. Jonathan and I went off in search of a Target earlier. We found one at 9:20pm, but they were already closed. Our mission was to procure a swim suit. Having failed to do that, we came back to the hotel, and he sat this one out.

Tomorrow we will hit the outlet mall in Crossville, TN. Then on to Dawson Springs. I expect we’ll get there in the mid to late afternoon.

 

Driving Day

We made it out of the house this morning at 7:30. That was pretty good I thought. We drove down I-93, 495, 90, 84, 81, and 70 with a couple of stops here and there for gas, food, and finally lodging. We’re in a Sleep Inn in Hagarstown, MD right now.

The kids went swimming and seemed to enjoy that pretty well.

Jonathan enjoying the pool

David even dragged Beth around the pool supporting her while she “swam,” and I think that was the highlight for her.

David towing Beth in the pool

I didn’t get in the pool myself though. Instead, I loaned my (clean) trunks to one of the boys who couldn’t find his. We will be buying another pair sometime during this trip.

Tomorrow we can make it to church in Vienna, VA where we attended for 18 years before moving to NH. We’ll have to bug outta here by about 7:30 to make it though, but I think we can manage that.

 

Packing Day

Today was the first day of my summer vacation. Instead of going to work, we packed stuff. We cleaned out the trunk. We bought some new clothes.

I am very sad to say that I bought myself some new socks. My felting repairs worked great until the socks were washed. Then the felt would bunch up into a lump making it uncomfortable. Oh well. I still enjoyed that little project.

The car is now mostly loaded. The roof rack is on, and the dog crate is in the roof bag. The DVD player is mounted, wired in, and tested. In the morning I will pack up the laptops, toss the toiletries in the trunk, and we will hop in the car and go to… McDonald’s for breakfast. No need dirtying dishes before we leave.

We plan to swing through Virginia and visit our friends there. Then on Sunday we will set out again for KY. I expect we will arrive there on Monday, but I’m not positive.

 

Quality Image

A couple of days ago I wrote about nominating one of my photos as a “Quality Image” at the Wikimedia Commons. I thought that it was one of the best pictures I have taken, but I was a little worried that it would be brutalized by a gang of professional photographers. Well, that didn’t happen. Instead, the photo was ignored for almost a week, and then someone commented that they thought it was an OK image and recommended it for promotion. He also suggested that the white balance may have been a little too blue. Well, maybe he was right, I have no idea! (I’ll have to do some research on White Balance and find out how to adjust it).

After two days with no objections, this guy’s imprimatur was sufficient to get my photo listed as a Quality Image. Yay! So here it is again.

Dalibarda repens

 

Foul Mud

Today Dave popped into my office and asked if I wanted some Egyptian cuisine for lunch. I’m always up for an adventure, so I said “Sure!” He told me there was an Egyptian restaurant on Pleasant Street named Gamil’s.

Ah! Gamil’s! A few years ago there was an Egyptian restaurant on Main Street called Gamil’s. Also, there was a Gamil’s in the Gateway Center, which is the same building as our dentist. Dave had never heard of either of those, but I had eaten at both. But the one at the Gateway Center had closed a while back, and I didn’t know when the one on Main Street had closed. When we got there, we asked.

They did indeed used to operate the place on Main, but only for three months. It was just not a good building for a restaurant – no exhaust ventilation, and no seating. They moved out of the Gateway Center and into the place on Pleasant Street. It was a nice looking restaurant too, better than either of the previous locations.

I grabbed a menu. There was a huge selection of Vegan options, and since I am a part-time vegetarian, I was attracted to that. About the fifth item in that section was called Foul Mudammas. I thought, “Man, that must be good, or they could never get away with putting ‘foul’ in the name.” So I ordered one. It was pretty OK! I will go back again, but I really want to try everything else they have in the Vegan section, so it’ll be a while before I have that again.

When I finished eating it, I noticed that the restauranteur had labelled my sack with a ball point pen: Foul Mud. Luckily, it didn’t live up to its unfortunate abbreviation.

 

Broken Laptop

Several months ago, the hinge on my work laptop started to give up the ghost. I asked our IT guy about getting it fixed, but since I had had the laptop for over three years, it was out of warranty, and he figured it would be better to replace it. OK. So I’ve had this new laptop for a while. I took the broken one home and let the kids use it. But every time they would open or close it, the hinge got just a wee bit worse. This week it finally popped. So I opened it up to see what it would take to fix it.

Basically, it’s going to take a new hinge. I found several on eBay and ordered a set. Then I started tearing into it a little more. Now I’m worried that it needs more than just a hinge. When it boots, I get the splash screen, but as soon as it switches video modes, the screen goes black. Most of the time anyhow. I found that I could plug it into an external monitor, and everything was cool – as long as you can get it to send the video to that monitor.

Tonight I removed the integrated display. Now it doesn’t even talk to the built-in one and goes straight to the external one. That’s good. I just hope that when I get the hinge fixed and the regular display/lid re-attached, it all starts to work again. It may need a new power inverter in the display though. Dunno!

 

Picnic

What do you say when your daughter asks you to have a picnic in the yard with her? There is only one correct answer:

Beth and I enjoying a picnic