Predator Quail

In the process of moving and due to a family emergency, there have been a lot of trips to my hometown area in the last six weeks. During that time, I have been able to see the transformation my aunt and mom are making at Grandma's house in terms of outside decor and construction.

They have been able to remove a raised bed that wasn't functional and move all the dirt to the other side of the house to fill in where it was needed. They have pavers, and plants and it is really starting to come together. Over Mother's Day weekend, new flowering plants were gained from purchases and gifts, and our bird friends started coming over for snacks.

Turns out that there is an entire flock of quail that seem to make the rounds each day throughout the neighborhood...and the flowering plants at Grandma's are just one of the stops at this time. One morning as we were getting ready to start on the To Do List for the day, we found this sweetie hanging out waiting for the coast to clear for landing near the closest flowers...
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Seven Years Ago on In My Words...Lights Out

Big Kitty Door

My friend has this wonderful cat that is rightly named "Big Kitty"...she lives up to this name, not in the way that Sissy, my other's friends cat did, but she definitely could lose some pounds. I saw this kitty door just for "larger" cats at Lowe's today and just couldn't pass up the opportunity to send a pic of it to my girlfriend and then post about it here...LOL.


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Three Years Ago on In My Words...15 Books

Newish Maru

Just makes me smile like riding the scrambler does!


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Four Years Ago on In My Words...Why Don't We?
I was just thinking about this today....makes so much sense!!

Bug From Hell

I haven't posted in a while, mostly due to the fact that I caught a nasty chest cold a few weeks ago and have not been able to function much other than the basics. It turned into bronchitis (which I have never had before) and I have now been coughing for 4 weeks.

Fortunately the antibiotics have knocked out most of it...at this point, the lungs are clearer but the urge to cough when breathing deep is still there. I can't really do anything remotely active without going into a complete coughing spasm. My upper ribs on both sides feel like they are out of place, however I am sure that the muscles are just pulled from the coughing.

I am hoping to be back at normal activities soon, to include exercise!
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Seven Years Ago on In My Words...10 Years Of Mishka

MCP Project April

These are my challenge submissions for the MCP Project for April. There is a fourth one but I am not sure if I will get it done in time.


This was Challenge #2 which was Bloom and at this time of year, it was harder to select one image from all the "blooming" image possibilities there were out there. I only did an auto correct for light and color, and then added the fuzzy border. The afternoon light was already so great and the flowers speak for themselves.


This second image is one that screams Spring in these here parts...growing up I would just zip my pinched fingers up the step and pop all the little blue balls off. I am sure my mom and Aunt just loved that...LOL. Anyhow, this one also had great afternoon light so I only did an auto correct to balance light and color and then added the fuzzy border. This is for Challenge #3, which was for a Shallow Depth of Field.


The sun peaking through these flowers was awesome and I couldn't help but take advantage of this challenge. This one falls under Challenge #4, Taking a Shot from Below. I tried not to let the sun into the lens itself because it would have wiped out all the detail in the flowers. I only did an auto correct for light and color balance and added the fuzzy border.
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Six Years Ago on In My Words...Utterly Ridiculous

Reading Blog Update

Here is my update for my reads in the month of March. Didn't get as much read as last month and definitely not that great of quality but am slowing knocking out some of the downloads to the Nook Color...
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Six Years Ago on In My Words...Golfing

Photo Projects for April

New month, new photo projects....for MCP Project we have the "challenge plan". For April we have the following four challenges:

* Challenge #1 – Illustrate the following in a photo: Showers/Wet
* Challenge #2 – Take a picture using a shallow depth of field
* Challenge #3 – Interpret the following in a photo: Blooming
* Challenge #4 – Get Low. Lie Down on the ground and shoot above

And for Shutter Sisters in April the words are: Sparkle and Shine.
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Seven Years Ago on In My Words...Me, Myself and I

Twelve Year Old BooBoos

Unbelievably, I fell down like a little girl the other day when we were hiking/geocaching...and I skinned my left knee through my jeans. It took two full doses of OxyClean to get the grass and blood stains out of my favorite pair of 501 jeans.

At first my ankle on my right leg hurt the most and I kind of just walked off the pain, not thinking anything about my left leg. Then at one point, we stopped during the walk and I thought I would check my leg. I pulled up my left pant leg and found that I was bloody and scraped underneath. When we got home, we did the whole first aid thing on it and now it has a nice shade of green added to the mix...

So I head back to workout class next week and I'll have a skinned knee to show off!
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Six Years Ago on In My Words...Getting There

Reading Blog Update

Updated my reading blog with February's books...check it out when you can and let me know if you like any of the books too!!
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Seven Years Ago on In My Words...Procrastination Has Taken Over

Shamrock Run 2012

This was my first 5K in quite some time...and I definitely felt it. Plan was for the whole family that was in town to come down to watch but it is such a huge race, that the traffic to get to it was horrible and my dad and his wife decided that they better head home. It was also drizzling out, which makes for a much worse spectator experience for anyone. So while the BIL found parking, my sis and I got out of the traffic jammed car and started heading to the start area. Time was tight so we had to move pretty quick.

Once we got to the start area, I moved up to behind the runners but in front of the strollers and most of those that were walking. This route started out similar to the one we did for First Run in 2011 but then turned and had a long slow gradual upgrade before turning again back towards the start area.

As I said before, this was a big race...I think 35000 people total (split between the 5K, 10K, and 15K) so besides the massive amount of traffic, there was a lot of activities after the event and lots of participants dress up. I don't wear my race shirts until after I have completed the race, so I wore my green Google running shirt instead. I also wore some green beads and a head band with shamrocks on it.

