morrowlife

Congratulations to Reader Number Four for finally joining the fold of The Only True Blog in the World! That’s her on the right, along with Readers One and Two and our non-reader friend. Number Three is outta luck.

I’m going to Luxembourg next week and not bringing a computer, so there will be no blogging. Whatever will my loyal readers do? Will they notice? Doubtful.

I only have two or three more weeks’ worth of blog pictures waiting in the queue. That can only mean one (or both) of two things: either I need to choose some more pictures from my vast archive (a distinct possibility) or I need to take some more. Since I’ll be in Europe next week, maybe I’ll be able to find something to take pictures of. Maybe that can be next week’s contribution to the blog. Yeah, that’s the ticket.

Speaking of blog pictures and limits, I need to have a look at how full my website server account is getting. I have pretty definite limits, and I may be getting close soon. What then? The way I see it, this means one (or both) of two things: either I need to take some pictures out of the archives (horrors!) or I need to pay more more server space (more horrors!) or I need to find a free place to host pictures. Okay, that was three things, but my intentions were good and that should count for something, no? No? Anybody out there?

Here’s another in my famous fireplace series. You can almost feel the heat, huh? There’s an interesting phenomenon going on with my digital camera in low-light situations – I get a lot of bad pixels. There’s always a big green one right in the middle of everything, and then several other blue and purple ones, depending on how dark the picture is. It’s nothing The Gimp can’t clean up, though. I blow the picture up to 200%, use the eyedropper near the bad spot, and then use the fuzzy airbrush to touch up.

I absolutely HAVE to go to bed earlier tonight. So, bye.

Here are a couple of non-readers in the rocks. We like them anyway.

The first Intel-powered Macs were announced at the Macworld Expo tonight. Joy reigns in Macland! I gotta get me one of them.

We went to James Monroe’s house, Ash Lawn-Highland, over the Christmas holidays. It’s in Charlottesville, Virginia, and is very close to Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s house, and Montpelier, James Madison’s house. Monroe, Madison, and Jefferson were not only neighbors, they were good friends. Monroe seems to have gotten the worst of it among the three, as he never really had much money, and his house wasn’t all that great. Still, he was the president, so they have the place open to the public.

My favorite part of the tour was when we visited the part of the house Madison himself built. The floor was so crooked you could hardly stand up straight. I guess he was a better politician than a builder. Everybody has to be good at something. He did give us the Monroe Doctrine, which basically promised Europeans we would stay out of their hair and warned them to stay out of ours. It served us well for quite a long time. He also worked out the Lousiana Purchase when he was Secretary of State. Not a bad legacy there. So, I can forgive him for having a lousy house. He gave a lot of service and didn’t get much of this world’s goods in return.

Still, his statue is in pretty bad shape.

As promised yesterday, here’s Aunt Sandy and the sea lion (or seal or dolphin or mollusk or something in the ocean or a river or somewhere). It was taken at the Detroit zoo last summer. They have an arctic exhibit with a pretty cool underwater tube you walk through.

Number One and I went to our friend Ross’s sixteenth birthday party at the Extreme Sports Center (can’t find a link, sadly – maybe a reader can find it for me) tonight. It was a lot of fun and the place is very cool. It has two indoor soccer fields, one of which was reserved for us to play touch football. We had fun, although I’m in quite a lot of muscle pain today. I don’t do much running around these days. Maybe I should start. Maybe not.

To the bedmobile! See you on Monday.