I LOVE Flash!

I just spent the better part of today trying to figure out why my stupid flash movie didn't work. I still don't know. Wouldn't work with the photos I prepped for it, but with test images, it works great. Tomorrow, I'll reprocess all the photos and see if they work. I really wonder why I'm in this business.

On the flip side... the boss just agreed to get me Adobe CS4 Web Pro... (sweet!)

I'm so tired I don't even know why I'm up right now. I have a bunch of photos that I want to upload, but it will take more energy than I have to get them done now. So, a quick blurb in the mummichog...

I found some motivation and started painting my storm windows yesterday. Yup.... that's right, the ones that have been stacked in the garage all winter. The ones I got last September so we'd conserve heat this winter. Well, I never was able to find a weekend to paint them, so they never made it up onto the house, and as I listen to the furnace blasting away right now, I cringe at the thought of what the heating costs are going to look like at the end of the season.

The temperature hit 48 degrees by yesterday afternoon, and I figured that would be good enough to get some paint down. I was wrong. It turned out that 48 was as warm as it was going to get. As I worked, the temperature went down. The latex paint I was using globbed up within minutes and when I thinned it with hot water, it went on too thin, so after fighting with two windows, I gave up. I got the chainsaw out and hacked up a few fallen trees and their branches into fireplace size pieces. I love the chainsaw. It beats painting any day, and I can use the wood to offset the heating cost next winter...(unlikely with our fireplace, but who knows).

Spring! 7:44 am

Hey it's officially spring (well not yet in Colorado)! So legend has it you can balance an egg on its end on the equinox. I've tried this year after year and it's never failed. However, I can't remember EVER trying it on any other day than the equinox, so maybe, with the same amount of determination, I could balance an egg on its end on say.... my birthday! I'll probably never try though, just because I wouldn't want to smash the mystery. Anyway... happy Srping, Happy Equinox. Now... where's the warm weather?

Whales...er Whale

I finally made it up to Provincetown, at the end of the earth, to look for north atlantic right whales. There are about 300 left in the world and each year, they come close into Cape Cod to feed on the baitfish-rich (krill, sand lances, etc) water of Cape Cod Bay. Last year they were in very close, and I saw a few feeding off Herring Cove beach, near Race Point in Provincetown. I got a late start, and arrived at the beach well after sunrise, missing all the magic of the sunrise over the sand flats. Still, the long shadows of the morning made for some great light and I had the entire beach to myself (except for a couple and thier dog that disapeared over the dunes into the National Seashore's "Beach Forest."

The colors and patterns were amazing on the sand and I had a hard time focusing on the horizon, where I hoped to see a whale. I did look up occasionally and eventually saw one whale. It looked like a finback though. It rolled to the surface, blew out a huge puff of spray and disappeard, rolled again another hundred feet in front of where it did the last time and then disappeared for good. The one big puff and straight line, deliberate path it made is why I think it was a "finner." The right whale has a very distinctive "V" shaped spout of water vapor, and they tend to roll around in the same place for a bit. So... one whale, and a hell of a photo trip. More photos on flickr later this week.

Brewster Oysters - Best in the World

The oyster farmers are out working on thier grants here in brewster. This is a grant by our home beach. The oysters live here in these cages, grow and fatten during the summer and are ready to harvest during the "e - r" months (SeptembER, OctobER, NovembER, DecembER, JanuarER... and even sometimes FebruarER)











Oyster cages on a farm off Brewster.










Wild oysters clinging to a stone on the Cape Cod Bay flats.

















An adult (harvestabale) oyster growing wild on the Cape Cod Bay flats. (The season ended on March 3rd though)

Everybody in the car...We are going OUT!

Did I write in here this morning? I guess I did... wow... long day. Anyway, the storm we were supposed to get today never materialized. It was another warm(ish) day with a full afternoon of blue sky. Of course we had to take advantage of it and neglect EVERYTHING that we had to get done this weekend. The list is endless, but I've all but given up on getting it done this year anyway, so why not! The choice wasn't difficult... 1. paint the bathroom to the tune of a screaming baby or 2. get out and enjoy the first really nice weather in 120 days while the baby naps in the jogging stroller. Done. We hit the bike path by 11:00 - all of us - two kids on bikes, Amy running (very quickly) and me taking up the rear, pushing the baby in our $5 yard-sale baby-jogger. It's only downfall is that it pulls to the left as I push it along, so I keep having to correct it. Someday I'll fix that too.

We stopped for lunch at "Local Flavor;" a sandwich joint on the bikepath, and on the way there, we saw our first blue bird of the year. My feet hurt and I think I have a sunburn, but man, it's nice to have these days.

Springtime On The Cape - Is Winter Over?

66 Degrees! Skunk cabbage is coming up along the swamp edges and the tips of daffodil stalks are coming up everyhwere. Sophie found a little crocus blooming by one of the downspouts, and I dug a mess of clams without freezing my fingers off. Oyster season ended 5 days ago and the time changed (spring forward) last night. I turned the outside water on and the kids rode bikes around and around the neighborhood (both collecting muddy dirt stripes on their backs.) The morning chatter of the birds is getting louder and there's only a few last remnants of snow in the yard. Dare I commit to Spring?? I think so, but I am prepared for a few more wintery blasts before... oh, say "Tax Day."

Tracks...

There is a thick crust of re-frozen once-slush snow everywhere outside my back slider window. It looks like its about 2 to 3 inches deep. On top of it, a thin layer of light puffy snow, only about a quarter of an inch deep, has accumulated, and has created a perfect medium for "releif in birdfeet." Everywhere there are little bird footprints. Thier meanderings in search of the remains of seeds that I have put out there, have created quite a design in the snow.

These days, the flocks ruturn each morning to eat a full tube of seads each day. There's obviously more birds showing up now than just last week - and a few more species too. The tube used to last a few days. Spring seems to be coming.... we just need the temperature to comply.

We Did Get Some Snow!

Yup! We got some snow. Not a really good snow-bomb nor-easter, but a good amount of snow. If the center of the storm had moved up the coast, just a wee bit more out to sea, we would have gotten wallopped... like Rockport did.

It wasn't bad. Even though, here in Brewster, we got mostly freezing rain over about 3 inches of heavy wet snow, we got enough to cover the ground and encrust everything. It was enough to close the schools too, so the kids had fun! They went out in the back yard and played in the freezing drizzle for a bit, and after I went to work, I hear they played with the wii all day long. Why not...