If You Don't Like The Weather...

... just wait a minute. Of course, in that minute, lots of things can happen. This is what the landscape in back of me looked like when I started photographing some flowers.


Ominous, but not too bad, right? The wind was picking up in nifty little gusts that made photographing the flowers a matter of 1)wait, 2) time wind gust, 3) push button on digital camera, 4) wait for delayed reaction, and 5) hope I got the shot. A few sprinkles started, but whether they were from the clouds or if the wind pushed water from a neighbor's sprinkler over, I wasn't sure. Being an optimist, I voted sprinkler, and looked through the lens to take this:


A gust of wind almost pushed me over, and made the flowers whip wildly. I unglued my eye from the camera, and looked up to see the trees almost bent double as another lovely 60mph gust of Wyoming wind roared by. I tried to photograph the trees, but by the time I took a picture, the trees had bounced back. For the moment.


Across the field I could see a wall of rain, dust, and debris hurtling towards me. That group of trees in the back of the picture vanished, the trees bent sideways again, someone's styrofoam picnic cooler kept up with the birds hightailing it to the safety of the pines. This is one time I'm glad I wear glasses, as a face full of gravel is not a pleasant sensation. I ran for the house before the next gust knocked me into the siding.

After all the tree-whipping, leave-stripping blasts of wind, the rain was a disappointment. It moved over so quickly it hardly got the ground wet. Even so, I much prefer the hit and run storms to some of the lightning show spectaculars we get around here. So, no lightning, no thunder, no tornado, and only a few flowers shredded by the wind. All in all, a good afternoon...

Print for Baren Exchange

Print for Baren Exchange # 37A

“Standing on the Periphery”

Theme: Voyages / Journeys

Medium: Linoleum block print

Paper: Stonehenge Natural

Paper size: chuban 10 x 7.5 inches (25.5 x 19cm)

Inks: Daniel Smith waterbased, 4 color + hand colored

Edition: 48

Progress - of Sorts

Busy week last week, work wise. The boss retired and our incredibly shrinking staff shrank once again. One of these days I'm going to look up and discover I'm an army of One.

In other news, I sold two stories and got the news the same day, within two hours of each other.

"The Tetris Effect", a scifi flash fiction is going to Every Day Fiction Date to be determined. I'll put it in my sidebar when I know.

"The Tale Teller", A fantasy fairy tale, is going to Reflection's Edge possibly in the August 2008 issue.

Now I can wait on everything else I have hanging out there in submission space. And start planning the 2009 WyoPoets Chapbook. And finish editing the Space Races RPG manual. And nail down the ending of The God Hunter. I think Scott's never ending Get-To-The-End-On-A-Mere-100 Words-A-Day Plan has stuck its grimy tentacles into me.

So here's a couple of pics from my handy phone camera to tide you over. Corgis, of course. Can't disappoint Anonymous.

Gratuitous Corgi Pic - Hangin' out in the front yard, post Fetch.



Front yard visitors, unperturbed by nosy Corgis.




What the Corgis do while I'm in my home office, working on prints. Max- tip over and sleep.





Merlin, stake out the territory under my drafting table - and sleep.

Modern Technology: Tougher Than You Think

It was one of those scatterbrained Sundays. Frantically running about in an attempt to do all the things I meant to do on a long weekend, but never actually got around to you know, doing. Son 2™ wanted to go driving. Learner's permits are hell on gas, especially with all the new "Must have x amount of hours driving" laws. So we drove around. I tried not to watch the gas gauge too much, or notice that gas prices dropped 4 cents since I filled up on Saturday. Finished with aimless driving, I came in the house and decided to add my third color layer on my woodblock print, turn on the sprinklers, set some stuff to downloading on my laptop, and hey, I could throw a load of clothes in, too. Multitasking at its best!

I blame the newly acquired Wii. Yes, we are now a 3 system family - XBox, Playstation 3, and Wii. Two of the three I lucked into on deals. Nothing shady, just being in the right place at the right time. (Doesn't seem to work with lottery tickets, however....)

