Autumn Sunset

Got the resident great horned owl as he made his escape -- I saw him sitting in a tree next to the pasture, hooting away, and while running across said pasture to get a better picture he took off flying. So this was the only picture I got of him...oh well. There's always a next time.

The sunset was crazy a few nights ago. Just saying.

Don't believe me? This is without any tweaking at all:

And this is with a 75% layer of Soft Light in Photoshop, nothing else:

Just bumped the contrast a bit. It was pretty awesome to see. 

In other news, I finally got my sassafras. I may or may not have mentioned a deal I worked out with someone I know to trade cookies for sassafras...6 weeks later, he made good on his end of the deal. I'm currently sucking down sassafras and marshmallow tea in an attempt to soothe my sore throat. I don't know how well it's working, but it can't hurt and it tastes pretty good.

In regards to The Hobbit premiere, I pooped out at 10:15. There wasn't much going on and I can always get a recap later of the best bits (Andy Serkis running down the red carpet and high-fiving people was pretty funny). I'm thinking it's time to watch the extended Lord of the Rings in anticipation for The Hobbit. Maybe even toss in the commentaries? Yisssss....that sounds fantastic. I'll crochet dwarf beards and watch movies now that I don't have to do NaNo anymore.

Don't mock me. Crocheted dwarf beards are pretty cool.

 Mwahaha.

What I'm doing tonight....

I'm watching the world premiere for The Hobbit.

Live. 

Excuse me for a moment..... *screams into a pillow*

Would you believe me if I told you that I seriously considered spending all my life savings to fly to NZ specifically to go to the world premiere?

Then stuff happened, and I rethought the moment of insanity, and realizing that I could livestream the whole thing in the comfort of my home made me very glad that I didn't go.

Well....very glad that I didn't spend all that money and stuff. I'd still love to have gone, but it's crazy packed and there's security guards all along that red carpet. I think I even saw some mounted police on the back streets. O.o

And in 8 minutes they start the red carpet walk and interviews and such! Gah! Right now they're 22 minutes into some kind of a concert by Neil Finn, who did pop-sounding version of 'Far Away Over the Misty Mountains Cold'. Not too crazy about his version, but meh.

They're almost ready to start the red carpet walk! I may or may not check in later with my crazy bits of coverage. Mwahaha. :3

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In other news my throat is killing me. Last week I was rather sick with a sore throat and it's reared its ugly head again.

Holy crap, there's 100,000 people at the premiere. O.o Red carpet walk is about to start! There's Peter Jackson! Gah!

I be back laters. :3

NaNoWriMo 2012. Status: Finished.

The first hideous clunky first draft is DONE. Now I get cool badges and a certificate and the right to put it down and never look at it again, if I so wish. I might (MIGHT, mind you) come back and try to do something with it. Maybe.

In the meantime, like my stuff?

The final winning count!

 

And my little website badge. I also decided to get a t-shirt because hey, doing something for four separate years has to have some kind of commemoration, right?

Post Florida, Pt 2

I just realized that the title could read 'Post Florida' (as in, after Florida) or Florida Post (as in, a post about Florida). See? See? Isn't that funny?

*crickets chirp*

We grammar nerds have it rough. Sigh.

But enough jokes! It's picture time! I got to meet up with a dear friend of mine that I haven't seen since February (and since then had a baby! Holy cow!). I've been skyping with her on a pretty regular basis so we've kept in touch that way, but it's just not the same as actually seeing her face-to-face.

So the Wednesday I was there, Lydi and I hauled the boys up to Orlando and met up with Tricia at a mall. It was pretty great. :3

Wade and David meeting for the first time...hee hee.

I'm not sure if they knew what to make of each other. XD

So basically we talked and walked around this outdoor mall for hours--most of the shops were too expensive, but occasionally we popped in just to see what they had. Each circuit of this place was at least half a mile, and we walked around it in full four times that I could remember. It might have been more, I don't know.

