Thursday, April 11, 2013

Seen any Butterflies yet?


20 comments:

  1. Dean brings transformation!

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  2. No butterflies, but a couple of tiny moths (or as the Chinese would say: ugly butterflies, lol!).

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    1. We had a moth resting outside our livingroom window yesterday. Tomorrow promises ice pellets and sleet.

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    2. Ah, good. that *is* a butterfly! I've been rather shook up and have decided it's better not to trust my eyesight. Details in a later post.

      Ended up closing the window and donning a sweater, albeit a heavy-ish cotton sweater. Weather guy predicting rain, heavy at times for most of the viewing area tomorrow, with sleat in western districts. Highs only reaching lower 40s. BRRR! As Dad observed, "Short Spring!"

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    3. BTW white magnolia in bloom!

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  3. Please keep Daughter in your prayers through NEXT weekend. She leaves tomorrow for a week in Bangalore, India on business. It's a very rough place for any woman to be; she cannot travel alone once there, and will need protection to some extent. I just read this (below) and thought, "Goodness, what a challenge!" http://www.ediplomat.com/np/cultural_etiquette/ce_in.htm

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  4. A tiny white butterfly on my way to the car. But the GLORY of the trip was that the Bloodroot is in bloom!!

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  5. Cat's tale of woe:

    Some time back I downloaded the latest version of iTunes, which proved so different from the version I'd been using that Dad had to explain it to me and get it set up in a layout I could use. So, that was all right. I don't like the new configuration, but at least I can use it now.

    A few days ago I spotted on Mum's CD rack a whole series of CDs with identical pink spines, which I recognized as being a series a few CDs of which I have, the Smithsonian's American Songbook series. Each CD album focuses on the work of one songwriter, such as Oscar Hammerstein II for example. With her permission I started bringing them upstairs to import into iTunes. When the entire series has been imported I'll bring my two or three CDs down too so the set will be complete.

    Well, I've been working my way through and have imported about half a dozen discs; and each import took forever, which was unusual. But, I chalked it up to the increasingly decrepit state of my computer and gave the matter no more t thought. Then Last night I wanted to make a YouTube of a song on one of the recently imported discs. But when I went to import the song into Movie Maker, the file folder was empty! After the initial panic, I realized that the import settings in iTunes must have reverted to the default with the installation of the new version, but it hadn't occurred to me to check them before blithely starting my imports. GRR! Today I checked and, indeed, that was the problem. The setting are now properly set and I've started re-importing the CDs. Thank Heaven I'd only gotten through a few. It would have been extremely annoying only to discover the problem after having done the entire series!

    But, you solve one problem only to run into another. The song file came into Movie Maker correctly, the song being "Spring Will Be A Little Late This Year" sung by Sarah Vaughn. I haven't yet started scanning the covers for the series CDs and in any case I wanted a photo of Sarah. According to the CD, the recording in question was make in 1953. So I went to Google, selected Images and typed in Sarah Vaughn 1953. As you might expect, a good number of images came up. As I glanced through them I worried vaguely about finding racy or otherwise inappropriate ones but decided that surely any publicity photo would be safe. You can probably guess what happened. In all innocence, I selected an placed on my YouTube that is racy to the point of indecency. Mom explained it to me in great detail, and I was horrified, agreeing that of course I had to take it down. And of course I chose that video to post on the FB group The Jazz Age. I'm lucky they didn't ban me! Naturally, I did not feel inclined to go back to Google Images and select another photo; photo; Heaven only knows what I might have picked the next time! I'm gonna be mighty careful about trusting my vision for a while, I can tell you!

    But I still wanted to put up the song. So, off I went to Rate Your Music to find the cover of the original 1953 album or single. No dice. Finally tried Amazon.com where I found a compilation of Sarah Vaughn, the Columbia Years that includes the song. Downloaded the cover for that compilation and also bought it - it's a two CD set that sounds really good. So, in the end I remade the YouTube with that compilation cover. It's an album cover. I have to trust that it's okay. I mean, I know in the Rock era some album covers are not, shall we say, family-friendly, but I'm pretty sure this one will pass muster. The whole thing really upset me though.

    strange to say, sometimes I forget how far under par my vision is and t hat it really is unreliable. Won't be forgetting it in a hurry again though!

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    1. I'm a bit surprised about the photo. The 1950s were not the 1960s.

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    2. Indeed! That's another reason I assumed anything I found would be safe. I mean, 1953? *sigh*

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    3. I'm sorry that happened to you, Cat. And I'm glad it was caught swiftly. Since it was caught and all is well now, I hope you will also at some point be able to laugh about it. Imagine our sweet Cat posting a racy photo. ;-) No one who knows you would think you'd intended to do it. Deep breath. As Mah*Sweetie would say, "Nobody died and all the injuries were minor." That said, =HUG=.

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  6. Bill, I love the idear of a forensic sorcerer, and Darsey's sidekick is quite entertaining. Master Sean O'Laughlein(sp?)

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    1. Needless to say, the idear of the Plantagenet dynasty having survived and thrived for some eight hundred years delights me.

      Besides the scientific study and application of magic, the differences between Lord Darsey's world and ours are many and often amusing. For instance, they have showers, wristwatches and telephones (though "telephone" isn't quite the word they use), but as of 1964 they haven't worked out how to lay the cable across the Channel.

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    2. Yes. And they have boxes that can preserve food for long periods. But the magic involved is quite pricey and even well-to-do people typically have only small units.

      They're also starting to replace horse-drawn carriages with those driven by magic.

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    3. I also liked how Master O'Loughlin(sp?) (thanks for the name) proved the murder bullet had been fired from a specific gun. Using a specific law of magic whose name I've forgotten, when he activated the spell the bullet jumped into the gun's barrel. Proving it had been there previously.

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    4. Don't think I've come across horseless ccarriages yet; something to look forward to. I liked Darsey's, ahem, electric torch. Do you remember that? It's in the story where he foils a Polish plot and rescues the Marquis of Sherburg(sp?. The explanation of how the torch worked was quite ingenious.

      Yes, the food preservation units gave me a smile. And the demonstration with the bullot and the pistol was impressive. In the same story as that demonstration, Master Sean did another spell? conjuration? that I found most intriguing. He was able to extract and project onto a screen the last image the murder victim saw at the moment of death, in this case the image of his murderer. That one sounded vaguely familiar, though I can't imagine where I could have come across something like it before.

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    5. I'm afraid I don't remember the electric torch. It was decades ago that I read the books.

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  7. Front page photos are all set through May 1st!

    Just be glad I went for a long walk before tomorrow's promised snow and ice!!

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