The route was tough but I enjoyed the scene with so many runners (biggest race for me so far) and everyone having such a good time. There were even a couple of Guiness glasses running along (and I am not sure how they kept from overheating in those costumes). Overall it was a fantastic experience and I would love to the do the race again in the future.
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Two Years Ago on In My Words...Car Crash

MCP Project March Part II

These are my submissions for the other two challenges in the MCP Project for March. They are for Challenges #4 and #1, which are Macro and From Above, respectively.



The afternoon light was so awesome, so on this one I only did a balance for light and color and then added the fuzzy border.



This one too...great afternoon light just like on the grouping I did for the Shutter Sisters project. I did the same balance of color and light and added the fuzzy border as the first picture.
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Three Years Ago on In My Words...Observations

Shutter Sisters for March

This is my submission for the month of March to the Shutter Sisters One Word Project. The word of the month is Gather and I thought this little grouping of the first signs of spring were perfect. I took this in beautiful afternoon light so I only did a color and light balance and added a fuzzy border.
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Four Years Ago on In My Words...Snail

Silent Secretary Project

I haven't posted about this here, but I am working on a project to transcribe my great great grandmother's journals (the ones that I have) onto a blog called A Silent Secretary. I named it this because that is what the diary books she wrote in are called. The blog used to be on Blogger but I had to move it to Wordpress in order to get the dates to work the way I wanted. Anyhow, I try to get a week or so transcribed over each time I work on it so I can get it all up there quickly.

So today, I decided I was going to get at least a week done (I actually ended up doing three weeks). I came to the end of a month and realized that the diary has a little section of info at the beginning of each month that is kind of cool. So I went back and added the little info sections in to each of the months I have completed so far. In the process of this, I realized that there were little mottos and/or quotes at the top of each page, so I went back through all the entries (over 100 so far) and added the little mottos/quotes in.

It took a lot of work but I am pleased with the additions and I hope the readers of the journals are too!! Please check out the beginning of each month for the new info.
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Five Years Ago on In My Words...Lunar Eclipse

MCP Project March

So these are my first two submissions for the March challenges on MCP. These are for Challenge #2 and #3 which are Natural Light and "Transition", respectively. I am going to see if I can get the other two challenges in as well, but I couldn't find the opportunity for them today.


On this one, I did an auto correct for light and color, and then in GIMP, I bumped the brightness a bit, bumped the green and blue hues a bit, and added the fuzzy border. I loved this little flower sitting all by itself and the detail in the petals.


On this one, I loved that the blooms weren't all open yet and the color went from white to green. The afternoon light was great too! I did auto correct for light and color, and then in GIMP, I bumped the brightness, bumped the green hues, and added the fuzzy border.
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Six Years Ago on In My Words...Nice and Easy

$1 Million Lotto Winner Continues To Collect Food Stamps

All I can say is WOW! How does this happen? How does she even qualify her actions? I have to wonder if there is enough brain power here to even sustain human life...now she is all over the national news...no hiding from that!
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Seven Years Ago on In My Words...Parking Peeve

MCP Change Up

So I was checking into my photo projects to find out what the theme words are going to be for the month and found out that MCP's Project 12 has changed to a monthly challenge format with several challenges to promote a bit more photo taking. I am excited about this....will give me a bit more flexibility since I already have the Shutter Sister's project that is a "once a month" thing based on a theme word.

Another change is that the images are going to be back on Flickr instead of hosted at our own blogs or third party sites. I am glad for this in some ways because it is easier for me to just have both projects on Flickr, but I also liked the traffic I was getting to my blog from the project as well so....

Last month's theme for both projects was Leap and I just couldn't come up with anything...I am hoping that this new format will motivate me to take a few more pics this month.
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Last Year on In My Words...Elmer Byrd 1911-2011
It has been almost a year since my grandfather died.

Books Can Commit Suicide Too

I saw this image ages ago on Pinterest and thought it was hilarious, and then after hearing a segment on NPR about how a study was done that actually showed that viewers were not as smart after watching the show as they were before, I just had to find the image again so I could share it...

According to the research I have been able to find, the image was part of a PSA that Random House was promoting last year.
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Seven Years Ago on In My Words...Art Dilemma

Popcorn Math

Okay...I know I didn't stick with my math major in college in favor of switching to biology but I am pretty sure the math here doesn't "add" up. According to the top of the label each bag makes 12.5 cups, and a serving is 5 cups popped, but then in the lower section, where it refers to calories, it says that a serving size is 1 cup popped....so which is it? This would seem to indicate to me that the actual calorie intake of a serving size is 100 calories if you only eat about 1/2 a bag. This of course is still super small...I just think it is funny to see the discrepency on what is by law supposed to be an accurate label.

I found this error on all the different microwave popcorn I found so it is "industry-wide". My theory is that the law regarding the labels really only applies to the item in its uncooked state and since they have no idea exactly how much popcorn will be popped out of any given bag with any given microwave, they have to estimate that part and are not held to the law. It still is fun however to make fun of the label...
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Three Years Ago on In My Words...Peek-Boo
Definitely missing our furry friend...

Pub Table Balance

Went out to a pub the other night and while coming back from the restroom, I noticed that there was a pile of coasters on the floor....at closer examination, it seems they were being used to balance a table. I just couldn't pass up the photo opportunity...
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Four Years Ago on In My Words...Toenail Woes

Contagion

Just watched this movie on disc from Netflix....can I say, I will not be touching my face as much and will be upping my sanitizer use in the next few days...LOL.

I thought it was pretty good...really opens your eyes to how fragile the human system is, and how quickly something like this could spread.

They talk about Kowloon being the most densely populated place in the world (we stayed in Kowloon when we visited Hong Kong), and they also reference the casinos in Macau, another place we visited. That was kind of cool.
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Four Years Ago on In My Words...My Soup