Mmmm... eels!

Well, whatever this bird is, it seemed to like eating eels. If you click on the above picture, you can get a slighter larger image and should be able to see the eel wrapped around its beak.

Young Great Blue Heron?

It's a foggy morning and this little guy is doing some fishing outside my window. I'm pretty sure it's a young great blue heron. It seemed a little big to be an immature egret.

Zen Cereal

About a month ago someone had told me there was a Zen cereal, but I had to see it to believe it.

What is the flavor of Zen? No longer do you have to ponder such a question during hours of meditation. Zen is apparently cranberry and ginger.

The only question that remains is do you achieve enlightenment by eating it?

New bag

I recently added a new piece of equipment to my dojo. The bag weighs about 70 pounds and supposedly has an extra soft core, but it seems pretty hard when I kick it. Maybe it just needs to be broken in (or I need to strengthen my feet and legs). Hopefully this will be useful to help improve my kicks. The only drawback is hitting the bag makes a fairly loud slapping noise, so I need to use it at times during the day when it is less likely to disturb the neighbors.

Ho Hum

This is something I had never seen before - a hummingbird perched with its wings closed. It looks kinda odd without the wings constantly flapping. Every time I tried to take a picture of it flying, it would land before I could snap the picture.

Weird Camera Effect

While in New Hampshire a few weeks ago, the night sky was incredibly clear, so I was goofing around with taking pictures of stars using my camera's ability to take long exposures. For this picture, I thought I had done a 20 second exposure when in fact it was a 30 second exposure. So, I grab the camera while it was still taking a picture and got this wavy red light across the picture. It almost looks like the northern lights, so I decided to keep the picture. I think the red blur came from some lights in a nearby house that the camera must have gotten a short view of while I was moving it.

Not a Good Sign

After a 150 mile drive up to NH, I discovered that my new kayak's seat is removable. Somewhere on the side of the highway between Rhode Island and Wolfeboro New Hampshire is a Necky kayak seat.

Fortunately, there's a kayak shop in Wolfeboro and I was able to get a temporary replacement seat - one of those gel pads that is designed to go over a hard plastic seat.

[July 5th addendum]
On an brighter note, after I got home from my trip, I went back to the place where I bought my kayak and asked about buying a new seat. The woman who works there took down my name and said she'd call me back today to let me know the cost. When I got home tonight, there was a message on my answering machine. It turns out the company that makes the kayak (Necky) said this was considered a warranty repair, so they are shipping a new seat to me FREE OF CHARGE! Woohoo! What a great company!