Lunaya Pravda

And some more pictures, this time of the LeMay Museum in Spanaway taken back in October. If you can believe it, we didn’t get to see all the cars - not yet, anyway - at least one building wasn’t open that day.

Visited the family in Eugene this past week, and used the down time to mess around with my camera some more.  This time I focused on monochrome options and learning to recognize the best objects for spot metering.

Seen at UW yesterday:

I’m busier than a twelve-peckered dog at the moment, but I thought I’d post that my cacti are still alive.  No overwatering… yet.  And I have photographic evidence of their survival.  The succulent on the right has grown some three inches since I got it - I’m very proud.

Just you wait, I can kill any plant life unfortunate enough to be here.

I’ll also note I’m having a blast playing around with the old tripod my dad gave me and learning all the ins and outs of my Canon Rebel XSi EOS camera.  In the above photo, the only auto setting was the white balance - everything else, including the focus, was fully manual.  And I should add that I LOVE the manual focus option because you can zoom in to 10x magnification and get the focus JUST RIGHT before you take the picture.  I’m looking forward to playing around with the camera when I go to Montana, and more specifically Glacier National Park, in August.

And I have a bonus picture of the asian salad I made this evening:

Mmmmm!

Against all that is ingrained in me, I’m trying, once again, to keep a few cacti in the house.  Given my past history with cacti, I’m clinging desperately to the idea that these poor plants aren’t doomed.

I blame nature shows.  Here I am, watching some program about all things desert-y, and the narrator starts describing how a cactus can adapt to harsh, arid conditions.  That should make them ideal for me, I tell myself.  The plants I have now are survivors; they cling to life in harsh conditions!

And then, with all the optimism and hope of a newborn babe, I obtain some poor, unassuming cactus and bring it into my House of Horrors.  I try to make it comfortable, and therein lies the problem.  My brain just can’t grasp that a cactus prefers arid conditions.  Sure, I tell myself, the cactus can manage with very little water, but it doesn’t NEED to.  In my house, no plant will go without!  This will not be a Land of Harshness!  And I water it.  And water it.  And water it.  It’ll grow better if it’s not struggling from water deprivation, I say.  And I water it some more.

And a few days or weeks or months later, my poor little cactus will turn to mush from the inside out and ends up unceremoniously tossed in the yard waste bin.  Repeat.

I quit owning cacti for several years because of this, yet here I am, with not one but three succulents sharing a pot of sand together.  Their presence causes a daily struggle with myself to keep from watering them.

Is it really worth this torment?

The Snark Of The Week Award goes to Brad at WendyMcElroy.com:

A few months ago it became trendy to refer to nationalization of banks as “pre-privatization.” Now, from Mike “Mish” Shedlock, I learn that someone has declared the economy to be in the “pre-recovery” stage.

I suppose by this reasoning the current U.S. wars are “pre-victory,” statements from the Administration are “pre-truthful,” and of course the U.S. as a whole is in a state of “pre-freedom.”

Someone call me when we’re post-bullshit.

Related to the previous post, it just so happens that The Register-Guard publishes maps of police calls every day, and has been for some months now. So, just to check their article containing all the ridiculous police whining about a lack of time for traffic stops, I recorded the daily numbers of traffic stops and all calls shown since late September, 2008.

Turns out all this whining is bullshit. According to the Guard’s available data, not only are the police conducting MORE traffic stops (in addition to answering more calls in general), the percentage of all calls made up entirely of traffic stops is increasing.

I’d expect as much from the Eugene PD. But shame on the Guard for not actually running the numbers - numbers the Guard itself publishes.