Here's a christmas ornament that Miles made a few years ago. Instead of "Find the bug" try "Find the glitter" instead. It's hexagonal! I like to think that it's actually super thin slices of columnar basalt, even though I know that's wrong.

Here's a different frame converted to black and white.

One of my favorite ornaments for years and years. He's actually holding glass ballons but they aren't fun. The elephant is the fun part.

There were two! I had forgotten that. I wish I could find a picture of the bones.

A few years ago my wife an I were walking in St. Cloud and we found a pouch made of a square of black fabric tied up with some twine. Inside were some rocks and some bird bones (we thought). This is the square of fabric held down with the rocks. I don't know where the bones and twince had gotten to when we took the picture. Was somebody casting a spell? HAHA! I hope so.

Well, no more babies folks.

Last one. This one is Marcia getting up close with a spec of moss growing in a withered limestone flower. The sepia tone pictures posted today were taken by Marcia and the black and white pictures were taken by me, excpet the few that are described as otherwise.

This one's just a documentary shot. Apparently all the ginkgo leaves fall off at once. Dispersed throughout the cemetery were these enormous ginkgo trees and each one had a thick carpet of perfect yellow leaves covereing everything beneath it.

I took one in color but I like the black and white better.

Here's an also-ran for the obligatory cemetery shot.

Again with the film grain that isn't.

Bullet hole? Somehow I doubt it.

Up close.

Cracks!

A dog, maybe? I'm assuming so.

Obligatory cemetery shot, I think.

Open advice to the world: If you want to pour a sip on the ground in respect for the fallen that's just fine. Just don't leave the beer cans laying around the cemetery. I would have picked it up but there was no garbage receptacle nearby and I sure as hell wasn't bringing it in the car. "That would automatically make today the day I get pulled over." I thought.

Marcia kept saying she was getting the creeps while we were there. Now I know why. I probably shouldn't have told her about the alleged hauntings before we went. Is that angel doing Tai Chi?

I was playing with this one in Picasa and added a film grain effect. No lie, you couldn't tell the difference.

The same statue as in the previous picture (below) from the side, no longer backlit, and the sky still very bright.

This was taken by me and coverted from Black and White to Sepia to lessen the contrast. The sun, although diffused by clouds, was behind the statue and the resulting black and white picture had a sky that almost hurt your eyeballs.

Woodland Cemetery is old and in some places it shows. In some places the headstones are partially enveloped in huge trees that almost certainly didn't start growing until after the stone had been placed. In others the hill has changed shape over time and the headstones have migrated, in uneven lines, down the hill. The saddest ones, though, are the ones like this. They look like they were originally standing up but at some point fell over. Nobody bothered to right them and they've slowly melted into the ground. Within the next 20 years someone will fail to sweep the detritis away and it will grow over completely. It's already unreadable. Soon it will be completely forgotten. Of course, that's all just made up in my own mind. Who knows if it ever happened or ever will come to pass.

Unlike many of the graves nearby Joseph Tschiember's tombstone was spared the indignity of being knocked over or smashed by falling tree branches in the big September storm. His monument survived with nothing more than a windswept coating of sawdust.

Marcia took this picture of a splintered tree which was converted from sepia to black and white and then toyed with to make it more high-contrast.

These are deep fried balls of smoked-sausageated macaroni and cheese.

The process:
1. Make homemade breakfast sausage
2. Hickory smoke a roll of said homemade sausage
3. Months later remove half of a smoked roll of sausage from the freezer and heat/chop it up in a skillet
4. Add the chopped sausage to macaroni and cheese
5. Put leftover sausageated macaroni and chesse in the fridge to "congeal"
6. Take it out a few days later and form it into balls
7. Roll balls w/ corn starch and let them rest in the fridge
8. Roll them in a beaten egg w/ 1 tsp milk added and let them rest in the fridge
9. Roll them in flour seasoned w/ salt, pepper, and paprika and let them rest in the fridge
10. Deep fry in a dutch oven 1/3 full of 35oF oil until golden brown and delicious.

It was so good. We just finished them. They weren't greasy but I still feel like I ate bricks.