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Showing posts from February, 2008

WHEW! Made it thru the week

Been fun (NOT!) with people dropping like flies with the flu. So far I haven't caught a bit of it (knock on wood) and nary a sniffle nor sore throat. Saw some crocuses poking their heads out of the ground on my way to class today. Have to pop out and snap some pics. Speaking of pics, I have a semi-professional photo shoot tomorrow. The guys hubby works with on occasion are being featured on some trade sites (plus they need photos of their stuff for their own purposes) and I will be doing those. Serious coolness. I've been practicing with the camera and getting lots better. I am also shooting at the full 5 mega pixels my camera does, so the image quality when I shrink the photos stays good. Also been practicing with light saturation (over and underexposing the pics) and coming out with some good results on some things. Sunday the coven is having a murder. Should be lots of fun. It will be a 1950's theme, set at a high school reunion. Learning everything I can about Cafe Pres

Oh so true!!!!

Silly me

I opened up a Cafe Press store . I figure some of my photos are pretty good, so why not? I'm going to stick with the freebie shops for now, which means I will be opening up several others as I get new photos done. I figure if I do decently enough I will spend the bucks and upgrade to their premium shop so I can put everything under one roof and pretty it up the way I want. I've put the button that links to my shop in my side bar, you can't miss it LOL (and of course the button is not showing up, grrrrrrrrr!) (and now it is. SIGH!!!!!)

FISHIES!!!!

My fish video. Processing them as DIVX .avi's seems to have done the trick video quality-wise when I upload them to YouTube.

Monday started last night, SIGH!!!!

Was going to post yesterday and then my keyboard flaked out. I have a nice wireless keyboard and occasionally it needs to be re-sent, but nothing I did would make it work so I could finish my post. Decided it was a sign to take a nap, which I did. Finally got it running again after hitting all the reset buttons and swapping out batteries and then pulling the new ones out and putting them back in again several times. By then i didn't feel like writing. So I will just rewrite what I had. Then the hard drive on my WinDoze machine flaked out, so hubby is going t have to dump my stuff on another hard drive so I won't lose everything. The WinDoze machine is the one I do most of my video editing on. Cold and gloomy out, been like that since yesterday (Sunday). Was a fairly lazy Sunday, didn't get a whole heck of a lot done. I did get a bit done on Saturday so that was a plus. Managed to forget my coat at home this morning, luckily I have my fleece vest so I won't totally freez

WEE HAAA!!! FRIDAY!!!!!!!

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Hopefully the weekend will be nice enough I can get some outside work done, tho they are predicting rain (and maybe snow....whimper) so with luck more snow will go away. Done editing the eclipse footage, just need to find a nice piece of music to add to it. I ended up speeding up several clips, deleting a few frames here and there and brought it down to just over 13 minutes. I'm going to be getting 3 goldfish to add to my menagerie, they were offered on the local freecycle group. With my other fish that should just hit capacity for the tank. I'll be picking them up sometime tomorrow. Can't think of much to write, so I will leave you with kitty pics. Here are pics of TC and Shadow:

Eclipse pics

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Not the best pics in the world, my little camera can only do so much, but not bad considering: I'll be posting the video as soon as I get it done.

Lunar eclipse tonight

And with luck I can get it on tape. I'll set the camcorder up on the tripod and see what I can get. I'll have to futz about with the settings to make sure I can get some decent footage. The work around with my vids seems to be working. I re-did the pasties footage using .dvix and that came out even nicer the the plain .avi. So I will be processing all my vids that way, even my quick and dirty ones since I have CyberLink on my laptop. Currently editing the Cabela's footage, trying out speeding up portions of the film, esp the driving to the store footage. I'll see about adding music to those parts. Got a high C on my test. Got thing right I thought I'd gotten wrong and screwed up the sentence structure problem like I thought I had. 9th grade English rears its ugly head again. I should do better on the other tests. Lots of school kids running around campus today, the Lionel Hampton Jazz Fest has started. One of these years we are going to attend one of the concerts. I

Tuesday (can't think of a clever title, sorry)

Sun is shining, the temps are pushing 40F and I had a fun weekend. No more long weekends for a while tho. Oh well. Getting the video stuff sorted out, so hopefully I will be putting better quality vids up, esp the "Cooking with Jean" segments since I also want to post those to my cooking blog. A number of the YouTube video bloggers are getting into print blogs. Backwards to how I did it, print first then video. But it all is good, makes for more interesting blogs with the various media available. I've added a couple of the YouTuber's who have blogs to my "Misc neat blogs" list (for readers of my Blogger version of this blog), Billybigun64 and Country Comes to Town , check them out. Still trying to catch the Shadow kitten so I can put him back outside. TC showed up this morning so hubby put him in the house to eat as we didn't have time to put food out on the porch. Phoebe is happy as can be with the snow going away, she was VERY vocal yesterday about ge

