Packing My Underwater Camera...

and hoping to get some underwater shots such as these.

I think this one will appear in my dreams tonight.  So surreal...














Here's a link on how to achieve some of these shots.  I think you'll have to find your own swimming pig though.
http://www.uwphotographyguide.com/over-under-split-photography

go ahead and give us a guess...

What is this amazing photo of? 



 It's a shrimp tail under magnification.  I just discovered how much I want to be shrunken to live for a short while in the world artist Caren Alpert has made for us.  Check out her amazing gallery here.

http://carenalpertfineart.com/index.html

Happy To Be Me

'Cause in just a few days I will be here.  High tea AND reggae...can you say, heck ya?!

What I Want Today...

is this mysterious print.

http://www.etsy.com/shop/jeremymiranda

When Life Gives You Too Many Plums, Make Sangria!

I generally keep my recipe pretty simple.  Plums, nectarines, raspberries, add a little orange juice, a couple of ice cubes ( I often remove these with a spoon after a minute) and top off with a good wine.   Let sit for a minute or two if you can handle the wait. Lift and enjoy!

We have a very old plum tree that still manages to produce an enormous amount of plums in about three weeks of ripening.  Lots go to the neighbors and our friends but we still eat several each per day and can't keep up.  I'm so not complaining!  I have stockpiled plum recipes and every year find a new favorite.  It's funny the satisfaction that comes from walking outside and just being able to grab a snack from your backyard.  Warm and amazingly juicy.  Even our chickens like to snack.

We leave a couple of fallen plums on the ground each day for the chickens to peck at.  That's Maude and Marigold above.  And Thistle below.  She's getting the plums that the squirrels and possums drop in the planters.

I love my girls!  Who knew that chickens are so cute and entertaining?  Even the dog and cat have come to accept them.  I so adore my little animal family!

Magazine Overload

I am a woman of many interests and if you look at the stack of magazines on my ottoman that shows.  I currently have subscriptions to Wired, Country Living, Vanity Fair, Fitness, Sunset, National Geographic Traveler, Coastal Living, Martha Stewart Living and three, THREE, car magazines due to the fact I plan on buying a car later this year.  I am a compulsive researcher just so ya know.  Obviously, none of my friends need to suscribe since I pass all of these on so they can also feel bad on how far behind they are on their reading.  All of these varied periodicals serve a purpose to me.  Wired makes me feel witty and smart (and just as easily, old school, obsolete and at a loss).  Country Living has pretty pictures and great gift ideas.  Vanity Fair is all about well-written smut, pictures about people I could care less about but judge anyway and staggeringly good world stories.  Really just a lot of humanity packed into that mag.  Fitness is to keep me out of the fridge and on my toes.  Sunset is my response to a need for seasons.  They do a fabulous job of giving me a recipe for a rubarb galette when I NEED that recipe on the first day of summer.  Need an idea for a fall planting?  Oh, why, thank you, Sunset, it's like you read my mind.  Where should we go for a long weekend in the snow come wintertime?  Ahh, look at the gorgeous pictures of the rental cabin that somebody else plows out the sidewalk come morning.  Thank you again, Sunset! Martha Stewart Living is pure habit.  I moved out of my parents home at 18 just when Martha was hitting her stride.  Her face was everywhere, couldn't avoid the woman if you tried.  Somehow I ended up with a subscription to her magazine and the next thing I knew, I was decorating my college apartment with a flourish that those Pic N Save items never would have seen with someone else.  Someone who hadn't been touched with Madame Martha's feather wand.  So I still subscribe and I still learn and I am still amazed that no one has jumped off a bridge and blamed Martha for making them feel unworthy.
My darling husband glares at my stacks of literature and puts his Popular Mechanics on top but he wouldn't have a Super Wife that kicks ass in plenty of departments if she didn't flip through those glossy pages of mental stimulus.


Photo by James Wojick

BE NICE OR LEAVE- THANK YOU

That's my favorite saying.  It hangs in my car from my rearview mirror and I get people asking me about it all the time.  It gets a lot of laughs and "that's awesome" comments. I originally saw it posted in a bar in the Midwest and again, years later, in the background of a No Doubt video.  I love it because I believe in it.  I cannot stand negativity so I love the succintness of this quote.  I love to be the crazy person at the airport who smiles at everyone and tries to get a TSA worker to smile back.  LAX used to have the grumpiest people and lately whoever is hiring for them seems to be doing an excellent job.  They seem to be happy and god bless them, efficient in their jobs.  It's always with sadness that I watch someone lose it at the airport to the person behind the counter.  I feel like handing them a shovel to help them dig their grave with.  Do they really think yelling like that is going to get them on the plane?  Maybe if they were flying to Iran or Afghanistan.  So it's with these thoughts that I must go book a couple of airline tickets for my husband and I.  I am a dedicated believer in nonstop flights and will pay mucho dinero more to not stop.  But it's not working for me this time as nobody seems to fly from California to Barbados nonstop.  That stinks but I realize that is part of the adventure.  To survive the travel days.  So which airport closest to me do you think is happier; Fresno or Burbank?