A Piece of the Crown

Just a small peice of our new Crown Royal display.

Artpad 13

I tried for a little touch of winter to cool everyone off. This is one of those that I spent a couple hours trying to make work. Others like the moonset on the ocean take twenty minutes. Go figure.

More Artpad Ocean

Looks like another artpad ocean picture.

1930 - 2006

Goodbye Pluto... I will miss you! Now there are 8 planets in my solar system, not 9. All the school books and encyclopedias will have to be replaced. We are supposed to "unlearn" that Pluto was a planet. They just took away a whole planet!

Remembering Oceans

Just a doodle of the ocean. This too, is with ArtPad. You will find a link on the front of the blog in the links section. It is a great little program to play with!

Doodle Two

"Painting" this and then watching it redraw itself was better than watching one of the old Bob Ross Joy of Painting shows! Okay... his might have turned out better looking, but he is famous and I am not.

New Drawing Toy

I found a new website that is pretty cool. It is called Artpad.com. It's like a lot of other drawing programs... Paint that is in most computer accessory programs for instance. The thrill of this program is that it will replay every brushstroke for you, so you click one button, the canvas turns blank, and then a magical paintbrush draws out your whole picture just like you did... at a speeded up rate. It is very cool to watch. You are supposed to be able to email this, but so far, no luck on that. I know there is a flash player involved, and most computers have that too, now. It could be just my slow connection. This was tthe first doodle drawing I made.

Fighting the Fire

A helicopter up there somewhere... dropping retardent on the fire. I'm beginning to wonder what the price tag is going to be on this little thing. Over 2000 people, bulldozers, water trucks, planes, helicopters, bombers, fire crews, logistics, fuel, retardent, equipment, payroll.... pretty soon you're talking a little bit of money...

The Boss's Plate

Since they are using radar from planes, I don't think it would really make any difference if this liscence plate was on the car....

Water Bomber

One of the Water Planes leaving Osoyoos Lake and flying over work on its way to the fire.

South Store Update

Brush cutting work still progresses at the southstore, although slowly. Last weekend I got a good start on the North end of the building, which had to be done with care because of electrical wires. This is the last enclosed portion to be done. Then there is along the fence, the south perimeter, and the remaining trees left around the building.

Garden Material

I don't claim to be a cook, but one of my zucchinis jumped into the oven the night before last... right into a 16 inch pan, and came out looking like this for me. You will be happy to know that is parmisan cheese on top and not ash from the fire. It was yum.

Two Cats

Here are two cats that live in my yard. I thought they would make a good picture for my blog.

Real Two Cats

My two real cats decided to show me that they too could make a good picture for the blog... it is rare for me to get both of them into a good picture.

A Park-like Yard

This is one of the reasons I was so excited about getting to move to this spot... even if it did mean packing up and moving again... We have TREES! It is a quiet and peaceful spot most of the time, with a beautiful small lake view sitting at the white picnic table at the west end of the yard. A good day for post #200! This would be my girl cat thinking it is HER yard.

New Deck

The new deck has made quite a nice place to sit and watch the day go by. There seems to be plenty of shade for most of the day.

Different Clouds

A different look in the clouds when I got to work yesterday... still caused from smoke in the air from the fire. All of the rays of light shooting down away from the sun was pretty cool. As of last night the fire was around 75,000 acres and still expected to grow. They figure it will actually burn until the first snows in October or so unless we get a lot of rain, which is unlikely.

smoke cloud

This is a picture I took Sunday evening at work to show the amount of smoke being generated by the fire. It all depends on which way the wind happens to be blowing at the time. All of this in the photo is smoke on a reasonably clear day. Kind of reminds me of a vortex cloud from the Phillidelphia Experiment or something. I haven't checked the news today, but there was ash on the car after work, and the last I heard on Saturday, the fire was burning over 65 square MILES.

Today was another Red Sun day with the briliance of a neon open sign at times. Beauty... even in the face of disaster.... exists.

Tripod Complex Fire

This picture I got from the Spokane News... They really don't want lookey loos driving around anywhere near these fires and getting in the way of emergency vehicles.... Anyway, this shows the type of area that is on fire. Today's news puts it at 38,000 acres. This is roughly thirty miles southwest of us.

Tripod Fire

Two days ago the land to the west was just a fog of brown/grey smoke and the sun was a brilliant red. The camera won't pick up the color, which is too bad, it was an awesome sight. The east was pretty much blue sky and clouds as usual, which was pretty strange. All of this smoke is from the Tripod and spur mountain fires, southwest of us by quite a few miles. This day the fire was about 18,000 acres.