Category: silliness

photography, silliness, strangers, sunrise

Fishermen…

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It doesn’t seem as if you can lump all the fishermen I’ve met at sunrise or sunset photo shoots into any sort of category.  Except they all seem to be friendly.  Take this morning’s sunrise encounter at Hammond’s Creek Bridge.  I was taking pictures, as usual, when he greeted me as he pulled up on a bicycle and marched over and introduced himself.  Keith maybe?  He says he always comes there for sunrise and sunsets but I don’t think I have seen him before.  And I asked him about One-Foot Fred but he wasn’t aware of him at all.  I didn’t see old Fred, just saying.  Anyhow, he asked where I was from, I said MA, and he got excited and said he was from W. Springfield.  So I added that I was from Brockton and he immediately got to talking about Rocky Marciano, and how his mother thinks that Tom Brady is the greatest baseball player ever (that’s what he said that she said).  Then it was on to Carl Yastrzemski, and John Havlicek.  The good old days.  Right about then he pulled a Budweiser out of his pocket and cracked it open, and settled in to watch the sunrise.  You can’t make this stuff up.4-5sunrise14-5sunrise24-5Sunrise4

donuts, Florida landmarks, food, fun, go with the flow, pastries, photography, silliness

The Florida Strawberry Festival…

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That I”m a rookie at this photography stuff came home to me again when I realized that I had taken a lot of pictures at the strawberry festival yesterday, but never took one of the actual strawberry shortcake.  I had wondered if I would come away with nothing but pictures of mounds of whipped cream and strawberries, and came away with none.  I wonder if Sunday afternoon might be the biggest crowd of the entire week, but I found myself sucked into a vortex and just snapped photos as the crowd swept me along.  If it’s shortcake you are looking for then you’ll have to get down there yourself, it runs through the 11th…

 

 

I found the charm I was looking for in the exhibition hall where they displayed their winning cakes, horticulture, quilts, and lots more.  A large display case held images of all the strawberry queens over the years, but I was a little disappointed that 1948, my birth year, wasn’t represented.  But then I saw that she was in a featured showcase of her own.

 

 

Maybe it’s the fact that I pack donuts for a living, but the donut burger caught my eye.  You always hear about crazy fair food, and I was excited to take this picture because it was early on and I expected to take lots of photos of food, but this and the elephant ears were my only food photos.  And I was obnoxious and told the woman that that’s not what we call elephant ears at Publix.  She said that hers were ‘authentic’.donutburgerelephantearI purposely wanted to go to this event alone, as I do most of the time when I’m wanting to take pictures, because I think I’ll drive another person nuts with my photo taking.  But I think that with another person’s perspective my visit might have been even more fun.  So grab a friend and go, but try not to miss the strawberry shortcake!

dogs, home, life goes on, loneliness, photography, silliness

Night life…

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On the way out for the sunrise the other day I found myself singing along with the radio, “I love the night life, I love to boogie”, and I cracked myself up. That would be true, I do love the night life, as long as it starts at 4 AM. And that’s if I’m lucky. Sometimes it starts at 3 AM, and this morning it started a little after 2 AM. That’s when I realized that the sound I was hearing wasn’t motorcycles, it was a helicopter. From the sound of it they were right overhead and circling. It seemed like they were concentrating on my house and my yard, even though I knew that that wasn’t likely. I also knew that the dogs would be awake soon, they seem to know when I’m awake and that will get them up and wanting to go out. But what was going on out there? I put all the outside lights on and let Ozzie out, but he didn’t seem worried about anything. I was glad Zoe didn’t want to go out because she wanders more and I really didn’t want to be outside in my pajamas with the helicopter overhead and a potential ax murderer out there. With my imagination in high gear it wasn’t likely that I was going back to sleep so I made coffee.

I must say that when I walked out of the bedroom I was greeted by the most wonderful smell. Clean, deodorized, no re-oderized, dogs! Ozzie got a bath, and Zoe got a bath, haircut, pedicure, and her ears done yesterday. I took a before picture of her, she was in full woolly mammoth mode and quite overdue for a trip to the beauty shop. I intended to take an after photo also, and I thought I might make the comment that if I thought that spending $100 on a haircut for myself would make as much of a difference in how I look as it does for Zoe then it would be worth the money. But when I picked them up Zoe was all dolled up with little pink bows in her ears and a coordinated scarf around her neck. She was too excited to stay still for much of a picture, and, quite frankly, I was embarrassed for her. She is the least girly girl ever, kind of like me, and she looked ridiculous. I left them on her however, because I had to head out last night and I hoped to get a better picture this morning. But those things are coming off before I take them for a walk this morning. A girl has her pride after all.

