Heron Dance...

Another photo safari up to the bird refuge. We didn't see quite the diversity of birds this time, and the light and sky was not as great for pictures as it was the week before. We did see quite a few Great Blue Herons!

This weeks weird amusement...

So a weird bit of amusement from my world, maybe no one else will find this funny, but me being easily amused, I did. Back in December I accidentally joined a dating site, OKCupid. I know, how do you accidentally join a dating site? In my case it was because of spiders. I had a spider boldy run out from behind a canister on my kitchen counter. He ran right at me, taunting me, and so, I squished it. That was my third such encounter I had with a spider in my home that week. I posted something about my spider invasion on facebook and a friend suggested that perhaps the spider was my totem animal, because spiders are natures artists, the weavers of amazing web tapestries, and like a spider I am a creative person. I'm not at all fond of spiders, they creep me out, but am also not freaky about them. I often think they they are beautiful and fascinating, just so long as I know where they are and that 'where' is outside of my house. Inside spiders, well, they find themselves squished or sucked into the vacuum, not a demise fit for my sacred animal totem.

That got me curious what my animal totem should really be, so I searched for some online tests that would tell me. I tried about three tests, which of course gave different answers, so I don't really know the answer to that question. Then a funny thing happened. After taking one of the tests, a message popped up saying "You are now registered at OKCupid" Hmmm... My first thought was "How did that happen?" and my second one was "What the heck, I am single after all." and I continued clicking.

The site started asking me questions, which is typical for a dating site. Standard tell me about yourself questions, ethics questions. lifestyle questions, sex questions. The questions seemed to go on forever, after answering about 80 I started getting bored, began to wonder if they would ever end, found the way to click to browsing mode, and started to check out profiles... This is where you can read men's answers to the questions, so long as you had answered the same question. I kinda wondered how many questions there were. The first profile I clicked on had 200 and some odd questions answered. Then I saw a guy I knew... he'd answered about 800, which then spurned me to answer more so I could see his answers. It was as though I fell down the rabbit hole, getting hooked on reading the answers to questions, answering more questions so I could read more answers, and trying to figure out why OKCupid thinks we may match. Some of the questions were pretty strange, and likely insignificant, my favorite strange question, which I didn't not bother to answer "While in the middle of the best lovemaking of your life, if your lover asked you to squeal like a dolphin, would you?" Really??? I spent about a week of Christmas break playing this game, then came upon a guy who had answered 3000 questions, which is when I realized how deep the rabbit hole was and then decided I was wasting waaaay too much time, all for naught, so I deactivated my profile...

That was until February, when I had a 'break up' with a guy I was sporadically dating. (I think we need a word for what it is when you break up with someone you were never really actually with, but that is a subject for another time) I decided to reactivate my OKCupid account. This time I left it active, and at least I made a few real life connections, but what I find the most of are messages from scammers. Scammers meaning guys, usually from other states, who write you because they find your profile so terribly enthralling that that they will do most anything to be with you... Eventually, should you engage them I imagine there will be some bid for your credit card number, but more often than not their profiles disappear in a day or two.

The preponderance of scammers makes me cautious, so one of the things I often do is reverse image search a fellow's profile pictures. This has become a game in itself for me, seeing if the scammers pictures show up on 'beware of scammers' websites, or as facebook, or business pictures of fellows with different names in different states; poor guys who likely don't know that their images have been commandeered for nefarious reasons.

This gets me back to the purpose of this post... my weird amusement. Yesterday I image searched the photos from my suspect message of the day... and was amused with what I found, as the closest match to this fellow appears to be a 9 year old girl. I wonder if he has any idea what his 'image' really is? That he actually looks more like little girl than a man. Not sure why I find that so hilarious, but I do.... so at least I get a few laughs out of this odd internet dating experience.

Mother's Day Adventure

What you do on Mother's Day when you your kids have flown the coop?... I went up soaking at the hot springs, then went bird watching/photo safari-ing at the Bear River Bird Refuge with my birdy-nerdy friend April. I know I was just there a few weeks ago, but it was exciting today, because I just used my Christmas present from my mom to buy myself a new camera lens, a really cool 18-200mmm zoom lens, so for the first time ever I was able to get some decent bird pictures. I admit that the bird shots are all cropped, as even with my new baby lens I could not get as close as I wanted. I'm usually a purist, and prefer to take pictures that don't need editing, but my bird pictures really called for a little cropping to get rid of excess background and highlight the birds. Gotta love digital photography. I was pretty pleased with my new all purpose lens!

Big Brother is watching...

Now this is interesting... I checked my blog stats yesterday, and look and see who has looked at my blog... That's right, the Office of the Secretary of the Department of the Interior. Apparently, what ever they were querying for, my blog came up 11th in their search. I guess this means that Big Brother REALLY is watching... and I suppose I should develop some sort of conspiracy theory to explain why they were looking at my obscure little blog.

I'm not sure what they google searched for, as google no longer gives out this information for logged in members. Blog stats were more interesting when I could look at key words and see how people found me... I was often found by people wanting to know if maraschino cherry's caused cancer, or how to dress like an artist, or people interested in the octopus ride at he carnival. Now I can rarely see how I'm found... though despite my need to find a grand conspiracy theory to explain why the US government is looking at my blog, I suppose the most parsimonious explanation is that I was posting about the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge. I sure hope they enjoyed my pictures!