fuzzy face

What a sloppy snout! I was under the impression that bugs were better at grooming than this cricket. His muzzle is messy with lint or something, and it even looks like he's drooling! Maybe they usually are, but when I found it, this one was already dead. I scooped it up from the floor, put it on a paperweight (rock), placed a blue sheet of paper in the copyholder, lowered the desk lamp and snapped the photo from approximately two inches away -- no flash. The filthy face is probably lint from the floor that got there when I scooped it up. I'll see if I can clean them up better next time.

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S2 dressed up as Wolverine for trick-or-treating. Big sister drew the hair on his face, and I constructed the adamantium claws from plasticware and tinfoil. Later, browsing through the pics, I touched up the facial hair for some wicked mutton chops. (I also thickened the brows and lengthened the canine.) What do you think? Pretty tough, eh?

show me the monet

Normally, I like my images to be as realistic as possible. Today instead, let's have a little fun playing with post-editing software.

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The above image was a throwaway. It was an experiment with a sunset and remote flash, but the set all turned out too dark. Since I couldn't destroy it any more than it already was, I generously boosted the fill light and added two or three doses of film grain. An impressionable coworker said it was reminiscent of Monet. :-)

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As a bonus, this shot of a 25-foot tall orange Dino Chomper balloon was retouched to remove the guy-lines. Though I couldn't get the angle I wanted with just the right clouds in the background... still, I like it for it's utter simplicity.

stomach in, chest out

When yours truly graduated high school he weighed sixty pounds less than today. From the photo, we can probably guess that it would be even more if I had a decent haircut. A sixty pound variance is not a big deal... if you're nine feet tall. As it happens, I am only average height. Barely.

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While loading recent photos, I was doing some post editing. Standard fixes. One person had something on their face, part of a picture frame was erased to make the background simpler, a smudge needed to be removed from a shirt... and my belly needed to be pushed back a few inches. Wait a minute! Since when is a virtual tummy tuck standard?!

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The next day I stood to wait for something, and as my body went at ease, I discovered that I had interlocked fingers resting high on my belly... while standing! I can't recall anyone except pregnant women standing like that. We're talking about late in the third trimester, by the way.

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It's not that I'm not in shape... round is a shape.

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It is time to declare war on my pudginess. I have no delusions about returning to the body I had at 18, but I look at it this way. Imaging carrying a 30 pound bag of sand all day. If you could lay that useless burden aside, wouldn't you? That's what I'm going to do.

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Speaking of youthful bodies... check out my impressive physique from 1966...

tintiddle

Tintiddle. (That's when you think of the right thing to say... after the fact.)

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It looks like Mr. Backwards Feet here, has the capability to do some serious back-tracking. A few days ago, I told the story where my son cheered in our car saying, "We're number two!..." Today I remembered that in the foggy preparation for writing that post, I wanted to give it the title: Craver, the Penultimate. I must have been seriously preoccupied, because good driver is such a lame title!

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Then I wrote the post which immediately precedes this one (perspective). I think I said what I wanted to say, but I'm not sure that's how I wanted to say it. Where's the impact? It's so ho-hum. Maybe I need more sleep or something.

night traffic

There is nothing of consequence to say at the moment. Things are very busy at work, home and church. But last night, I was fiddling around with my pictures on the computer and for no reason at all, I superimposed the moon and a splash of purple on this otherwise plain photograph.

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Shallow? Maybe, but I kinda like it.