If there was an escaped convict on the loose out there this morning I wonder what he would have thought if he heard a savagely barking dog taking a bead on him, and when she came out of the darkness she was wearing tiny pink bows in her ears?2-24Zoeafter22-24Zoeafter

flowers, go with the flow, photography, rain, silliness, simple things, sunrise

Two leashes and a bag of poop…

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That’s what I had in my hands when I spotted the flock of robins a couple of doors up.  I didn’t have my camera with me on the dog walk either, so photos weren’t an option until I looked for them after I got home.  And the sunrise I didn’t go out for because I expected it to be overcast? Well, that happened, but I did get a photo out the back door. 2-4sunriseoutback

So, what to photograph in the limited time available before the rain?  And close by, because these trips to Clearwater are 100 mile round trips and I’ll be back there again tomorrow night.  Maybe it’s because the chickens next door have been visiting my yard lately, and they’ve de-weeded pretty well, but I thought of the chicks they usually have a Rural King.  But that wasn’t all I found there…2-4ruralkingchicks2-4pinkflowers2-4pink22-4yellow2-4pansy2-4fringe2-4blueBut the real find were the boots!  Now I can join the ‘photo chicks’ I know on one of their photo walks, and not worry about getting my feet wet.  And when I’m not walking with them the boots can live in my bathroom, they’ll fit right in.+2-4beeboots If the nice woman I met at Rural King is reading this, welcome to my world!

Facebook, friends, sending a message, silliness, strangers, technology

Hello stranger…

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Call me paranoid… but something is going on with Facebook and/or Messenger that has me creeped out . Maybe you get random friend requests, and if you do please tell me so I can stop being concerned, but I seem to get these random friend requests frequently, and it seems to always be from men. It has always seemed odd to me, but not necessarily alarming. Then I mentioned it to my uncle, who said that his daughter told him not to click on them at all, not even to delete them, because if you do then ‘they’ will send even more of them. Who will, Facebook? Is deleting them where I went wrong? If there is some sort of random-possible-friend-generator out there in Facebookland, I’m picturing the wheel from Wheel of Fortune here, shouldn’t the requests be pretty much evenly divided between men and women?
And Messenger seems to me to be one step further into being intrusive when I get a message from a total stranger that just says ‘hello’. I just got a mental image of my daughter reading this and rolling her eyes at how ridiculous I’m being. Again, always men, and always ‘hello’. If you communicate with them to ask who they are would it be some kind of gateway to your information being somewhere out there in cyberland where you wouldn’t want it to be? Is ‘hello’ some kind of code word? One of these random hellos did wind up, and don’t ask me how this happened, as a facebook friend. Yup. Did I somehow click on it when I was just getting pages off my phone? Was it one of those 4 AM half-asleep things? Maybe Ozzie plunked his chin down on the computer when he snuck up on me when I was in the recliner with the laptop in my lap?

I’ve been thinking about this for a while now, thinking I was being silly, but I got a friend request a few days ago that makes me think that things have really gone off the rails here. This friend request, from another random, no mutual friends, man, shows his profile picture with him naked! Only from the chest up, but what does that imply? Seriously? Is it me? My co-workers thought that this was hilarious, and I would too, if it was showing up on their Facebook page instead of mine.

I’ve never felt my age more than now, when I’m tempted to complain that today’s society its just too much for me.  Up until now I’ve been such fan of technology in general. I think my New Year’s resolution will be to delete any more of these requests the second I notice them, the heck with what my cousin says. Sorry Deb, love you!

1213randomrequests.jpgFaces have been obscured, I’m not sure why I thought I ought to do that.  And these requests have been deleted, after I took a photo of course…

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adventure, childhood, photography, Pine Island, silliness, simple things, sky, unintended images

Widget’s tale…

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After two cold, rainy, and entirely dreary days, it was almost startling to see some blue sky that afternoon, but still lots of clouds. Clouds that just might be lit up by the sunset. I hadn’t been out for the sunset at Pine Island in quite a few days, so off I went. I complained when the wind wasn’t there the other day, and the no-see-ums were there, well, the wind was back, in spades. The clouds had been blown almost entirely away and the seagulls kept taking to the air, and flying nowhere. They couldn’t make headway against that wind.

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And that wind, well, the seagulls weren’t the only ones who struggled with it. Don’t I always say that Pine Island never disappoints? That the people I meet are just as important to me as the sunsets? Well, we can now add elves to that list, or, one elf at least. His name is Widget, and he had quite the tale to tell…

Widgets mission
It seems he had been chosen by Santa for a very special mission, one that had taken him to Hawaii. It was hard work training those elf recruits, so before he left Hawaii he earned a chance to relax on the beach…Widget gets some sun

But then a huge gust of wind blew across the beach, and Widget found himself flying through the sky.  All he could see were all the seagulls who were also being blown in the wind with him.  He was flying and flying, and he was very scared, but mostly because he didn’t know if he would ever see his boy Jonah again.  He just wanted to go home.

Widget touches down

There were hardly any people on Pine Island on that cold and windy evening.  But lucky for him Jonah’s mommy was one of the people there on the beach, and we all saw him as he flew through the air, and landed with a thud, and we ran to see if he was okay.  He didn’t care that he was cold, or that he was covered with sand, he said he just wanted to go home.  And then he smiled…

Widget's selfie

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