'Twas A Dark And Stormy Night!

Suddenly, a shot rang out!

A door slammed!

The maid screamed!

Lightning bolts forked down from the heavens!

Snoopy grinned maniacally from the top of his doghouse...

Did anyone get that? Does anyone remember the really cool Peanuts cartoons from the 60's and 70's?

Yeah, yeah. I know, most of you have heard of that era in the ancient history class that you slept through in High School. 'Sides, we all know that everything we now know comes from the 21st century and that's what matters! If it don't start with i- or e- than it's of no consequence. And heck, who was alive back then that even matters anymore.

Oh, that laughing you hear in the background? Just Rod Serling, never mind him.

And get off my lawn!! And outta my pool!!!!! Harumph!

Totally off-topic: There will be a "conversation with wifey-poo" at the end of this post.

Getting back to the storm... And it wasn't at night either.

We had a couple of days a few weeks ago when the wind was cranking hard from the north. That is odd this time of year. The wind direction meant that the surf was only half as high as you'd expect from a gale, but the skies were clear. And that meant that I could take some really cool pics on high speed w/o the pics being grainy. *Side note: if the pics were grainy then I'd ferment them suckers!*

I do know that pictures of waves and storms never tell the real story, and unless you know what you are looking for in the wave shots (spindrift, foam stringers etc), then it can be hard to imagine how fast the wind was blowing. But trust me, the wind was howling that day. Yes, I had to lean into it and carefully brace the camera on a railing with my legs splayed outwards just to get shots that weren't fuzzy. No sense using a tripod cus it would've been blown over.

And to think I used to be foredeck crew in yacht races in weather like this. Most times I'd "forget" to clip on... good thing I can swim, eh?

Here're (cool conjunctionally, conjoined, contraction, eh?) some pics of the surf.


To the untrained eye, this doesn't look like much.

But notice the height of the people on the jetty, and then take another look at the waves.

I just love the way the light is shining through this breaker...


Even more transparant water coolness.


The bloke on the right is LATE! Very late.


No surprise that he was left behind...


This is normally a beach. No, it was not high tide.


Hmmmmm, same beach.


Perhaps now you'll see the foam blowing off the top of the whitecaps:

Well, maybe not.


Notice how I framed the shot so the ocean horizon is lined up EXACTLY with the railing? Pretty good, huh?





And here is wear-where-were I reward (Re-Ward; is that a secondary ward against weres?) your patience with a real, true, honest conversation betwixt WP (Wifey-Poo, otherwise known as The Most Wonderful Woman In The Entire World --perhaps I should move to Mars?) and YT (Yours Truly, that'd be me. No further adjectives are necessary, of course.)

*Remember, WP is a world famous novelist and arrrr-teeeest, whereas I'm just a dumb ex-truckdriver*

*we join our heroes in the middle of a talk --mainly cus YT couldn't remember how it started...*


WP: In addition to the transparency I had to throw in some kind of sfumato.

WP: And I even know what that word means! So there.

YT: So do I, of course.

WP: So what does it mean? *snicker*

YT: In what respect?

WP: Nice try, but don't play dumb.

YT: Well then, you are quite obviously mispronouncing a certain Italian sparkling wine, or you want me to make a particular type of pasta.

WP: *laughs hysterically* Not even close.

YT: Yes dear.

...

YT: You still haven't told me what size of spirali you'd like with your 3 bottles of spumante tonight.

WP: *Sob*