There were little kiosks with guys hawking their wares, and they tried to draw us in every time that we walked past. After the third time that we had waved off their attempts I told the others that I was going to stop intentionally just to see what they were selling. It makes for a good memory, but I was caught for what felt like forever by some French guy trying to sell a manicure set. It was funny because he was flirting the whole time trying to get me to buy this thing from him, but I wasn't about to pay $70 for some nail kit.

It was still pretty fun, though. :p

Baby pictures time! This is David, Tricia's baby. He's pretty adorable and smiles at EVERYBODY. Holy cow. (My brother was like 'he looks like an old man!' and I told him to be quiet because he doesn't know what he's talking about. XD)

(BREAK!)

Post Florida, Pt. 1

Oh man. I had a great visit with much picture-taking -- I've got lots of pictures to share. Because there's so many and I don't want to break it up into several different posts, I'll post a few and then have more after the break. 

Warning: Beyond this point are babies. Lots and lots of babies.

Enjoy, folks!

 So Wade was sleeping when I first got there, and seemed very confused at my presence when he woke up. When I went in to get him up he just stared for ages trying to figure out who I was.

Then he ran around and showed off and all had a good time. It was great. 

Ben is a pretty cool baby too. See dem shades?

At first I wasn't too crazy about this one, because you couldn't see his face. But it's a pretty good representation of Wade, come to think of it.

BREAK!

Reporting In

...from sunny south Florida, as Rush Limbaugh would put it. 

This is my second day visiting my brother, sister-in-law, and two nephews. I've taken a few pictures, but haven't uploaded them yet so this will be a text-based post. 

Yesterday was uneventful for the most part--I spent the night at a friend's house halfway between where I live and the airport, so it was only an hour drive. I did get patted down by the TSA and they checked my hands for explosive dust. (I guess I looked like a terrorist or something--must work on not looking angry in the airport. XD)

I did leave my wallet on the plane though. Funny story about that: I didn't notice that I had left said wallet on the plane until I had been at my brother's for a while. Then I remembered that my grandma had sent some money with me to give to them, and while searching for it I realized that I couldn't find it. Cue a growing sense of doom and the feeling that I was going to completely lose it...thirty seconds after I realize that my wallet was gone I get a call from Mom, saying that she had just gotten a call from the airport saying that they had found my wallet on the plane and I could pick it up at the airport. 

Thank. Goodness. I was seriously about to start bawling or something, because it had all my money, my credit card, driver's license, etc in it. And when I picked it up from the airport, it still had everything in it. So that was exciting and thrilling all at once.

Wade has changed quite a bit since the last time I saw him--he was just pulling himself up on things and mostly crawling around. Now he's walking (or doing the Wade Waddle, as I've dubbed it) and getting into everything (per the usual) and sort of talking. It's mostly in single syllables and there's multiple meanings for each syllable: 'ba-ba' can mean 'bottle', 'bath', and 'bye-bye'; 'tee' can mean 'thank you', 'here', 'train', etc. It all has to do with context, apparently. 

When Wade saw me for the first time he had just woken up from a nap, and he spent the next ten minutes or so just staring. I don't think he remembered me...or maybe he did, I don't know. He likes me now though.

Ben is cute, but quite fussy and is in a constant state of 'sleep--eat--tummy problems--spit up--sleep--rinse and repeat'. He smiles a lot when he's not hungry or urpy, and he likes to be held unlike his big brother. I can't wait for him to be able to support himself and crawl around and stuff. It's gonna be awesome.

And that's all I got for now...oh, and I'm almost to 25K for NaNoWriMo. My story is very scattered, but it's been fairly easy to sit down and pound out 2K a day. Over the first week I was hitting 3-4K a day, hence the being way ahead of schedule...it's pretty cool. I'm hoping that after my story is 'done' for NaNo I can have the gumption to go in and start carving at it and rewriting and researching more thoroughly in order to make a tight story, because I have an idea for what I want it to be about...it's just meandering as the month progresses. Sigh. 

And with that, I'm tired. Good night, folks.

