Experimenting

I've been trying to figure out the close-up facet of my camera. Here are a couple that I think made it, though I forgot to turn off the flash on St. Frank and he would have been better with natural light.

I think the secret is not to look through the viewfinder but to turn on the screen and use it to frame up the photo.

To be continued.

Monsoon

Kind of a pretty day, heading into Prescott around noon.

Those clouds do look a little threatening but they're still pretty.

Oops! About an hour and a half later, heading home.

See those mountains? You don't? Oh, I guess it's because of the rain.

A little further to the south . . . you can see the edge of the storm.

And here's what it looks like to be in the middle of it.

The monsoon has finally arrived, bringing with it much-needed rain. But, as usual, it produces some flooded streets and other problems. SWMBO said we got some hail here before I got home. Wonder how the BRD's little red Mercedes weathered the storm sitting in her driveway.

The cooler temperatures (around 65 now) sure feel nice.

Burger Madness

Warning. Warning. Warning.

These pictures are fuzzily out of focus.

I don't know why.

Could be the amount of alcohol in the photographer.

Could be a cheap camera.

But . . . here it is.

First of all . . . a half moon.

Then . . . the grill. Hamburgers. Onions.
A closer picture of the onions.

Buns . . . toasting on the upper grill.

O.K. The final picture wasn't taken. Your photographer with his face full of grilled hamburger and onions and cheese on a toasted bun.

Eat your heart out.

I did.

A lazy weekend

I did hang the flag out for Friday and Saturday to celebrate the 4th of July.

SWMBO did grill a chicken stuffed with lemons, and some thick slices of sweet potato for dinner the other night. Delicious. (The sweet potatoes weren't inside the chicken, they were alongside it.)

Other than that, our marking of our national holiday was quiet.

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The BRD went to a luau costume party Friday evening. And the (World's Oldest) rodeo in Prescott Saturday night. (She says she didn't want to go and told her man that next year he could go with his buddies.)

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And they went to Phoenix today to watch Randy Johnson finally win his 289th career baseball game in a 3 to 2 squeaker. Randy gave up a home run on his second pitch of the game but after that he was spectacular. Once again the bullpen nearly gave it away but they managed to hang on.

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I've been doing a lot of reading lately. Finished Jeffrey Deaver's exciting "Stone Monkey" yesterday. I've now started on "Audition" by Barbara Walters. A couple more libary books are in the house but SWMBO is reading them simultaneously: "Mission Accomplished: How We Won the War in Iraq" by Christopher Cerf and Victor Navasky, and "Late Nights On Air" by Elizabeth Hay.

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I went to my cardiologist the other day for an echocardiogram as they continue to watch my heart. There was a new woman doing the test and we were talking about my atrial fibrillation. I told her I had never had any symptoms or felt anything. She said, repeatedly, that she would have thought I would have felt a fluttering in my chest. After the third time she said that, I replied "No, the only fluttering I've felt there was when I looked into your eyes." She laughed and told me I had made her day.

I'm finding I can get away with remarks like that more and more as I get older. Guess they just don't take me seriously any more.

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I have done something I never thought I would do: I have set up a MySpace page. But wait! It was prompted by a conversation I had with my grandson, the Army man, last weekend. I asked him to give me an e-mail address that I would actually get a response from. He's on his fourth tour in Iraq now and I'd like to stay in touch. He said that was probably the best one since he gets about 500 spam e-mails a day on his other ones.

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This sounds like a letter home from college. About the only thing I haven't said is "Please Send Money!"

So.

Please Send Money!

Happy Birthday, America

Rush-ing toward mediocrity

Comes the news that conservative blowhard Rush Limbaugh has signed a new 8-year contract for 400 million dollars to continue his talk radio bloviating. TALKERS magazine estimates Limbaugh's audience at roughly 14 million people. But the population of the United States is currently estimated at more than 304 million people. That means that Limbaugh's screeds are heard by only about 4 and a half percent of the country's population.

It is further noted that Limbaugh vehemently opposed John McCain during the primary season as not conservative enough. McCain won the Republican presidential nomination fairly early and easily.

So much for Limbaugh's influence.

But as Tom Taylor, said to be news editor of something called Radio-Info.com said, speaking of Limbaugh and his syndicator, "both sides have made a lot of money for each other."

What a country!

Family reunion

SWMBO, the BRD and I made a very quick (48 hours) trip to southwest Colorado this past weekend for a visit with several generations of our family. Of course, as we were on the way home, I thought "Damn, I didn't get a picture of the four generations together." Later, after we were home, SWMBO brought it up and said "My family has always been conscious of those types of photos and we forgot to get it."

Well, with one grandson headed back to Iraq with the Army for the fifth time, his twin sister getting ready to join the Navy, daughter living now in Oregon, the other granddaughter in Colorado . . . it may be a long time, if not the last time, that we'll all be together.

We had a good time though we were exhausted when we got home (7-1/2 hours of driving each way) and a great fun but tiring day Sunday. I played croquet for the first time in many decades. I didn't win.

Best of all, we avoided all the 4th of July traffic.