We got up by alarm, and it was a rude awakening for me — I had been in the middle of a dream! Had my normal breakfast. It was solid overcast and dark. D knocked on the RV door around 7:50 to suggest that we hang tight instead of going out to photograph at 8:00 because we'd be pissing into the wind. I edited images from yesterday then worked up a blog entry. I used my new filter wrenches to take the polarizer off of my 24 Tilt/Shift lens and that was a piece of cake. Then I separated a thin polarizer from a UV/Haze filter that had been stuck together for maybe a year, and that took a lot of work. Then I cleaned most of my filters and lenses.

Had lunch around 12:05. Processed images for a stock submission. (You may read more about stock submissions on August 7, 2009.) Called my mother and chatted for a while. My Unky Joom called. When I was little, I couldn't pronounce "Uncle Jim" very well, and "Unky Joom" stuck. They recently bought a Class-C RV, and when they were towing up and down the mountains of Maryland today, their Chevy chassis was overheating and he wanted to know if we had any problems with our Ford chassis when we tow up mountains. We don't. Almost as an aside, he let us know that he's all done with his chemo for lymphoma, and the tests still show that the cancer is gone. A couple of minutes after we hung up, I got a call from my Aunt D, Unky Joom's wife. Apparently, Unky Joom hadn't asked all of the relevant questions, and she needed more information. She said all of the males in my family have poor phone skills. :) We had a nice chat. The sun broke through the clouds around 3:50, and J went out to photograph the birds at D's feeders around 3:55.

We went into the house at 4:25 to have dinner cooked by RA of Frito halibut, rice w/cumin, and creamed peas. The Frito halibut was very tasty! It had halibut chunks, sour cream and mayo, and finely-crushed Fritos on top, then it was baked to perfection.

We all went out to photograph the birds at the feeders at 5:45. A female hairy woodpecker was very cooperative and landed several times on a feeder support that looked like a regular tree (see left). The bird and the post were in the light and the trees in the background were in the shade, so the woodpecker really stands out. RA brought out some pineapple angel food cake for dessert.

J and I went back into the RV around 7:35. I downloaded images and did a quick edit. Had some Asbach Uralt while doing the first-pass edit in Capture One. Processed more images for a stock submission.