Daily Photo - Cricket Escape

So after finding 5 crickets wandering around my house I finally thought to check the cage. Someone chewed through the mesh and started a trend. I'm still finding crickets around but at least the cats are having fun. It's probably good I am forbidden from breeding roaches as reptile food. At least the crickets can't really breed while they're loose.

Daily Photo - English Muffins Again

I'm trying a completely different recipe this time where you make them kind of like pancakes. We'll see how it works out. the cinnamon, sugar and raisins should at least encourage me to eat whatever comes about.

Daily Photo - Blizzard 2

Daily Photo - Blizzard

It's still snowing and there is 12 or so inches on the ground. The buildup at the end of the driveway was hip deep. It's nice not having to go anywhere.

Daily Photo - Merry Christmas

Nice and cold this morning.

Daily Photo - Happy Holidays

Yes, I torture my cat.

Daily Photo - Bagels 3.0

Attempt 3 with bagels. I fiddled with the recipe a bit this time, and skipped the refrigeration part. I haven't taste tested yet. edit: They're getting closer to bagels. The bottoms however taste like pretzels since I let them get too dark.

Daily Photo - Snow Fleas

It was nice and warm out today at Moose Hill. Around 9 AM these guys started appearing.

Daily Photo - Snow

Finally.

Snow!

I should not be as excited as I am.

Daily Photo - More Frost

I really do like frost.

Daily Photo - Frost

I should not get up and take photos of frost in my yard. It leads to me thinking it is way too cold and not going on a hike.

Daily Photo - Flower

Flower from my last trip to NY.

Daily Photo - I Need Snow

That powdery dusting yesterday was not enough. Here's a leaf.

Daily Photo - More Lights

This is from the exact same position, and I think the focus was set the same, but the f-stop was set to f/18 rather than 5.6 like yesterday. It yields a very different image.

Daily Photo - Lights

Just playing with Christmas lights.

Baking Bread

So yesterday I attempted to bake bread again. My goal is sandwich bread to replace my expensive whole wheat bread from whole foods. So far no chance. Technically my goal is also related to budget considerations. The first loaf was from a recipe on King Arthur Flours website. Either I screwed it up or their recipe really requires their flour. This is what came out of the oven. it looks very little like their picture. A chunk disappeared while I was getting something. I almost ended up with a dead dog. The other dog was quite happy with the quarter loaf he got due to the others overactive feeding response. It tasted fine, but it is crumbly and won't stand up to sandwiches, and barely stands up to buttering. I made a second one, but it came out largely the same. I then, around 9PM started my last loaf. I'd set up a starter 8 hours before and made this bread from Amy's Bread. It looks like sandwich bread, it cuts and holds up kind of like it. I left it to cool for 7 hours, that's what happens when you finish it at 1:44 AM. The only downside is it actually tastes rather like Italian Bread. Apparently I need some sweetener in my breads. The raisins were supposed to be in an attractive swirl. That really didn't work either.

Daily Photo - Raisin Bread

It actually tastes a lot like Italian bread, but with some raisins and cinnamon in it. Another post will follow showing my bread failures.

Daily Photo - More Frost

The focus with live view is unreal.

Daniel Webster - Freezing Dawn

At 5:45 AM my alarm went off. After hitting snooze a number of times I got up. I quickly checked the weather and saw 30 F. Well, that's cold, but I should be fine. By 6:17 I was in the car. I forgot my hand warmers, which turned out to be a disaster, and that knit hat hat I took is not as good as my wool Bula one. When I arrived I was surprised that defrosting my windows had actually caused frost to form on the inside of my car's back windows. This should have been a sign. it was bitterly, excruciatingly cold the entire time i was there. It was worse up near the parking lot, but by the time I left I couldn't really move my fingers and felt like I was walking balanced on two bricks. That said I did get some nice pictures. A few days ago I pulled out my camera's manual again to fiddle with live View. I know people had thought it was such a great feature when I bought the camera, but I'd never actually used it. in a nutshell if you're shooting from a tripod at a stationary object it increases your ability to focus by like a million times. This led to lots of frost pics. Live View can get stuff like this, rather than by chance which is how I was doing it. Out of 300 or so photos today only a handful are out of focus ones of frost. Admittedly I also have the camera on a two second timer and had the mirror lockup enabled. Right in the middle of me freezing my butt off I got to listen to numerous close by shotgun blasts. A minute later I heard "Did you get that doe?" out of the woods ahead of me, and I saw a guy in orange walk by. I'm not sure exactly where Daniel Webster ends, but that seemed mighty close to conservation land. I looked it up and shotgun deer hunting ends in 3 days, then it's primitive firearms... I heard a few from farther away later. Someone also put a little feeder on the viewing window and some accommodating tufted titmice posed for me. On the way home my mother texted me asking how cold I was. It turns out it was actually 7 F out. I just lightly check the weather and was actually looking at the high for the day. What did I learn? Always bring the good hat. Hand Warmers are essential. Always drag the tripod (I actually got a good distance from the car before going back for it this time. I nearly whacked myself in the head since I'm iffy at spotting critters at a distance my lenses are capable of, so that means mostly frost subjects at Daniel Webster.)

