Daily Photo - Books

I've got 8 boxes worth of books packed and ready to go to the library book sale. I still have plenty left at home.

Daily Photo - I just keep missing these.

I have to stop going on little vacations. I did come back with some nice boxes to fill with the stuff I don't need or want.

New Book

It's a little book with color images of all the different frogs and such you might find in vernal pools in Massachusetts. It also has numerous photos of different frog eggs and how to id them. Link to site where you can buy it: Natural Heritage & Endangered Species Publications

Books I Use

I've spent a few years taking various field guides out of the library, or at least browsing in a book store. Some I've found at MassAudubon Sanctuaries, and others only through Amazon. These are the ones I found the most useful. A Field Guide to the Dragonflies and Damselflies of Massachusetts by Blair Nikula, Jennifer L. Loose, and Matthew R. Burne is so far my favorite one. I bought it before any of the others at Stony Brook in Norfolk. Every id has full color pictures of males and females as applicable, as well as location, status, and time of year they can be seen. I haven't seen it in a library, and you can't get it on Amazon. I've seen it on some wildlife sites, and at several MassAudubon Sanctuaries. I find it to be hands down the best dragonfly guide out there, and possibly the only one. Link to site where you can buy it: Natural Heritage & Endangered Species Publications Butterflies of New England by David Weber. I like this one too, but it doesn't include caterpillar photos, which I think could make it a great rather than a good book. It does use photos unlike some cheaper guides I've seen which use drawings instead. I've never been great at identifying animals from drawings to life. Mushrooms of Northeast North America by George Barron. At this point you should be noticing a pattern. I find this book organized in an easy to follow manner with full color id pictures throughout. Even if I don't figure out exactly what I took a photo of I get some guesses. And it's much easier to follow than trying to google 'orange mushroom eastern US'. National Wildlife Federation Guide to Insects and Spiders of North America by Arthur V. Evans and Craig Tufts. Again full-color photos. Especially important to me is that the photos and the information are on the same pages. You don't dig through a huge section of photos then have to dig through all the pages in the back to find the accompanying info. New England Waterfalls by Greg Parsons and Kate B. Watson. This one I haven't gotten to use yet, but i do so far like it. It has locations, descriptions and in some cases pictures of 200 waterfalls and cascades in New England. It will likely keep me busy in April. Beachcomber's Guide from Cape Cod to Cape Hatteras by Henry Keatts. This book goes to the cape with me every year, and helps figure out what some of the odd seashore stuff is made of, or by. Wildflowers of the Berkshire & Taconic Hills by Joseph G. Strauch. This book was origianlly bought because it was less than 5 dollars on clearance. It's not a bad book, as all the flower id's are photographs, but they are seperate from the descriptions. it is nice that the images are sorted by bloom color first though. National Geographic Field Guide to the Birds of North America (Second Edition) by Jon L. Dunn. This book is up to a 5th edition, but the artwork looks largely the same. I like the book, because I find it better than the little pocket field guides, but I really would prefer pictures rather than drawings. Hiking Massachusetts by Benjamin B. Ames, AMC's Best Day Hikes Near Boston: Four-Season Guide to 50 of the Best Trails in Eastern Massachusetts by Michael Tougias, and Hiking Southern New England by Rhonda Ostertag. I haven't used them for actual trail ideas, more locational ideas.

Sunday

I spent some time today outlining about half of my new cat litter box hider. I found a big empty base cabinet for $20 at ikea in the as-is department. It was in perfect condition, though missing a top and doors. The top I'm fixing with a piece of plywood. The doors I should be able to find a pair at ikea for another $20, I'm just going to have to check often. I need 15" doors, and most of the ones in as-is are 12 inches. I bought a deep plastic tub to use as the box, and built the shelf on the other side. My goal is to cut a hole in one of the doors, so Abby can jump into the whole thing, then down into the box. I want to line the shelf with a cat litter catcher material, so the dog's will stop eating the cat litter. the whole thing is going to double as a stand for some reptile cages, so none of them will be on the floor any more. The space under the shelf is going to store cat litter, as my cat loves to lick and eat plastic, and World's Best Cat litter only comes in plastic bags.

