Diamond tipped saw blade required

A 6 picture quiz to see how well Miles City Winter House visitors notice and remember where various little statues reside.

I call this one ‘The Food Chain’ (the spider was a later addition, to give the fish some joy):

This one is the dirty, but wise, bald guy:

These folk recently immigrated from Peru:

This one is hard:

This one is easy:

And this one is just scary:

I’ll give away the mystery to that last photo.   I lost control of the macro lens attached camera for a minute, resulting in a Mike selfie, or maybe it should be called a eye-fie.

We did some cave maintenance, with Scott leading the charge:

Helen did the dusting, the dogs did the sniffing and lounging:

And Dad schooled they young’uns on how to monopolize. 

Did you know the Monopoly game was originally invented to illustrate the negative aspects of monopolies?   This guy didn’t believe me either:

Helen gave Dad hair cutting a shot, but ended up calling in Mom for a rescue:

And Shiana pleaded for a rescue from Mom’s retaliatory ice down the back war, but as a non-involved photo journalist, I kept my distance:   

A few more photos and a Mike Rap video on the July 8 page here (a nifty Google auto-generated Story):

https://plus.google.com/+BruceWinter/stories/bfc2bb6d-2297-3f65-8457-fd45f429bb9c1475195a3d8

Back in Utah, we had a short visit from a long haired Noah.  He and Boris exchanged some music ideas:

Irena is doing well, being proactive with a variety of tricks to keep her cancer in remission:

As you can see in this shot, pool season is in full swing:

We had a pool party last week with Helen’s EEG lab crew:

Kids can be soooo photogenic:

Adults vary widely in their photogenic-ticity:

Super Dog kept an eye on everyone:

More party photos here:  https://plus.google.com/photos/+BruceWinter/albums/6037847174772452305

One of Helen’s former residence, now an attending and a neighbor, got married last weekend:

Wedding and reception was at a fancy and scenic hotel up at Park City:

Last week we had a visit from a vacationing CA family.   This is what I call a ‘photo cube’, as it requires 3 cameras:

This was a race to see if boy or shadow got to the water first … ended in a tie:

It was an interesting visit.   The Dad is a networking guru, having worked on Internet2 and he invented a core algorithm (LEDBAT) used by Apple and in BitTorrenting, accounting for about 15% of all internet traffic!   More photos from that visit here:

   https://plus.google.com/photos/+BruceWinter/albums/6041164370149410945

I finally got my new ceiling fan working.   Turned out they forgot to plug in an internal connector at the factory.  Carrying a 7’ fan up and down a  ladder to a 12’+ ceiling (3 times!) is a trick:

This weekend’s project was to install cement pavers the bottom of the deck steps:

After carefully cultivating grass there for 2 years, I decided that cement might be a bit more resilient.   What I didn’t take into account was how strong cement pavers are and how many saw cuts would be required.   Note the look of despair here:

After consulting the wisdom of the Internet, I concluded a 6” abrasive blade on a battery powered skill saw was not going to cut it, so I bought a expensive ($70) 10” diamond tipped blade for my cheap ($100) table saw, and after much dust, called it a victory:

Finally, only one bug marched into my macro lens this month:

This guy can curl up to the size of a pea with a shell as hard as a rock:

If he ever needed back surgery, I could accommodate, aided by my diamond tipped saw blade!

Bruce

 

Flying Gargoyles trapped on Venus

Morning doves:   “What the heck are those crazy bipeds up to now?”  (fyi, doves don’t swear)

Biped:  “Feeding insects to my Venus Fly Trap”

The tricky part is that flies are not often interested in being digested by a plant.  So we attracted them with stinky wet cat food:

But flies seemed to have been trained in anti-trap tactics:

Like avoiding the 6 trigger hairs on the inside of the trap.  The outside makes for a great fly sunbathing perch:

So the caring plant mother took a more aggressive approach, which involved raw meat and a fly swatter:

And a pair of tweezers

And the plant said nummy:

I discovered that other insects do not attend the same survival classes that flies do.  This one walked from my spoon right into the belly of the beast, guess he didn’t like my spoon:

Is amazing how fast it closes … < 1/2 second:

This is my attempt at using the sun as an x-ray machine, looking for the insect carcass inside the closed trap.  Didn’t work very well, probably also need x-ray glasses:

Contrary to the above photos, we have not become evil insect killers.   I normally practice shoot-and-release.  This guy has an interesting pair of eyes and nostrils … not sure which are which:

And this guy:

Loves to play with these yellow roses sexual organs:

Switching to something fatter and happier:

I installed some garden statues in those new spots I opened up with last month’s landscaping.    Helen picked the above fat guy … I went for a more traditional Buddha.  He is the one on the right:

And we both agreed on a couple of gargoyles:

Finally, I couldn’t resist a Dragon.   I recently watch the 2nd Hobbit movie, so I gave our dragon his own Arkenstone (actually, it is the centerpiece from Nick and Chloe’s wedding, but don’t tell the dragon, he thinks he is Smog):

I installed some outdoor LED lights, so our new inhabitants now light up for a few hours after sunset:

If you look closely in the above photo, you will see a ghost dog running by the pool.   He sometimes likes to practice ghost mode playing with a LED flashing cat toy.

 

The cat is terrified by it, but doggy loves it!

Bruce