BlogFest '08 video

Had to re-do my video, outputting it as an .avi since YouTube is squirrling up my vids I do in .mwv, at least the longer vids. So I will be NOT outputting my longer vids on .mwv and will be checking out the other options CyberLink PowerDirector has available. So here is some scenes from BlogFest '08:

A very low energy day

After all the excitement of yesterday I am semi-dragging today. I can't wait for next year's blog fest, it was so much fun and I want to meet the people I didn't get a chance to say hi to this year. Several people who attended I didn't get a chance to chat with. Been processing video, I'm currently re-doing the blogfest vid using a different format. The one I usually use for YouTube looks sucky after I upload it, so I'm trying a RealTime format and I'll see how that looks uploaded. If it works, I have a couple cooking vids that I'll redo and repost. I still have more photos to process, mostly the drive up and back I've also got the trip to Cabela's and some nice sunset video. Not sure how soon I'll get to that. The Cabela's vid I want to try some funky video editing on and see what I can do to make it zip thru parts of it. I hit the sack as soon as I got home yesterday, two pints of Fat Tire Amber kinda did me in,tho I was a happy camper

Blogfest '08 photos

I've got the photos posted on my Flickr account and here is a slide show: Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR .

AND we're off!

More or less, hubby just ran back into the house to get the EnRoute software to put on the laptop so I can plot our course to CDA and Blogfest '08.

FRIDAY FRIDAY FRIDAY!!!!

AND I survived my first test in my class. 3 pages of multiple guess, 1 page of problems and not quite 1 page of short answers. Of course my brain derailed, but I think I managed to do well enough not to embarrass myself. So now that is over I can breath again. Chilly, but the sun is out and I am SOOOOOOO ready for the weekend. We have Monday off for President's day, so I will get my two days to sleep in since we have to be up early to head to CDA for shopping and the Blogfest. So excited to finally get to meet a bunch of people from online. Been trying to get the Shadow kitten back outside. Weather is better and he will be happier. I just can't quite corner him so I can grab him. I think I may have to open the door and maneuver him towards it so he can go out on his own. TC is still sticking around, tho the last time he tried to come up to the porch Phoebe chased him off. But I've been keeping food out for him. Lunch today is leftover steak and alfredo noodle stuff. The ste

Halfway mark

The week is going by fast, which is good as this Saturday is the Huckleberries Online Blogfest up in Coeur d'Alene. I finally will get to see some of the folk I know on that blog face to face. It will be so cool. I even got the unofficial T-shirt one of the other bloggers who hang out there designed and put on Cafe Press. Just gotta write my name in the space. We are going to go up early so we can hit the new Cabala's in Post Falls and then stop by one the home of one of the other denizen's of HBO. He is called The Stickman and makes walking sticks for people from sticks he finds while out and about. Then it is off to the meet and greet for an afternoon of pizza and friends. Is it Saturday yet? LOL So waiting for my lunch to ding, toasted cheese sammies with sliced turkey breast. I'm now wishing I'd brought the other half of the avocado I had last night with my wraps we had for dinner. Oh well, that means I have a nice treat for when I get home from work tonight. B

Nap time!

Had a yummy lunch of leftover homemade tomato soup (I signed up to do test recipes for America's Test Kitchen) and a toasted cheese sandwich. Both were yummy and I will be making that soup again. I am thinking at least a double batch so I can stash some in the deep freeze. Had a friend over for part of the weekend and exposed her to some good movies. She's never seen most of the old classics, so we've taken it upon ourselves to speed up her education. Turned in my homework assignment, my brain just had a hissy over it, but I think I got most of it correct. If not, I hope she gives me a good score for effort. Now I remember why I hated 9th grade English (so many, many moons ago). Test is Friday, so I need to start reviewing what we've learned so far. Snow is melting at a lovely rate. No signs of flooding, tho the river is higher then it was. I can actually see a good chunk of my lawn and have found a couple of my garden decorations that had gotten buried. Not sure how so

A lovely and fun evening

As mentioned, I had a date with hubby for dinner and a play. We had dinner at San Miguel's and it was very good. Our entrees came out about the same time as our appetizer tray, but we didn't mind, everything was delish. The appetizer tray had flautas, taquitos and quesadillas with chips covered in cheese. Hubby got one of their signature burritos, not sure what meat he had. I think it was one of the beef choices. I had the vegetarian enchiladas with spinach, cheese and mushrooms. Totally to die for. For dessert we had flan. MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!!!! Hubby also surprised me with a prezzie. When he picked me up there was a package in the front seat and me thinking not much on it, put it in back. I figured we could see what it was later. He hauled it into the restaurant with us, muttering something about me trying to be more female sometimes LOL So I open it up to find a salt cellar in the box. My sweetie found a salt cellar kinda like the

I've got a date tonight!!!!!

