So The New Year Is Upon Us

 

Now that 2010 is here, I am spending my day making a list of goals for myself.  I don't make resolutions. A "resoulution" is an "act of resolving or determining upon an action or course of action, method, procedure..", and what I am doing is by no means a determined course of action. I find that in my life, setting out on a course of action usually leads to something other than what I started out to do. So, if I set goals instead, no matter what course of action leads me to the desired result is ok.

Some of my goals are simple, direct things that accomplish a specific task:

I want to clean up my computer, and by that, I DO NOT mean dusting off the screen. I want to get rid of files no longer needed; bookmarks that lead to pages that make me wonder why I bookmarked them to start with; organize folders in some kind of order that make sense, and put the ones I use the most at the top of the list. If I accomplish that, it will make my days infinitely better and help me save time. 

I want to get organized in my life. I do so many different things that I sometimes just get overwhelmed with the list. I want to make myself a schedule, so that I have an hour a day to write; an hour a day to sew, an hour a day to play, and an hour a day to exercise. (Not that putting the hour a day on my calendar will actually make me do those things...)

 

I want to get a tripod and learn to take better photos. If I had done that last year, this photo of the gorgeous blue moon rising over Payne Lake on New Years Eve would have been better than this:

Other goals may prove to be a little harder for me to do, but not starting to work in that direction will assure me that they won't get done:

I want to move my blog to a hosted website with my own URL. I have some very specific and some other vague goals for myself for this blog, and have already started working towards them. I want it to be the most Fab blog, ever. (Now how is THAT for a goal???)

I want to get my Etsy store up to date, and get all the purty things I sew listed on there for sale. I want procrastination to be a thing of the past.

I have a goal to get all my gluten free recipes sorted out, typed up, and presented in some type of cookbook, whether it is an e-book or a printed one. There are other gluten free cookbooks out there, but I am a southern girl who cooks in a "southern" way. I want other gluten free cooks from the south to feel comfortable in the kitchen, making all those mahvelous southern comfort foods we grew  up on, minus the gluten.

I want to make myself a quilt with these fabrics. I have already started it, by cutting all the pieces. All I have to do now is the sewing (HA! that's easy to say!)  I have a baby quilt to make, and a couple of other big sewing projects that I want to finish by spring, but of all my goals, this one will probably be the easiest for me to accomplish.

So, there it is, out there for public consumption, and public scrutiny. Making these goals public will put me at greater risk of completing them. What are YOUR goals for the year 2010?

I Got A New Camera!

I have been using my old camera since 2003? I think. I got it when we lived in McAllen, Texas, and we left there in January 2005. It has been a good camera, but it was time for a new one, because it has been acting a little fickle for a year or so. It just turns itself off at will, or doesn't take pictures whenever it doesn't feel like it. And while I haven't missed any truly important shots, I just wasn't happy with it anymore.

When I found out that I was to receive a cash award from my job, I decided to use that money to get a new camera. So, when I saw that the money was in my bank account, we went to Tuscaloosa yesterday to get a new one.

Since I took this picture in a mirror, it is backwards. This is a Nikon Coolpix S630. It is 12 megapixels and 7X zoom.  And when I took this picture:

 

the readout on the LED screen said "Did someone blink?". That cracked us up! Now I still wonder how the camera knew that FabGrandpa blinked. I was soooo excited to find out it has a setting for taking pictures of food. Since you KNOW I love to take pictures of food almost as much as I love to eat:

pancakes

bacon

BBQ salad

It does a pretty good job with landscapes too. This was taken with the "night-time landscape" setting. It was almost dark outside when I took this photo.

 

And it was after dark when I took this one. 

I think I am going to have lots of fun with this new camera. As soon as I figure out how everything works.

Some Random Pic From My Camera

FabGrandpa says I take pictures all the time, and he is right. This morning when I took the card out of the camera to upload the pics onto the computer, I had quite a variety of stuff on there.

Here is the mountain across the highway from the Christmas tree lot (behind the outlet mall) at sunset the other day:




It rained most of the week in Phoenix. The day we had to break down the trailer to take it two blocks across I-17 for warranty work to be done, it was pouring down. We both got soaked.



You never know what you will see in an RV park. Here, obviously, is a chair having a picnic.



My new scarf. While I was out Christmas shopping, there was a deal too good to pass up. I love wearing scarves in winter. It also helps prevent those sore throats I am prone to get.


An experiment with light. I was playing around with the camera during one of the many dull moments at the Christmas tree lot. This turned out pretty cool.