After finishing a print run with color 3, Son 2™ convinced me I needed to learn how to play Wii sports. So I threw more clothes in the washer, and commenced learning how not to throw my shoulder out of its socket when swinging my arms wildly about. My coordination level is iffy at best, but I didn't break anything, or punch the dog, so I think I did okay.

I decided to throw my clothes in the dryer before working on a web page. As I'm pulling them out and tossing them in the dryer, I hear this suspicious metal clink in the washer tub. It wasn't a money clink. This was tinnier. My brain immediately went into berate mode. "You forgot to empty your pockets. It's probably your name tag from work. Now you'll be Constan or something ..." No, I knew my name tag was magnetically adhered to my desk at work. I remember doing that. Brain started shooting off fireworks, or burning synapses or something as I rummaged through soggy underwear in search of the clinky object.

Brain - "I know what it is, I know what it is, you are going to be Sooooooooo pissed..."
Me - "Shut up! It can't be that bad."
Brain - "Ha!"
Me, as I spy the object in the bowels of the washer - "Oh, shit!!!" - Profanity being most definitely called for.

My jump drive.

The one I left in my pants pocket when I came home from work Thursday and changed out of my 'pretend I'm fashionable' clothes.

I pulled it out, and unsnapped the cap. I tried to look inside, but shiny silver metal looks the same wet or dry. I ran upstairs, and grabbed the blow dryer, and applied cool heat to its dark insides.

Me - "That cap was snapped on really tight. Maybe it will be okay."
Brain - "Ha! Say goodbye to the last chapter of that novel. Should have transfered it to the laptop right away, like I told you to."
Me - "Nobody likes a smug brain. Be quiet or I'll reduce your caffeine intake."
Brain - "?!?"

So I popped the drive into a USB slot on the laptop. With a little "Bing!", the interface came up and asked me what I wanted to do. Suspicious, I clicked on the drive. All my files came up. Still in a state of disbelief, I opened a few at random. The jump drive still worked. I transfered everything to my external hard drive as fast as my brainless fingers could command.

Me - "I can't believe it."
Brain, sulking - "You never listen to me."
Me - "Hooray for old, 256mb jump drives with snap-on caps."
Brain - "Let's go play Wii Bowling."

I owe the technology gods, big time. Maybe I'll sacrifice a few CD's their way. The knitting gods, however, will be heartily displeased with me. In the same load that I found the jump drive in, was a pair of hand knit wool socks. I threw them in the dryer in my quest to find the metallic clinky object. My socks are now really, really dry. Luckily, they don't look too shrinky. I can still put them on my feet. Thank you, Knitting Goddess, for superwash wool. Savior of ADD laundry-idjits everywhere.

The 4th in Wyoming

Or at least where I prefer to spend my 4th of July holiday ... In the middle of nowhere.

Upside - Not many people. I saw two eagles, or they saw me. We watched each other for quite a while.
Downside - It was hot. The green shriveled as I watched.
Upside - The dogs could run themselves ragged,
Downside - It was hot. After 30 minutes, the dogs preferred the air conditioned vehicle to roaming the countryside.
Additional Downside - Panting, drooling dogs with dog breath wanting to be right next to me the whole trip home. Panting and drooling. And licking the top of my ice tea bottle. And hogging the air conditioning vents.
Upside - They'll sleep good tonight. At least they will after the neighborhood fireworks quit, around 2am or so.

Now off to the cool of the basement to work on a woodblock print. I'll venture out later to watch the fireworks. I can see the big, city-wide display from the comfort of my own front porch on the backside of the city limits, because I know the four thousand citizens + who descended on the park for the parade/hot dog feed/road race/mud tug will be out there at the events center. If I'm very lucky, the mosquitoes will have snacked on them all day, and will ignore me this evening.

So you other Americans out there, what did you do for the 4th? Go anywhere special? See anything interesting?