14 August 2009 Photo: Stars And Stripes

Metal flags make a lot of noise when it is windy!

13 August 2009 Photo: Hard & Soft & Fuzzy

Hard wood...soft colors...fuzzy weed!

12 August 2009 Photo: Nearly Salsa

So I planted a whole bunch of tomato plants this year so I can continue to make my own salsa. They are finally getting red. Here is the first specimen!

11 August 2009 Photo: Geronimo!

This phone made me think of people yell Geronimo when they jump from high places, which then got me thinking about where did that come from. So I did a quick search on line and found the following:

"The 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment's motto and slogan was named after Geronimo. In 1940, the night before their first mass jump, U.S. paratroopers at Fort Benning watched the 1939 film Geronimo, in which the actor playing Geronimo yells his name as he leaps from a high cliff into a river, depicting a real-life escape Geronimo successfully attempted in which he jumped off Medicine Bluff into the Medicine Creek with his Cadillac horse. Private Aubrey Eberhardt announced he would shout the name when he jumped from the airplane to prove he was not scared. The trend has since caught on elsewhere, becoming widely associated with any sort of high jump in popular culture."

10 August 2009 Photo: "Beach" Blanket Bingo

I have my niece for a couple of days and today we went to the "beach" since it was the hottest day of the summer. Beach is in quotations marks because as someone who grew up at the ocean, I still can't seem to buy that water and sand at a lake or reservoir is truly a beach. I mean really...where are the waves, seaweed, saltwater? There are seagulls but they are just looking for dumb people who leave food open on their blankets so they can steal it.

9 August 2009 Photo: Prickly But Pretty And Purple

We have a fair amount of thistle growing in our yard so in staying with yesterday theme of Scotland, I decided ot make the national flower of this country the subject of today's photo of the day.

8 August 2009 Photo(s): The Scottish/Redneck Games

So today we went to the Scottish Games/Celtic Festival and the Redneck Games. Separated by only a few miles, I am not sure I can tell the difference between the two games.

It seemed like there were a lot of men throwing things that probably shouldn't have been thrown (heavy weights by the Scots and hubcaps by the Rednecks). They both had music, food (with long lines) and beer. Both groups where wearing unusual clothes by main stream standards. I must say that the music at the Scottish Games was better and the humor factor at the Redneck Games was slightly higher. All in all, there were different cultures experience today.

7 August 2009 Photo: Polka Dots & Stripes

I just liked the different patterns on the pots.

6 August 2009 Photo(s): Old School Brownies

I decided to take a few cameras from my collection outside for a photo shoot today. Here are a couple of images that I liked. I have over 20 old school cameras that I have collected over the years. I would love to find a way to take some pictures with them. It is crazy to think that this was the technology back in the day compared to what we have today. Who knows what the future will bring?

5 August 2009 Photo: Roaming Gnomes

As I was walking through my yard, I found this little gnome hiding in the greens. Perhaps with the bad economy, Travelocity had to let him go. Is no one safe???

4 August 2009 Photo: Sailors Take Warning

Is the saying true?

In order to understand why “Red sky at night, sailor’s delight. Red sky in morning, sailor’s warning” can predict the weather, we must understand more about weather and the colors in the sky.

Usually, weather moves from west to east, blown by the westerly trade winds. This means storm systems generally move in from the West.

The colors we see in the sky are due to the rays of sunlight being split into colors of the spectrum as they pass through the atmosphere and ricochet off the water vapor and particles in the atmosphere. The amounts of water vapor and dust particles in the atmosphere are good indicators of weather conditions. They also determine which colors we will see in the sky.

During sunrise and sunset the sun is low in the sky, and it transmits light through the thickest part of the atmosphere. A red sky suggests an atmosphere loaded with dust and moisture particles. We see the red, because red wavelengths (the longest in the color spectrum) are breaking through the atmosphere. The shorter wavelengths, such as blue, are scattered and broken up.

Red sky at night, sailors delight.When we see a red sky at night, this means that the setting sun is sending its light through a high concentration of dust particles. This usually indicates high pressure and stable air coming in from the west. Basically good weather will follow.

Red sky in morning, sailor’s warning. A red sunrise reflects the dust particles of a system that has just passed from the west. This indicates that a storm system may be moving to the east. If the morning sky is a deep fiery red, it means a high water content in the atmosphere. So, rain is on its way.

The above is from http://www.loc.gov/rr/scitech/mysteries/weather-sailor.html

3 August 2009 Photo: That's Corny

Corn season in central NY...there is nothing like fresh picked sweet corn!

2 August 2009 Photo: The Itsy Bitsy Spider

...went up the water spout. He lost his grip and fell in the flower pollen.

1 August 2009 Photo: Ithaca IS Gorges

I ventured down to Ithaca today with my friend Patty. She and I worked at Cornell together and she was in the area visiting for the weekend. We headed down to some of our old haunts on campus and in Ithaca, including Treman State Park (which has some of the best waterfalls in Central NY). It is days like this that I miss Ithaca more than ever. The gorges are just amazing and I have so many fond memories of hiking and swimming there with friends. It truly is gorges!