Daily Photo -Toka

Toka holiday attempt. I did go on a hike this morning which my sister insisted I do when I admitted I had taken almost 200 photos of my cat yesterday. More on my freezing dawn hike later.

Daily Photo - Abby Take 1

She thinks I'm nuts, but I think she will work better for a Christmas Card than the dogs. She's so much easier to photograph. I bought two silly bell collars years ago, and always forget them til the last minute. This was the test to see if she would wear it without killing me.

Daily Photo - Frost

Another from Moose Hill last week.

Daily Photo - Abby Again

I'll admit I edited this a little. My arm was in the upper left hand corner in the original. This is the only trick I've taught my cat. I should try some more though as she will work for petting.

Daily Photo - Abby

She refused to sit six inches to the right where she would have been nicely sunlit.

CSS Evil

I really have to figure out how to write blogger from scratch. This fiddling with other people's code is getting obnoxious. I finally got the post text, widget text, and all the linking colors to do what I want. Switching the posts to a black background really pissed off the presets, so I had to add tons of my own code so things like the search on the right wouldn't display in dark colors since the presets only declared one text color... Now if only I can get the tabs to stop displaying oddly in IE.

Daily Photo - Toka

Out of 70 pics yesterday, only one came close to nice. I have to stop pretending cloudy is bright enough.

Resuscitating Houseplants

A few months ago when I though I might be moving I liquidated most of my houseplants. They were listed for free on craigslist, and some people were nice enough to pick them up. I kept 6 or so that I was more attached to. I then proceeded to neglect most of them to near death. The two in my bedroom were doing fine, but the few I stuck under lights have been frying. I pulled them out yesterday to figure out what was going on.

The first is a very old african violet. I've had it for probably 8 or more years now. On fiddling with it I realized it now had two crowns and the root system had rotted off. This isn't really a problem for african violets. I had to drag out some dirt I microwaved a few months ago (the only potting soil I know the location of) and re-pot the original crown and the new crown and stuck them in zipper bags. I ended up with tons of extra leaves, so being a plant idiot I popped them in some more available dirt and in 6 weeks or so will have more little clones. I expect I've just been cooking my black jewel orchid as it keeps dropping leaves for no apparent reason. The other truly abused plant is a 3 year old amaryllis I grew from seed in 2007. I had never re-potted it. So yesterday I nicely removed all its dead roots and gave it new dirt and a new pot.

I still have a begonia with just 1 leaf I'm not sure what to do with, but I'm not completely sure why I kept it in the first place, so it may be bound for craigslist.

Daily Photo - Peaceable Kingdom

I declared Juicy out of quarantine 2 days ago. That meant I could move her tank upstairs to the nice warm rooms rather than the cooler living room. However I don't quite have a specific spot yet, so she's hanging out on my bedroom floor. I think my dog's might be getting too used to the other critters. Juicy is also in need of another bath as she shed for the second time in as many months on Monday, and I didn't catch it early enough to shift her onto coco fiber like I wanted, so she has some stuck shed again.

Fiddling with CSS

I used blogger's new template editing thing for the new site look. If you run it through the W3C CSS Validator 131 errors come up. Gee I kind of wonder how well someone tested this before setting it up. I guess I'll be fiddling with CSS tomorrow. It does explain why IE hates my page tabs though.

Moose Hill Jaunt

I got up this morning, and though I didn't make it out as early as I wanted, I did get out early. there had been no frost at my house, but the parking lot at Moose hill had a number of nice arrangements. i snuck up on three deer with my new obsessive walking method, also known as paying attention to what you're stepping on and stopping every few steps to glance around and listen. The weirdly warm temperatures we've been having appear to be tricking a few of the plants. The forsythia was blooming in patches and the skunk cabbage was visible in the marsh. I flipped the camera upside down to use my flash fro below on the next pic. I took a bunch in the standard configuration, but was getting very harsh shadows. Turning the camera upside down eliminated the problem. it made clicking the shutter a bit awkward however. The boardwalk was very thinly coated in ice. Not quite enough to slip, but every few steps one food might slide where you didn't expect. Winter view of the swamp boardwalk. After a few snows those nice pale grasses will be flat.

All in all an enjoyable walk.