Virginia Breeze

And there is a lot of sunshine this morning pouring through our living room window as I sit here and try to figure out what needs to go in this post. One of my dearest blogging pals is having trouble leaving comments here. WP Spamfree is leaving her messages that don’t make any sense. If anybody else has had a problem with that please let me know! Use the contact page under the header near the right edge.

I forgot the cord that connects the camera to the computer so I will have to wait until I get back to Richmond to share some photos of the beach. It has been an interesting weekend. Apparently there is a fire burning out of control in the Dismal Swamp down near or below the North Carolina border. If the wind shifts just right you can look out over the water and see. . . practically nothing.

But thankfully a front recently came in and blew all the smoke away so this morning the sun IS shining brightly. The sound of the waves crashing on the beach is very relaxing. And the temperature is very comfortable. Not too hot and not to cold as Goldilocks used to say before she ran away with the bear.

That’s what happened right? Or was that Little Red Riding Hood? What a name for a girl! Gad. No wonder she ran away.

The weekend entertainment theme down here is Elvis. So there are many Elvi running around. None of them are particularly talented from what we can see. Well, maybe the ones that jumped out of the airplane and floated down to the shore line were talented.

But the ones that tried to sing were dismal sounding and blowing smoke when it came to carrying a tune. Most did not even try to sing. They just flipped a switch and lip synched.

There is really so much pretending that goes on at a beach town like this one. Pretend entertainment. Pretend construction. People who are pretending to be one thing or another.

The only thing that is real is the ocean and nature. The birds that skim the water and the fish that nibble at your toes when you venture out there. And the weather of course can be overwhelmingly real when it wants to be.

But the beach is mostly sand that has been sucked through a tube from the bottom of Rudee’s Inlet and then spread around by a bulldozer. I was out there about six this morning taking photos. And every time I do this a strange guy comes up to me and starts asking me if I know this person or that person. I am supposed to know apparently because I’m taking photos. This morning he asked me if you are allowed to walk out on the rocks. He knows perfectly well that you are not supposed to do it. There’s a sign ten feet away that makes the point. So I told him “No you are not supposed to walk out there” and he walked out there anyway with his bag of goodies.

I worked with people like this guy for many years so it’s not big deal playing games with him. But I mention it just because it illustrates what I am trying to suggest about this place. And when we got here yesterday and it was filled up with smoke it just seemed so appropriate.

Smoke and a very large mirror are all around us. The only safe place to be is in the water. Plunge into the surf and suddenly feel like you have merged with nature. Dive deep and stay down as long as you dare.

Late last night I told Beth I wanted to go swimming. And she was not happy about it but she stood on the edge of the water while I waded out into the darkness. The water was warm and mysterious. The waves were fairly large and I was totally unprepared for them when they hit. Still it was a joy to be out there in the darkness feeling the embrace of the ocean. I imagined for a moment being one of those unfortunate souls who are shipwrecked for one reason or another and float away into an endless darkness.

As I looked down the beach at the towering buildings and lights I felt comforted. I would not want to be out in the middle of the ocean with little hope of survival. I want reality but not too much of it. So I swam back to the beach and kissed my wife. I thanked her for putting up with me once again and we went upstairs to sit on the balcony and watch fireworks.

Photos at ten.

It’s time for a contest here at Virginia Breeze.

And this one will challenge your eye and not your brain. I hope.

Here are five photos containing images from this blog. They are each a part of a different photo and some of you who have been following along since we started here last summer should not find this too difficult.

So this contest starts now and it will end Sunday noon est.

The prize is a 25 dollar gift certificate from Amazon.com.

And all you have to do is be the first person to identify the five posts that contain these images. Then email me the answers (url’s) using the contact page under the header here at Virginia Breeze. Don’t give away the answers or anything else by putting any information here or in another post. We will have a consolation prize and we so don’t want to give the answers away before the contest ends and be disqualified. Here are the five images. . .

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Well it doesn’t seem like very many readers have taken this contest seriously. So starting next week (Sunday) we are going to increase the first prize to fifty dollars. That’s a fifty dollar gift certificate to Amazon. com.

And each week that goes by we will just increase the prize money until I get someone’s attention. It will probably end up being my wife. But hey! She’s a reader too. She just gets to stick her pretty little fist in between my ribs when I am sleeping if she doesn’t like something I have written.

Update://  We have a winner!  It’s Jendrick Hosellmyer from somewhere out there in the tundras of northern Europe.  Thanks Jendrick!  And thank you everyone for playing.  It took quite awhile to get a winner but I’m sure Jendrick will agree that it was worth the wait as he drives his new Toyota Prius around the cracks in the ice while he’s looking for a place to recharge the battery!!

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I think I have come to the end of the road in terms of my search for a place to put really, really enlarge photos. And ironically it is the same place I started blogging last summer.

I am talking about Blogger! Because you can post photos there that can be studied in very great detail. I didn’t realize this before now. Maybe I missed it last summer or maybe it is something that has come along since then.

So I have started updating my old blog . And the photos there can be found through the Pages tab under the header here.

Here is what I am talking about. Some of these photos will be 2400 pixels across. They won’t fit in a window. But they can be examined in much greater detail.

So now my Wordpress blog has a new partner. Blogger! Who would ever have imagined this happening!

Here is something I learned to do after spending some time with Vladimir. I am still not very good at it and it took hours to figure it out. But I have installed the d*** thing! It would have been an impossible task before now. I was talking about lightboxes last week. Well this really is a lightbox.

Click on it or go to the header and click on Lightbox there.