It is Friday and Fridays are for fun and there really isn't anything more fun than an early spring with the possible exception of working with me.

Here is photographic evidence that spring has sprung.

People are no longer afraid to open windows 

There is green stuff outside

 It is Friday and Fridays are for fun.  The weather this week has been amazing.  Warmer weather is good for business because buyers and sellers like to wait until spring and spring came quickly and unexpectedly this week. 

I use a lot of social media including this blog and yes blogs are social media but the term social media is out of style and so this blog is new media which makes no sense at all because it is almost 7 years old and blogging has been around for like 17 years.  

One of my favorite new media social network type thingys is twitter. Over the years I have discovered . . and I think it has been five years now since I started using twitter. . that there is one question I can ask that will always start a conversation and that question is: 

If you were a tree what kind of tree would you be? 

Cotton wood trees on harriet Island for inspiration

If you use twitter you can answer the question and end it with #tre or you can leave an answer in the comments. 

 It is Friday and Fridays are for fun.  I have a group on flickr the photo sharing site for people who photograph Peeps.  We have 75 members and I like to kick off the season with a couple of pictures of Peeps.  I don't like to eat peeps but I love to photograph them.   Last year I posted this peep infographic . . I guess infographics are kind of 2011:

Here are some new peep pictures for the group.  If you like to photograph peeps please join the I love peeps group on Flickr:

ouch

That had to hurt

 It is Friday and Fridays are for fun.  It was a busy week.  One of the joys of being self employed is not having to worry about the bothersome weekends filled with all that spare time.  

I think I have worked every weekend this year so far.  I have been working with buyers showing them homes for sale and I have been doing some professional photography.  This month I have had at least two photography projects every weekend.  Yes I am getting tired but I am always happy to have the business. 

I am learning how to explain to my photography clients that if I take photographs in a dark bar for them it is possible that the photographs will look as though they were taken in a dark bar.  

I bought a new camera two weeks ago it is my first in 4 years and technology has changed.  The thing is a bit complicated but I am slowly getting the hang of all those buttons and dials.   There are three pages of diagrams of the camera with the names of all the dials, buttons, wheels and switches.  

It also shoots video.  Video is different than still photography in that bad video is called "organic" video and it is alright because it is video but bad photographs are not alright because they are not video.  I look forward to shooting more organic video.

The best way to test a new camera or a new lens is to take pictures of the dog.  She really hates cameras but that is part of the challenge.  I have to either sneak up on her or trick her into posing instead of hiding.  I got this shot by offering her a dog biscuit.  

daisy

Photography isn't about the camera but I don't think the companies that make cameras want people to know that.  

money

It is Friday and Fridays are for fun. I am on a mission this year to declutter and to get rid of stuff and I continue to do a little every week because I believe that it is better to do something instead of nothing.  As I get rid of stuff that we don't use anymore and reorganize I am finding that I have more room in closets and drawers.  For now I am just going to admire the empty space and maybe put a few things away that I never really had a place for before.  

This week I have been working on one closet.  I have not had a lot of time and the closet is huge but I keep plugging away.  I have discovered that the closet has a floor.  Honestly I had no idea.  As I go through cloths that I stopped wearing two decades ago but hung onto just in case, I am finding some treasures.  I plan to keep a couple of the flowered skirts but my friends are telling me that it is unlikely that shoulder pads will ever make a come back so it is with great sadness that I send what is now "vintage" clothing to the St. Vincent de Paul thrift shop on West 7th street I hope someone can use it for something.  

The money in the picture was I found in the closet and I am going to use it to buy a lottery tickets.  The drawing is tomorrow so if you don't see anymore blog posts you will know it is because I won the lottery and am in some undisclosed but warmer location and am busy trying to decide if I want to go swimming again or if I should order another drink. 

What do you have in your closets?

Related articles mostly about stuff I have gotten rid of:

Ancient Software

What to keep and what to toss out

Goodbye Makes The Journey Harder . .

A Blast From The Past

More De-Cluttering

The Week Of Broken Things

Out With The Old And In With The New

 It is Friday and Fridays are for fun.  Before  I even get started on this let me explain the I am a Realtor not a member of the news media or an English teacher . . . .you probably figured that out by reading my blog.

 Every morning my husband and I watch the local news on a little TV in my office.  This week we stopped watching the news station we have been watching for years because I am so sick of the stupid things the news anchor says that I am missing most of what passes for news and I suspect my husband is tired of listening to me complain about it.

I totally understand that our  TV news anchors come from other planets and mess up the pronunciation of every day local words like "Wabasha" and "Wayzata" and they don't understand that it is the East Side not East St. Paul.  In fact the news media has called the east side east St. Paul so many times that I think we call it that now.  It is easier to change the name of a neighborhood than it is to explain it to the news media. 

You would think that someone at the news station would take the time to go over the basics. I can even understand how they turn Minneapolis into a state when they say "St. Paul, Minneapolis" instead of St. Paul, Minnesota.  If there were some kind of a news media orientation class maybe they could be taught some of the basics and then they would blend in until the cold weather hits.  

It isn't just local stuff that reporters mess up.  They have reports about people who have been shot in the garage.  Oh my!  In the garage?  That must really hurt!  This morning the news station that I switched to had a news report about learning to cook a great meal in an hour.  I kept wondering if the cooking lesson lasted an hour or if the meal was cooked in an hour.  No way to tell from the news report.  

I decided to give them another chance but they horribly mispronounced some common words and then used the word often too often taking care to emphasis the "t".   They pronounce Realtor 'real-i-ter'.  

They slaughtered the pronunciation of several words which caught my attention forcing me to turn the news off so that I could write without distraction.  There is one channel left. . .

cds

It is Friday and Fridays are for fun.  I continue to work on my big de-cluttering project.  My goal is to do a little each day.  I did not make much progress this week but the week is not over and I  did manage to clean off some shelves in my office and I found this lovely  dusty CD holder filled with old software.   I tossed the software and sent the CD case to the thrift store along with an old laptop case a camera case and some other "stuff"  that I have not used in a decade . . or ten years or something like that. 

Does or did anyone actually use the free copy of MS Works that used to come with computers? 

What do you have at your house that should have been tossed long ago?

Related Posts:

What to keep and what to toss out

Goodbye Makes The Journey Harder . . A Blast From The Past
More De-Cluttering
The Week Of Broken Things
Out With The Old And In With The New