It’s not coming together yet

I have finally gotten a veritable buttload of pics to post, but unfortunately, cannot do so just yet. Between work and student schedules, various tasks around the house and in the office, and sinuses that are wreaking havoc, I can’t sit down long enough to do a post justice, much less a couple or three of them.

I know what you’re saying: “Jeez, Al, work from a schedule! Set aside key times during the week devoted to maintaining your website and such commitments, and stick to it! Duryay!” Fine – easy for you to say. But my schedule bounces around from week to week, plus of course I can’t dictate when my sinuses will decide to lock my head down in a vise, and all that, so put a sock in it. The bouncing schedule, at least, will be taken care of soon enough, one way or another.

In the meantime, I will slam out some quickie posts just to show I’m not dead – unless of course I’ve written an artificial intelligence program to automate my postings, with access to the stock photo folders, and have at some time in the past died from a decongestant overdose. But you know that hasn’t happened, because no robot could write anything with this much panache – as cool and sexy as robots are. Man, robots could make our lives so much better, if only we’d let them.

Anyway, here’s a mantis from yesterday. While none of the egg cases I got this year seemed to have hatched, nonetheless there are several mantids in the immediate area. I find it interesting that, in this ridiculously hot and dry weather, I can summon them with a misting bottle: hit key areas with a heavy coating, and if there’s a mantis around, it’ll come up to the upper leaves to get a drink. This one was quite pleased with my actions, and thus posed readily with a nice string of droplets along its antennae, and I was able to get them and the eyes in the same plane of focus.

Chinese mantis Tenodera sinensis with water drops from misting bottle
More will be along before too long, I promise. And if you can’t trust the word of a sentient computer program, what can you trust?