3 months and 7000

It's a beautiful Sunday morning here, at last. After several days of near constant rain, we have sunshine. Eventually the lawn jungle will dry out and I'll be out there with the mower. One of my neighbours is out there with a chainsaw. I'm relieved to see he's working on a small tree, not his lawn.

There were a couple heavy duty blogs over the last several days, so I thought I'd do something lighter today. (Insert a long break to think, and take some more flower photos. Lots on tap. And the cats are being extremely photogenic today.)

There's a bunch of thinking going on. I'm working on the Brighton Beach driftwood chunk, figuring out how to present it. Michelle and I did her portrait for the Melanoma awareness month, and they posted it!  (That's a Facebook link, not sure who will be able to see it or how long it will stay valid. You saw the original photo here, it's the last one.) About the same time I was supposed to do a selfie for a photo scavenger hunt. It's on the blog, but you'll have to hunt for it; I'm not particularly pleased with it. I've been thinking about other portrait shots, including one of me. Insert emoji for thinking in progress. I got a really good one almost by accident last night while out with some buddies doing some light painting. It's on my photoblog people page.

Three months ago and a couple of days ago we arrived in New Zealand, and started to re-explore Dunedin. That three months has gone by in a blur! You'd expect the month there to, so fair enough. But even the next two months have gone by really quickly. I'm not sure why.

I get up, make coffee, feed the cats. There's usually some quiet time for me to write, edit photos, and sometimes if the light is right I'll be out taking photos even before coffee. Have some breakfast. Cleaning of, breakfast, cat boxes, me. Then do something. Eat lunch, do something, eat dinner. We often watched some video in the evenings. Then do it again.

Maybe I like this life. I haven't been the least bit bored. I don't understand how people with a functional brain and the internet can be bored. Then there's books, and puzzles, baking sourdough bread, editing photos, and all sorts of other stuff that doesn't involve the internet and doesn't involve being out risking being infected, or passing on the infection you don't yet know you have.

One thing I haven't done that I thought I would, is reading. I used to be a huge reader. Now, not so much. Not sure why. I struggle to get into books. Maybe my brain is too much of a writer now. I start noticing what the writer is doing, rather than just enjoying it. I get irritated when I would have done it differently. Don't get me started on poor editing.

I was thinking of going back 3 months and posting the oldest not blogged photo. Except it's a not particularly attractive chunk of driftwood. Not what I want to lead the blog off with. The next 100 photos are either driftwood or rocks. Some sand. Then I found this one.

I am missing the beach. I can see why people used to walking on the beach every day are cranky about beaches being closed. You never know what you'll find, or what the light will be doing.

Like this. How long for you to spot the wildlife? No, not Linda.

An artsy shot for you. No, that colour is not photoshop.

Sometimes there's lots of emptiness, with a thing in the middle. This one was a bit different than many of my driftwood shots. I wanted some of the background because the sky and beach were interesting in a subdued and painterly sort of way, and I tried to capture that.

A couple more typical shots of that same chunk, just because.

One of the many pareidolia photos.

What's the 7000 you ask? Comments. My buddy Janice broke through the milestone this morning, posting the 7000th comment on the blog. This one is post 3370, so you'd think I average 2 comments a blog, but not so. Back when this was almost purely a fitness blog, and blogging was still a thing, I got many comments per blog. Now, not so many. More people are reading on mobile devices and the Blogger software doesn't like those for commenting. Plus not so many people blog anymore, or read blogs.

Still, I love getting comments, and I thank and appreciate my commenters. Feel free to send in comments by any channel you like, the comment box, Facebook, Instagram, email, text, whatever.

Of the Day
Michelle

Curtis or Celina

Flower with serendipity
This one is the same file number as the one below it, only this is from July 2017.

This one is the most recent one from today. Yeah, the morning light was pretty nice.

Driftwood