Traveling Thoughts

About a month ago or so I started carrying the digital camera with me at all times in hopes of capturing a cool photo daily. I’ve not gotten a photo everyday and on the days that I do get the photo I can’t say that it’s always cool.

What I can say is that this photo is cool:

It was taken one day afterwork as I was sitting in traffic. It was monsoon season in NM and every afternoon the clouds would gather and dump on us. The clouds were converging in this photo. It hadn’t started raining yet, but if you can imagine off to the right, where the clouds were black, it was already starting to lightning and thunder.

It’s just a beautiful image as it stands but if I had had the chance to shoot all that was going on around this image, that was cool too. Use your imagination, you’ll be amazed with where this photo can lead you :)

Finally, someone lets me out of that damned cage. They clean it and feed me and give me fresh water, but they never pick me up and hold me or pet me. That was different today. She did. I’ve seen her before, but she’s not who I usually see. This one is a rare specialty. She doesn’t come often but when she does I can always bet on being let out of the cage and being able to run around or roll around (yeah, she puts me in that damned ball, I roll around and get to go places but I’m stuck).

Tonight she let me at her computer, damned thing was dirty, I had to clean my paws after using it, it was like she had been sweating as she was typing or something, it was all salty, it burned my paws. Or maybe, it was those things they eat, the crunchy ones, I don’t know what they’re called, they’re round, ah yes, chips. I get those in my meals sometimes, I hide them, she must eat them.

But the good news is, I was able to send her a message

It’s not easy using those buttons, they’re spaced so far apart, and it took me even longer to figure out how to get it into caps. It’s funny though, and I’m not sure she’ll figure out how to turn it off. But I was pressing the shift key, and after a while something popped up about sticky keys. And then all I had to do was push the shift key twice and I was in all caps. It was magic. Don’t know how I did it, wasn’t going to bother with turning it off. I just know that it was amazing.

So, I got my message out and I’m pretty sure that she’ll communicate with the other people that I’m not that bad and that it’s ok to let me out of my cage. I mean, they were only bitten because they were squeezing me, you don’t have to squeeze me you know, my eyeballs are liable to pop out of my head. Well, and they got bit when trying to get me out of my cave, because it was nice and dark in there and I was sleeping and they stuck their hands in there. Don’t you know that you don’t stick your hands into an animals domain, because that’s what happens, you get bit. I shouldn’t get punished just because of their stupidity. *rolls eyes*

Needless to say, I was successful in sending a message and hopefully things will change for me in the future. I’ll let you know the next time I have access to a computer (which, unless she comes again and lets me near hers, it may be a while).

…all because at 1am in the morning when I was up checking my blood, I had reached up to turn out my light and in my line of view was a black spot on my ceiling. I thought it was a spider (not having my glasses on I couldn’t see) and so I got on my chair to look. It was a moth, A MOTH in my bedroom, it could’ve been eating through my clothes. So I took a picture for evidence to show mom in the morning because I wasn’t going to leave it there and hope that it were still there when I woke up.

Mom said there was something wrong with me and that she should take my camera away…she thinks I was switched at birth or something…

I recently posted a picture of my mom’s bird, because Lily is my mom’s bird, and she let’s everyone know it. If someone other than mom walks past her cage she’s screeching, if mom walks past the cage without talking to her she let’s mom know it’s unacceptable and that she’d like to be picked up.

Me, I terrorize that bird on a regular basis. Make sure she knows that I hate her as much as she hates me. I call her the Turd Bird. That’s her official nickname. By my Turd Bird, she’s beautiful. She’s got eyelashes. This one is completely beyond me because as a bird, she’s not a mammal and she’s not supposed to have eyelashes and that is hair isn’t it?

You’ll have to click on the picture and view the largest size of it to see her eyelashes, but she really does have them. I’ve been fascinated by them ever since we got her. It’s just so cute that my bird has eyelashes. Even if she is a turd.

Mom’s been hunting down different digital cameras. I broke her heart I think when I told her that she wasn’t allowed to use the Sony dsc-w70 anymore and that she had to use the HP Photosmart m527 which isn’t nearly as good as the Sony. Originally, she was going to get the Sony when I went and bought an SLR, but then she was giving me crap about paying off my student loans so I’m not getting an SLR and she’s not getting the Sony and I’ve revoked her use of it as well.

She’s been all over the net looking at digital cameras and while I’m a Best Buy loyalist, Grandma used to work for Ritz camera (which was wolf camera before that and fox photo before that), and thus, mom’s been all over the Ritz camera website.

She did find a camera that she wants though, and to be completely honest, I’m jealous, I wanted a new camera. But, this is all my own doing, I wouldn’t let her use the Sony anymore. So instead of beautiful crisp pictures of her beautiful Lily Bird:

She’s getting something far less desirable, so much less desirable that I won’t even post it to Flickr. The Sony is so crisp and clear and if you view the large format of that picture, you can see the goodness of my Sony camera (my bird has eyelashes, that’s goodness from a digital camera).

But in cameras, she think she’s found the best in it’s class, which means that she’s done her research and dad’s helped, and dad knows something about cameras. The camera she’s decided she wants is the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ8K.

So, mom, you’re gonna get your camera, and me, I’m going to be depressed that you get the new toy, but you’ll be able to produce the photos that I am currently prohibiting. I will however feel a whole lot better that I can run around with my camera in my pocket and take pictures at my leisure. Do you know how difficult it is to take pictures of cool things like that caterpillar hanging from the tree when my digital camera is at home for your use instead of in my backpack for my use. You get your Panasonic and I get my daily photo, like this one of the mutant moth

So, I was telling you the other day how I decided to participate in the photo hunt on </dic>. I really didn’t think that I’d win but I was going to put forth my best effort. I had one hour for lunch and when I got in my car to go get my pictures I already had three from the office. The hardest one for my was going to be the sombrero (or so I thought). It turned out that none of them were exactly hard. After walking the block where I work and looking for “dic” on a sign a co-worker suggested I go to the phone book. That worked great. I found where I needed to go and from there I mapped where I needed to go to get the rest of my items.

The sombrero ended up coming from a restaurant we have called Poncho’s. I got all the pictures in my hour and got them uploaded to my flickr account and just in the nick of time too. There were other people on the hunt, of course. But while I was out there was a conversation about how Chris doubted that anyone would get the pictures the same day of the hunt announcement and if someone did he’d double the $100 that was initially set for prize money.

I got my pictures posted on </dic> just barely before another guy and Chris paid out the $200 at my request to my latest Tour de Cure ride.

The best part of the scavenger hunt though was asking people to help you out. Like the people in uniform. First I went to Arby’s and took a picture there (but like an idiot didn’t save it) and they were all excited and told me good luck and whatnot and they told me where to find my sombrero. But then when I discovered that I didn’t save my photo and I had to get another Jiffy Lube was the place to go. The guy’s expression is priceless:

This is going to be one of those activities that I would participate in often. Photo scavenger hunts.