photograph
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I was sorely disappointed with Lulu.com this year. I’d created my 2011 calendar using that company expecting the same very good results I enjoyed last time. What I received was, in several places, second-rate printing at best. So today I used Zazzle.com to create a new edition of the 2011 calendar. Their online creation process was easy though didn’t seem to offer some customizations to which I am accustomed. Still, I’ve heard good things and will hope for the best. So I’ll be placing an order for close relatives and dearly hoping Zazzle provides me with excellent product! All told, next year’s calendars are costing me a fortune!
UPDATE: The calendars finally arrived at my PO Box over the weekend and I picked them up today (Dec. 6). They look very good though slightly shorter than the Lulu 2010 product. Zazzle’s image quality is very good (way better than what Lulu did to the 2011 calendar) though perhaps a bit flat. Then again, I’m used to computer screen and photographic print renditions. At least I now have something decent to send and sell.

A black cat, resident of a hardware store's property, peers out from the wheelwell of a disused industrial truck.
During a little exploration Sunday afternoon, we happened across a couple of “working cats” — felines that live on the premises of businesses, not strays but not housecats. One cat lives in the yard of a small town hardware store. There’s a large industrial truck parked permanently in front of the store’s windows but behind the firewood for which we were shopping. On the giant tire of that yellow-green truck was a beautiful black cat that put us in mind of our dear departed Missy. The kitty posed for a few pictures then, wary of strangers’ attentions, took off for parts more secluded. Stopping by at a nearby winery we sighted another cat sunning and grooming itself on a sub-roof near the main entrance. Kit paused, took a good look at us, then went about its business and we did the same. The wine wasn’t very good.
It was a truly miserable November day. Skies were overcast, temperatures never rose out of the 40s, there was rain, there was rain with ice pellets. I started work on my 2011 photographic calendar. I ventured outdoors only to hang the freshly-cleaned bird feeders and travel to Taco Bell for lunch. That was enough. The damp cold seemed to penetrate to the bone. It was a good day to be an indoor cat… or a “cat” indoors!

The rising sun illuminates trees overlooking the West Branch Columbia River valley on a cold early November morning.
This day dawned bright and crisp making the commute to work more pleasant. Dropping into the valley, I looked around as I crossed the bridge over the West Branch of the Columbia River in Olmsted Township. The rising sun was kissing trees at the rim of the valley, trees that had so far held on to their colored leaves. I stopped for five minutes to snap some photos and enjoy the view and wished I could have explored the frosty fields I’d passed along the way. Hi-ho, it’s off to work I go!
A random spoonful of Campbell’s Vegetarian Vegetable Soup brought up a surprise. BOX ??! I ran and got my little Canon G11 camera to document what fate and the soup spoon served up. But wait… the edge of the “O” is flattened. Is that a “D” instead? Well, mebbe, but I’m gonna claim that the word BOX came up all by itself from the bottom of my soup bowl. After all, BDX makes no sense, and vegetable soup is a sensible lunch!

Visible satellite image of the October 26, 2010 superstorm taken at 5:32pm EDT. At the time, Bigfork, Minnesota was reporting the lowest pressure ever recorded in a U.S. non-coastal storm, 955 mb. Image credit: NASA/GSFC.
It’s being called a “super-storm”or “weather bomb.” The storm we experienced yesterday was a whopper. Although many of us escaped any damage or danger {it was actually no big deal where I was sitting}, the same cannot be said for everyone’s experience. Tornadoes, hurricane-force winds, torrential rains pummeled many areas. The lowest barometric pressure ever recorded in a non-coastal area was measured within the system’s spiral. A weather satellite image is, at once, beautiful and frightening.