Above: Cactus that summered outside and decided to bloom. I brought it in and put it under lights trying to keep from stressing it too much. I figured more light was better than the complete lack of light in my kitchen where most of the other plants overwinter.

I spent the rest of the day working on my book. I'm using blurb, because I've used it before, and it's fairly cheap. I personally have had good luck with them, here's hoping it works out again. This book is going to double as an album for the first 9 months or so of my dSLR, turns out other than a few test prints I haven't been printing pictures from it. I have about 120 pages right now, and just finished putting in shutter speed, f stop and lens information for all the pics. I just need to finish adding my comments, format the text, spell check, and have someone read it through.

Char who wasn't interested in the camera last weekend. (Charcoal Corn Snake)

Red (Amelanistic Corn Snake)

And now for something completely random. FARSCAPE IS BEING RE-RELEASED ON DVD FOR LESS THAN $150 for the entire series. I know, it's quite sad how excited I am. It's also sad that I know that $104 dollars (pre-order price) is going to Amazon in the near future so I won't have to slowly borrow them all from the library ever again. Farscape: The Complete Series

Macro Photos and Dead Bugs

So, I got a macro photography book from the library, and I think it was the first one I've seen that actually details how to make a killing jar. You know so you don't have to deal with that pesky motion thing that live bugs do. I lost quite a bit of respect for the book, even though I'm thinking of getting some extension tubes to shorten my focusing distance on the 100 mm macro, which was also mentioned in the book.

(Dragonfly I found in the middle of a trail. If you poked him he's flap his wings. It took me a minute to notice he was headless.)

I take quite a bit of pride in the fact that it might be harder, but unless a bug was dead when I found it, it will get to fly away when I startle it. I have trouble believing that all the nature sanctuaries I go to, that really have the best bug assortment, would like me to wander around killing dragonflies so I can get them to sit still for the photo. Dragonflies start changing color when they die, so pics of dead ones aren't even useful for identification.

(Darner from Minot. It's so windy there, especially off water, that once they can't fly the dragonflies seem to take headers into plants. We found two upside down on the sides of trails. One would try to fly when you flipped it back over, but would just take another header. )

I feel like it's a bit of laziness. I spend a lot of May and June relearning how close I can get to different species before they'll fly away, or which ones I might convince onto my hand. I guess it does delay gratification somewhat. My May dragonfly pics are normally a pile of sticks with a red stripe with wings in them. Apparently it's important to only kill the best ones, so you get photos of perfect rather than imperfect bugs. I've been stewing over this for a few days now. Thursday I was in a store and asked for a plastic bag to catch a dragonfly who was banging it's head against one of the front windows trying to get out. I caught him and let him out (All the while repeating Dragonflies can't bite me.) This is the third dragonfly this year I've had to catch and release from somewhere. By the by plastic bags are awesome for catching them, especially they opaque white ones. I just have no interest in ending the life of anything else just for THE picture. I feel like it's cheating. Maybe I'll never get THE picture, but I won't feel guilty about killing critters just because they wouldn't sit still.

I Caved

I sanded down the putty and screwed it into the wall. Now I have a stack of books I've owned for over 5 years and never read that can get donated or sold. I even have a little extra space at the end. It should just fit all the books my sister is borrowing.

Shelf Completed

Well, it took another trip to HD, (measuring issue needed another 6 foot board, and another box of screws) and I had to remove the top shelf and replace it because even though I did the math three times the sides were about 3/4" too short. The top shelf is about 3/16" taller than all the other ones. I've got wood putty in the holes, we'll see if it sticks to the screws like I hope it will. I'm hoping since I bothered with the wood putty I will actually paint it. It's still not attached to the wall, which might help encourage me to paint it, though I really just want to attach it and bring all those books downstairs. To top everything off the battery charger for my drill died and now I have to decide whether I want to hunt one down on eBay or just buy a new drill, the price difference is only 10 bucks.

