62 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 3-22-16”

  1. Morning all.
    So pleased to be on break now. All my conferences are done and went well.
    I have begun preparing materials for term 4 and term 1.
    I asked the principal for a list of students for next year and she looked at me like I was crazy. Then I told her that I was going home and needed to get ready now.

    Liked by 5 people

    Reply

  4. Often I send AJ only bird photos, but from this hike through the “marsh,” I thought it was cool that I had birds (the red-winged blackbird above and several more), amphibians (the leopard frog is the only one who posed for me, but we saw a lot more frogs jumping into the water at our approach), and mammals (the swimming muskrat above and a beaver and opossum that might have been dead).

    Just a few days before this hike, I had posted on here that someday I want to get photos of red-winged blackbirds on cattails, two species I associate with the swamp and with each other. Although I’d often seen them together, I’d never been able to get a photo. Within a few days, we took this walk where several males were calling from last year’s dried cattails, and I was able to get photos of two of them, including this decent shot. It isn’t as sharp as it might be simply because it’s a vertical photo cropped from a horizontal, and it had already been zoomed in. So it does better at a smaller size, but it’s my blackbird photo. This region is absolutely crawling with this species from early spring to fall, as my photo of a huge flock from a couple of weeks ago would hint. Later in the summer, if I take a walk down my street, in one area near water I will be cursed at by a dozen male red-winged blackbirds within a city block. Males may have more than one mate, too. Males don’t help feed their mates or nestlings, but they are very effective at guarding their territories. Last summer I got some amusing photos of one chasing a vulture–a bird many times its size and a bird that is no threat to its nest that I know of. The females are very pretty, but very different from the males–the females are brown and they blend in better to their nests in the reeds. As many males as I see screaming, the females stay camouflaged and I don’t see the nests, but males would give away the nests if they went to them. The males come to town first, and find nesting territories, and then the females come and choose mates and their territories.

    The leopard frog is much smaller than the photo would indicate. According to the Kaufman Field Guide to Nature of the Midwest (a really excellent book, BTW), this frog is less than three inches. Well, if you click on the photo above, you can see the visible part of the frog at bigger than life size, and this creature was several yards away! I would in fact have never seen it at all had not my husband seen it through his binoculars and called it to my attention. The frog stayed completely motionless long enough for him to guide me to where exactly it was in the water, and for me to zoom in on it and get several shots, and it never did move. I had been looking to the right side of our path, since numerous tiny frogs had jumped into the water on that side, and I was hoping to be able to see (and photograph) a frog–all I saw was leaps, with no chance to see the frogs either before they leapt or after they disappeared into the water–and then my husband saw this fellow on the left side. It was far too small for me to see it with my naked eye, but he guided me as to what part of the pond to look, and I found it with my lens.

    The final shot is a muskrat in the water. We saw this one on the right side of the trail; it was just entering a tunnel under the trail, so we both jumped to the left side, knowing we’d soon see it on that side. Sure enough it came out and swam around a bit, giving us a very good view. I started with these “creature in its habitat” shots, but just as I started to zoom in and get a close-up of the critter itself, it dove underwater. (If it knew we were there, it showed no concern, but they tend to stay underwater for long periods.) I’ve learned over time that if I zoom in immediately, I might lose a chance to get any shot of a specific creature, so usually I take one or two at whatever level of zoom I have when I first find the creature in my lens, and only then do I zoom in more. In this case, I took several wide shots and so I had time to zoom in and get a close-up shot sooner, and probably should have done so . . . I just wasn’t thinking about the fact that it was likely to dive and then I’d miss further opportunities. It did swim back our way later, but I had reeds between me and it, and couldn’t get a good shot. I do like this shot, though.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  5. Thought for the day.
    “When God measures a man,
    He puts the tape around the heart instead of the head.”

    Op Cite. If I had been making the statement, I would have loft off the “instead of the head” part.
    “The Lord seeith not as man seeith; for man looks on the appearance , but the Lord looks on the heart.” I Samuel 16:7b.

    Liked by 3 people

    Reply

  6. The first thought I had when I saw the header was, “Darth Vader!”

    Interesting photos, Cheryl. It’s nice to see the great outdoors through your lens!♡

    It’s cold here, too. We actually slept late, and I attribute that to the cold. Art’s first appointment is usually at 10 a.m.

    So many things are blooming around Atlanta. If I went out for an early morning drive I might see all the flowering trees shaking with the cold shivers.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  8. Haha I thought Darth Vader too and, as I scrolled down, fully expected to see him sitting on a cat. 🙂

    It’s my Monday, back to work now that the cold is mostly gone

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  9. Very intimidating bird staring at me when I opened this page….I actually gasped!! We are preparing for a boat load of snow tonight and tomorrow….then again Friday, Sat., and Sunday….arggg!! But it is 50 degrees right now and I’ll get my errands accomplished before the fridge repairman gets here….I’ll be in line with the hundreds who are purchasing milk, bread and toilet paper!!

