It is just another usual day at Grandpa's Farm. We've been sitting here watching the sun blow and the wind refuse to shine. It's too cold to go outside so we stoked up the fire, put on the coffee and drew straws to see who has to go get the mail. I'm going to have to check on the person holding the straws because this is the third time in a row that I've lost. She will probably start winning when the sun shines and the wind quits blowing. I keep forgetting if it's the short straw or the long straw that has to go get the mail. I suspect it changes daily depending on who pulls which straw.
In the middle of all this whining about going to get the mail in the wind and cold she reminded me that it might be a good time to take some pictures. I got a new camera for Christmas (a gift to myself) and am still learning how to use it. This is one of those new dig-it-all ones that has fifteen mighty pixels and four mighty bites of memory. It will take and store about six hundred pictures. I bought the four mighty bites of memory at Wally's Mart and wish I could buy some for my own personal use. Then I could remember if it's the long straw or the short straw.
This camera will let you look at the pictures and if you don't like them you can delete them. I remember back when I was a kid that we had to be careful when we took pictures because we had to pay for every one of them. Not only that, we had to wind film into the camera and out of the camera and send it away to be processed. Then we paid for every picture.
In between then and now I got bit by the 35 mm SLR bug and took pictures and slides. Same problem - pay for every picture. I finally invested in an enlarger and built a darkroom. Then I would pay for the negatives and make my own pictures from only the ones I wanted. Got better pictures that way but I probably never saved enough to pay for the equipment. When I switched to slides then the problem returned - pay for every picture. I could still enlarge the ones I liked and make prints. Anyway, I like this dig it all one better. I delete a lot of pictures. So going to get the mail was an opportunity to practice taking pictures and deleting them.
I took my camera and went to get the mail looking for pictures along the way. Going down the driveway I couldn't find anything that triggered my creative urge to take a picture. And we have a long driveway. There were horses but they are not photogenic if they know you are there. They refuse to cooperate. I only get pictures of horses rear ends when they know I'm taking pictures. It may be that they are expressing an opinion of my picture taking ability. I have no clue as to how a horse thinks, if at all. I just call them a mule and go on.
Anyway - on the way to town I saw some big horn sheep so I pulled over to the side of the road and took several pictures and then deleted half of them. As I drove on I came upon a band of about 70 wild turkeys so I did them, too. Then the two white-tail deer that crossed the road got pictures taken of their rear ends. All I needed was for a moose and an elk to show up and I would probably have at least 25 pictures to delete.
On the way home I found the turkeys again so tried taking them from the north. The big horns were a little farther away so I tried some telephoto pictures. A couple of geese and an eagle completed the wildlife pictures for the day. And then the sun broke through and created some nice scenery pictures of hills topped with trees. By the time I got home I had at least 40 pictures to delete.
Sorry to get your hopes up that something interesting or exciting happened out here in the country. It was just another usual day.
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