Some Roses are Red ... and So are lots of other Somewhat Random things ...

Really? ... who would have thought ... lol

... yes - if you think I write about some Rather Ridiculous stuff - you are proabably Right ... but I am not going to Refrain - I will go Right ahead anyway - because it is past time for those of us doing the ABC Wednesday thing to post about stuff starting with the letter R and now it is time for the letter S ... and there is at least one of these R things (which I was also going to post about again as an S thing anyway, because it really is S related ;-) that I Really wanted to post about anyway ;-)
I decided to make this an R and S post because I am not sure I will have time to do another totally S post between now and next week ... (if I do then I guess it could be a Second one?)  ... although most of what I will be posting about, if I do get a chance to post Stuff this week, is also Related to, and part of, what I was planning on blogging about for my letter T post ;-)

Righto ... let's get Right into it?  ... first R thing is the Rover that will be Rolling over ... the Surface of Mars - "the Red planet" ... no - not the the ones that, Remarkably, are Still Rolling Round the place (well at least one of them is ;-) but the one that is now Sitting on top of a Rocket, Ready to Roll onto the launch pad Rather Soon - the Mars Science Laboratory - which is a Rather large Rover called Curiosity - due to lift off and head out into Space (which is why this is Really an S thing too ;-) in 9 er ... make that about 6 (because I didn't finish this the day I started and it is now about 3 days later) days time (and Land on Mars next August I think)... unfortunately I live a bit to far away to just Rock up to watch the launch, but, provided it does take off when planned, I will be doing the next best thing - I will be Right in the middle of the action at the CSIRO Tweetup, here at the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex ;-)
Strangely enough, the launch has just been delayed by a day, meaning it won't be happening in the wee small hours of Saturday morning (Australian time), but in the wee small hours of Sunday morning instead - which is a bit Sad for those poor Sods who booked cheap flights that they can't change, or have other places they have to be on the Saturday night - because they will miss the actuall launch ... but, because it was too late to change all the other plans (guest speakers and Stuff) all the other fun Stuff, apart from the live cross to the USA during the launch, will Still be happening ... and then we get to go back again on Saturday evening for more fun Stuff and do the live cross for the launch at about 2am Sunday morning, and get to spend another night out at the place we get to Stay at on the first night. (provided the launch isn't delayed/Scrubbed or something ... which, unfortunately, is possible)

So ... this S part of this Rather odd post might only be a fairly Small part of it - but it is a Rather Significant bit as far as I am concerned - LOL
If any of you lot (all 3 of you? lol) reading this are on Twitter - I am @UTLAU - and even if you are not signed up to Twitter yourself, you can find, and look at, my twitter page at http://twitter.com/#!/UTLAU
(I am not sure how often I/we will be "Tweeting" during the actual event - for one thing - we are going to be rather busy having our guided tour, eating dinner, listening to all the guest speakers, etc ... and the other - there is probably no phone/etc reception out there anyway, and even if there is - the place we will be during the guided tour, and the launch of the MSL mission, is a "radio quiet" area so we will have to turn our phones/iPads/whatever off, or to "flight mode" anyway ... but we will have some access to computers that are connected to the internet ;-)

Anyway ... now to Resume the previously written R post ... which I should have posted a week ago, but it took me a few days to get around to writing it/finding what photos I wanted to put in, and then a few more days to actually get said photos onto my blog ... not sure if it is me or them, but uploading photos seems to be a pain lately ... works ok for a while, sometimes, and then it just seems to hang ... grrrr ... and unfortunately I do sometimes have to do other things besides sit at the computer getting lost on Youtube or something while waiting to see if things are working or not ... sigh ... LOL


R is also for Round and Round in my head ... which is what is currently happening with David Bowie's song "Life on Mars" - LOL
(note to Self: maybe I Should put that Song on my phone, so I can play it /sometime during the Tweetup ;-)

R is also for Remembering what other Relevant R things I was going to post about ... but I know I have Rather a lot of photos that I have taken Recently - an amount would be several Rolls of film, if it wasn't for the Recent Replacement of that technology by Digital - what a Ripper of an invention that one was ;-)

I guess I should go and Rummage around in my photos, and See what Results I find ... it is amazing how many Random things I found to photograph Recently, that were Red, or otherwise R Related ...

btw ... when I decided to walk the dog late this afternoon, I only had room for 3 more photos on the memory card in the camera, so I took that one out and put an empty one in ... it now has 72 photos on it!
(and I also took a few more photos with my phone ;-)

[a day or 3 passes]
er ... I Really should finish this post before I Run out of days in the week before it is next Wednesday (and time for the letter S)
(oops! LOL)
... and I think that Red is a bit TOO Red Mars seems to look a bit more like this colour in the photos anyway ... LOL

I guess I should stop Raving on about Random stuff that is probably Really boring, and find a few Reasonable "R" Related photos to put in here ...

