7 Quick Takes (Vol 126)

Good golly it is almost August! And Quick Takes are here again. How the time doth fly.

Remember, after you have spent quality time with my quick takes you need to click on the picture above to be whisked, at the speed of the approaching debt ceiling, over to Conversion Diary.

Let the Quick Taking begin!

1.
Lets see, the most exciting thing to happen this week. We will start with that. Well I think it would have to be that I bought a new lens for my camera.

OK, for those of you who don’t have a DSLR or don’t care….just skip to #2. For the rest of you I purchased one of these……

This is a Canon EF 85mm f1.8 medium telephoto lens. She is beautiful. She lends herself to portraits and such but she has many uses and I am just trying her out. We are holding hands at the moment but I think we will be taking vows pretty soon.

2.
One would think that I have enough time to keep up with blogs. But evidently one would be wrong.

I am WAY behind on reading blogs.

I am too ashamed to tell you the count in my Google Reader of unread blogs. It is atrociously large and rather daunting. But I am trying to weed my way through them with thought and patience. I feel like I have made a commitment to read them if I have taken the trouble to add them to my Google Reader.

Do you ever feel like that? Like you have an unspoken commitment to read all blog posts.

Or am I the only one.

Hello?

3.
So, I have a confession to make.

For about the last year or so I have been using Photoshop Elements to do my photo editing. But I hang my head in lazy shame to say that I never REALLY learned all that it can do.

I know, I know. That is bad. I learned just enough to be dangerous but no more than the surface. And barely the surface at that. I was just basically lazy.

But no more. I am spending time every day. I am playing. It is fabulous fun.

Some of you are asking, “Why don’t you just have Photoshop? Why Photoshop Elements which doesn’t “do” as much?”

#1 because it is expensive and that just isn’t in the budget right now (see #1 above).

#2 it would be like giving a 6 year old a Ferrari. I need to learn to drive this software first. And so far this is all I am needing.

4.
Remember last week I told you that Max the Wonder Dog had been back to the vet for another round of “Why is his nose shooting out stinking snot?”

Weeeeeeeeell we have the answer and it is a doozy.

So Dr. Jeremy calls last night to tell us the results of the nasal culture that they took last week.

Well, I have never seen this bug in a dog’s nose before. It is very unusual.

Unusual? (said I with fear and trepidation)

Oh yes. In fact I am going to have to call the microbiologist to see what he thinks about this.

Oh man!

Then Dr. Jeremy starts to rattle off the name of this bug.

Ummm, wait a sec Dr. Jeremy so that I can get a piece of paper to right that one down.

Chryseomonas Luteola.

Egads.

So the news is somewhat good. They cultured it out and he has a very large infection. Dr. Jeremy was impressed with it’s voraciousness (Thanks Dr. J, I live to bring you amazement). It is resistant to a wide range of things but it is sensitive to the tetracycline we have Max on so that is good. HOWEVER, Max will need to take 6 weeks of antibiotic and then be re-cultured. And if the bug is still there then the next antibiotic that he takes is very expensive.

Our $50 pound dog has cost us a lot over the years.

But I am worth it right?

5.
We have a fully packed weekend and I am tired just thinking about it. HHBL and I WERE supposed to be taking a long bike ride right at this very moment (8a on Friday) but we had to postpone it and that is very good because right now it is raining very heavily. That never makes for a good bike ride.

Tomorrow we have a picnic to go to (where I am hoping to meet Hugh Hewitt and Herman Cain) and then Blossom in the evening to take in some Russian music with LookLeap and The Tech Guy. And then on Sunday I am photographing a wedding and that always wipes me out.

I am going to need a lot of coffee.

6.
Well, the deer found a bunch of the daylilies in the back garden. Here one day and gone the next. But I am not crying too much because I have had about 6 weeks of continuous blooming so I can be generous.

But they had better not start on the hosta!

If the rain would stop then I could go out and spray the stinky vomitorium stuff.

7.
Some days I amaze even myself with my productivity. Yesterday was one of those days.

Laundry
ironing
cleaning
Photoshop studying
photograph manipulation
cooking
reading
blogging
knitting.

Today not so much and I really need to get some things done!

Oh to be that productive every day.