One-Handed Photography.

Why "one-handed"? I present you with Exhibit A. My left hand was busy holding dogs. Fortun-ately, I found out that vibration reduction is a good thing to have, especially when all I had was the heaviest camera in the arsenal-and no flash. Thank goodness for "editing tools"! Would have been a good time to test out a new D300. (I wonder if we're getting one for Christmas??).

Anyway, Mr. Puppy was suffering from extreme cabin fever, so I packed him.. and Rally, in the car and drove 30 miles to the Big Thicket National Preserve, where these images were taken on the Kirby Nature Trail. We had a great walk, with the following exceptions:

• Extra 3 miles of walking, backtracking to find the cell phone



• Half a dozen deer ticks on the dogs. (None on me.)

Other than that, a very nice afternoon for a walk. More images are on the new slide show on the sidebar. If you want to see larger images, click on the slide show to be taken to the web album. Enjoy. As usual, heavy on the fungi.

Crazy Horse Lives!

image ©Crazy Horse Memorial Fnd.

The Memorial, that is. With the help of a $5 million matching donation, from a South Dakota billionaire banker, the memorial, which promises much more drama than a bunch of dead presidents or Confederate generals, will probably be completed. Hopefully in our lifetime.

The Mother of Invention.

I've been logging a lot of internet time since I have a lot of it on my hands, and I don't have to share "WiFi time". Tonight I finally decided to check out a relatively new service from Netflix, called "Watch Instantly". I/We've been subscibers of Netflix for a number of years, and enjoy the huge catalog of movies they have to offer.. mainstream flicks, indies, documentaries, TV shows, foreign, classics... the list goes on. Our problem is our travel schedule. The movies have to catch up with us, and we don't always watch them right away. In fact, right now we've got a movie on our shelf we've been carrying around for over a month. That's not economical at $16.95 a month.

With the "Watch Instantly" option, I can download up to 16 hours of movies during any billing period, so tonight for my "road test" I downloaded some Japanese Anime... a little ditty called "Girl's School"... (and now I know why geeks and adolescent boys are so enamored of this genre ;^)

Next, wanting to watch something short, I chose Season 1 of 30 Rock, (primarily because I was forced to miss it when it was on air because - someone - always wanted to watch CSI instead). My personal opinion is that 30 Rock is one of the funniest, and best written programs on television due, in no small part, to it's creator, Tina Fey. Not only is she wickedly, brilliantly funny, but she's so damn hot! (It's OK... Margaret knows about this crush and is cool with it.. right?) Besides, I'm not alone!


Anyway, my experiment with Netflix downloads.. (which are included in our monthly service, by the way) was a mixed positive. Because I'm parked a fair ways from the antenna at this campground, the signal was low, causing some buffering issues, but Netflix has a nice fix, which halts the stream until a sufficient amount of buffering has occurred to not hold up the movie again. Their viewer (which you download for your first movie) adjusts to the speed of your connection. Overall, I like it, and will probably use it whenever we're in a place that has faster than dial-up speeds.

A Pretty Cool Dog.

HT Linda Stillwell in Oklahoma.

Not to bum everybody out, but it's been reported that Skidboot passed on earlier this year.

A Problem.

The return flight's not until the following Friday!

Shades of "Donald & Lydia". So much for doing our part for world peace.

I've Got Some Bad News.. and Some Good News.

There. It's not just the South. Received word last week from Margory that the spectre of AB1634 is about to raise it's ugly head again. Just when we were ready to venture into the Sunshine Golden State next Summer for the Scottish Deerhound Club of America National Specialty at Lompoc. Not if this piece of garbage passes, we won't. Not one tire tread will cross that border, and if the Club is smart, they'll pull their event out of the state. Anyway, keep abreast of the news on this issue by regularly checking (and supporting) the link above.

On a related subject, Steve Bodio informs us of a new advocacy group directed specifically at sporting dogs. Check out the website, and see if it deserves your support. I like the looks of it.

The Bachelor

That's me. Took Margaret to Houston Intercontinental Airport.. (yeah, yeah, I know.. think Washington National.. or Idlewild).. to fly to spend Christmas with "the Georgia Reiniches". (Congratulations reader Cynthia!). Ordinarily, we'd both go, but with no events to attend in Georgia it made no sense to make the 900 mile trip there when we were going to be back here in Texas for year end.

So here I sit, at the Escapees Rainbow's End RV park in Livingston, TX. Just me, 5 dogs, and a cat. There's a big ham dinner on Christmas at the Activity Center, and maybe one of the single RV geezer ladies will hit on me. You never know.

Anyway, there's plenty to do around here. The Big Thicket National Preserve is not far, and Lake Livingston offers much to explore as well. I'll survive.

Oh! One more thing: We never got around to getting a Christmas card done this year. So don't be running breathlessly to your mailboxes every day. I should come up with something before the holiday.

If not, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everybody!