Welcome back Mrs D
 

Hope you had a wonderful holiday, you have been missed:hug:

:Wave-Hello: :I-Agree: :grouphug:

Thanks so much. Yes, we arrived yesterday, after a long drive.

The vacation was nice...much cooler than here and a relief. But there were storms. And with one of them a huge lightning strike behind our house, just in the woods past the shed where our propane refrig. lives! Weez was in that area and ran home in the blink of an eye. The light was blinding as we were looking that way when it happened, and the crack was deafening. We are so lucky it missed us (not like in 1979 when the house was hit one night with me sleeping in the loft area!) and Weez was not hurt.

Here is a picture of the strike on the tall cedar near the top. This gash widened to about 12 in wide and 6 deep near the base. Wood and bark shredded and thrown into the trees and at least 30ft around the tree. So lucky it did not burn or start a fire.

On the other hand, we had a beautiful rainbow one other stormy day, which we had many of near the end of the trip.
Both spectrums of storms--the drama/danger and the beauty.

Healthwise I had a small shingles attack down my right arm where I had them originally. And a GI attack for a week. I think this was a gall bladder thing, as hubby did not get it, and we eat the same food and drink the same filtered water. I had to go gluten free just in case, and also found psyllium seed very effective in stopping the painful attack (severe nausea, pain in my right side and endless diarrhea). Other than that, I have a nice tan, and feel much better now. Surprisingly, my blood sugars went DOWN when I stopped the metformin! I've been 3 weeks without, and have 103 or thereabouts each morning now.
I expect they will go up at home again. So this will be fodder for the doctor to puzzle about for a while! LOL

Our new cat enjoyed herself immensely. So much so she had to bring us live critters in the middle of the night! Pigmy shrews and one frog who screamed the oddest way at 1am by my bed and was climbing around in my shoes trying to escape Weez -- I saved him in my net that we reserve for these moments and he now lives back in the lake. Weez did not travel well and complained most of the time. Oreo is recovered somewhat, but a bit slower than usual, and a trip the the vet will be soon to have that thyroid nodule evaluated. She gained some weight back. She had a severe cough and sneezing 2 days after we arrived there, and I think she caught a virus at the vet's where we took her 2 days before we left.

Otherwise it was beautiful up there as usual.

I'll put up some other pics on this thread if there is interest. And there will be some in my album within a week or so. Some hummingbirds, rainbows, freighters, etc. my new sig pic is one from this summer. My new camera... the Sony super zoom, HX-1 is really exciting for nature pictures. ;)

Welcome back... would love to see some pics!!!

Okay, I put 3 pics up in my album today. My laptop has some of the modified files and I will have to use it to send some more photos today. Still unpacking and getting resettled.

The pics so far are mixed into the 3 albums...the newest one is first.

My new camera is a super zoom Sony and takes 9 mega px which have to be modified in my graphics program to fit here. I set it on 3:2 ratio, with 8M but still they are just huge files! And there are 300 of them. Maybe 10% are great shots, IMO. I am not that great with cameras, or settings, but I do have a large art background that helps somewhat. This camera is auto, with manual overrides, and has many features... anti-motion, ISO choice with noise reduction for low light, easy to find white balance (if I ever learn how to choose which WB setting), and panorama (which I haven't learned yet) etc.

Here is one I just did quickly... just edited for size. It was a beautiful sunrise ---indicating storm coming. "Red sky at night sailor's delight, but red sky in morning sailor take warning!"
This was taken with white balance setting in low light levels.
The boat is ours and tied to our new dock which set us back a pretty penny!

MrsD
I am New here as you know, and I kept looking at the picture on the bottom of your posts thinking it looked so familiar and then looked at your name and location and you have great lakes, well I live on the great lakes (up north) also in Michigan it is so pretty isent it? Been here my whole life, so I enjoy your pictures.
Susie

Good to have you back, mrsD, and lovely pics!