Today's Entertainment

I have a problem. I have lots of paperback books. At the moment they're stored in my attic in 4 foot wide book shelves I made as my first real wood project. By lots I mean twelve 4 foot wide shelves worth in four sets of 3 shelves each. They're so short due to the sloping ceiling all around the attic. Enter the empty wall in my bedroom, that since it has two doors on it can't be used for anything but a hallway. Several weeks ago I looked at it and saw a bookcase, floor to ceiling, full of paperbacks. I'd have to build in holes for a light switch and electrical outlet, but otherwise it was perfect. I also have to attach the whole thing to the wall.

The plans came out to having 10 shelves, about 52" wide, by an overall height of about 83". It took me three weeks to remember that 83" pieces of wood really do fit in my car. I love that I have a tiny car that fits as much as my old station wagon did. I ended up with five 10 foot 1" x 6" and two 12 foot 1" by 6". I got shelves cut out of the 10 footers, and the sides from the twelve footers, all other cuts will be on my miter saw. I got the bottom, sides, top and 5 shelves put together before the drill battery crapped out on me. No more work until tomorrow. I need more screws anyway.

Much Too Early

It was a mistake to take a book out of the library titled The Complete Book of Bulbs, Corms, Tubers and Rhizomes. It was a mistake to a quick google search for bulbs. And it is a mistake to be thinking, "Hey, fall bulbs are 50% off right now, why not? So what if they won't be delivered until September, and my credit card will be billed now..." That is all.

I'll admit it...

I read Twilight. I managed to hold it off for so long though. I only read it a few weeks ago. And then I got sucked in. I bought New Moon, because I didn't want to wait the TWO MONTHS it took to get the first one out of the library. I didn't like Jake at all, so got Eclipse out of the library. That one only took a week. By that point I knew I'd have to finish it. Breaking Dawn also came from the library. Overall, I liked the series, or at least some of the ideas in it. That last book though... ouch. I'd say it was written either at a different time as the other three or even by a different person. It meandered a lot, maybe to use up all those pages? It just all got tied up a bit too neatly, and somehow none of the main characters suffer. I especially didn't like the middle of the book from Jake's view, but I disliked it before when that was done. Either a book is 1st person, or it isn't. The whole point is you only know as much as the person talking, so you don't switch around. Now I've got The Host: out of the library and am a little afraid to open lest I get sucked in like with Twilight.

Attic Cleaning and 80's Cartoons

So Sunday I got talked into cleaning out parts of my parent's attic. It is as you expect full of junk from my childhood, books and magazines that were not stored properly, and lots of shredded paper from mice. We hauled out about 15 milk crates full of books for donation, threw out some broken never used skis and poles, and I discovered Dad's been storing a 'Blue Bird' dummy terminal up there for more than 20 years... Some 15 year old sleeping bags went out, as did lots of assorted broken items. Only one thing looks resell able. A bike rack. Who's going to buy a bike rack in November? I found boxes and boxes of toys. My Little ponies have a very distinctive smell, though I don't remember any more which are mine and which are my sister's. It just sort of makes me want to find the original movies on DVD to see what I remember of them. I also found a little toy Pterodactyl with a button on it's back that moved the wings. Very low tech toy. I remembered it was from a TV show where the bad guys put mind control boxes on dinosaurs and attacked the good guys who had to get the dinosaurs to cooperate. Eventually I found the instructions to one of the toys, Dino Riders. A curious web search got me this: YouTube Dino Riders And then came the reasons I stay off You Tube My Little Pony: The Movie, Transformers. Someone, somewhere has saved just about everything. And yes we have entire collections of McDonalds and Burger King Toys, even though I never ate anything there but fries. I also saved a huge rubber maid container full of dinosaur and animal toys. And I actually packed it well enough it doesn't look like anything is living in it. At least I didn't find any enormous silverfish in it, like in some of the other containers. The entire attic cleaning is to convert the second bedroom of my parent's house into a movie room/ guest room. But we needed a place for all the stuff still in that room first.