Brothers and Sisters

This is the latest portrait of my FabGrandchildren, Michael and Sarah. Michael lives in Maryland at Andrews Air Force Base with their father and step-mother. Sarah lives in Seattle, Washington with their mother and step-father. Sarah came to Maryland for two weeks, then Michael flew with her to Seattle for two weeks. While they were together in Seattle, their mother, my ex-daughter-in-law, took them to have their picture taken. I must say that I think that photographer has a good sense of humor!

Some Photos of Granite Hill Campground

Now that spring is here, this place is getting really beautiful. The photo to the right is the spring house near the trout pond. They stock the trout pond for a trout tournament each year. We saw the fish truck here last week.





This is looking across the trout pond to the center of the campground. The leaves are not out yet on the trees, but it is still very pretty.







Here are some tulips blooming near the office. There are flowers everywhere.








These tuplips are beside the driveway coming into the park.

This is part of the barn. It pre-dates the Civil War and was used as a field hospital during the war. It is a very interesting design, called a "bank barn", introduced by German immigrants.

Time to Go

I had to go down to the dock to get my crab trap out of the water for the last time on Tuesday afternoon. The view from the dock was wonderful, all reds and oranges from the leaves changing. I had to go back home to get my camera. This first photo, in case you have never seen one, is of my crab trap sitting on the dock. It is so sad to think there will be no more crabs until next year!

This next photo is taken over by the employee parking lot down by Robinson's
Creek. The dock you see there is on the other side of the creek. My friend Lynn and I drove around for about an hour in the golf cart taking pictures of the entire place.


I didn't expect it to be so busy here this time of year. We had two Halloween weekends, with tons of campers coming for the "Haunted Hayrides" on Saturday nights. On the last weekend before Halloween, there was a costume contest. All the kids and a lot of the adults were in cotume all day. One cute little boy about 5 years old had on a power ranger costume with padding in it to make him look like he had big muscles. And one pregnant woman was dressed as an oven, and her hubby had on a chef hat! How cute is that?

Last weekend the town of Urbanna had their 49th annual Oyster Festival. We had 705 arrivals in two days. We were hopping busy but it was not really that bad. All of the us who work here were really amazed at how smoothly it went for us. The festival lasts two days. They had about 90,000 people there for the event.

Rebecca came up to visit us on Sunday, and we went out to eat with our co-workers that night. There were about 12 of us in all, and we laughed all evening. Then, we did it again on Monday night before Rebecca went home. Two of the couples we worked with left on Tuesday morning. Gary and Faye went to Unicoi State Park in Georgia, and Liz and Russ went to Ft. Worth, Texas to work at Cowtown RV Park for the winter. Jim and I will be leaving this coming Tuesday to join Gary and Faye at Unicoi. We worked there last winter and loved it there. It is about 10 miles from Jim's parents house. I'll be there in time to cook Thanksgiving dinner for them. We'll be back here on the river next season, though. Working here has been really fun.

One More Hibiscus

I don't know what I will do with my time when the flowers wither for the season. Maybe the trees will turn to a beautiful hue here, and give me something else to photograph. In the meantime, this hibiscus continues to enchant me every time I pass by. This particular blossom is larger than a dinner plate. The front is gorgeous, but I tend to look at flowers from a different angle. Every line of it is so graceful, so elegant. And look at those little green spikes on the stem! Ok, next time I will show you the dock here at the campground.

What Did I Wish For?

While I was out riding around the campground looking for a pink rose I had seen earlier in the week, I found this lovely flower instead. It was supporting itself in the rosebush. If I had not been looking for the rose, I would have missed this little treasure.

The existence of this little flower reminds me of the lifestyle my husband and I have made for ourselves. We have chosen to support ourselves by working in the campgrounds we want to visit, having been drawn there by the beauty of the surrounding area. We get a chance to stay longer, as if putting down roots if just for a little while, and explore an area more closely than if we were only able to stay for a week or two.

While we are there, we have the time to search for the everyday, the places where the locals eat, the sights they go to see, and the things they do for fun. And if what we find while we are looking is not exactly what we were looking for, the we change what we are looking for. You never know what treasure you may find just because you look for something else.

When I went to the creek to check my crab pot this afternoon, I took my camera along for the ride. This pink hibiscus was blooming at one of the permanent campsites. I love the way these flowers look from the back, so elegant and graceful.

Flowers are my my favorite photography subject, but I also take a lot of pictures of clouds and bugs. When I came home for lunch today, there was a praying mantis on my front door. I took a few shots of it, but none of them were good enough to put in my "keepers" file. Maybe he will pose for me again tomorrow.