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  10. Here’s a QOD. If you have a cell phone, what is your ring tone?

    Mine is the UCLA fight song; it appears to be the only one I can have, much less react to.

    Though my first thought is always, “oh, no! I didn’t see the baton go down.”

    But of course I’m no longer in the band . . . So it must be the phone! 🙂

    Liked by 3 people

    Reply

  11. Mine announces who is calling me. It will either be husband or seventeen year old or the neighbor. Those are the only folk I have given the number to.

    Like

    Reply

  15. Years ago, in the early days of musical ring tones, I set my ancient flip phone to ‘When the Saints Go Marching In’ and forgot to silence it before going to a movie with a friend. I got a lot of dirty looks that night

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  16. For one thing. I never get calls on my cell phone.
    Seriously, I get more wrong numbers than real calls on my cell.
    I don’t give my number out to many people.
    At doctor’s offices and similar places, I leave that space blank.

    Like

    Reply

  20. I just erased thirty phone messages off the land line, only five of them were of value. We don’t pick it up until somebody starts to leave a message. I don’t know who calls and does not leave a message.

    Like

    Reply

  21. I usually have it on vibrate so when it goes off at school the students don’t notice. But I only get calls from my wife and junk calls. I ignore them.

    If I have the volume up, the ring tone is the theme from the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind. I like that movie, though my children don’t.

    Like

    Reply

  24. I never even monitor my home line, all it gets are marketing calls now, really not worth keeping at this point. When my contract comes up I’ll likely do away with it.

    Like

    Reply

  25. Ring tone: whatever was set on the phone. My husband has a bunch of specialized rings, and I’d kind of like to set one for him on my own phone, but I’ve never done anything like that.

    Funniest ring tone story for me: I attended my tenth college reunion, and at the end of it, we decided to sit in a circle and pray together. We were seven or eight stories up, praying, and suddenly a cat started meowing. I think all of us were wondering how on earth a cat got in that room, until the phone owner grabbed the phone and shut it off.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  28. Funniest phone ringing story. One day in church someone’s phone rang. They were quite embarrassed but the our priest stopped whatever it was his was saying and broke out in song, smiling. He said he had always wanted to do that. So what song did he sing? This one:

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  30. I don’t use my phone much but my ringtone is the old time ringtone….three of my dearest friends have their’s set with the same tone…when we are together, it gets real interesting when one of our phones ring

    Like

    Reply

  31. Having a problem with Windows 10 :

    When I turn on the laptop, before clicking on anything, I get a message that Automatic Repair is starting. After it has tried to repair whatever-the-problem-is, unsuccessfully, it gives me some options to choose from, like shutting down, restoring, resetting, & some other advanced options. Nothing has worked.

    For the past few days, I have had to wait for it to come back up after the restore or reset, & then re-install my browser & virus & malware protections.

    Today I googled about it, & found that lots of people have had this problem, but the answers of how to fix it are all over the place, & many are above my skill set.

    The easiest fix, which I haven’t gotten around to trying, but will later, is to take out the battery & unplug, then press the power button for 20 seconds, then plug in, but not put the battery back in yet, & see what happens. This seems too easy, so I’m doubting it will work, but hey, I’ll give it a try.

    I’m going to not shut it down tonight, which will keep it going, but that is only a temporary non-fix. (Also, Windows 10 does automatic updates, which then restart the laptop, which would mess that up. I’ll have to see if I can do something to keep it from doing that.)

    I’ll have Chrissy, who is much more tech-savvy than I, look at some of the more complicated answers, & see if she could do them.

    Have any of you had this problem & successfully fixed it?

    Like

    Reply

  32. My children set up my phone for me. My worst experience was when I was mowing the backyard and somebody had set it to vibrate and I suddenly thought I had a bee in my pocket. Quite the panic situation.
    Then one time I kept hearing a strange noise until one of the children told me it was my cell phone in the other room.
    Children……

    Liked by 4 people

    Reply

  33. A few years ago, Lee’s ringtone for a boss was the Mission: Impossible theme, & for home was the Green Acres theme. (He & I used to sing that together, with him singing the Eddie Albert part, & me taking the Eva Gabor part. 🙂 )

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  34. One of them decided I was having too much difficulty with it so he set it to ring, announce, and vibrate all at the same time. That was ugly and depleted the battery very quickly.

    Like

    Reply

  35. My mac laptop is getting fixed, malware invasion — also turns out it was set up with that code that’s become the topic of the feds vs. apple on those phones the terrorists had.

