I'm not saying I'm any good at this, but I miss the days when you could post a digi mod like this in the photo gallery.

Do you ever worry about an animal surprising you when you take naked pics outside? This is what it might look like

One of my fav fruits are blueberries. It's getting late in the season for them so I thought I better make a pie. This is my first blueberry pie of the year. It might be the only one too.



A slice with a dollop of yogurt. Uh huh!

One of the greatest joys of home ownership is a back yard. The greatest joy of a back yard is home grown tomatoes. For the past several years I've been raising my tomatoes in containers. It's been working out pretty good. The tomatoes have been ripening and I've been picking for about 2 weeks now. It seems that every day I get a large bowl full. I have 3 varieties this year, a small sweet one, a plum and a seedless.

Here is a pick of one of the plants,




Here is some of my bounty,



If you want some, come on over, I have plenty!

I have a laptop that had been acting dodgy. Using it had become very frustrating. I thought if I reload Windows that might solve the problem. If it doesn't, I'd really be no worse off as that laptop has just mostly been gathering dust lately.

I made several attempts at reinstalling based on advise from youtube. One NNer also gave me advise. The problem was the result wasn't what it was supposed to be. I have a program that will wipe the system clean, the nuclear option. When that thing is finished I will end up with a completely clean computer. Then I have to hope I can reinstall Windows.

So I ran program, it took about 12 hours to finish. Popped in my Windows 7 disk and let it run and followed the prompts. Most things looked OK but I was unable to get on the internet, even with it being connected with a cable. I thought about it and decided that maybe I need a driver for it. But that is a problem, in order to get on the net I need a driver but to get the driver I need to be on the net. Luckily I have more than one computer. So the good folks on youtube showed me how to get the driver and transfer it to my internet challenged machine. Success! Lesson learned, back up your f*cking drivers before you do some shit like this again!

Then I started reloading programs like Word Perfect, Photoshop etc, mostly uneventful but now Photoshop won't read my raw files. I'm gonna have to do more research on that.

Then I noticed the 2nd hard drive wasn't showing. Mr. Google pointed me to PC World for a simple and easy solution. Now except for that one PS issue, my old laptop is back up to speed.

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EDIT, I got PS to read my raw files. I had to do a manual download and install from the Adobe site. I had tried that before and it didn't work but this time it did. I had to do it twice as there were 2 updates that it needed and only one installed on the first try. Sometimes you just gotta keep poking the damn thing!

I used to grow a dozen or more tomato plants, so much that I would turn the excess into sauce and freeze it. One year I had so much I was running out of freezer space. But in recent years my garden area has been flooding easily. So I've been growing my tomatoes in containers. I planted about a month ago and so far it's looking pretty good.

Here is one container, it's a plastic bag on a stand, it has 3 ports for tomatoes and 3 for herbs. There is so much foliage you can barely see the container.



And it is sporting tomatoes on the vines already.



I also have 2 containers like this. Each one can hold up to 2 plants. It's a self watering system, you put water in the bottom of the tub and it has a tray that the soil sits on and it wicks up the water.



I also planted 2 tomatoes in the ground. Unfortunately they are drowning from the light flooding from last week's rain. I knew those were a crap shoot, as long my containers work out I'll be a happy camper with 7 tomato plants.

After a week of doing dishes by hand and using paper plates when possible my dishwasher arrived and is installed. I'm always tossing little things in it throughout the day, not having it made me realize just how useful those things are. Dishes, glasses etc really pile up fast.

It took the guy about 30 minutes to remove the old and install the new one.

When I bought my first one about 30 years ago there were all kinds of color choices. In fact the first one I had came with removable front panels and extra panels each with a different color so I could swap it to what ever I wanted, I think there were 6 colors altogether. And that arrangement made it easy to get a customized panel. We had our cabinet maker (we did a kitchen remodel at that time) take one of the panels and put an overlay on it that matched the cabinets. But today it's a different story. The appliance I selected only comes in 3 colors, white, black and stainless steel. I'm not a big fan of stainless steel finish but I had the same lack of color choices last year when I bought my fridge, I didn't want white or black so it was stainless by default. At least now my dishwasher matches the fridge. Besides, what matters is that it gets the dishes clean.

The new one is considerably quieter than the old one and is supposed to be more energy efficient. I'm looking forward to many years of listening to it almost silently hum away while scrubbing my dishes.

When I was a kid one of my chores was doing the dishes after dinner. When you're a kid, you have more important things to do, such as watching TV. But I had no choice, I had to do the damn dishes and I would complain that we should have a dishwasher. Unbeknown to me, we actually had several dishwashers, me and my siblings.

At some point in my adult life I made it my business to finally realize my dream and get a dishwasher and free up my delicate hands for more important chores, like wanking. So for the past 30 years or so I have been happy loading and unloading dishes in the Maytag. But last night Maytag Number 2 gave me the finger and decided it wasn't workin here no mo! Well, I will give it a proper retirement send off (to the recyle yard) and replace it with a more modern, energy efficient model. The problem is, the new one won't be here until next Monday. That means I am once again relegated to using my delicate hands to washing dishes. Oh the horror of it!!!

Off I go to look for some youtube videos on how to wash dishes by hand.........................

I'm sure you've heard of April showers. April showers may bring May flowers but the showers today turned my back yard into a pond. And that brought a pair of ducks.





At this point the female spotted me and gave me the evil eye. The male didn't seem concerned.

In my previous blog I asked about the bird that was in my back yard. I thought it might be a turkey but wasn't sure because it didn't have a wattle. One of my neighbors is a hunter, in fact has hunted turkeys. I showed him the pic today and he said without a doubt those are female turkeys. He was surprised they were here.



A side note, my neighbor says turkey season opens next week.

There were a pair of these strolling through the yard this afternoon. I'm wondering what it is. I kinda thought it might be a turkey but it doesn't have a wattle, so I don't think so. Do you know what it is?