iPhone "Art" in Two Minutes

This afternoon I found Bernice on top of the secretary desk in the family room. I've never seen her up there before so I took this photo with the iPhone, opened the App "Photogene" and applied an "effect":

 

 

I like it!

Here's another example I did last month with my own eyeball:

Step One

...and cropped...my new User EyeD

I've since taken "eyeball photos" of a few friends and applied the same "effect". The willingness that my friends have to offer up their eyeballs in a split-second for an iPhone photo without so much as a "Why?" delights me to no end. This one of the eyeball of Dion Wright, my amazing artist friend, truly needs no filters...it stands on its own with a tremendous amount of character in one shot:

But here's what happened after the filter was applied (if it's too dramatic, refer to the peaceful kitty photo above):

Here's looking at YOU!

New Webcam Self-Portrait

I think it speaks for itself:

Raccoon Scramble

This is Bernice. Don't be fooled...

Our mainland cat Bernice is an exemplary feline and a voracious predator/murderer. I don't say this lightly. Perched calmly in the photo above, framed by greenery, orchids and art, doesn't accurately portray her usual nature. She's definitely shown me why keeping a cat indoors is a favor both to the cat and the neighborhood critters. I've had many kitties in my lifetime, but she is the most prolific hunter I've ever known.

I've mentioned elsewhere how I like to keep air flowing through the house (the "flow-through teabag" effect). I seldom, if ever, close the doors completely whether I'm home or not. There are consequences of doing that, of course, and I've come to accept most of them. Because the house is never completely closed up, Bernice has proudly presented her bounty of lizards, frogs, birds, hummingbirds, rats, mice and pygmy mice; most heartbreakingly, a baby bunny and most horrifyingly, a baby rattlesnake, all for my approval and admiration. We even have a generic name for the carnage, regardless of the critter involved. It's "birdy mayhem."

The "open door'" policy also seems to invite other critters inside as well. I've come home to a neighbor's sweet orange kitty, Miss Scarlet, happily asleep on my bed, like it was meant to be. (Bernice must have been out hunting.)

Last night around midnight I heard some noise coming from the utility porch, where I keep the pet food and water bowls. Ordinarily, our dog Olive keeps critters out of the house before they get very far, but she was spending the night at my daughter's house down the block for a sleepover with my grand-dog Pepper.

I got up to investigate, and found a giant raccoon happily polishing off Bernice's food, rattling the bowls to get the last crumbs. When we locked eyes, he made a run for it. I went and got my little video camera and followed him to see where he'd go. This is what happened next:

He ran through the house to the bedroom, jumped into the atrium window and into Bernice's bed, where he realized that there was no way out. When Bernice saw him, she stretched herself up as big as she could and challenged him as though she thought she was twice his size, when the opposite was true. At this point I was really only worried that the raccoon would hurt her somehow (half-asleep, I call Bernice "Olive", but she didn't notice). Hissing and swiping at him, she did her best to flush him out. His response? It seems he urinated in her poofy bed (you can hear it!) before making a dash back down the hall, into the upstairs "Rapunzel" room, out the open window and across the roof.

I love how Bernice ran after him with such conviction. That cracked me up. After the excitement was over, I shoved Bernice's poof into the washer, started it up and went back to bed (knowing full well that a raccoon had just sprinted across the sheets). Bernice kept vigil all night by my side, her neck stretched out like a meercat on security detail. There were no further incidents...

Odd Family Portrait

Scott had a tremendously painful, spontaneous-onset headache last month. The headache subsided without incident, as far as we know. I wasn't on the island, and even though we spoke on the phone that evening, he didn't feel it was important enough to let me know about it until the next day.

An Aspergers' trait that Scott has, is thinking that I somehow hear his phone conversations (both sides), read his emails (both sent and received) and hear his thoughts, especially if I need to or should know about the information involved. It's not a paranoid thing, as Scott is so blantantly (sometimes brutally) honest that it wouldn't concern him in the least if I had complete access to those things. There's utility in his belief that we share instantaneous data transfer, in that it conveniently removes him from the responsibility of having to relay any information. He's certain I received it when he did. For someone who poo-poos the notion of telepathy, I'm not quite sure how he thinks that works.

It often doesn't occur to "Aspies" to share or relate certain information and/or experiences, though Scott frequently does (especially if he's moved by something he's read or a movie he's seen). There can be a problem with what information Scott doesn't think to pass along. Things like, "We have a family of four coming for dinner in ten minutes." He thinks I already know because it was a phone conversation he had yesterday. They show up, he sees the confusion in my face and asks, "Didn't you know?"

As someone who's refrigerator is tailored to a man who doesn't eat leftovers or frozen foods, and whose primary diet is lattes, tabbouleh, pasta, French toast and waffles, I need more notice than "none" to whip up a meal for guests.

So, back to his headache. A friend phoned him in the middle of it and he mentioned it. The friend thought it was unusual and insisted that he should go get a CT Scan at the local medical center, which he did. The results didn't show any blatant danger, and ultimately came back normal. (Really? Because that is just so surprising! Even without the headache, I would have expected something of real interest in there. A crowd of excited professionals staring at him with awe would be more believable.)

When he finally mentioned it to me, I was so worried for him, but also upset that he denied me the opportunity to be with him through it all. He didn't think of that. His theory was he didn't mention it because he knew I would take the next boat to the island and he didn't want to inconvenience me. "What if it was serious? What if you'd died?" I ask. "In that case," he says, "you could've taken your time getting here."

When I got back to the island, we were having dinner together at Antonio's. We had fun conversation throughout the meal and both laughed a lot. I commented that he has finally learned to "dine" after all these years. In Scott's case, that means that after you've finished your meal (or whatever portion of it you've deemed edible), you don't bolt for the door, or badger those dining with you to wolf down the rest of their meal so they can bolt for the door, too. "For most people, dining can also be considered a relaxing social interaction," I have explained to him many times, much to his disbelief.

Our dinner plates were long gone, yet we were still sitting there, happily enjoying our conversation. When I pointed out how nice it was, he stared at me with sincere concern and said, "Oh my God! MAYBE I DID HAVE A STROKE!," horrified at the realization that he might somehow be inching toward mainstream behavior.

Anyway, Scott handed me the CD of his recent session, with 36 individual "head slices" to scrutinize. I finally had a chance to look at it. My favorite shot is the one above (something about the eyeballs), though it was really interesting to flip though the stack in succession, ending in a tiny oval of a skullcap at the top. I was looking at the files on the laptop and couldn't save the images separately, so took a photo of this one with my iPhone. The result of doing that was a reflected ghost image of the top part of the frames of my reading glasses (centered in his sinus area). I thought it was somehow appropriate as a wacky family portrait for me to be peering out from inside Scott's "command central."