Another Blustery Day

Okay, because of the crappy weather, today's pictures are from March 2006. These were all taken at Busch Gardens, Tampa, Florida. I only put the bird pictures on here. The top picture, you can just block out that awful part of me. Just focus on the bird! Yes, I have lost some weight since then! LOL

I don't know what species most of these birds are. Parrot family, but I don't know any more than that.

I just tried to pick out some half-way decent shots.

These were some type of ducks.

This is the same parrot that was sitting on my hand drinking nectar. I thought it was so cool to have that bird crawl onto my hand to eat.

This is an albino Peacock. He was quite the show-off!

Another parrot.

This one is an African Grey (gray?)

This is a Spoonbill roseate.

And last, but not least, this is a Scarlet Ibis.

Okay, it was short and sweet! Hope you enjoy the pictures. At least it gives the illusion of being warm!

TTYL

Love Ya

Lisa

It's All About The Geese!

Okay, today's post is nothing but Canadian Geese! I took these yesterday. I got over 100 shots of them, but only had a few really good ones.

There is a pond across the street from our hospital. I see the geese flying across in the evenings from my back yard, and found out that this is where they are landing.

There was a minimum of 50 out there yesterday. A lady who is a caregiver for a couple in the apartment complex beside this pond said she had counted 130+ a couple of days ago! They will only hang out here at this pond for a couple of weeks, according to the caregiver.

I just about froze, standing out there taking pictures!

I wasn't wearing any kind of jacket. The temperature was around 40 degrees F, but it was rather windy. I only wore jeans and a tee-shirt.

My hands were the coldest!

I wish I could have gotten some closer pics of them, like I did at the horse show in New Castle last August.

I didn't get a chance to see any of them flying in or away this time.

That's about it for now.

I'm going to get off here and start working on fixing dinner.

Everybody take care and have a great rest of the week. I hope we don't get the snow that they are calling for tonight. I'm OVER IT!!!!!! My garden and flower bed are hollering for me! :)

Love Ya

Lisa

Still Waiting For Warm Weather!

I am so over the cold weather! We had a bad rain storm Wednesday evening. It had been raining all that day, broke for about an hour or so, then cut loose again! I had gone out for a short walk to try to relieve some stress. (Gonna be dealing with a lot of that for quite a while!) When I was on my way back, it really cut loose. Rain, wind and hail. It was all hitting me in the back. I was completely drenched by time I got home. I was walking past a friend's house when it really started. When I got past the front of the house, I heard a loud cracking sound, like a board or a tree limb snapping. I couldn't see anything out of the ordinary though. When I finally got home, I called the friend and told him what I had heard. He said that he didn't hear anything, but he would go out and check on it. I also jokingly told him that I was tempted to run up on his front porch to wait out the rain. He just said, "well, I was home, you should have. I would have taken you home." I just laughed and said, "Oh sure, now you tell me!" While I was talking to him, I had to step outside because Michael and Jason had the TV turned up loud playing video games and I couldn't hear. I was getting wet standing out there, so I stepped into the furnace closet. I was even getting wet standing in there because the ceiling was leaking. Shortly after, the ceiling collapsed! It had been in bad shape for a while, but finally gave in. Chuck, Jason and Michael put a new roof on the closet Friday afternoon. They still have to put the new insulation in the ceiling on the inside, but at least the outside is done. Now I have a huge mess to clean up. Plaster, chunks of wood and shingles and wet insulation! YUK! I saw my friend up town the next day and he said that he couldn't find any damage. That's good!

The picture at the very top is of our local Lake Placid. I know that there are several Lake Placids around the country, but I'm quite sure that ours is the smallest of all of them! If I'm not mistaken, the building on the far side of the lake belongs to The Assembly Of God Church.

The next picture is just a couple of Canadian Geese on a frozen pond. It's really strange that they don't seem to leave here in the winter any more. They used to always fly south, but I guess this is far enough south for them now.

This is just an old barn when I was out driving aimlessly around last Sunday. I ended up in Dunkirk, Indiana, via the back roads.

I thought this horse was so cool looking with it's markings.