November 1st and Costumes and Foxes and Stuff

I'm going to try to update all the things, hokay? Hokay. Just don't worry if all the convolutedness makes you confused.

Today is November 1st! It's also NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month)! I started doing it in 2008, and have done it every year except last year. I'm a bit more organized about it this year, at least...

For the uninformed, NaNoWriMo is a challenge to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. I always try to hit 2,000 words a day, just to build up a buffer of sorts (and once I get going that's a really easy goal). There's no prizes aside from the pride of knowing that one has done it--I mean, yeah, one could take 50,000 words and enter it in the word counter thing, but what's the fun in that?

What am I writing a novel about, you ask? Well....it's a story idea that's been percolating for a very long time, let's just put it that way. And I hate talking about my writing stuff because other people might find it silly. But I still enjoy doing it--I just don't show it to anyone. XD

Just know that it's a horse story. But there's lab experiments and stuff, so it's an updated horse story. 

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Yesterday I got to dress up all day--I don't like Halloween as far as the 'scary' stuff (I don't mess with stuff like the undead/dead/demonic/whatever. That's just something one shouldn't mess with, imho.), but I do enjoy cosplaying and it meant that I got to go to work dressed like Katniss Everdeen. Mwahaha.

(This was after being in costume for well over 10 hours. I think it held up fairly well.) (I would also like to point out that those shoes are slicker than snot on tile and I almost fell several times at work and walking into the house.)

Like the mockingjay pin? Ah made eet mahself. :3

I followed this tutorial on DA, painted it gold, and then sprayed it with shiny sealant. It's not exactly original, but it was fun (and better than the original idea of cutting out a picture and pinning that). Don't mind the flecks, they're just bits of ice cream from work...

There was a party at church for little kids (*cough* and the big kids too...), so my friend and I painted faces and hands and such.

I can paint a mean taco, apparently.

That was all fun in itself...and I got to go in later to dig through the leftover candy and pull the stuff that I wanted out. I have a bag full of Junior Minds and Whoppers and peanut butter M&M's hanging on my door to dole out over the next month. Ees gonna be awesome.

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This morning we saw the fox. Outside. In broad daylight. 

This happens VERY rarely. But it was still pretty cool.

As soon as I heard Mom yelling about it in the kitchen I ran to get my camera, and got exactly 3 pictures before he saw me. But again, it was pretty cool.

He (she?) was chasing some birds here or something, because he looked up in the pine trees after stopping.

This is my favorite--I was crouched behind a block of wood off the porch and keeping very quiet, but somehow he knew I was there. This was the expression he made for about 5 seconds before taking off into the tall grass.

I was able to get such a close picture because the zoom on my camera is awesome that way. ;)

We used to have battles over the chickens with the resident fox...but since we got rid of said chickens I guess we don't have to go after him anymore. He's way too pretty (and wily) to trap anyway. ;)

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Oh! Wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles--I got my Kangen water filter hooked up today! I've been so excited for this--you have no. idea. 

So basically Kangen was is ionized water, and the filter allows one to chance the PH balance of the water. The more alkaline the water, the better it is for you (with 8.0-9.5 being the best range, alkalinity-wise). The idea is that people eat and drink things that create so much acidity in the body that they need to balance it out with alkaline foods and drink. I've known people who have been on Prilosec and acidity medication for years get off of it with this water, and it's helped my brother with canker sores in the mouth (they're triggered by acidic food). I've wanted this filter for ages, and finally bought one last month. 

I'm also excited because the various PH balances can also be used for cleaning anything from mirrors (6.0 PH) to sinks and tubs (2.5 PH--high acid), to taking stains and oils out of clothing (11.5--high alkaline), to mixing with essential oils (11.5 again), etc. It's just an awesome filter. These have been used in Japan for about 40 years in hospitals and such, and are starting to catch on in the US. I'll probably be spazzing about this water for a while and doing experiments and such...chronicling them here, of course. :D

But now...it's not even 9, and I'm ready for bed. All this getting up early and writing nonsense has put me back a bit. Sigh. I'll be back, hopefully before another week passes.