Sunrise, Sunset, and Adventures in Plastic

I have new sunset photos for you from the last couple of days (Saturday and Monday, to be precise), a sunrise and a few completely unrelated bits of news. Here we go!

Sunrise, Dec 12, 2008.

Here's that sunrise. I've done nothing to this photo but resize and sharpen. I think it's kind of dull myself. Somehow the sunsets around here are consistently much better than the sunrises.

Sunset at Miko's Corner, Dec 12, 2008.

See? Don't you agree that it's much more dramatic? It's got a few lens flares, but it's much more interesting than that sunrise shot.

Same place and time, more or less.

Country Club Road, exiting the dog park the same evening.

Miko's Corner, December 15th

December 12th again.

From the Picasa album Tucson Sunsets

Those last two shots are the only ones I did more to than resize and sharpen. And I didn;t do much. They didn't need much tweaking.

I sort of wanted to rant tonight about the obvious unfairness of Barack Obama being derided for his supposedly close relationship with a crooked governor who never campaigned with him, who didn't endorse him in the primaries (or vice versa), who angrily complained in a taped conversation about Obama being unwilling to offer anything but appreciation if Blagojevich made the Senate choice Obama wanted, and who repeatedly called Obama the most offensive of George Carlin's Seven Words. Today Obama had the gall to accede to the request of a highly respected U.S. Attorney for the sake of an ongoing investigation, despite the political inconvenience this causes Obama himself. How dare he do the right thing?

There. Consider that rant ranted. On to the personal stuff.

Last week, I mislaid a debit card. I had put it in a reusable cloth grocery bag along with the groceries so that I wouldn't lose it, but could not find it when I unloaded the groceries. I spend much of the next day searching the house, the car and the driveway, checking with the grocery store, and making sure it had not been used. Eventually I reported it lost and ordered a replacement.

Tonight John was finishing up a sixpack of beer I bought him last week. When he took the carton out of the fridge, my debit card landed on the floor. It was in the beer carton!

Let that be a lesson to me. Or something.

It was a credit card I turned to tonight to finally order that CPA review course, with textbooks, guided seminars and online and offline components. John and I had agreed on a version of the course that was more expensive than bare bones, less expensive than the works, and much less expensive than almost any other reputable company's courses. When I ordered it, there was a minor nasty surprise - the address was an Arizona one, so my credit card took a hit for over $111 more in sales tax. Ah, well. It will be worth it in the end. So now I have to gear up for the actual studying! But not tonight.

Karen