Shooting up in Utah

Yesterday was a strange but fun kind of day.  We have a friend, Little Mary who is a retired military gal with 14 guns and a 160 acre parcel in the middle of Bumf*** Utah.  We decided to pack a picnic and go visit the place with her and our friend Dan.
The day was crystal clear and temps in the low 80's with a light breeze.  Couldn't have been nicer.  We brought my craft canopy for some shade and set up a day camp.
On one of my walks, I ran across a number of wee scurrying lizards.  Most of these guys were so quick you could just see a tail waving back and forth before they disappeared under a bush.  This one posed for me tho.

I think it's a dream of a lot of people to move out somewhere where there is nobody, but I can tell you after yesterday that this is just that kind of place and it's TOO isolated.  About 30 miles from a town with just a post office and 10 more miles down a dirt road.  I imagine the stars at night would be totally breathtaking tho.  I took a string of pictures to make a panorama shot, but each one looked about the same, so here is just one of the scenery.

As you can see, lots of stickery plants, sagebrush and these amazing salt flat areas of pure white.  We weren't too far from the famous Bonneville Salt Flats, at least when we left in the afternoon and headed south to the I80, I think that's what I saw off to the left, a miles long area of pure white in the middle of the desert.

As for wildlife, there were plenty of flies after our lunch, a beautiful white butterfly that liked the canopy, and this poor thing, beautiful in it's symmetry.  Actually, this isn't wild at all, but probably a sheep, as this is sheep country.

Shooting the guns was actually a lot of fun.  Mary is a kind teacher and helped me do whatever it is I needed to do  to get the gun to shoot.  I smacked a target on the second try which was exhilarating.  Won't say how many times it was before the second hit tho!  Here is Mary in her "Chuck the Rifleman" moment.

The last little gift of the day when we were looking for cactus to take home, was a Horny Toad that scurried across my path!  It's a miracle to see one of these little guys, unless you happen to live somewhere where they flourish.  I saw one when I was a kid, and now this one.  I stuck the camera as close to the sticker bush as I could, but he's so well camouflaged that you really only see him cause of the outline of his torso.

Catalog Crazy

So yeah i've been away from the blog for months now... somedays just too blue to write (as in I've got nothing to say or add to the world to make it a better place etc), but most days too busy and overwhelmed to write.  And the funny thing is, writing usually aligns my molecules (kind of like doing that exercise video for 10 minutes) so it's a good thing.

I've been making a bad habit of zoning out in front of the computer, pushing a button, reading something, pushing another button and so on, while time flies by.

 Lately I've been making myself actually heave ho on the old catalog for 2010, gee 6 months into the year, i think it's about time!  I just revamped the one month old edition and it's ready to go out to all my wholesale customers.  Well, it's ready after I buy more ink and print about 50 more issues.  You see, my laser printer was printing kind of fuzzy on the jewelry photos, then I cleaned the big thingy inside that must be absolutely speckless.  Well, that was a mistake, cause then the print quality really went down.  At the same time, I was printing catalogs for my trade show ACRE  in Vegas, so I ran to the local Office Max and purchased an HP Officejet 6500 which claims to be "40% cheaper than running a laser".  They lie.  While the printer prints beautifully and is quiet, it runs thru cleaning cycles alot and burns up the ink.  I think my 5 page front and back catalog cost about $5 to print on the ink jet, whereas it was about $2 on the laser (using discount laser toner).  Sigh.  and now for some strange reason, my laser seems to be  printing pretty good again, so I'm trying to finish things up and get that catalog out.  It will feel like I've come up with a solution for world peace or something once it's all done and mailed.

Here's a sunset from a few weeks ago, I think the volcano in Iceland may be causing this, but it's fantastic!