Liberty

And most people think the Statue of Liberty is sitting out in the water somewhere.

Don't Jump

If you jump from the Golden Gate Bridge you are serious about ending it.

Ahhh!

Badger Custom Grip

Time Change

Don't forget it's that time of year.  The time changes tonight so be sure to adjust your clocks back one hour.  Unfortunately I work tonight so I will have to work 13 hours instead of my usual 12 which is a bummer.

Surveillance

I like the message that this guy is trying to get across.  That similar intrusions of privacy by CCTV cameras slip by every day without any negative reaction from most people yet walk up with a camera and people freak.  Surveillance cameras are everywhere now, both inside and outside, in government offices and in private businesses.  It is rare now days where you will go anywhere where at some point in your trip you will not be recorded on camera somewhere.

Sweet Potatoes

This is the local sweet potato hangout.

Fall Colors

This is a beautiful time of year.  The air is cool and dry.  The mosquitoes are gone and there are colors other than green in the trees.

Happy 27th Birthday Cathy!

Hurricane Sandy

This is out the back door this morning as we get more Hurricane Sandy winds.  It's slowly been getting worse throughout the night.  I'm still waiting for the water to rise.

Hard Boiled

I'm just sitting here listening to the rain and wind and worrying about whether the water is going to rise as far as the chicken coop.  We are having sustained winds of 30 - 40mpg out of the north right now from Hurricane Sandy and it is supposed to increase and last through the night and tomorrow.  North winds pile water up into the end of the bay where we are so I will be watching closely.  I'm not worrying about the house flooding like last year but it could easily get up into the chicken coop.

What do you do when you can't eat all the eggs that your chickens are giving you?  You hard boil them, chop them up, then feed them back to the chickens.  They love them.

New Old Jeep

This is my 8 year old Jeep.  I just put a 2 inch lift kit on, some new shocks and larger, more aggressive tires.  Finished it off with a new stereo system and some new headlight assemblies to replace the old hazy ones.  That made a huge difference in the way it looks from the front.  I love this vehicle.  160,000 miles on the odometer and it has never required anything but some new tires and oil.  I had much rather spend a little every so often to fix it up rather than get back into making payments on anything.  I used to pay $450.00 a month in payments.  It only took the equivalent of 3 of those payments to pay for all of these upgrades.

 

Last Harvest

Wow.  I finally finished my five 60 hour weeks and have been decompressing.  The weather is absolutely gorgeous which is helping to chill out.  Today I changed the blades on my riding lawn mower (bent them last time I mowed riding over a root), mowed the yard and harvested the last of my veggies (mostly peppers).  I then cut all the vegetation out of the vegetable planters and put it all in the compost pile to make compost for next year.  This years experiment of growing vegetables in the Earth Box planters was a complete success.  Next year I will install an automatic watering system with the boxes to save the daily watering chores.  Below is a picture of the vegetables I pulled today just before putting them into freezer bags and freezing.  The front center are cherry tomatoes.  Left to right around the tomatoes are bell peppers, anaheim and banana peppers, jalapeno peppers then carribean red hot peppers.  I won't be lacking for peppers this winter.

Vote!

Guess what I did today?  Today was the first day of early voting here in North Carolina.  The courthouse was PACKED.

4 More Days

Just four more days and I will be back posting.  Work and sleep have been my life (and a sad life that is) for weeks now. 

A Brilliant Mind

I have used my superior human intellect to outwit my hens which have refused to lay eggs in my special, custom built egg laying box.  I purchased some wooden eggs then placed a couple in each of the egg laying bays.  Voila!  The next day each bay had eggs in it and the corner of the coop where the chickens had been laying was bare.  If my employer could see how brilliant I am I would surely be CEO by now!

Neuse River Ferry

Just riding the Cherry Branch to Minnesott Beach ferry.

Make it a Double

One of my eggs was a double yolker today!

Pantry

This is a picture of my pantry.  I like to keep a little extra in case of emergency.

All Work and No Play

I am in the middle of a 4 week work stretch of 60 hour weeks.  12 hour shifts plus a 1 1/2 drive each way is leaving little time for anything other than work and sleep.  I feel bad as my daily posts are dwindling down to nothing.  When my posts dwindle down that tells me that I am not living life as I should.  In a couple of weeks things get back to normal thank God.

Today's pic is my micro 4/3's stable.  I started out with the Panasonic G1, then along came the Olympus E-PL1, E-PL2 and finally the OM-D.  The OM-D has completely filled my 'wish list of desires' in a camera and I no longer have any urge for something better.  The original Panasonic was a great camera but I had to have in body stabilization so that prompted my switch to Olympus.  All of the Olympus cameras have been great and I am totally satisfied with the Olympus line.  My lenses are a mishmash consisting of the Panasonic 14/2.5, 20/1.8, 25/1.4, 45-200 zoom, the Olympus 45/1.8 and 14-45 kit lens with wide angle adapter, Nikkor 55/1.8 macro, Minolta 50/1.4 with bellows and last but not least, the Pinwide pinhole lens.   The ability to use just about any lens on the Micro 4/3 cameras, plus the wide quality selection of lenses, is one of the big reasons I switched to the m4/3 world and I don't regret it for a second.