"All the leaves are brown and the sky is gray..."

These are some pictures I took at the beginning of fall. I'm just getting around to posting them. I thought that they were very fitting to "California Dreamin'" by the Mamas and the Papas...

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This is one of the trees in our front yard with our dog, Raven, in the background. She was out there with me the whole time I was taking pictures. Her nose got into quite a few of them.

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This is of the same tree buy while laying on the ground. I thought it was a cool angle.

One for the holidays...

I was cooking the cranberries last night for this afternoon's Thanksgiving feast. I, of course, followed the directions. I found this snippet especially helpful:

TO FREEZE: Place this bag in the freezer.

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Happy Thanksgiving!

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I also posted this on Eavesdroppers. If you haven't seen this blog yet, check it out!

Scotland pictures...last of 3

And the long-anticipated final installment of the Scotland pictures...

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[Below]The first two are of the same little building ruins that I showed in the last post on this...just different shots of it. I think that this little building is really cool. If it was acceptable to live outside, I'd pick to live there. Right there in that little half of a cottage. Or somewhere just like it (with less tourists).

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[Above] This is the University of Glasgow. It's a really old, pretty campus. I have this picture in a little black polka-dotted frame right here next to my computer. I love it. I'd love to go to a college that's that pretty.

Cemetery

This is a picture that my mom took at a cemetery. It's kind of sad, but happy at the same time. I also painted something based on this picture. I haven't worked on it in forever...the tree just needs flowers and a few more little things like that and then it will be finished. But still the picture's probably better. I'm not the best artist in the history of the world...

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This also reminds me of when we were down at Mammoth Cave and passed a little cemetery. A sign showed us that it was called "Little Hope Cemetery". Take that as you may.

Scotland pictures - second of 3

The previous post was of some Scotland pictures that I really liked...here are a few more.

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[Above] A castle back in the woods.

[Below] Another castle. This is my desktop background now...I love it.

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[Below] I'm not exactly sure where this is or what it used to be. It's ruins of some sort, I suppose. A picture that I'll put on the next post has the same building but with lots of really pretty flowers...

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For background on these, see the previous post.

scotland - first of three

I haven't been to Scotland. However, I just got done watching Braveheart and I'm in a very Scotland-loving kind of mood. (As if I'm ever NOT in that sort of mood...but whatever.) So...yesterday I got these pictures that my grandparents took while they were over there a few years ago and I thought that I would share... [There are a lot of these, so I thought I'd do them in 3 sets...]

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[Above] Sheep! For you, Sarah...haha

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[Above] Sheep in the valley

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[Above] Stone wall and flowers.

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Excuse the big white boxes around them...they're scans and I've yet to sort this out.

out west...

We took a trip out west a long time ago - long before I even knew what a blog was. I was looking through my pictures the other night and I thought that these few were really neat.

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[Above]This is the St. Louis Arch from below. I presume that everyone visiting the arch takes a picture just like this one or at least one very similar. I think it's really neat though. I got lots of these.

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[Above] This is Bryce Canyon, in Utah. It isn't as well known as the Grand Canyon, where we went, too, but I think it's a lot cooler.

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Notice the orange printed dates in the corner...long before my digital camera.

organ views

I was at church this Sunday and thought that I would take some pictures of the organ pipes from different angles. Here are the results:

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I didn't take these on my camera, I took them on the church's because I had forgotten mine. It was a little more difficult to use - it was a much earlier version of mine. I'll bring my beloved camera next week and try again then.

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jaws strikes again

Jaws strikes again ? Nope, just an art exhibit.

The Caption:
Surfers walk past work titled 'Pedestrian Portait' by Australian artist Jennifer Cochrane, as part of the annual of the Sculpture by the Sea exhibition at Sydney's Tamarama Beach, Wednesday, Nov. 1, 2006. Staged along Sydney's spectacular Bondi to Tamarama coastal walk, Australia's largest annual outdoor exhibition of contemporary sculpture attracts over 400,000 visitors and exhibits over 100 works by artists from Australia and overseas. (AP Photo/Mark Baker)

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From Yahoo! News

Talk to the Hand

I recently (Oh, I lie. I finished a week ago.) read my second book by Lynne Truss. It was Talk to the Hand: The Utter Bloody Rudeness of the World Today, or Six Good Reasons to Stay Home and Bolt the Door. I liked it a lot, though probably not as much as her first book, called Eats, Shoots and Leaves. Talk To the Hand was still a really good book about rudeness, as the title implies. It discussed a lot of issues that I think are pressing in today's society.
The introduction was quite lengthy, and then it went into the "six good reasons". These discussed common issues in the world that have to do with rudeness. She told a lot of stories that were quite comical, which made the book very entertaining and enjoyable.

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It wasn't what you'd think of as a book about rudeness, though. It didn't tell what you should do in certain situations, and it wasn't really about etiquitte. It was just kind of like when you realize something is a problem and feel that you need to rant about it. It was that and a lot more.

It's truth made you laugh and realize that you'd been in a lot of the same situations. People talking loudly on cell phones all over the place (of course, I thrive on this so I can later blog on their stupidity) and others cursing at complete stragers or yelling at store workers or commiting various other acts of rudeness.

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It also made me see rudeness in a different light. It made me realize when I'm about to do somthing that would make people think "How rude!" and makes me hesitate.

That's something you hear a lot around places.

One person cuts in front of another in the hall.

"How rude!"

Someone bumps into another or burps or whatever and doesn't excuse themself.

"How rude!"

Someone doesn't hold the door open for the person behind them.

"How rude!"

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Of course, there are some times when rudeness is obvious, but need we state it so blatantly? I was recently at the mall, waiting in line for a soft pretzel. I never like it when someone stands directly behind me in a line, so I never do it. I was about 3 feet behind the woman in front of me - clearly still in the line - when a man came up in front of me and cut into that 3 foot space, like I wasn't even standing there. There was no "excuse me," no "may I get ahead of you, I'm in a hurry" and no convential getting-in-the-back-of-the-line.

But I kept my cool and didn't say a word. It got even more frustrating, though, when he didn't know what to order and then his kids came up to him (crowding me further, of course) and started demanding their orders, too.

I got the pretzels that were fresh from the oven though, didn't I?

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As cliche as it is, sometimes you want to yell "how rude!" and sometimes more than that. But we must hold ourselves back, because isn't yelling "how rude!" rude in and of itself?

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If you want to read more about Lynne Truss or any of her books, click here.