My husband Andy found these two baby pigeons in our planter by the front door yesterday. This was not a cause for rejoicing. We have already been conducting a long egg disposal campaign in the backyard palm tree for the past two years (the dogs love to lap up the raw eggs). Just when we thought the egg laying was easing up in the backyard, we see these two ratlets with useless wings in the front. We wondered why they hadn’t been eaten by cats yet. We thought about taking them and putting them in the cat food bowl our neighbor puts out twice a day. That would give the kitties a real feast. But we laughed that off to sick humor and left them alone, hoping the neighborhood cats would finally notice them and eat them. Maybe the cats were waiting for them to fatten up a bit first? We should see…

Well, it doesn’t distress me to tell you that the little vermin were gone in the morning. I guess the cats decided they were finally plump enough. The cats probably already knew they were there, right? I mean, two birds in the bush…

Andy went looking around the yard and found the signs of carnage accounting for one bird. The other, I guess, was hauled away to another cache in the sharp-toothed mouth of a feline filcher.

I guess it just goes to show: here today, gone tomorrow. As much as I may morbidly gloat over Nature’s predation over these creatures, the truth is "you could be hit by a bus" any time so you might as well live, love, and laugh– even if it is sick laughter about poor little baby birds!

As I lay in bed early the morning about this same time last year, I heard thunder, saw the occasional flash of lightning, and then saw the color of the sky change into a natural sepia tone. It was such a phenonmenon that I got out of bed early, turned off the house alarm, got my camera, and went outside to capture the moment. I originally blogged this on my main site, danielgreene.com but decided to blog it here as well since it was my view from our home. It also happened to be taken just outside the windowed door in the previous post.

I think I got high on the thin air up at the mile-high altitude of Jerome, Arizona. There I was, taking a video of the beautiful panorama around me, when the beauty of Nature inspired me to sing! Ah-ha! Oo-hoo! Ha ha!

I saw some photos of light painting on Flickr and figured out how to do it from reading the descriptions and EXIF data. So, when we were camping on a dark night last weekend, I got out the flashlight, set the camera on the picnic table for a 30-second exposure with a 10-second delay, ran into place, and wrote CAMP in the air (pointing the flashlight straight forward). I stopped at the end near the Coleman lantern hung on a tree branch and smiled, thus placing my face right in the curve of the P.

This photo was the 244th most popular photo of Flickr on May 11, 2009.

Marvelous place! Why even go to Nice? We’re sitting in a seaside cafe right now, with free Wi-Fi, eating crepes, & pain au chocolate and drinking cappuccino. C’est si bon!

Woke up at 2 this morning after going to sleep at 9. Lay in bed wishing I could get up, get a bowl of cereal, and get on the Internet. Tried to devise a plan to write this geomoblog without consuming too many of my paid connection minutes. Left the room at 3 and went looking for a midnight snack. Was told that I could order from the Blue Lagoon 24 hours a day. First went outside to get my geoposition. Couldn’t get it on the Promenade Deck even after standing out there for 5 minutes, so I walked up to the pool, sat down with no walls around me, got my coordinates, and took this photo of the pool at night.

Why would I go to so much trouble to find my location? Well, I’m geeky that way, and I consider it a challenge to create a geotagged mobile log (geomoblog) of our travels so that friends and family can follow our progress and see where we are in the world. The reason I’m taking and posting these photos to smithersgreene.net is via Flickr is so that you can click on each photo to see it on Flickr and click the map link to the right of the photo on the Flickr photo page. You are also welcome to leave comments either on Flickr or on smithersgreene.net, although I regret I won’t have the time to read your comments much less reply to them until I get free Wi-Fi again. And even if and when I get free connectivity, it is bad for my hands to write much on this little keyboard, and besides, I’m on vacation!

I discovered that I have to type my entries on this small device because the ship’s Internet cafe closes whatever page I am on when I log out. Hence, I cannot log in, open a draft in Gmail (which I started with a photo and a title on my G1), log out, finish composing, log back in, and send. I wish I could, but I guess that would be too economical to be allowed.

Anyway, I forgot to give a log of our first very long day of traveling, so here is is now: we got up at 4am on Saturday the 25th. Our friend drove us to the airport at 5:45 so we could be there by 6:15, two hours before our flight (since our destination was abroad). I took a nice photo at PHX of the sunrise and our plane with Camelback Mountain and the Papago Buttes behind it, but the free Wi-Fi signal at the airport was so weak it never sent. Oh well! Then we arrived at ATL at about 2:50pm EDT. There was Wi-Fi at ATL, but it warn’t free! Our plane to BCN departed late at about 5:30pm, and we flew about 8 hours, arriving in BCN at about 8:30am Sunday.

Once in Barcelona, we took the Aerobus and the Metro to our Hotel California. We stopped in to say hello-and-see-you-next-week. Then we walked all the way down Las Ramblas rolling two suitcases each because the "Parada" (which was not a parade, but a marathon) was running down the south car lane toward the sea. At Columbus Circle (I forget the right name of the placa), we took a bus to the ship. We boarded the ship at 11am, got drinks (I took that photo yesterday of a contented poolside Andy), and I took a much-needed nap on the chaise longue. (I had not slept well on the plane despite the sleeping pill I took).

And that leads us pretty much up to now, minus a few details. This first full day of cruising will be entirely at sea. Of course I am taking more photos which I will upload after we come home November 8. But for now, I’ll probably just upload a photo a day.

Andy & I are thrilled to be doing this cruise together. Thanks for your well wishes. I wish I could reciprocate, but that will have to wail ’til we come home. In the meantime, thanks for reading!

Oh, and by the way, for pesky friends such as Ivo (Ostravaczech), Andy & I voted early by mail, and we voted the right way, of course!

It was a long journey, but we finally made it on board. After this, we finally had a hot shower and a good nap.

I splurged on 115 minutes of Internet access on board for $55. I can use it on my G1 with Wi-Fi, but I must be frugal. So, just a few updates this week!

Andy & I first laid eyes on each other five years before the day we posed for this photo during our camping trip on Mount Lemmon. We’re still in love and as happy to be together as ever– even more so.

We bumped into each other getting in line for coffee at Claire de Lune coffee house in North Park (San Diego, California) on a Saturday morning, May 24, 2003. About all we said was “Hello!” and “Good morning!” and I wanted to meet him but I was busy having a meeting with a friend and he was busy having a meeting with some friends. Luckily, we met two days later, May 26, at a Memorial Day pool party. And we’ve been together ever since. This is the first year since we met that the days and dates we met coincided again.

Today, I partook of an American custom– the Labor Day Pool Party. This year, my partner and I bracketed our summer with a Memorial Day pool party and a Labor Day pool party at the same house. It was fun. Hope you had fun too!

Andy and I went to Aunt Chilada’s last night for a “meetup” of Flickrites (users of the Flickr photo sharing web service). It was good fun. We met some nice people, and I took some good pictures. I talked with one guy, Garry, about SLR’s and lenses, so I learned some technical stuff too (though I don’t remember all of it). I’m glad I went.