The hubby and I are having dinner at San Miguels and then tickets to see The Vagina Monologues at the Kenworthy Performance Center.

The women before me pt 1

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As mentioned in a previous post I have been scanning old family photos my mom sent me. Here are a few of my dad's mom, my Grandma Mabel: Grandma Mabel and me: Grandma Mabel and her sisters: (left to right: Aunt Violet, Grandma Mabel and Aunt Laura) (left to right: Grandma Mabel, Aunt Violet and Aunt Laura) Grandma Mabel is the one I take most after in a lot of ways and it is her "Grandma magic" I am finally coming into. I spent a lot of time with her, simply because she and Grandpa Herb lived in California and that is where we lived most. I've been kicking myself in the last few years for not paying attention to when she was teaching things, but then again, what kid listens to their elders when they are imparting wisdom. Some of it must have sunk in and hid for many years, since I am remembering things when I need it. She also had a very wicked sense of humor. One story told was when Uncle Herb brought his new wife, my Aunt Lila, to visit. Aunt Lila was a city girl t

MAKE IT GO AWAY!!!!!

whimper

I'm so friggin' exhausted

and I don't know why. Could be I haven't had any caffeine today, tried a sip of the coffee I fixed for hubby and even with the mocha mix I put in it didn't taste good. So I have been sipping herbal tea all morning. Good tea tho, Pomegranate Passion from Bigalow Tea. The snow has started again, they are talking 2-4" during the day and possible accumulation of 1-3" over night. WAAAHHHH!!!!!!!!! As long as it isn't like last Thursday it should be okay. Reminder, check out New West to see which pic of mine they are featuring on their front page today. (ETA: Seems it has rotated off the front page, tho they now have the yesterday's pic up again, not sure why, but check out their gallery to see my pic) Lunch today is toasted cheese sammies, going to try the yellow Costco sliced cheese. I loved the sliced Swiss, so this should be good too. Just gotta wait for the toaster oven to ding. DING!!!!!! This is the time I wish I had some nice fresh ripe tomatoes to sli

SERIOUSLY WAY KEWL!!!!!

One of my photos on Flickr is going to be a featured photo on NewWest Network - the Voice of the Rocky Mountains tomorrow!!!! So check the site Feb 5 to see which one they picked. WOO HOOOO!!!!!!!! They are expecting another little storm tonight, I hope it fizzles, I am SOOOOOO sick of the snow now. I want to start getting ready for garden season and the snow is not helping. They are predicting warmer weather this weekend and some rain. I hope it doesn't melt the snow TOO fast, flooding is not fun. After seeing how much snow is built up in the space behind the deck I am really regretting not getting the greenhouse built. EVERYTHING is covered in snow. I'll have to get out this weekend and clear what I can. Let The Clone (TC) out this morning with the rest of the kitties who wanted out. He hung around on the porch. I put food out so everyone has some. Soon it will be time to let the Shadow kitten out, just have to get a hold of him. TC seems to have gotten over his fright of th

Saturday

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I can't believe I am actually looking forward to going back to work on Monday LOL. If one is going to be snow bound, it helps to have a MUCH bigger house hehehehehehe. Saw the Shadow kitten last night, he came out for a while. He even got within 3 feet of me when he spotted the aquarium and ran up to see what was moving around, then he spotted me and took off. The Clone is going fin, but I have NEVER seen a cat who was terrified of the TV. He'd come in to the living room from the kitchen and start towards us, then looks up, sees the TV screen and ZIP! back into the kitchen he goes. I tried an experiment, I covered the screen with a coat, but kept the sound on and that doesn't bother him. Just the screen with the picture moving. Very, very strange. We are going to attempt a Costco run tomorrow, weather permitting. We need to get out and about. We went to Pullman yesterday, needed to hit Shopko for a kitchen garbage can (the lid on the old one broke) and to check for a couple

Day 2

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University is closed again, we got a ton of snow yesterday. They are going to be a while digging campus out. Spent a good chunk of the day listening to the scanner and being glad I wasn't out and about, they were not have a good time out there. Here is a pic of The Clone and the shadow kitten: Amazingly, things have been pretty calm in the house since I brought them in. They've pretty much have hung out in the hidey hole at the base of the kitty condo where I'd put some pillows to make a nice cave for our kitties. I put in food and water for them and have pretty much left them alone. I did manage to cuddle the Clone for a while and he is a very sweet kitty. We finally ventured out for a bit, needed to hit the grocery store. The neighbor up the hill broke out the property owners bull dozer, so he was clearing our little road. County had plowed sometime earlier in the day, but by the time we got out, it was hard to tell. Here are some pics: In the morning out my kitchen windo