Summer has finally arrived here in Cowland. We’re seeing consistently dry, hot weather now and you can see that people out and about are in much happier spirits. Summer is only about a month late.

I’ve been busy trying to stay out of trouble.

So far I’ve succeeded.

Our annual summer party rainfest (it has rained every year except for one that we’ve had the party) went off successfully again — no injuries, one broken fence gate, some assaulted frogs, and 2 overfed dogs.

I’ve been schooled and am schooling.

The latest person to school me was Rudy. I was refreshingly pleased to be given a few insights into his political thought processes. He argued some political points with me on facebook recently, but did so with intelligence and practicality. He’s someone that has made his own political decisions through reason and research rather than as a crowd-following Lemming.

I’m schooling myself in photography, as many of you know. It’s my newest hobby and I’m working my way through a stack of books, from visual composition, to using Adobe Lightroom. Playing with off-camera flash is the coolest thing I’ve come across in a very long time. It’s actually what’s keeping me away from this blog the most. Fragileheart has patiently volunteered her time to a couple of photosessions for me to work on my lighting.

Here’s an example of what off-camera flash can do for you. Take for example a painting that was created with heavy brush strokes or a palate knife. The surface of a painting like this is as important as the image itself. The strokes convey texture, emotion, and movement to the underlying image.

Straight-on, or flat, lighting produces this:

Lighting from the side produces this:

The trade-off (isn’t life full of these) is that the more texture you show, the less saturated your colours become. The trick is finding the right lighting ratio and angles to strike a good balance between colour saturation and texture and thereby do some justice to a piece that will still be best viewed live.

Reading through this book took some effort. The writing is simple and lacking in obvious metaphor. I became bored just past the halfway mark.

Perseverance paid off, however. No, the writing did not become more colourful, nor did the plot become more intriguing. In fact, the reason that this book has satisfied so many millions of people is because of the simplicity of the truths that it presents.

The book shows that life is about the journey — and true satisfaction in life is about a single-minded journey to achieve that which we feel calling out from our deepest recesses.

Everything falls into place along this path. Be it good or bad we learn from it all and step forward towards our goals. In the end, does it matter that what we desired was in front of us from the beginning?

The Alchemist is an allegorical story of wisdom. Most of us will lie on our deathbeds before we ultimately realize or understand what Coelho tries to show us in this simple tale.

Paulo Coelho is on Twitter here and has over 60,000 followers.

TroubleMaker

Remember back in 2007, when we had my wife’s great aunt and her friend over from Romania for a visit? We couldn’t get rid of them fast enough because of the fighting between them.

So, in a moment of weakness, we decided to invite TroubleMaker (TM) back alone for a visit.

She arrived here after not having slept for 36 hours (combined travel and pre-travel insomniac excitement time). Nausea prevented her from eating well for the first day. While throwing up into the toilet during day 2, her lower denture fell in and then she accidentally flushed it.

“Can you get it back?” she asked.

I pointed to our septic tank. “See those green plastic covers in the ground over there?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“That’s where it is now.”

We took her to a denturist nearby. $1600 later and she now has 2 new full dentures (upper and lower). The previous lower denture cost  50 Euros (which we explained to the denturist as he looked at her old upper denture in disbelief).

The first three or four days with the new dentures was new-found torture for The Girl and me as the usual denture sores developed and TM was still not able to eat properly.

After a denture adjustment or two, TM was able to eat decently again. More importantly, she was able to take her “nerve” pill and keep it down. That wonder pill, the “nerve” pill, has almost transformed her into a normal woman. Almost…but definitely enough for us to enjoy life again.

She’s here until the end of July.

I hope to also be.

The Girl needed a root canal on a lower left molar and so I was voluntold to do it.

I’ve had some previous experience doing dental work in her mouth. We’ve come a long way since those early days.

She still needs nitrous, but is now ok without oral tranquilizers and we don’t yell at each other as much. In fact there were no raised voices yesterday.

The procedure went well. I had to numb the crap out of the tooth because it was undergoing an irreversible pulpitis.

We went out for dinner afterwards to celebrate a job well done.

Because her tongue, cheek, and lip were still numb on the left side, she tried to do all of her chewing on the right so that she wouldn’t accidently chomp down on her tongue or cheek on the left without realizing.

Instead she chomped down on her tongue on the right and definitely realized. That’s a pretty ugly hematoma that has developed.

She’s not in too much discomfort at the moment. Although I do sympathize with her, my happiness at coming through the whole experience unharmed, myself, is something that money can never buy.

The usual suspect.

My annual summer bloggin’ slow-down is currently in full effect. You might see some stuff on here every now and then but you’ll definitely see more stuff from me on Twitter or Flickr because those are places that I can hit and run.

Summer is just too short here in iglooland to spend it typing my crazy life’s details. Don’t worry, I’ll be back. I always return.

Talk to you soon (I hope). I’ve gotta go and chase another visitor away…