Crunchy Thoughts

I was tagging some of my photographs earlier and came upon a shot of some crapemyrtles. When I label plant photos I like to include the scientific name as a tag . . . just to show off.

So I’m typing up all my tags: “tree plant crapemyrtle auburn winter azalea rhododendron L–”

And when I got to “L–,” I had the loudest, most giantic brainfart this earth has ever experienced.

I forgot the scientific name of crapemyrtle.

“Ohgodohgodohgodohgod,” I think as I flip through the pages of my brain, but all I see is the letter L and a long, fuzzy semblance of a word.

I would like to say that it eventually came to me, that I snapped my fingers after a few seconds with an “Ah-ha!” and continued tagging, confident in my plant knowledge.

But no.

I had to get up and go look at one of my designs on the wall. Oh, the shame of it. And once I saw it I thought, “Oh yeah, how could I forget that?” This is just sad.

My penance is to say three Hail Tradescants and contemplate on the life of Lagerstroemia and chant its name until I never forget it ever, ever again.

Lagerstroemia indica.

Lagerstroemia indica.

Lagerstroemia indica.

If you have a glance over at the right side of this page, you’ll notice a new little photo thingy; and if you don’t see it, try hitting the ‘Reload’ button. There, you see it? Good.

Buzznet — where I was previously uploading photos — has been horrificaly slow lately so I told it to buzz off (heh) and have signed up with a new service called Flickr. Hence, the new photo thingy on the right.

It should work roughly the same as Buzznet’s thingy did but with more flair. I am also amused by Flickr because I can use it as a photo-back-up service. Even as we speak I am slowly uploading my entire high-resolution catalog of images up to the site. This will come in handy in case my computer or my house blows up (fire), blows away (tornado) or drowns (flood).

Don’t worry though; you won’t have to wade throughout my entire archive of mediocre photos just to find the few good ones. I’m only displaying the good ones publicly and the mediocre ones, well, I just won’t let you see them. I am very excited about the whole archiving/backup feature with this.

It might take a few days or even a week for me to get it organized how I like so bear with me. I have a lot of photos.

I am now interrupting this constant stream of phone pics to insert some actual information. About bloody time, right? Ha.

Well, Steven is enjoying his job in Birmingham, so we are feeling really good about moving up there. I have sent out my own résumés and am in the midst of interviews. We have also been working on some small things in our house to get it ready to sell. The builder still needs to fix the hardwood floor, but that is the only thing that is keeping us back, so once that gets done, we hope to have our house on the market.

We’re working on simplifying all our stuff in the house — by moving some stuff into Mom and Dad’s house — and we’ve repainted one of the bedrooms and purchased some furniture-related doo-dads to make the house pretty. I have learned a lesson from all this: you never get around to decorating your house and making it look good until you have to move.

House stuff on the other end is going faster. We have found a house in Chelsea that we are really keen on and we’re hoping to have a contract on it by the end of this week. Sadly, we will have to have a clause in this contract that will let someone else get the house if they can close on it before we are ready; in other words, if we haven’t sold our house in Auburn yet. I’m not worried about buying a house — we’ve been there and done that. It’s the selling of a house that is quite new to us. And by the by, that link takes you to a post from a year ago today. Sheesh, I hope this doesn’t turn into a yearly event.

I sincerely hope that we can sell our house before someone else spies out our Chelsea abode. I feel our chances of that have risen some this week — The Albatross on our street finally sold, and for quite a chunk of cash, too. If that house can sell for that much, then we feel pretty good about what we’re asking for ours. Once we start asking, that is.

True to fashion, I took a buttload of pictures of the Chelsea house when we were there and I have posted them in my Crunchy Images. Go have a look-see and tell me what you think.

Mainly we are just coasting along, Steven working in Birmingham and me working here, until I get a good job offer and/or we can get around to selling the house, whichever comes first. Ideally, it’ll happen at the same time, like clockwork, but life doesn’t seem to do that often.

To add to all of this, Steven is actually on jury duty this week in Montgomery. He seems to be amused by the court system, and I am amused because Steven is staying in Auburn this week: the drive from here to Montgomery is do-able on a daily basis, as my sister can attest, so Steven is commuting from here.

I think this is about as much craziness that I can handle at one time, so I hope things will get to a much normal status in the next month or so.

And now back to your reguarly scheduled photo pics.

This lovely piece of art is modestly priced at $99.99!

When I was in Mobile the other day I saw a wreck happen from 24 floors high. Obviously, I promptly blogged it.

Well, the next morning I was checking out a copy of the Mobile Register that the hotel kindly left in front of my room, when I see that the wreck made the newspaper. Check it out. It must have been a slow news day in ol’ Mobile.

So how many licks DOES it take?

bonfidide, Grade A

Neat

And I am off!

That blue truck hit that line of parked cars.

edited to add: And I saw it happen!