Just a short note to let you know that I will not be posting for about a week. Fun things will be going on, but I will be back for sure! Thanks for reading!

Visiting

Been having a nice time visiting with my mom, dad, sister's and my sister's boys. We've been keeping busy going to the gym, shopping and going to the beach. I've also been able to visit with some of my old friends.

One of the nice things I was able to do was visit with one of my old roomates from BYU. We took a trip over to Orlando and went to the temple. That is one BE-U-teeful place.

It's nice to visit with old friends!

CRUISIN'

In one week, I will be off on one of my favorite things to do....a cruise!!!!!!!!!!! And boy, do I NEED it!

I will have to say, cruising is one of the best and most cost efficient vacations there is. Many think it is very $$$. But that is really not the case. It' not hard to stay at or under $100 a day. That includes you motel, food, entertainment, and someone to "drive" you to different countries.

Of course, you can rack up the bill if you drink a lot of alcohol, do a lot of pricey shopping, and go on expensive excursions. But if you want a nice relaxing vacation, you don't need to do any of that.

Our first few cruises we did the excursions at every port thing, but I have learned that just walking around the different ports of calls and exploring the boat is just as nice, and a lot of the times, better than the excursions. 

Being one that likes to take pictures, I enjoy the ports of calls. I love the culture, and I like to do small shopping. When shopping, though, I really don't like to buy stuff from China. I can do that at home. I like to look for people sitting on the beach hand crafting jewelry or carving an animal from a piece of wood; and of course I do like to buy me a t-shirt or two.

So, the next time you want to go on a really nice vacation, and not spend a lot of moola, think about a cruise. The cruise that we are going on is a five day to the Bahamas, and it is costing right around $70 a day. Yes, I do have to get there, but if you shop around, you can get a pretty good rate on flights, or if you don't mind driving, you can do that too. A lot of you probably live pretty close to a port anyway. We always leave out of my "home" port, which is just minutes from where I grew up; and my family still lives there. So, that makes it really nice for me.

Better yet, never mind. Don't take a cruise. Then there will be more room on the boat for me. Just kidding, really, though, check it out!

Foto Friday 28 Sept 2012

This week's Foto Friday's theme was WATER.

There are a couple of pictures I have taken that I love for the water theme.

This one of my daughter and her husband's wedding rings among the rain droplets on here daddy's black Celica

and....

This picture of the Washington DC Temple reflecting in the reflecting pond.

I love this picture!

IT'S A SCAM!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Something happened to me the other day, and I feel I need to share it. I had a phone call on my land line. We have caller ID, but this time nothing came up to give me a hint as to who it was. My sister and some of my other friends tell me not to answer these things, but having kids away at college, and in high school, etc. I felt I needed to answer this call. You never know when it might have been an emergency, and not everyone leaves a message. In fact, I have found A LOT do not leave messages.

Anyway, I answered the phone. I almost hung up, because at first no one seemed to be there. Just as I was about to hang up, a voice came through. This voice was that of a male, and was speaking broken English. I thought, "Well, crap, I should not have answered it." This is how the conversation went:

"Hello, this is Microsoft calling to let you know that your computer is sending information to our company telling us that you have bad software and your computer is infected, and, blah, blah, blah."

He told me all kinds of weird things. I continued to listen, as I knew this was a scam, but thought how many people would believe this character. I'm sure if I let him go on, he would have asked for some of my personal info.

I finally interrupted him and asked how he got my phone number.  He told me that when we registered this computer we had given our phone number. He continued on, but I interruped him, "Hmmmm, that can't be true. You see, our one and only computer is like, well five years old, and our phone number is less than two months old."

*CLICK!*

You got it, he hung up on me. Why am I blogging about this? Well, I had a few of my Facebook friends tell me that I need to report this to the police. Not sure they can do anything, but I felt maybe if I blog about this on my Tappingflamingo blog and my Vibrant Nation Blog, that the word will get out. I was also told that many of my Facebook friends had experienced the same type thing recently.

So, to all my readers, BEWARE!!!! Do NOT give our ANY info over the phone unless you are FOR SURE as to who you are talking to. And even then, be careful. My in laws  who are very careful, and who use the computer to do business very LITTLE, and who know not to share their info over the phone have gotten their identity stolen, not once, but TWICE! After seeing what they have gone through, I am doubly cautious about using the internet for business, and also about trashing my stuff. I shred everything! If you get your identity stolen, you are the one that has to prove you are YOU! And believe it or not, that is not the easiest thing to do. Seems like they treat you as the villain.

So, anyway, heads ups! The only reason these people continue to do these type things is because, apparently, we are not careful enough, and it is quite easy to get people's personal information. So let us all band together and make it hard for these people, then maybe it won't be so prevalent. 

Here is a good link and here is another link to go to for info on how to keep your identity safe. Personally, I have never felt comfortable giving my info online. I know most of you do this without thinking. Online banking is something I feel very uncomfortable about. Once these Bozo's get your bank info, then you are in really bad trouble! They can wipe out your bank account in nothing flat, and you probably won't know about it for several days.

The computer can be a wonderful thing, but it can also be a nightmare in many ways, and identity theft is one of those nightmares.

Foto Friday..............

SHADOWS

I waited to post this today, as I used it for our contest picture at our photography club which met last night.

This past month our photography club had shadows as our theme. I was really excited about it, yet kept putting it off. September was so busy, and pretty soon October was here. I had ran out of time. The day of our club meeting we had cloudy rainy weather, so needless to say, NO SHADOWS! 

I turned to my computer and googled shadow photography and found this great idea. I really don't know how I ever went without seeing this. I have researched all kinds of wedding photography in the past, but never came across this. From what I saw, it seems to be very popular; too popular in fact. But I decided to do it anyway. 

This is the original picture I took. Nice, but I really didn't want you to be able to notice the scripture being highlighted. I wanted the heart and ring to be the focal, and the scripture to be a side note. So I went in and edited it a bit.

What do you think?

I like it!

Oh give me a home.......

                                              Where the deer and the antelope play.

This is actually a nightly ritual.

                                  I'm not sure if I'll ever get tired of it.

Sox doesn't say much at all. She actually likes sitting out on the lawn watching them.

The neighbor's dog doesn't like them too much though. He scared them off. Sox was not too happy when they ran off. She started to whimper.

This poor little guy, though was pretty clueless...."Where'd everyone go?"

After looking around and realizing everyone took off without him, he decided to head on home. Good thing he wasn't in the wild, he probably would have been someone's dinner.