    For those enjoy satire, this is pretty wicked (tweeted by Russell Moore):

    http://babylonbee.com/news/pcusa-oks-additional-sins/

    ______________________________

    LOUISVILLE, KY—By a nearly unanimous vote, the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) voted to overlook or explicitly endorse a number of additional sins in what is being perceived as an attempt to slow its rapid pace of membership decline.

    As balloons came down, the PC(USA) commissioners danced in the aisles to the Kool & The Gang 1980 party standard Celebrate and some attendees openly wept for joy as the denomination announced their official endorsement of pride, gossip, sorcery, covetousness, theft, and sexual immorality as a general category.

    “Finally,” sobbed self-described “open gossiper” attendee Rebecca Arnett. “I no longer have to live a lie. Now I can confidently be the gossip God made me to be. Did you hear about Lauren’s husband, by the way?”
    ___________________________________

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  37. Karen, I don’t have Windows 10 and the family computer, which does have Windows 10, hasn’t displayed that problem. However, when I was in West Africa, whether it was humidity or something else, I had a terrible time trying to start up my computer. When I pushed the start button, the maker’s brand screen would show, then the starting Windows screen with the little animated meter to show it was loading. Partway through it would pause ominously, then the blue screen of death would appear and the computer would shut down. It would then try to restart, and then the make’s screen would show up. Then a DOS screen would appear saying there had been a problem and the computer had shut down and a list of options would appear. I always scrolled down to the bottom and chose Start Windows Normally. It might take several tries – I think a few times I went above ten tries – and sometimes I would just shut it down, leave it for 20 minutes and try again; but it would eventually restart. I never let it try to fix the problem, because that led nowhere. I eventually noticed it was more likely to do it if I hadn’t used it for over a day. When I came home, it did it at first, but then it stopped, and it hadn’t shown any problems for over a year and a half. Last week, it shut down in the middle of something, but that I attribute to its relative old age. It is only a netbook and it has seen many places and things, so I’m not surprised it is wearing out.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  38. You all are so amusing! Thank you for the laughs.

    I have the T-Mobile ring tone that you hear on television so that can be confusing. Art has another one that is unobtrusive. At one point, during a past election year a co-worker’s FIL thought her husband (his son) should run for President. He was serious in his slight state of dementia. Co-worker and her husband thought it was cute and funny so they changed her ring tone for her husband to be that Presidential fanfare song. So when he’d call her it always seemed the President was calling.

    Liked by 3 people

    Reply

  39. I am working on a devotional adult coloring book type project so that is what I am writing the thirty-one prayers for. I thought Kim would be happy to know I took her advice and found a way to use prayers in my writing.♡

    Liked by 4 people

    Reply

  40. I’very heard Windows 10 has a lot of problems to work out. They let the customers find the kinks so they don’t have to pay someone to do that. That is why everything is so time consuming. Most products go to market without being truly consumer ready/friendly. As they make money on the product sales, then they pay someone to fix the updated versions.

    Like

    Reply

  42. As I am working on my laptop at home, which does not have internet, Miss Bosley has a blanket to sleep on directly behind the laptop screen and next to the window pane. Earlier she was watching a bird and chattering her teeth. It was reminding me of when I told the vet that Bosley once in awhile chatters her teeth at me. The vet said that is not a good sign since cats do that toward their prey.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  44. Cute frog, btw

    Tess has taken to nipping at poor Annie’s back heels and rump when she walks by — not enough to hurt, just enough to thoroughly annoy her

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  46. Yes, the cat will NOT be herded

    Although she sometimes makes a game out of it when Tess gives her the ‘eye’ and starts creeping toward her.

    Annie turns and races across the floor, sliding on the throw rugs (Tess doesn’t give chase) before she saunters back and Tess has to do it again — I can tell Annie is having fun with her

    Liked by 3 people

    Reply

  49. Well oops. I guess it is just the first part.
    http:/.bit.ly/1RbJZme
    very exciting if you like to see controlled blasts that don’t bring down the whole mountainside.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  52. Why is it that long hours on a keyboard working with numbers is not the same as long hours at the keyboard working with words? I think the numbers thing is totally left brain and the writing involves switching back and forth between left and write brain. I listened to a Michael Hyatt webinar this morning and he said to do the initial writing without editing so you stick with the right brain work. Then later do the editing, using the left brain for that portion. Makes sense.

    Like

    Reply

  56. His ride has come to pick him up. The guy he was sharing rum and mj with. He plans to live in the guy’s dad’s rental with another guy who abuses alcohol and has lots of guns. Should be fun for them all. Some have to go down before they can go up.

    Liked by 3 people

    Reply

Leave a reply to Karen O Cancel reply