Virginia Breeze

I  can’t believe the choices Wordpress gives us when importing a photo.  There are four choices.  And there is nothing between 300 pixels wide and 1020 pixels wide.

Does that make any sense to anybody?  Please let me know.  Aren’t photos in blogs usually around 450 to 550 pixels wide?  So why the giant gap?

So I am still at home and still have a cough but it’s getting better.  Veeerrry slowwwwly  getting better.  And so I sit here playing Lord Of The Rings: Online.   My character Breezee  (from Virginia Breeze!  Oh How sublime!) is now at level 24.  You start at level 1  and go to level 50.  And they have just come out with a new edition called Mines of Moria that will take you all the way to level 60.

As you work your way up other people in the game ask you to help out with their quests.  Because you offer them more protection as they try to slay these big, ugly orcs and devilish little goblins.

A guy asked me for help today and we went out to do a quest.  But we both were killed and ended up in this circle of rocks where you go when you die.  You decide at that point whether you want to try it again or just slink off and try something a little easier.

I was contemplating doing this when my partner started bringing these lightening bolts down on my head.   It was his idea of a joke.  Apparently he didn’t know that I have been holed up here during the holidays with this cough that is making me CRAZY.

So I turned around and wacked his head off with my awesome swords.  I have two of them.  One for each hand.  And then I walked away.  In the distance I could hear the wargs cheerfully having him for lunch.

Medicine doesn’t always come in a bottle.  Sometimes it just drops from the sky.

We are here for a little while and then we go!  Where do we go?  Everyone has their own ideas about the answer to this question.  But there seems to be a general consensus that it is a “far, far better place”.   And it’s really not too difficult to imagine that this is true after watching  the “news” for a few days.

It seems to me that the way we think about this  has a profound bearing on the way we live our lives.  So it makes sense to really take some time and come up with the best answer we can find.

Here are some people  you may have known who passed away in 2008.  Perhaps a few of them  impacted your life in some way.   Some of them made impressions on the lives of millions of people.  That’s a pretty amazing thing, isn’t it?

They will not be soon forgotten.

Thanks to David at David’s Musings for giving me the idea for this post.

Here is a lovely rendition of Canto Della Terra for the holiday season.  It is a warm gathering of thousands of appreciative fans who stand and applaud from the very beginning.  This is what is so positive about humanity.  It raises my estimate of our humble status every time I see something like this.

And they really raise the roof at around 3:08 in this performance.  Sarah Brightman shows that she can really belt it out when required.

Here it is on another night done in High Def.  A different mood too perhaps.  But still wonderful.

Kenny Chesney

Play Jingle Bells

04-jingle-bells

We are going to go over to the Lewis Ginter Botanical Gardens and view their Christmas display again this year.  The photos I took last year seem to be very popular and they do something different every year.  So we tried to get in the first night it was open but the parking lot was full and they were diverting traffic out into the darkness.  I didn’t stick around to follow the trail.

Apparently I’m still not completely cured where crowds are concerned.  In any case here are some photos from last year’s exhibit.  I haven’t posted these before (or I don’t remember doing so…take your pick).  In fact I never really looked at them (or don’t remember etc…).  They needed some light and some cropping.

And here they are.

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