by

Our Daily Thread 4-22-15

Good Morning!

And a Happy Birthday!!! to Bob Buckles. 🙂

Today’s header photo is from Cheryl. And below are some more. 

bluebirds3 cheryl

bluebird 2 cheryl

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On this day in 1792 President George Washington proclaimed American neutrality in the war in Europe.

In 1889, at noon, the Oklahoma land rush officially started as thousands of Americans raced for new, unclaimed land.

In 1952 an atomic test conducted in Nevada was the first nuclear explosion shown on live network television.

In 1954 the U.S. Senate’s McCarthy hearings began on television.

And in 993 the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum was dedicated in Washington, DC.

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Quote of the Day

“I don’t really care how I am remembered as long as I bring happiness and joy to people.”

Eddie Albert

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 Today is Glen Campbell’s birthday.

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Anyone have a QoD?

58 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 4-22-15”

  5. HAPPY :-BIRTHDAY.
    TO OUR 🙂
    DEAR BOB, HAPPY 🙂
    BIRTHDAY
    TO YOU!
    (It’s a Wandering Views sing-a-long with 6 Arrows and Roscuro doing a piano duet!)
    We just need a Mumsee cake for old time’s sake!

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  9. I am recouperating from mowing. I awakened in the night when aspirin wore off. Pain mixed with prayer. I said prayers for WV peeps among others. Finally got back to sleep. Bosley makes a good heating pad that I don’t have to plug in. Her utility bill is the price of a bag of cat food. 🙂

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  12. I loved those bluebird shots–best I’ve ever gotten of that species. The state park where my husband and I often walk has an area of dead but standing trees. In that region, one can always find red-headed woodpeckers, red-winged blackbirds, and (usually) bluebirds. This last visit we saw two different pairs–the male pictured is from the second pair, not the male of the pair pictured. (You have to look closely, but in the pair the male is on the left.) Actually, the second pair wasn’t in the dead trees, but an area just a few yards away.

    That one male was so cooperative, staying on the same limb for at least five or six minutes. My husband saw him and pointed him out and I took a picture, but I didn’t have the right angle because of branches in the way, so I moved around the tree and got photos from the front of the bird. Then the bird turned around but stayed on the same limb, and I got photos of his back. (If you look, you can see the same twigs in both photos of the one bird.) It was an overcast day, but the blue of his feathers was just electric, and the color jumped out at me as soon as I zoomed in. I want to do the photo at the top in colored pencil; it looks perfect for that medium. (I got a few more photos of bluebirds than those, but those were my favorites from the day. I also got a nearly perfect chickadee shot the same day.)

    BTW, the pair of bluebirds was far enough away from me I didn’t know what species they were until I zoomed in, although I guessed bluebirds just because I see a lot of them there. They were just specks on the tree until I zoomed in, but I thought it was cool to get a male and female together. I had to keep walking to get the shot, since originally that downhanging branch at the male’s left was positioned between the two birds, and I had to walk far enough that the angle of the shot was changed and the branch was no longer between them. It was nice that they stayed in place long enough that I could do that, though one of them did fly before I could move farther and maybe get the branch just a little farther away.

    Early spring is about the best time to get bird photos, though, since the birds are finding mates and singing and making themselves visible, but the trees don’t yet have leaves that hide the birds. Of course, the tree the pair is on is a dead tree, so it won’t have leaves later in the year either, but the single male chose a tree that is still alive.

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  14. Foxtails are springing up out here in Southern California.

    The cat has some kind of an owie on her back, I’ve been spraying it with stuff which makes her hiss at me. The hair is still right there so I can see what’s underneath, but she doesn’t like it touched. So I suppose we may have to head to the vet, but I have an early assignment this morning I need to get to.

    We’re still getting calls for interviews regarding the pulitzer, CNN, Newsweek & Al Jazeera all called yesterday. The angle everyone seems to love is how the reporter had to leave journalism to pay his rent, of course. And that’s made management prickly and more than a bit defensive.

