EngelFish.Net

DevilDucky – David Attenborough: The Lyrebird

Okay, this is really amazing. I’m not much of a bird fan, but this bird is amazing….

Last night, T made chicken livers for dinner. The last time we had liver it was a bit too much for my delicate constitution. Very, very rich. This time it tasted terrific. Then she told me that there wasn’t any liver in my meal. She’d pulled it all out and left the apple, onion, bacon, and sauce. It still tasted terrific to me. I had it shmeared into a sandwich, and went back for seconds. Mmmm, Mmmmm, Liver!

The rains from hurricane Alberto are keeping everyone indoors here today. It’s better to have good rains now and avoid water restrictions for the rest of the summer! Of course, that’s of little consolation to the folks who’s streets are flooded. And I just read that there was a minor train derailment where the tracks cross West Jones Street in Raleigh, which is right in front of my old restaurant, 518! How can a train derailment be “minor”?

IMAGE: Reaching into the wayback-machine for this one. A few years back Denise, Alyson, Elvis, and I rented a beach house for the last week before “the season” started in May. We arrived at the beach totally ready to party and relax, but it was coming down like toads (not unlike today). We said, “what the hell” and grabbed beers and slickers and trooped down to the water. As you can see from our smiling faces, we enjoyed ourselves in spite of mother nature’s shenanigans. The rest of the weekend has to “stay in vegas”. ~grin~.

This was a very long weekend, which started out easily enough with errands after work on Friday. I spent some time with Mom, and then had dinner and watched the season finale of Law & Order. Not a bad Friday night.

Saturday was spent running errands all over town, buying supplies, working on a printing project for friends who’s wedding I shot a *long* while back. I am learning daily how little I knew about color space for digital photography and the subtleties of printing. Several hours of work and research resulted in less than ten good prints. I took a break that evening to go have a drink and take a photo-stroll with some friends from Flickr. We had fun , as Taryn’s video shows. I am quite pleased with a few of the images I made, although I was plenty tired when I got home.

Sunday started early enough, and ran far too long. After cleaning up the apartment and then posting the pictures/video from the Flickr meetup, I spent the entire day and evening working on prints. In fact, I didn’t go to bed until 5:30 this morning. I was editing and making “collage pages” for the wedding album, and then ran out of ink around 11:00. Taryn scrambled to find a superstore that carried the ink I needed, but none did. We’ve since figured out that only the specialty camera stores carry cartridges for our printer. ~grrr~. So I called Tommy at eleven to see if he knew where to get ink at that time of night. He didn’t, but said he’d do my prints if I brought over a DVD with the files. So I forged ahead creating the pages. I finished the last one at 4:00, and then called Tommy (who said he’d be up all night). Because my friend is flying out at 6:00, I wouldn’t be able to get the album done and delivered before her flight. I spoke with her husband, who is going down in two weeks, and arranged to deliver it to him later today.

Taryn dragged me to bed at 5:30, and nicely woke me up for work at 8:30. I’m tired, it’s raining, and the Jeep started leaking antifreeze on the way to work this morning. Can I have a “redo” on today?

IMAGE: The moon rising over the buildings of the downtown warehouse district of Raleigh. These are the train tracks which run between the the Five Star restaurant and the gravel/concrete pit under the Boylan Bridge.

This has to be one of the best tips I’ve read in a long while on any site. If I am shuttled directly to automated-phone hell, I typically will hit the zero key instantly to try to get to an operator. Some phone systems are smart enough to not let me do that, but I’ll certainly be trying this trick next time!

The plumbing in the basement of our building is being replaced.  If you can’t run water or flush, it’s tough to spend the night in an apartment.  The landlord booked us into a nearby hotel for the night, but we decided that our bed would be far more comfortable.  To remind middle-of-the-night-groggy me of the ban, Taryn placed unexpected things in both of the sinks (rolls of toilet paper) and over the commode (a rug).  It worked.  I learned, however, that knowing you can’t go during the night certainly makes you want to all the more. 

Having to commute to your morning shower feels strange too.

IMAGE:  My niece, Courtney, posed for a few pictures during a family visit from Washington State last summer.