I just Realised that will Require me to Remember, or look at the blog post to Remind myself, which ones of my Recent photos I have already posted (I Remember that the Red hot poker flowers were in my P post ;-)

Hmmm ... a couple of these photos could be S photos as well ... which is probably a good thing, Seeing this R post kind of became an R and S one - lol
I uploaded the rest of them last night, but it was a bit late to stay here adding captions when I had to get up for work today ... so I will add them now, and then I can hit the "post" button before this post becomes as Ridiculous as the Rather Strange R post I found Saved in my "drafts" (I might have to be Silly and post that one next time we ABC Wednesday is up to the letter R, if I don't think of something better ;-)



Red flowers, looking Rather Striking actulaly ;-)



the roof of my car just before I went to work last Monday morning - there is a tree next to where I park the car (there is a branch of that tree poking into the top right corner of the photo) and it dropped a whole pile of bits of flowers, and sticky nectar as well, onto the roof of the car ... and then a whole pile of those plague soldier beetles gathered there - I presume to continue eating the nectar.



this is about 15 or 20 minutes later - after driving to work (at speeds of up to 80kph) - some of the beetles are Still on the Roof!

this is a closer up shot of the flower bits and beetles (taken a few days later I think)



Some Red and blue Recycling bins Ready for me to put them in the Science classroms at the school I work at.

Sunset, Refleced on the water (while out walking the dog)



Red Sky ;-)



Reddish light Reflected on the path ... which also has a heap of Snails on it ;-)
(btw - my mobile phone Rang just as I was trying to take this photo - lol)

Roses ... Some Red and Some ... not ;-)

Red Roses ... Rather wet ones (I was walking the dog in the Rain ;-)

Srange Red light - from the Street lights Reflected in the foggy Sky

Same Reddish Sky, with the moon - this was the Sky just to the Right of the Sky in the previous photo ... lol

Red flowers in a coutryard at work (same Red flowers as the ones in the first photo, which are in my garden at home - in fact I think the ones in my garden were grown from bits that fell/were broken off these plants at work ;-)

Red chairs in a corridor at work ... in front of the principal's office actually ;-)

Red flowers ... "Bottle Brush" flowers ... a species of Callistemon (not sure which one - they are an Australian native that has been bred into a lot of different new varieties for gardens/etc)

Rainbow colours in the camera lens (and another one of those Red flowering Callistemon bushes ;-)

a Rose



a Red gutter, and a Rock at the front of the school I work at
(actually the long building in this photo is part of the science block - where I work ;-)

Rust dyed fabric ... actually Rather Rotten too - this is what happens when you decide to "dye" some fabric by wrapping it around some rusty wire and stuff and bury it in the garden for 2 or 3 days  ... but then don't Remember that you did that until it has been there for 2 or 3 MONTHS ... oops? LOL  (I will still find a use for it eventually ;-)



a Reddish orange Grevillia flower ... we have some Strange looking flowers here in Australia ;-)

Ok ... photos now have captions ... which I am still not sure I like the look of how blogger does that ... but it takes ages to get them all lined up neatly if I try and write in between them because all the html tags that get added with the photos tend to mess up the formatting or something, which it also does a bit doing it this way, but not quite as badly ... and the only way to make things look neat/how I want them to is to edit the html code and delete them all - and that takes ages ...

btw ... for those who want a closer look a a weird flower/beetles making beetles/whatever other weird thing in one of these photos ... these are actually quite large photos (they will probably not be quite so large after a while if I keep posting this many every time I post to my blog - there is actually a storage limit for photo on here ... but, from what I read somewhere on a help page, because I have google+ I get to keep uploading stuff after the limit is reached, but anything over a certain size will be made smaller automatically). Anyway ... if you want to see these photos even bigger than they come up in that thingy you get when you click on one - do a right click and open it in a new tab/window and it should come up the full size (which even if I have reached the limit and my new photos do get re-sized as I upload them, they will still be a lot bigger than they appear in the blog posts ;-)

One last S related thing ... DD (Dear Daughter) came wandering in to the room the other night, while DH (Dear Husband) and I were watching TV or something ... and she asked if it would do anything bad to a keyboard if you drew/wrote on it ... when asked why she wanted to know that she answered: I want to write "the final frontier" on my Spacebar ...

