Captain Enterprises

…. got a call this afternoon to pick up more wheel weights (ww’s)! A friend calls my truck Snowflake, so for now, that will be her name. Well, Snowflake has had quite a work-out these past few days, but is no worse for wear! Pictured below is about 771 pounds of ww’s. I am practically all out of trays, and I have to schedule a pickup soon for range lead. So, I have to get cracking and start the sorting operation – sooner, rather than later!

Shown below is what I fetched this past Wednesday, 4/23  (one trip in the morning, and another in the afternoon) ….  approximately 2083 pounds of wheel weights.  For the 2nd trip, I christened my new 2014 Silverado to haul about 1481 pounds – which was a breeze for the truck to handle. I was pleasantly surprised at how well the truck drove with this weight. Now I will have to sort through all of the trays and separate out the actual lead weights (clipons and stickons) from the steel and zinc wheel weights, in addition to the junk thrown in like valve stems, lug nuts, broken sockets, etc. A woman’s work is ne’er done!

As an aside, I must compliment Maritime Motors of Fairfield for their friendliness and professionalism. My salesman (Chris) was super and I have the honor of being his first customer to buy a truck. When I went to the dealership, Chris had been there for only 2 weeks (but has been in the business of selling cars for 20 years)! Everyone at Maritime treated me as a valued customer and made the process of buying a new vehicle a breeze. So, if you are ever in the market for a new or used vehicle,  I recommend Maritime Motors highly. A nice family run business. You may wonder how I decided upon going to Maritime. To find out, here’s the story .

And while I am at it, I did write a review of this dealership and it got posted. To read all about it, here’s the review website, you’ll have to scroll down to find mine (dated March 22, 2014) and titled:  Excellent to buy from and have service performed!!

Please click on the picture to read a very moving story that was featured in the Connecticut Post on March 1, 2014.

We had a pancake supper Shrove Tuesday at Christ Episcopal Church and everyone who attended had a good time.  I don’t think anyone walked away hungry.

Please see some pictures under the Shrove Tuesday tab located above or simply  <click here to see the pictures>.

… to the Sunset and Cloud Page. Did some more fiddling with the watermarks as well. Time to get some sleep; was up until 4:00AM yesterday working on the blog – but I have an early rise “tomorrow”….. so off to slumber-land I go!

…. at 4:35AM EST. I am in the process of re-watermarking all the photos on this site with a tiled design. And I will be adding more pictures to the “Sunset and Clouds Photo” page as well. All photos uploaded, but will be swapping them out. There are some glitches with the WordPress software that I have unearthed. I seem to have a knack for unearthing stuff; for 2 other websites that I had managed, there were glitches with the editors that were used for updating (2 different editors, at that!). Ah, a woman’s work is ne’er done!

Time to get some ZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzz’s. Stay tuned…………

I changed the watermark on MiscToo… she did not mind the water too much! My previous watermarking program I had for several years now, stopped working a few weeks ago (I don’t have a clue as to what happened with it).  I downloaded the latest free version, but paid for the license so as not to have their credit appear on my pictures. I also downloaded another watermarking program from uMark, (and paid for the license as well).  I recommend buying the license so that you can make full use of the program and have only your watermark appear. I have been using uMark exclusively because the program is very robust, easy to use, and has nice features. Also, uMark emails newsletters with some great watermarking tips. And lastly, and most importantly, uMark has excellent email support. I recommend this program highly!

You can click on the pictures in this post and other pages, and they should expand out to nearly full size on your screen, to better see the watermarks. The footer picture at the bottom of the page, does not expand for some reason. Perhaps it is a function of the footer widget.

If you haven’t discovered already, simply click on the underlined blue words (links) above to see MiscToo, and the 2 watermarking websites.

Most of the photos on the clouds and sunset page were watermarked using TSR, from a few years ago. The banner was done recently using uMark.

Well, that’s all for tonight!

…. I have been experimenting with stuff! Added a few widgets (calendar, follow me, counter, etc). Even MiscToo is getting her claim to fame (or is it claw?). She does not yet know it, but she Too is now a widget at the bottom of the page. I changed the background color to a shade of blue of my own choosing. I tweaked the menu name to show: Sunset and Cloud Photos. From my travels around WordPress, I understand there is no restrictions to the number of pages. We shall see! Right now, I have: HOME, ACCORDION MEMORIES, SUNSET AND CLOUD PHOTOS, and ABOUT. This will all most likely change as I travel about the many, upon many, WordPress tutorials. 

In regard to the MiscToo widget. She initially got chopped off on the right. So, I changed the canvas size in an attempt to not have her face chopped. Not! Then in my travels, I found some WordPress information on a forum in regard to this. I compressed the information in my brain to come out with a simple explanation for myself: My picture was too big for the size of the sidebar. So I made it of such size as to fit into the space without chopping. Sometimes you got to put 2 and 2 together, and keep it simple! I glean that the sidebar width is 250 px so I re-sized my image to be 158 px  (wide) by 249 px (tall). 

Stay tuned…

Well, this storm for my area was not as bad as predicted, in regard to accumulation. The winds, however, are 20-33 mph, and the temperature 14 degrees (may be even colder). Not sure about the wind chill, but when snow blowing the driveway, it was cold. Plus I got peppered with a lot of snow particles with the wind whipping all around. I had to abandon wearing my glasses since I could not see through them and I was afraid I’d run into something, notably my vehicle in the driveway. As an aside, my snow blower started right up, it was recently serviced; and I got some great starting tips from the service man. Sears has a great warranty program – and a discount on service – and they travel to your location. Coool beans!

Anywhoo, back to my story. After I did my house, I did the neighbor’s 2 sidewalks (he is on the corner), and then I did the driveway and sidewalk of the neighbor next to him. Upon finishing the snow blowing, I shoveled off my front porch. My postman arrived at the same time and was astonished to see icicles on my eyebrows. A first for him (and I think he meant he’d never seen anyone with icicles on their eyebrows). So, I decided to capture the moment before they melted completely. I went inside the house to retrieve my Nikon D90 from its hiding place out of reach of MiscToo’s paws, and took some pictures. Then I used my old Pantech cell phone to get the last views.

The heat of the house does have a way of meltin’ the icicles. I look like a deer stunned in the headlights in some of my self-portraits, 2 of which are below:

And on this day, back in 1978, I bought my house. Hard to believe, 36 years ago!

….. and by treats, I mean for me, I lost 1.5 pounds. I was holding steady on the 24th and 25th, and expecting today (26th) that the scale would screech at me (or is it the other way around)? Now my guilt for having eaten Hershey Kisses, holiday home-baked cookies and other delights, has vanished (just like the 1.5 pounds)! Life is good!