    But things are pretty much getting back to normal — yesterday we had a guy in the lobby who claimed he’d been mysteriously microchipped and wanted to talk to a reporter about a story (no one wanted to go talk to him). Our regular (often drunk, but lovable) gadfly called to chat with reporters from one of the few remaining pay phones left in the city. And our editor is back to being his grumpy-normal self. He was much nicer & more fun after he’d consumed nearly a whole bottle of champagne.

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  15. Meant to say (thanks, spellcheck) that the cat’s fur is stiff and hard to pull up on the sore spot, so I can’t really see the skin underneath. Probably a bite or scratch from some close encounter with something. The downfalls of having an indoor-outdoor cat.

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  17. Yard season is among some of you. Our yard is white. 😀

    The birds are having a hay day in the crabapple tree that still has apples. We have three crabapple trees, but only one has old apples in it by this time of year. I am unsure if it is because the apples are bigger or more sour. For some reason, the birds prefer the other two trees. So nice for the birds to have some left for this last time before food for them will grow again.

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  18. Donna, there was also an article on a woman in one of the Carolina’s who won the Pulitzer but had also had to leave journalism. They made reference back to your guy.

    Side note about your editor and champagne. I am absolutely the cutest, wittiest person I know after a glass of champagne; just ask me, I will tell you……thus the reason I don’t drink it. :).

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  19. Kim, funny (and, yes, I saw an article about the other reporter, too). The champagne was flowing, we had one reporter who had to be hushed a couple times as she began speaking (cutely) her mind a little too freely to the publisher …

    Here’s the newsweek story, our guy has kind of become the poster child for downtrodden print journalists (which we like but management is beginning to hate — but all newspapers now are in the same listing boat):

    http://www.newsweek.com/pulitzer-prize-winner-who-walked-away-journalism-323932#.VTeylSz9raw.facebook

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  27. You know what we had for a couple of hours?
    ❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️

    It’s late April!

    I notice the “hand gestures emoji” doesn’t have the most widely recognized one. (Not that I planned to use it on here, or anywhere, if they did!)

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  31. Janice & Kim, I’ll email you the link. Not sure if I’ll do a group email to everyone whose address I’ve got, though. Is anyone’s inbox not already overflowing? 😉

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  32. Reminds me a little of those stories in Highlight.

    👨 Jose ate lunch. He ate 🍕 pizza and a 🍌 banana. And then he had to go get a 💇 haircut.

    His 🙌 barber has a 🐱 cat. His 🙌 barber just got 👰 married.

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  33. Interesting that what is a black-and-white icon on the site shows up in full color on here. I don’t know what that barber scissors and comb turned into up there. 👔

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  34. Janice & Kim, I mailed you the link now.

    It was really cool practicing there yesterday. I was alone in the old building for an hour in the afternoon. The performance area is on the third floor, and, while there are windows, it was quite dark and windy/rainy yesterday, and I could hear the wind whistling outside when I’d stop playing. Kind of eerie, and yet thrilling at the same time.

    The building is in a small town near me, and if you watch the video, you will get that small-town feel, watching a tractor with loader hoisting that piano up to the third-floor window.

    Several boys from the high school in town were given permission to leave campus and help with getting the piano into the performance hall. I am told they were quite pleased to be asked to help. 🙂

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  43. Well, I am going on 11 years of working with Guy…. Today he took me to lunch and the other guys in the office went too for Administrative Professional’s Day. I was a little shocked that he thought to do it…he must have had someone remind him. While on the one hand I was grateful to be appreciated on the other I find it a little condescending. I am more than a “secretary”. I can list, sell, write contracts, and I am an associate broker…but it was still nice to be appreciated for an hour!

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  44. I wouldn’t know KIm. I’ve never been appreciated before.

    The guys in the SS class I taught for years in Falls Church did send me a nice pen holder set, with the inscription I always opened the lesson with.
    “Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in thy sight, My Lord and my redeemer.”
    I still have it. Likely always will.

