When we returned from running errands today, we were greeted by a covey of quail on and around the courtyard wall. We have seen them do this before, but this is the first time my camera caught them in the act. When we first arrived, there were five or six on the wall but as I approached with the camera, they started to retreat toward the wash. Click on the image to enlarge.
The idea for this animation came from a bumper sticker we saw in town the other day . . .
Sometime between the Christmas and New Year’s holidays, the old sitemeter counter rolled past the five hundred thousand visit point. We don’t have a real high-volume visitors to the site like some of the Pajamas Media folks out there, but we do have high-quality folks like you that read our words. So, thanks for coming around.
The college football bowl season ends next Monday with the LSU/Alabama BCS Championship game. After that, you can expect us to post more frequently than we have this past couple of weeks.
Guess who is going to pay for all the new debt? Ramirez hints at just who is going into debt . . .
The Obama administration will formally ask Congress later this week to raise the nation’s debt ceiling by $1.2 trillion, according to Treasury Department officials.
The latest request is the third of three requests authorized by the contentious debt ceiling agreement reached last August and is expected to come on December 30 – the day the debt is projected to fall within $100 billion of the current $15.194 trillion ceiling. The new request asks the ceiling be raised to $16.39 trillion.
I hope everyone had a good Christmas. We had a very nice Christmas at home; we enjoyed preparing and eating our Christmas dinner and a pretty good NFL football game in the evening.
Image – gifts – click to enlarge
One of my (Christmas Eve) birthday presents is pictured in the left half of the image; it’s a nautilus necklace and earring set made from southwestern fossil materials, a little corral and Globe (Arizona) turquoise. I also received some colorful “candy” bracelets made up of Blue Turquoise, Mojave Green Turquoise, Purple Turquoise, Apple Coral and Spiny Oyster with Sterling Silver fittings, handcrafted by southwestern Native Americans.
For Christmas I got an Arizona Cardinals hooded fleece (image right) with the Cardinal emblem on the back and on the left breast. I also got a new cookbook, “Cook Like a Rock Star” by Anne Burrell of Food Channel fame. It has over a hundred fancy recipes that I’m anxious to try.
May you all have a joyous Christmas and a very Happy New Year.
This animated Christmas card is based on a famous painting “The Virgin with Angels” by William-Adolphe Bouguereau, oil on canvas, completed around 1900. The original painting is in a museum in Paris, France. The complete image can be seen here.
I can’t take credit for the animation since this appeared as an example of animating methods in a tutorial on the SWiSH website. SWiSH is the program I use for some of the flash seen on our websites. I modified the script in the scrolling text for our custom Christmas greeting.