(and if you don't get why she wanted to do that - you need to go and watch a few episodes of Star Trek ... even one episode ... or even just the Start of an episode - lol)

Perhaps I Should Post Something Interesting?

Actuallly I can Possibly think of a whole Pile of P things to Post (and ended up finding a Pile of Photos)  for a letter P Post for ABC Wednesday ... some of them are Probably not Particularly interesting to most, and a few could be downright Peculiar, but Perhaps most People will find at least some of them may, Perchance, Pique their interest ...

One thing I Particularly want to Put in here is this:
 I have a friend who has, over the last few years, Published some Particularly good/interesting blog Posts - about the People and Places she has been ... after enough people said to her "you should write a book" - she has done so! It is called "Pack and Follow" and she has Published it with one of those Print on demand type websites ... it can be found here - http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/2578726
(perhaps I should Produce a book and Publish it? ... not sure anyone would want to read it though - lol)

I Put a (small) pile of ideas in here before I went and did other things, then came back a few days later ... so I will leave them in whatever colour the text defaults to, and add the rest in this Peculiar Pink ...

Peas +/or Pies  er ... yes - I like Peas and/or Pies ... and yes the "and/or" does mean I like either one, or both together ... I could go a Pie floater about now ;-)

Puppy
Pussycat
I have lots of photos and stuff about those in this blog ... Probably have enough other Photos to add to this Post that I don't need any more ...

have a Party and invite my Pants down ... the pants I was wearing at the time were a bit short ... they were second hand, and had shrunk a bit more too ... original Plan was to add some Patchwork or something to the bottoms, but I never got there ...

Pumpkin beetles - Piles of the things!
Actually they were/are not Pumpkin beetles (that was what one person I knew called them once, but after some quick research on the www I noticed that is not what they are ... they are soldier beetles ... in fact if they are the Particular species I think they are - they are known as "Plague soldier beetles" ... which kind of does describe them:


bazillions of beetles flying in from who knows where ...

beetles being beetles? ... with a blurry Patch (Possibly a finger Print) on the lens ... oops ... I wiped it off after that Photo, but this one was still better than the others to show close up detail of what the beetles look like.

not so close up of the beetles in the tree - this is our "street tree" - they are planted in front of most of the houses in our street ... I am not sure what they are, but later in the year they grow big brown seed Pods ...

beetles in the tree in the dark - when I got back from walking the dog ;-)


While walking the dog I also found a few more of what I thought were the same beetles flying around ... caught one to get another photo - and noticed they are not the same at all ... these are Lycid beetles:


Lycid beetle on some grass



Lycid beetle on my hand

 

oops ... I was trying to take a photo just before/as it flew off ... but ended up with what I often get instead - an empty hand/finger where the beetle/other flying insect WAS ... lol
(btw - the blue thing is the dog's lead ... dog is a blurry blob in this photo - just above my "pinky" finger)

 .. another day, another Pretty (or is this one also Peculiar?) colour ... (half those beetle photos uploaded then stopped, by which time I was off doing other things, so now it is the next day)
For those who want more information on those beetles/want to know what website I used to work out what they Probably are - I went to this Page - http://www.brisbaneinsects.com/brisbane_beetles/index.html - the Lycid beetles and soldier beetles are about half way down the page.
btw ... what have beetles got to do with the letter P? ... nothing really, except I had heard someone call one that looked a bit like these 2 (but may have been another species of orange and/or green/black beetle ;-) a Pumpkin beetle ... but those are something else, and there are lots of web Pages about them because they are a garden Pest. That, and the fact that most black and yellow/organge insects are either Poisonous to eat, have a Poison sting, or are Pretending to be one of those that are ...

now for the other P Pictures I was Planning to Post:
(and some that I wasn't, but found while digging around in my Photos ;-)

purple sky ... I took the photo because it really did look that colour ... but it wasn't until I had Put it here that I noticed it is almost a Pefect match for the Purple text!



