Ahhhh, October

Another October, my favorite month. It seems like Christmas will be here before I find time to write my "How I Spent My Summer Vacation" post, so I'm going to stop thinking about it and write what's current.

In fact, I'd like to get back to popping off a paragraph a day, instead of tackling heavy content that takes me a week or writing and editing. I'm thinking of taking part in NaBloPoMo November, just to shake off my self-induced sense of obligation to be smart and funny and prolific.

NaBloPoMo stands for "National-Blog-Every-Day-for-a-Month Month." Or something like that.

Who's with me?

In the meantime, I have a new camera lens, and yesterday I took a walk, and here's what I snapped, in a mile:

Berries. Probably poisonous.

Deer. We saw one next to the house tonight that was so big that I half-wondered if someone's mule hadn't gotten loose.

Hedge apples. Did you know folks gather these up and put them in their cellars and such to rid spiders?

They look like brains. No wonder the spiders leave.

I inadvertently planted giant marigolds this year. I thought I planted giant marigolds last year, but they were just "big" marigolds. These were GIANT marigolds,  that created a 3-foot tall hedge of blossoms around the garden all summer. Some of them were as big as hedge apples. They were gorgeous...and they disguised a weird sickly garden. Too much rain followed by too much dry this year. Tomatoes rotted before they ripened. Creepy.

The last tomato of the year. See? How it rot-riped?

The last shot is for our friend Michael, in Nashville. It's going to be a harsh winter, it seems.

Blog Troll III: I Get By With a Little Help From My Friends

My beautiful, beautiful friends.

My beautiful, record-keeping friends.

This post today is to show you the faces of just a fraction of the friends and fellow bloggers that received terrible comments in their in-boxes from the same troll I did, and stepped up to help, when I asked.

They could have washed their hands of me, and of all of this, and I wouldn't have blamed them. But they did not. They didn't asked what would happen, or how this would pan out, or what more what might be required of them. They each gathered up those nasty comments and the corresponding IP addresses, and forwarded them to me, so that I could forward them to the investigator.

Here is my love Clint, my son Brian, and my mother. Here are friends that I love, and their spouses and their children.

We may have a local case against the guy because he made the mistake of harrassing too many people in one berg (3 violations = Felony), but this is bigger than a Champaign-Urbana issue.

My friends above, in no particular order, are also from New Orleans, LA; Deary, ID; Detroit, MI; Los Angeles, CA;  New York City, NY; Baltimore, MD; Beaumont, TX; and Panama.

These photos are only of me and my friends and family. I have to speculate: how many other women are there out there has he tried to shut down by going after in the same manner? I doubt very much I'm the only one.

If they are out there, I wish them luck, and better yet: A dozen or so friends that have so much faith in them that they'll take records, step up, sign papers, and ring a cowbell for their victory.


Here is another take on this, written by Boston Pobble, pictured above.