Day: April 26, 2006

Crankypantsing, Photography

Or till rust will come upon the screw

Shelly

100_1945
Rusty screw

100_1896
Dandelion

100_1912
Lightning seeds

100_1913 (Photoshopped)
Heart

I spent a good bit of the past weekend outdoors. The weather was gorgeous–sunny and warm with a perfect breeze. I decided to take my camera out and get some spring-y pictures. It was also a good excuse to play around some more with the macro settings.The dandelion seed image is un-retouched. All I did was resize it. The others were Photoshopped. I knocked down the saturation and upped the red and yellow channels. I also added some noise to the last image. I did a crappy job of squaring my camera to the tree branch, so the bottom portion is out of focus. Hrmph.

In local news, there was a nasty wreck near my house last Sunday, knocking out the power for over 6 hours. As I came home yesterday, I noticed that a big chunk of an electric pole was lying beside the road near Fish Creek Bridge. Yikes. We also had some asshat kids go on another mailbox-bashing spree. I guess we should be thankful it was mailboxes and not people’s heads, but still… I mentioned that I spent my last $14 on gas? I did not exactly factor a new mailbox into my, um, “budget.” Luckily, I originally bought the cheap-assed plastic model, which is pretty much unbashable. The rotten little vandals tore the door off it, but the box itself is still in decent shape. Unlike my neighbor’s mailbox, which is totalled. This went way beyond the usual drive-by whacking. Whoever did it took their time. It can’t have been easy breaking the door off my mailbox, and my neighbor’s was hit from two different directions.

Crankypantsing

Gas

Shelly

And now a word about gasoline. A few words, in fact. And a few more about why I should never have gotten out of bed this morning.

I get a little panicky when my gas gauge gets below 1/4 tank. It’s silly, because 1/4 tank will get me to Bloomington and back two times. But still, it makes me tweaky, so I try not to let it happen. Well, this morning, the needle was resting on top of E (which, alas, does not stand for Enough). I stopped at our local Bigfoot on my way to work and put the last $14 dollars in my checking account into my gas tank. Then, I went inside with the last of my ash tray change to buy a big, fat pepsi-coke-soda-pop[1].

While waiting in line behind the inevitable “cigarettes and lottery tickets” crowd (why the hell do folks need lottery tickets and smokes at 5am?), a couple of town marshalls came in. Apparently, someone had done a pump and run, and the clerk had called the cops. Poor kid. When that happens, it comes out of his pay check. He was just ending his shift, and was likely tired and thinking of his warm, comfy bed. He told the marshalls that he didn’t even remember approving the guy, and so he didn’t get a plate number or a good description of the car. That really sucks. Here I am, spending my last $14 dollars on gas, and other folks are stealing it. Hrmph.

The best part of the morning, though, was getting to Bloomington and finding that 17th Street is closed at the football stadium. Hello?! Who the hell thought it would be a good idea to tear up the street in front of the largest parking lot on campus, the week before finals? Hmf. I just hope I can remember not to get off the bypass at Kinser tomorrow morning.

____________________________________
[1] Growing up in the Crossroads of America does unkind things to one’s vocabulary. To some folks, anything fizzy is a “coke,” to others, it’s all soda, and to others, it’s pop. Our local drive-in calls it “Coke-cola.” They also serve “Mellow Yellow,” so perhaps their authority on the subject of fizzy drink nomenclature is questionable. My favorite, though, is the ever popular Pepsi-Coke. That pretty much covers the major bases.