Lotus Girl’s Neighborhood

Don't pay for expensive online storage systems.  Instead, take advantage of gmail's hundreds of megabytes of storage just for you, and mail yourself files.

Really.

I do it, and I'm still only using 0% of my storage space.

Yesterday I took a few tiny videos of Sweetie playing. In this one he kills the paper to get to the mousie, and then decides to take up residence under the paper. Watch out for those back feet!! WOW. 

After reading tons of stuff about it, Jody and I bought some Miracle Berry tablets. You let them dissolve in your mouth and the chemical Miraculin that's in them causes your tongue to interpret flavors differently. Basically, sour and bitter become sweet.

The first flower is there. Not open yet, but it is purple. I am so thrilled. Yee Ha  A couple stumbleupon pictures then off to bed to read.

I didn't name them. Peace & Love Georgia & Annie

Nite Nite

And I found this instead. I did find the cat and they are beautiful.  Hyde Park Concert. yep

The people across the street just had twins. I hope they don't expect me to hold one of them. Yich. Now if they were KITTENS.........  *sigh*

Okay, my people, I'm headed off for my glorious week-long vacation in...lovely Wichita.  Although I have other obligations, my goal is to turn this into a writing vacation.  Or, failing, that, a lying around doing nothing vacation.

Lis, a writer friend from my writing retreat last year (who I'm about to see in less than a month at this year's retreat), surprised me with a package that arrived two days ago.

They're exquisite, tiny gourmet chocolates, of the citrus collection (as opposed to the floral, and spiced, etc. collections), from a fabulous place she knows called Richert.  They came on a day I was having my cat meltdown (see second to last previous post) and are absolutely divine.  Sublime dark chocolate, with lovely citrus fillings. 

Chocolate is good to have, but friends are better.  Thanks, Lis!

I'm finally coming to terms with the manual settings of my camera. We're getting to know each other and with the help of a tripod, I'm beginning to see some of the flexibility my "old" Pentax ME Super SLR had. These shots are all pleasing to me, in their ways, and all are unedited except for a couple of snips here and there to get rid of extraneous petals and leaves. It was a pleasure that I can't describe (and one that I've missed), to coax shapes from the shadows and paint the colors with light. Much more to work on, though. Cool.

The garden is divided into many distinct gardens, each thematically different. Here is the virtual tour as we saw them.