Pink bits on the trunk of a gum tree (Eucalyptus sp.)

 

Pink bottle bush and Purple .. er .. hardenbergia I think.

 

Pink Person ... I made 2 of these - one to keep, and one for a swap ... the @ was because I spend a lot of time online, and is even more apt now that i am on Twitter ( @UTLAU if you want to find/follow me there ;-)  but I made this before Twitter was even invented ... lol

Pincushions ... made at the quilt retreat I went on recently ... I wasn't going to make the hat one, but I just happened to have a circular bit of green fabric that was exactly the right size we needed (had to fit over an old CD) the other one at the top was meant to be a cupcake, but I had brown and yellow fabric and decided to make mine a Christmas themed chocolate cupcake with custard icing (hmmm I must try baking something like that one day - it could taste good ... or not ... lol) the other one was meant to be made with a lot bigger hexagons ... but me being me - I used really small ones, because I did not want a huge pincushion!

 

Pink (and black) gloves ... garden gloves I got from Aldi ... but bought because I think they will be quite good to use when doing machine quilting (they actually sell "quilting gloves" similar to this, but those cost a lot more money)



I took this Photo at work ... they often use Plasticiene in high school science classes, and sometimes I find Peculiar things when (if) it comes back ... (this lot has a blue Pony and a Pink snail shape and a Person ... lol)


Of course, Procrastinating about Posting this meant I had more days to Photograph a few more P things:

Pink flowers, Photographed while walking the dog ...

bright Pink bottlebrush flowers.

Pink and white and green leaves ... quite Pretty ;-)

the dog looking Pretty in the late afternoon sunlight
(instead of clouds with siver linings - a Golden Retriever with a golden lining? lol)

pink grevillias

Pink flowers ... quite Pretty, but some of these look a bit Peculiar

Purple daisys

bright Pink roses

red hot Pokers

a wattle tree with a Profusion of Pinkish looking Pods (and Pinkish looking leaves)

more Pink/Purple daisys

Peculiar Pinkish clouds

a Plot ... Part of a study of grass species or something ... in the nature Park I went on a walk in yesterday.
(I was Probably too busy taking Photos to Pay Proper attention to what the Person leading the walk was saying about these Plots ... ooops?)

Poo ... on a rock
(I am not sure why, but if I go somewhere that I end up taking more than just a few photos - I always seem to end up with at least one Poo Photo!)

a cow Pat - yes - another Poo!
(with a couple of tiny Pink flowers)

Pretty Purple flowers ... not sure what ... and no I did not Pick them - I had to Put my hand around them to stop them blowing around in the wind, so they were still enough to take the Photo

Pretty Prickles! (a scotch thistle)

Pink flowers, and pretty grass.

Peculiar flowers ...

more Prickles - this time on the Echidna that someone spotted over on the wall of the dam.

the Echidna near the Pond - after a few of us took photos it walked over to the grass and hid ... "I can't see you so you can't see me"? LOL

a Praying mantis on a Plantago Plant

Pink flowers on the edge of the driveway when I got home and Parked the car



and another photo of the soldier beetles ... not really a P photo - except they do look Pretty ;-)

I am sure I had a whole Pile of other P things I was going to Post about ... but after that Profusion of Photos ... maybe enough is enough?

I Pondered upon the idea of Posting a Picture of DD's Pigtails - she just got home, and was telling me all about how she got Pulled over by the Police (who were driving around doing random breath tests/etc) ... and how the Police officer gave her some Peculiar looks and they ended up having a Particularly long conversation about why she had Pigtails and how good they looked (and no - she did not get "Pinged" ... she tends to obey the speed limits and road rules, and doesn't drink and drive). I decided not to Put a Photo here though - it looked a bit Peculiar, and I can't be bothered Putting it onto the computer anyway ... not at "stupid o'clock" at night when I should have gone to bed 2 or 3 hours ago, because I have to go to work in the morning!

btw - as Per usual - clicking on a photo should take you to the lightbox thingy where you can look at all the photos, or a right click and choosing "open in new tab" (or new window) should take you to the original size version of that photo, if you want to see it bigger (yes - they are quite a bit bigger than they show up in here).