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  45. That is my prayer, Chas.
    Stocked up on groceries and now off to the airport to pick up dil and three sweet and lively kiddos. Then we wait for an hour for daddy to come in from LA where he has been doing some training today. I plan on taking lots of snacks with me.

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  50. I think I’ve mentioned on here that I was making a book of my bird photos (along with mini essays on all the birds for which I had several good photos and on several subjects relating to birds, such as flying and courtship). I have four pages of hummingbird shots under “ruby-throated hummingbird,” for example, but I also have two pages of hummingbirds fighting and two more of hummingbirds grooming themselves. All in all, it comes in at close to 300 pages, with hundreds of photos and more than 50 birds that have at least two pages focused on them (some, like cardinals, have as many as eight pages, not counting more photos of them in the section on flying and more in the “birds in snow”).

    It started out as just a book I put together over a couple of months, but over the past year I’ve continued to work on it, taking out weak photos and replacing them as I’ve gotten better ones, adding new birds as I’ve gotten good photos of them, and within the last month even adding a section of photos of preening birds and adding two pages of singing birds to the courtship section. The bluebirds on this header were about the last ones to make it into the book, and the swan ones from a couple weeks ago, multiple cardinal shots, and cedar waxwings are also there, along with about 70 other species that have at least a photo or two, sometimes lots of them.

    Anyway, the book is print on demand (which means expensive) and I don’t expect anyone here to want to order one (even I waited for a rare 35% off coupon from the publisher, and even then it was expensive). I also did an e-book version that I set up to sell for $3.99 (I may increase the price later, but I decided to keep it low starting out), but basically I’m mentioning it on here in case anyone who has my e-mail address wants to see the link to look at the book. (Don’t consider this a sales spiel; I just put a lot of work into it, and if you came to my house I’d let you look at it, but this way you can look at it from your own house.) I’d put the link on here, but in order to honor my husband–who is fine with people from here e-mailing me, but wishes me to remain anonymous on this site itself–I’ll just offer it to anyone who wants to e-mail me. If you don’t have my “real” e-mail address, then e-mail me at my anonymous one that I set up for World, extra dot extra at juno dot com.

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  51. Long day today. Emily left for work (to her new job at Claire’s) at about 8:45 this morning, worked until 4:00, then went straight to school. She’ll be home about 10:30.

    Chrissy & I had Forrest outside for a long time today, & thought he would drop off to sleep right away, but he didn’t. He finally dropped off shortly before Chrissy was due to be picked up. Phew!

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  52. Cheryl, I emailed you about the bird book. 🙂

    Karen, whew!

    Tomorrow is Thursday. You know what day that is for me.

    And I’m also meeting with my duet partner tomorrow afternoon. That will be fun.

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  54. 😈 👿
    🌵 🌷 🌸 🌹 🌺 🌻 🌼 💐
    😸 😹 😺 😻 😼 😽 😾 😿 🙀
    🐎 🐴🌟 ⭐️ 🌠 🌄 🌅 🌈 🌊 🌋

    AJ, you don’t mind if I hog all the bandwidth testing to see what they look like in color, do you?

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  56. Exciting day at the blog, with elephants and horses and all sorts of interesting…miscellany.

    Time for me to shut down the screens. If anyone needs a midnight snack, here you go. 😉

    🍅 🍆 🌽 🍠 🍇 🍈 🍉 🍊 🍋 🍌 🍍 🍎 🍏 🍐 🍑 🍒 🍓 🍔 🍕 🍖 🍗 🍘 🍙 🍚 🍛 🍜 🍝 🍞 🍟 🍡 🍢 🍣 🍤 🍥 🍦 🍧 🍨 🍩 🍪 🍫 🍬 🍭 🍮 🍯 🍰 🍱 🍲 🍳 🍴 🍵 ☕️ 🍶 🍷 🍸 🍹 🍺 🍻 🍼

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  58. It’s late, but I just found I could get an app for the ESV Global Study Bible through Crossway for free. It looks good for any who would like to get one. It is for ipad, iphone. or Android. Two different apps of course according to device maker. Maybe someone already shared this and I missed it. I just saw it on Twitter.

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