"A mind once stretched by a new idea can never regain its original dimensions." ~Oliver Wendall Holmes

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Monday, July 14, 2008

Out past curfew!

My midnight walk with Taboo has gotten a bit later each night and tonight somehow became the 2am walk. I watched one of my netflix movies and then Taboo and I walked it to the post office. On the way home from the post office, I noticed that there were several police cars around the neighborhood. It seemed like something was going on, which made me a little nervous. Then I saw the shadows of some teenage boys sneaking around a corner and understood...these cops werent lookin for bad guys, they were just tryin' to bust a few teenagers for curfew. :) Anyone remember the thrill of sneakin' around town after curfew?

When I got home, I snapped this pic(above) of the moon setting to the right and Jupiter up in the corner. I have been consistently seeing this bright object in the sky, knowing it was a planet, but not knowing which. So, tonight I did some research and found out that it is, in fact, Jupiter and it was at it's closest to Earth a couple days ago which is why it's so spectacular in the night sky right now. (Tell Nathan that it's Jupiter!) Now that I know how to control the shutter speed on my camera, I could get a shot of these light in the night sky. Here's the same shot without adjusting the shutter speed....the moon almost just looks like a star and Jupiter is barely a speck that you have to convince yourself is even there.
This shot has a shutter speed of 1/250 of a second (i think...i cant check cause my batteries are dead) and the better shot above was taken with a shutter speed of 2 full seconds. What a difference. I feel so much better now that I know how to use my camera. Why didnt I take the time to figure this out sooner? Blah...

After I got done with all of the camera stuff, I sat down to load the photo here and heard a rustling outside the window. When I looked, there was a momma opossum with her baby wondering through the neighbors yard. I thought sure it would come around the side of our house to inspect our trash cans so I turned on the outside light in hopes of getting a pic, but they never showed. That is one of the things that comes with having the town creek right in your back yard. We get opossums and raccoons, snakes and toads, birds and all other manner of wild animals. It's kind of neat, excect for when they get in the trash and throw it all over the yard in search of their next meal. Here's a pic i pulled from the web for your viewing enjoyment, since i couldnt get one. They have crazy thick tales that are kinda creepy. But, WHO KNEW...? The opossum is actually a pretty interesting little creature. It is the only marsupial in North America, it has opposable thumbs on its REAR feet, the male has a bifurcated penis and the female a bifurcated womb(yes, bifurcated means what you think it means), when the babies are done living in moms pouch they crawl up and hang out on her back for a couple weeks, they can withstand the venom of rattlesnakes, cottonmouths, and other pit vipers, and they have more teeth than any other mammal or marsupial. Who knew? I am truly amazed! Opossums are awesome!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

nathan really liked that!! you want to know what else we have to do every night??? we have to brush our teeth just like alisha use to do when she was here!! its so funny nathan is always correcting me. "This is how Alisha does it and she know how" that would be nathan. oh and now we can never forget the toung because thats were all the stinky stinky breath comes from!! thanks alisha

alisha said...

no problem...anything to help:)

I'm laughing sooooo hard right now.