Ready for our closeups

    My friend Paul got an iPhone somewhere around a year ago. I got a Windows phone earlier this year. We both like the cameras on our phones except for one little thing: we couldn't shoot little things. We didn't know how to zoom. We thought that we couldn't zoom. It made us sad.
    Last night, Paul told me he thought he had figured out how to do closeups with his phone camera. He was mortified that he hadn't figured it out before. He opened the camera app, put his hand on the screen and, uh, ungrabbed. Balled up his hand, touched the screen and flexed his fingers outwards while still touching the screen. I'm sure that could be better phrased. I'm sure if we had read the effing manuals, we would find it better phrased there. Oh, I tipped the end of the story, didn't I? So I got my phone out, turned on the camera, did exactly the same thing, with exactly the same effect. Bingavast! (One gets so few opportunities to say "Bingavast!") Zoom!
    So now, instead of boring my Facebook friends stupid with pictures from far far away or by manufacturing closeups via cropping, I can bore them stupid with actual closeups. Let's get started!

Sour grapes

    I visited the State Fair three times and never rode any rides. Obviously, if you're feeling sour grapes, the last thing you're going to admit is that you're feeling sour grapes. By definition, what you're going to say is that those grapes were sour anyway. But I have more than a suspicion that they really were sour, at least a bit.
    News reports suggest that they might be a little worse than sour. A bunch of people were injured yesterday or the day before at the NC State Fair on a ride called the Vortex, which started up again when they were trying to leave it. (De-ride?)
    So yeah, rides built and operated by carnies have a certain level of safety issues, but the selection of thrill rides is also a little odd. Mostly, they take your really really high and spin you around. I'm not the world's biggest fan of either heights or dizziness. For some reason, I have next to no problem with being on the side of a cliff one or two thousand feet in the air with no safety equipment, so long as my feet are in contact with the actual ground. Put me in a harness and throw me a hundred feet in the air and I'm much more alarmed.
    I like roller coaster kind of rides; this fair only had one, and it was decidedly mickey mouse. (I think it did have mouse in the name. Google says Crazy Mouse.) Seven years ago, a child was thrown from a roller coaster at our State Fair (then the Mad Mouse), which may be why the coaster is so mild these days.
    The only other thing I would have liked to ride was the log flume, but those are ever so much more fun in the summer when getting splashed with water is delightfully cooling. Seems like a trip to Carowinds is in order! For all that they have a lot of throw-you-around new roller coasters, they still have the old ones, and the old log flume, and the lines are a lot shorter. I'll plan on going next summer, and save my sour grapes for the ones with long lines!

Stuck in the nineteenth century

    Last night I dreamed that I walked to the nineteenth century. Apparently there was an admission charge. But then I walked a ways on a paved, though not very well-paved, road. At some point, I noticed that I was next to the sea and that clipper ships in great numbers were going by in both directions. So maybe it was the eighteenth century. I didn't get to enjoy much tourism there, whatever century it was, but I was able somehow to return and get my stuff and my cat. But then I was back here again and worried about my cat, lost in time.
    The rest of the night, whatever I would dream, I was impatient with the dream because I wanted to get back to the first dream and rescue my cat. The other dreams were pretty interesting, too, though the only one I remember is one where a good friend from high school was charged with some serious crime. In real life, his only crime is not participating in Facebook. I never did succeed at getting back to the nineteenth century, though since the actual cat was lying across my legs it's a fair bet that my not-quite-sleeping mind knew that everything was all right. There was never anything like a nightmare level of alarm; just a slight annoyance. I have asked Amelia what the nineteenth century was like, but she just gives me a look like, "What?"

Still an idiot

    Not to, you know, overstate the obvious, but there is further evidence that I might in fact still be an idiot. First evidence relates to the agony of da feet. The broky foot sensation that I complain about periodically appears to be due to... tying my shoes too tight. Yes, it's true, at 51 John yet again demonstrates that he is almost, but not quite yet, ready for kindergarten. I'm going to get this dressing myself stuff down yet!
    But I can top that. Last night, I ran the battery down on the smart phone to the point that the screen dimmed and it was otherwise complaining about it. I went and plugged the phone to the charger. I did NOT plug the charger into the wall. Unbelievably enough, this morning the phone stopped working. Isn't that weird? I blame the incipient Alzheimer's. Or my dangerous one-glass-of-wine-a-week drinking problem. On the bright side, when I did get it plugged in, it charged up much quicker than the previous smart phone did, and maybe even faster than the previous dumb phone did. So that's what it was! An experiment! And a successful one at that. And not the least bit evidence of dumbness. No sir!

Tie a string

    Maybe it's just me. Every time the car starts running out of gas, I feel a slight uptick in nervousness, or tension maybe. The odd thing is that after I fill the tank, it's a couple of days until the feeling subsides. I've tied an invisible string around my finger to remind me to get gas, and it takes a little while for it to untie itself.
    I'm trying to figure out if this is an evolution artifact. Did ancient man think, "Gotta knap me some flint!" and when the flint is knapped, did he still feel a left over imperative towards flint knapping? I guess there aren't many precisely analogous situations. Getting gas is so easy; failing to do so in time has such serious (or anyway annoying) results. I guess it's worth tying a particularly strong knot in the mental handkerchief. But it's very peculiar getting into the car the day after getting gas, knowing (and seeing) that you have a full tank, and still having a particularly strong urge to go get gas. Hopefully, it IS just me.

Poison. Deadly poison.

    Traditionally, I try to fake people out when my cooking is good by telling them it's awful, horrid or disgusting, and/or I apologize profusely for same. The latest muffin creation, the one with cocoa butter and coconut, is so good however that I had to go on right past these mild approaches. I labeled the bag, "Poison. Deadly poison." Truth to tell, this second batch isn't quite as overwhelmingly excellent as the first one, possibly because I used almonds instead of pecans and the almonds were maybe a little past their prime. But they're still dang good.
    A stranger thing: I've been making these things for years now. (You can find the basic recipe by googling the name of this blog and add "heaven one bite at a time.") For ages, I would put the puffed brown rice in a bag and pound on it, with the idea that I would produce a little flour. Finally and only very recently, I decided that the very little bit of flour produced couldn't possibly make a difference in the final product, so I quit bothering with this step. Since then, I can't get all my ingredients in the muffin cups. So I guess all that pounding did something. Anyway, I'll try pounding again next time and see if my muffins start fitting again. It's possibly of course that I used regular muffin cup liners instead of mini-muffin liners all this time, and just now have switched to the minis. But I don't think so. Anyway, these are the life-and-death issues that rule my life. I know; must be nice not having real problems.

You'd think there'd been a shutdown

    Since the gubmint reopened, crowds at Congaree National Park have been much greater than I've seen in years. Of course, summer just ended and mosquito season just ended, so there would probably be better turnout than there had been all summer regardless. And although low water levels make for little in the way of scenic vistas, the hiking is much better and easier; apparently I'm not the only one to appreciate this. I ran into more people out on the trails than... practically ever. But it was a great day and a wondrous hike. And my new Keen boots coupled with my old Dr. Scholl's orthotics seem on the way to fixing my feet and back. So yay across the board.
    I fell asleep on the Bosox-Tigers baseball game, so I put on sports radio to find out the result and fell asleep on that, too. Perhaps for this reason I dreamed that because they did well in their series, the Dodgers were going to the World Series, too. It would be a round-robin affair. Well I thought it was funny.