anyone else getting xanga subscription digests from feb/march 2005???
in the past 2 days i’ve got one from Feb 25, 2005…one from feb 26,
2005 and one from March 6, 2005… very odd…..i wonder if they’ve
been lost in cyber space all this time or if xanga is having some sort
of breakdown.

i found a poor little kingfisher lying on the ground on it’s back yesterday morning….it’s the first time i’ve ever seen one…and it’s got to be one of the prettiest little birds i’ve ever seen…….it must have ran into the windows and knocked itself out…it was still alive…..a construction guy picked it up and gave it a toss to see if it could fly, and it did, but it ran smack into the side of the building again and fell to the ground….so they put it down on a grassy hill at the bottom of the lake here at work…….i watched from my office to see if it ever flew off….and it didn’t so i thought i’d go down and see if it were ok….or if it were even still there, and if it was injured, i’d put it in a box and call the RSPB to come rescue it….so i went down there and sure enough it was still in the exact same spot, so i picked it up to see if it appeared to have any broken bones…..i think maybe it was still just stunned….so i took it away from any buildings and off of the grassy hill where it would have been an easy target for the heron on the lake….and i held it out and it actually flew….it flew into some bushes….so hopefully it’s ok….i had a look for it this morning to see if it was still around and saw no site of it…so hopefully that’s a good thing!   i also found the teenie tiniest little salamander on the sidewalk this morning on my way in to work….it was not even an inch long….so i put it back in the grass, before someone either stepped on it or ran over it on their bike……….i guess it’s been a bit of a nature week for me……what a shame i didn’t have my camera on either occassion……my back isn’t quite strong enough to lug the camera around with me all the time like i used to……perhaps after a few more weeks of physio and i’ll be able to at least start carrying the compact again…..it was raining this morning anyways…
oh, and here’s my latest piece….

i took this week off of work as  holiday to give my brain a bit of
a rest and to jumpstart my creativity, since it was a bit worn
out…..so i’ve got a brand new piece i just finished last night…i
hope you enjoy…

ok! so who has 20 minutes or so with nothing else to do at all???????? you?? well if you do…i have just recently returned from a lovely week on the north sea.  We went up to whitby for a week and rented a nice little cottage….Whitby is on the north east coast of england and is situated near the north yorkshire moors. It’s a very old fishing town and is steeped in history and legend, everything from pirates to vampires….yes whitby is the location where bram stoker’s dracula landed when their ship mysteriously wrecked on the shore…just below the east cliff and the fabulous whitby abbey.  anyways…while on holiday i took a very very large number of photographs (638 in total) and i have finally finished processing and shrinking them all, and I have chosen (a mere) 200 and put them into a public yahoo folder where you may now watch a slideshow of them, if you’d like!  the slideshow probably takes around 15 minutes to watch from start to finish…but i think you have the option of making it go faster if you’d like! anyways…if you’ve got the time to spare, feel free to check out the photos here

just a quick update, since i haven’t in a while! i’m finally back to work again after my surgery…half days for the time being, but i’ll be back up to full days before long! and besides, i’m going to the sea in a week anyways…so that will make things even better! i am really looking forward to some time away..and there is nothing i love more than a nice trip to the sea! i’ve been pretty busy otherwise…cera starts secondary school in a little more than a month, and there is lots that needs done before then…school uniform stuff to get and all that other fun stuff…although i swear…the school uniform is going to put me in the poor house…we’ve had to spend £90.00 already just on the P.E. clothes! I haven’t even started on the regular uniform yet…nor have I bought all the stuff she needs for P.E. yet either…I still need to get her some shin guards, a swim suit, a mouth guard and some track suit pants (because the ones they were selling were long enough to fit my husband who’s 6’1″ !!!)  I’ve bought all the shirts a bit big though, because who can afford to buy all that every year??!! but most of the P.E. clothes have the school’s logo embroidered on them so we have to buy them from the school…..even the socks!! at least I can get away with buying most of her regular uniform at any ol’ shop…black pants, white blouses..etc…the only thing that has to be bought from the school in that reguard is the sweater and the tie. (and polo shirts, but they can only wear them in july, so no point in spending the money now!)

here is a new piece that i’ve created for a manipulation duel over at neosynthesis.  the object of a duel is that 2 people join in a challenge and you start off with a source image. the first person must make something out of the source..then the second person takes something from your image and makes a new image from it….you go back and forth taking something from each other’s piece until you’ve reached the number of pieces that have been agreed upon beforehand… i find the duels to be a great source for building creativity…it really challenges you to work on images that you wouldn’t normally work on..and perhaps even to learn some new techniques along the way….you can see the duel here if you’d like to see how it works…it’s still in it’s early stages, but we’re going pretty fast, so it will not be long before we reach our 20 piece mark!

anyways…here’s the first piece:

“The beginning”
©Tracy Adams

a relatively new piece that i’ve completed..

“Blue moon rising”
© Tracy Adams 2006

Prints Available

hey! guess what?! i won first place in that surreal competition over at attemptestock’s site!
that’s the first time i’ve won any sort of competition in years and years! so i’m pretty excited!

ok..you know why i
don’t update very regularly??? because i like to use netscape as my
browser…and darn it if it won’t let me add photos because xanga says
that it’s outdated. so that means i have to open up firefox….i
know..that’s just plain laziness…but i like a trouble free life…and
i always forget about that whole business, otherwise i’d just open
firefox in the first place….but nooooo..i have to wait until i’ve
typed out a blog before remembering that xanga doesn’t like netscape.

in other news…my zoom lens broke last week
and that was my favourite! i guess i had better start saving my pennies
up….good thing that I will be returning to work in a few weeks! 
Sea of dreams has made it into the shortlist of entries for the surreal
competition. Hopefully it won’t be long until we know who has
won!  in the meanwhile, here is another piece that i did, using
one of attemptestock’s figures!  she always has such nice poses!

“Home Schooled”
©Tracy Adams 2006
Prints Available