Before & After

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The Before photo is one you are familiar with - I use it for everything. This is actually just a photo that Simon took with my digital camera because I asked him to and it turned out so good that I've been using it for years. Alas, I'm not so young, thin or curly anymore.

Here's the after - in my new cute glasses. I wanted a better picture in which to debut them but I could not resist playing with the laptop webcam after I finished my breakfast on the deck this morning. The dark part of the glasses is sort of a dark tortoise shell, outlined in light green. I love them. When I bought them I worried I'd get sick of them whenever I get out of my lime green phase but resistance was futile. Besides, if I get sick of them eventually, maybe that will motivate me to update my frames more often than I do, cheapskate that I am.

It was after I got my glasses that I realized my hair had gotten a little long so I made an appointment and told Maria that I needed a haircut to go with my new glasses to take me from cute to super cute. (I stopped perming my hair a couple of years ago, I think it was.)

The glasses look really spectacular when I'm wearing a green shirt. Simon told me I can't wear a green shirt every day, to which I replied, "Watch me." Turns out I was right in that green goes with pretty much everything I wear - turquoise, purple, red mostly.

This webcam kills me, by the way. I never would have gotten it except heck, it was only $25 additional - and I'm glad I did. Do I see a webcast in my future? Perhaps - but I sure can't think of anything interesting to talk about - or write about evidently.

If you look closely you can see Verona's green eyes staring out from within her black case. She loves coming outside with us. If I sit on the deck with the glass door open, just the screen door closed, she'll meow all day long. So the other day I decided that maybe it was time to try letting her loose on the deck to see what she would do. We never let our cats out, largely because we live on a rural road but cars that do go by, go by fast. Which is silly to say because even a slow car could kill an animal. They are indoor cats.

I thought, what if Verona takes to staying on the deck as well as Reggi took to being off leash at Ellison Park? So a couple of weeks ago, I opened the door and let Verona out. After she got over the shock, she strolled around like she owned the joint. She was way more bold than I thought she would be. She was originally a barn cat at Steve's sister-in-law's horse farm, but that was a lifetime ago. I let her roam around for a while then scooped her up. We won't be doing that again - too much risk. Surprisingly, she has not been trying to scoot out every time we open the door, which is what I feared - that once she got a taste of the good life, she'd be a rascal to keep inside.

I tried her on a leash a long time ago but that's never very successful, is it? Once we pulled Reggi's crate out on the deck and let Venus hang out in there - she liked it. So we'll probably do that for Verona sometime because these days she seems to like being outside far more than Venus does.

Meanwhile this black case works well. Verona started meowing the moment I pulled it out of the closet. I opened it and set it on the floor and she ran in. She sat on the table next to me meowing the entire time - until I took her picture. Now she's quiet as a mouse. Hmmmm.

By the way, I'm thrilled that this new laptop has whatever type of screen that I can use outside. It's a cloudy day but still, I could never do this with my old laptop. I always thought when I saw commercials or whatever of people using their laptops outside, it was bogus. Have I mentioned out much I love this new laptop?

One last thing, then I'll (mostly) stop being goofy with the webcam, I promise. When I first got the laptop I was setting things up, poking around. Hey, here's the webcam button - I wonder how this thing works?

A window not unlike this one popped open and scared the bejesus out of me!

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