Travels with my camera

I don't know where the time is going, but I have been so busy, I haven't had time to do this, or not enough time when it was convenient to do it anyway. I won't even attempt to do every day for the last six days, too much has been going on. Trouble is I have been out a lot, just the way I like it, but then I get all agitated because nothing is being done here, I've done no cleaning, the grass hasn't been done for two weeks, which isn't a disaster because its not grown very much due to the heat, but now we have had a fair bit of rain, has started springing up again.

I suppose I lose a little of the enthusiasm for doing this as it's a duplication in a lot of cases, because much of what has been going on I have posted about on the bird forum.

I've been enjoying the heat, I rarely find it unbearable, and it's lovely to be sitting around at night with just t-shirt and joggers or even shorts on, I have 7 months of sitting in here with the central heating on full blast, and wearing two sweatshirts, thermal socks and slippers thanks! The last few days since the horrendous storm on Tuesday teatime though, its been fairly warm, but it's very grey and looking like rain virtually all the time. There is quite a cool breeze got up now too up by my aviary, and I will need to put a sweatshirt on tonight I think. That pisses me off slightly when I see Wimbledon on and it's brilliant sunshine on that side of the country.

Okay then, just a quick summary of what I have done this week. Sunday I went to my favourite stretch of river and took a couple of photos from a different aspect to normal, Emma had her swim so was happy. I was slightly peeved though to find that the place I normally go (and which I was looking forward to sitting on my rock with my feet in the river) had been taken over by two families with kids all in the water swimming. How dare they! It's my place. I never see anyone there normally.

Monday I went to my friends to try and help her set up her wireless broadband, but had no luck again. She has a smallholding, and we had a nice walk down to the river there in one of her fields, so Emma was happy again! Saw a few dragonflies down there. Made me a bit sad, because I used to live there too, we had the next field along, and I used to spend a lot of the summer sat down there with the dogs.

Tuesday I went to my friend Pats, and we took the dogs down The Dingles again, got a few more pictures of - guess what - Emma in the river!

Wednesday back to Irene's to have another go at the wireless broadband, armed with some new info from some great people on the digitalspy forum I belong to. In the end though, this didn't work either but it did give us something to work with, the problem was she wasn't getting an IP address, so we resorted to phoning Orange again, and the problem was the Wireless adapter. We uninstalled and re-installed several times, and then, hallelujah it worked! It's nice to know it doesn't just happen to me then, I can never get things to work either. But at last she is set up and running with her laptop. After that we popped into Lampeter and then took Emma down the river again!

I just bought from Irene an HPPhotosmart which is the little printers that you can print photos off either direct from your memory card, your camera or pc. It's bloody brilliant, am thrilled with it, and have been printing up lots of photos, it will mean I can send some to mum, without the hassle of connecting up my Epson, and then finding the ink has dried up normally, and having to head clean the sodding thing about 20 times! The print size is 6x4 and 100 sheets of photo paper is only £6.99.

Today I've been into Carmarthen, left Emma at home, as it was a mega shopping trip and too hot for her to sit in the car, so unfortunately, she isn't going to get a walk today, however, she doesn't seem too bothered. I just don't have time. I came back and put the guinea pigs out in the garden and then cleaned out the cage, and finally sat down for the first time today at 5.30 to do this.

I went to the Citroen dealer about my radio/cassette needing recoding. They don't do it there, it means taking or sending it to Swansea! Not pleased. So I ended up buying a facia panel from them for £13 (a bit different from Halfords at £29.99 eh??? - no wonder they say "free fitting" ) and I may buy a cd player from Argos for £49.99, which works out at half the price I was paying for the Halfords set up. The guy in the Citroen dealers said it's a simple plug in job with all modern players now, it will simply mean unplugging mine and plugging in a new one. Yeah right, but my mechanic will probably only charge me about a tenner. That's the good news. The even better news is that the Citroen dealer bloke told me to leave the radio cassette that needs the code switched on for an hour, which it doesn't say in the hand book. So I left it on when I got home, went to check, and it then accepted the sodding code! So that's now working again. I may take the facia panel back for a refund actually and stick to what I was going to do in the first place, plugging in my personal stereo, perfectly good enough for the amount of times I fancy playing any music in the car.

Okay, that's about it, but I must mention a few things.

Trying to catch the lovebird, with no success, I have today put cards and a photo in the two local shops, and yesterday put one in the vets and mentioned it to the pet shop in the next village. If it is someone's pet, there's just a chance if it recognises them, it may come down to them, it certainly won't come anywhere near me! This is day six now, cheeky little git it is too.

The arrival of my ultra sound Cat scarer today, bought from eBay on Tuesday, great service, just hope it works, as I'm sick of finding dead things in my garden, like a mole, a housesparrow, bit of a greenfinch, feathers which were probably once a blue tit, and possibly the demise of the two jackdaws that I have had to take to the vets to be put to sleep.

Tomorrow will have to be an at home day and get on with things, the house is filthy, must hoover at least, it's been too hot really though. Oh and I bought a roll of shed roofing felt - my bird aviary shed is leaking like a sieve all along one side, the woodchip was soaking after the storm the other night, its pissing in there just where the electric goes in too for their night light so it's got to be done, I would never forgive myself if it sparked and started a fire. The consequences don't bear thinking about. So that's going to be fun crawling about up there, I can't hardly lift the roll, let alone fix and cut it, I may have to put an advert out for someone to come and do it for me I think.

No sign of my Snuffles. I passed two squashed hogs in the road on the way to Carmarthen today. There is one on the road just as you leave the village here, less than a quarter of a mile up the road, please god don't let it be him. :( I stopped on the way home and picked up one that was nearer to Carmarthen. It was an absolutely huge hog. Unfortunately, it had been there a while and was full of maggots, not a pleasant sight at all. I put it under a bush on the verge. The thing that gets me is that poor thing was inches, I mean like two inches from the kerb. Now they don't bounce off cars I'm sure, so why was someone's car wheel that close to the kerb? I'm sure they are run over intentionally, just another thing that some saddos get their kicks from nowadays. I wonder too, how many hundreds of other cars and drivers had been past that poor creature since it died there, and not cared a damn about it. Is there something wrong with me? Why do I feel the need to remove things from the road before they are flattened under a car wheel (this one was still whole, because it was so near the kerb, nobody needed to drive over it, apart from the person who hit it in the first place. )I have picked up all sorts of road kills before now, I must be weird, but I think it's awful to just leave things laying there like that, apart from the fact that it may mean the death of something else which will come to feed on it. Oh well, I can only do my bit I suppose, and get the funny looks from passing vehicles, they all think I'm mad. If it weren't for me doing that though the little sick Tawny Owl I found earlier in the year would have died.

Well that's gonna have to be it now, time to do the pet's teas and mine, I'm starving, didn't have time for any lunch today, just ate an apple on my way home in the car, and then a carrot when I was unpacking the shopping! I've got salad tonight for a change, lol!