This was taken on Valentine's Day. It's in our next door neighbor's yard. We call it a bird bush, because there are always several birds in it. I just liked the way it was holding the snow.

Gonna get off here now and go to bed. Michael has school tomorrow, make-up snow day, even though it's a so-called holiday. Just another excuse for the government to take a day off and get paid for not working!

I see that I have some new members on my followers list. Welcome, everybody!

I will come visit people tomorrow. Everybody have a great week.

Love Ya

Lisa

I Just Couldn't Resist!

Hi everybody. I went out for Chinese at lunch time yesterday(Monday). I just had to get a shot of this. Notice the billboard above the restaurant. I thought it would make a funny picture. No offense intended to anybody. I love Chinese food!
Glenna's Section

Glenna and Tim live in Anchorage, Alaska. Sunday, they went out driving around. The temperature was somewhere between 10 and 15 degrees below zero F. These are some of the pictures they took while they were out and about. There are truly only 3 pictures here. The rest are simply Photoshop. They e-mailed me the original pictures and I did the rest. These are all looking out at the ocean. I'm not sure which mountain that is across the bay. I know it's not Mount Redoubt. The first of each picture is the original.

The second is simply enhanced. It was very foggy there that day.

The third is slightly over-contrasted. You know how I love to over-contrast some pictures!

The forth is using the "watercolor" filter. The same with this set. First is the original.

The second is enhanced. The third is over-contrasted. The forth is the watercolor filter.

This set is a little different. Still the original on the first.

The second is antiqued.

The last is antiqued with spotlight added. Notice, it looks like sunlight hitting the water just left of the center of the page.

They asked me to post these pictures on my blog, so here they are for you to enjoy!

Gonna go for now. I will probably post again tomorrow. I went out on Sunday myself and took some pictures. I wasn't very happy with the results for the most part, but I did get a couple good shots.

Good night, or good morning. Which ever applies to you when you read this.

Love Ya

Lisa

Winter Thaw

Okay, call Ripley's Believe It or Not! I've been up since 4:00 this morning! Chuck's son came to visit, so we had to go clear down to Indianapolis to the Greyhound station to pick him up. His bus came in at 6:30 a.m. The pic above is obviously Lucas Oil Stadium, the new home the the Indianapolis Colts. The stadium is directly caddy corner from the bus station. We didn't have daylight until between 7:00 and 7:30 and I took this pic shortly after 6:00, so it was a little too dark to get the actual building.
We actually got up to 51 degrees F. yesterday. Most of the snow is gone, except what was plowed up into huge piles in parking lots and along the roads.

This Red-bellied woodpecker has been around quite a bit lately.

Same bird, just on the ground picking a corncob clean. That's okay. There's plenty more where that came from.

This poor Bluejay was having a major bad-tuft day! LOL

One of the few bird pictures I actually took while I was outside. As I said in the previous post, I take most of my bird pics from a chair looking out my kitchen window.

I thought that this little sparrow was so cute!

Female cardinal in the cherry tree. I can't wait for summer so I can pick some fresh cherries, if the birds and Michael don't beat me to them!

This is a European Starling. This is the first year that I ever saw them in the winter around here. Normally, I only see them for about a month during the middle of summer, about the time that the Grackles are getting ready to leave.

A White-breasted Nuthatch on the suet feeder.

This is the same cat from my previous post that was trying to camouflage herself in the snow.

My squirrels had disappeared for a short while. I think it got a little too cold for them.

I had gone out to Lori's last week to try another shot at getting pics of the horses playing in the snow. Her friend, Stan, was there with another gentleman working on their well pump. This is Stan and Val's dog, but unfortunately, I have forgotten the dog's name. Lori would toss snow balls and I would take the picture while the dog was jumping to catch them. Then we switched.

This is one of Lori's horses rolling in the snow. His name is Taxes because he was born on tax day.

This is yet the newest member of Lori's horse family. This is Goldie. When Lori got hurt, she was trying to coax the three adult females into the round-pen so she could let Goldie out for her first romp in the snow. We were hoping that Goldie would try rolling around in the snow, but she still wasn't really too sure about it.

Well, I think that's about it for now. I'm going to go and visit some more of you folks now.

Have a great week!

Love Ya

Lisa