Mid-March Ruminations & Cogitations

I have been busy this week and haven’t had much extra time for posting. But I thought I better take a few minutes to give my blogging friends an update. Between doctors and dentists, our dance card has been full lately.

In addition to all the nonsense with my eye condition, I had a routine mammogram this week and I have been getting some emergency dental work for the past two weeks. There’s never a good time for a dental bridge to go bad, is there? I didn’t need a root canal, thank goodness. So the pain in my wallet is significantly greater than the one in my mouth, LOL.

And yesterday was pretty much shot by the time we got done with various doctor appointments and tests. I saw my eye doctor again, and Mr. Jim made another trip to his cancer surgeon’s office about a superficial blood clot in one of his legs. Both doctors gave us the okay to travel on our planned journey to Moab, Utah. Three cheers for that! Mr. Jim will be taking some blood thinner pills for a while and should get some pain relief in a few days. I continue to have cloudy vision my left eye and will consult with an additional eye specialist in April.

I hope you like the beautiful sunset photo I took earlier this week! (Click to see it bigger.) We’ve recently enjoyed some delightful spring weather, and our daffodils are blooming in earnest now. After dinner this past Tuesday, we sat in our rockers on the front porch and watched the sun go down. The clouds were quite striking, but the sunset colors were looking rather dismal. I wasn’t holding my breath for a show. But lo and behold, the colors started to form about 11 minutes after sunset. I bolted for my camera. There was no time to use a tripod, so I braced myself using the porch pillars. The magnificent display only lasted for three short minutes!

This panorama photo was merged from two separate photos. I did my usual Photoshop post-processing on it, but I used a new plug-in filter program near the end of my editing steps to bring out some additional clarity: Macphun Software’s Intensify Pro. I was very pleased with how the program performed and how easy it was to use. Macphun approached me to become an affiliate, and I agreed after using their products. So you will now see additional advertising over on my sidebar, and soon I’ll add links on my photographic suppliers blog page. (Please note that Macphun Software programs only work on Macs!)

Macphun is running a special promotion right now and allowing free downloads of ColorStrokes, a selective color program. If you have a Mac desktop computer, you might want to scurry on over to their web site to get it - via my sidebar link, please! (P.S. Scroll down to the bottom of the Macphun home page for the link to the free ColorStrokes program.)