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

My Belated Birthday Card

I hope this works. I tried to put it on my side bar, but couldn't figure out how.
http://www.jacquielawson.com/viewcard.asp?code=1763706652141&source=jl999

Thank you to Patty Lincoln

Let Me Try This Again!

The last time I tried to post from my computer, it disconnected on me just as I hit "publish post"! Talk about aggrivating!!!
I finally get to thank Merle at Merle's Third Try for the Honest Scrap award. She passed it along to me when my internet was down. Here's how this goes.
List 10 honest things about myself
Post the award on your post and blog
Put a link to the person/persons who you received the award from.
Nominate at least 7 blogs which show "honest scrapness"
Be sure to link to your nominees in your post.
Let them know they have received this award by commenting on their blogs.

1. I just quietly turned 46 years old on January 30th.
2. I am scared to death that because I have already lost my father, mother and maternal grandmother to cancer, that I won't be far behind.
3. I have been married three times. The first two marriages were horrible. The current quite good.
4. I have 2 sons. Ryan will be 27 in May and Michael just turned 15 in October. One grandson, Cody, will be 4 in August. One daughter-in-law, Melissa. I love them all. A big part of why I moved back to Indiana from Florida.
5. I have a terrible weight problem. 17 years ago, I went from 180 pounds down to 125 pounds, then turned around and got pregnant! The pounds have been packing on and slightly dropping since. My highest weight got up to 212 pounds about 3 years ago. I am only 5 feet, 3 inches tall, or should I say short (vertically challenged!)
6. I am extremely lazy! I will stay up til well after 1:00 in the morning, but stay in bed til at least 10:00, if not later!
7. My husband gets very aggrivated with me because I rarely talk. If I don't have anything interesting to say, why speak!
8. I love to home can fresh vegetables and make my own jelly.
9. I would rather be taking pictures than keeping house, although, I do make time for that as well.
10. I love all different kinds of music, as you can tell by my playlist. I'm sure a lot of you were kind of surprised to see Glen Miller's "In The Mood" on there.

Now, I'm going to break the rules on the next part. I don't like to select just certain people for these awards. I feel like I might be upsetting the people that I don't choose. So, if you are visiting this post, please feel free to take the award on over to your own site.

This Blue jay shot is my pride and joy up to this point. I couldn't believe how well it turned out. I took it last Wednesday when we had our big snow storm. I think we ended up with somewhere between 8 to 12 inches of snow, depending on the area.

I shot this over on the Mississinewa River on January 26. I thought they were called gray geese, but my late mother and my step-father got me a National Geographic Complete Birds of North America book for Christmas, and when I looked the birds up in the book, it says that these birds are called Swan Geese. Id never heard of such a thing.

This is the bridge that I was standing on taking the pictures of the geese.

This is a female Red-bellied Woodpecker.

This is just an icicle that I shot out of my kitchen window. The shot was so over-exposed that you couldn't see the icicle at all. So I put it on Photoshop and clicked on Enhance then Auto levels, and this is the result!

These two cats belong to Lori over at ProPhoto By Lori. I took it a couple of weeks ago. I had been out there the day previous to take pictures of the horses out in the snow, but an accident happened before we could. While Lori was trying to get the 3 older phillies into the round pen so she could let the baby out, one of the horses kicked her in the head. She is doing better now. She still has some slight bruising. She was being quite stubborn and wouldn't go to the E.R. Shame on you, girl! We finally managed to get some shots earlier this week. I haven't edited any of them, so I'm not posting them on this entry.

One of our many male cardinals. All of my bird shots that I get since living in this house have been taken standing on a chair and shooting out the kitchen window.

This is a Brown Thrasher. This was the first and last day I have ever seen this breed. In the last couple of weeks, I have decided that since I have this bird book now, that I am going to try to see how many different breeds of birds I can get shots of, print out a 4x6 of the best of each, and put in the book on it's respective page.

This is one of the neighborhood cats that I feed. She stayed right in this spot for quite some time waiting for the bird snack that never came. She is actually a gray cat, but you'd never know with all the snow all over her. The birds were smart enough to wait till she was gone to come in for seed.

I think this is my longest post yet!

I'm going to get off here now and get to bed. I have to get up with Chuck in 4 hours to fix him breakfast and get him a lunch and snacks ready to take with him. Yes, I will go back to bed, then back up at 6:30 long enough to get Michael up for school then back to bed.

TTYL

Love ya

Lisa

Here We Go Again!

Sorry I haven't been posting for a while. Last Friday I had done a complete post, and just as I hit "publish post" I lost my internet connection. No, I didn't neglect to pay my bill. I made the mistake of trying to switch from AT&T to Vonage for my phone service. What a mistake! Take my advice, don't use Vonage. They were horrible. Now, I'm waiting for Vonage to surrender my phone number back to AT&T. That won't happen until January 28! No phone line, no internet:( Once again, I am using the computer at the public library, so, no pictures for this post.
Must go for now. I have an appointment to get my hair cut, not that it's going to help anything! LOL
Take care and have a great weekend.
Love Ya
Lisa