It's The TIME OF THE SEASON...

...for the sun to finally come out for a while...

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Where I used to live (in North Idaho), every summer, there'd be two or three weeks in which temperatures were just plain old debilitating HOT with temperatures in the upper '90s or 100's. (I'd never make it in Arizona, I'm sure.) Down here in Oregon, it's been HOT in the Willamette Valley, in such cities as Eugene, Springfield, and Salem, among others. Here on the coast, it's been gray and dull a LOT this year. And, we've had some stifling Humidity this year. It's almost as if someone has attached a load of bricks to your back; the slightest movement makes you break a sweat, and yer clothes just kinda STICK to you. The first time I experienced this Oregon Humidity, I thot I was having a heart attack. And, I would venture to say that 75 degrees with a lot of humidity is virtually as difficult to put up with as 95 or 100 degrees with less humidity. Towards the end of this week, though, we've had some brisk ocean winds, blowing in some cooler air and sweeping the threatening storm clouds away. And the air feels lighter and I can BREATHE again. Perhaps atmospheric pressure really does put one under pressure.

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Every year, towards the end of summer, there comes one day in which Everything Just Feels Different. Something about, perhaps, the angle of the sun, the color of the sky, whatever. Summer technically ends on Sept. 21st, I think, but long about mid-August, there just seems to be a day where Everything Is Somehow Different; Ma Nature's way of saying "hey, it ain't gonna be summer forever". Granted, the fairly constant cloud cover of late has blocked out the sun quite a lot, removing the sun from view for days at a time. But since about mid-week, the sun's been out morel, and on Friday, Everything Felt Different. The air felt lighter. I've been sleeping better. Maybe there is something to this Barometric-Pressure thing. And now is the time of year I look forward to; as things get progressively cooler inland, there's less fog on the coast, and honestly, September and October can be Glory Days indeed. Sunshine and cool temperatures; at times it almost feels like Morning All Day Long (not that I'd really know 'cos I'm never up in the morning, but you know what I mean...).

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So anyway, I went out picture-taking today, and will post all of them on the Webshots site (http://www.webshots.com/), under the username 'digitaldave72' if you wanna take a look at 'em. But I wanted to highlight one of the pics I snapped today. I think I'm gettin' quite wily with the camera; more likely, though, I'm just Lucky sometimes. Near here are some small islands where Sea Lions hang out, and you can hear them barking from sunup to sunset, arf, arf, arf, all day long. Cape Arago, where I went today, is about a half-mile south of those "seal islands", and while taking pictures there, I heard a low rumbling sound coming from the ocean somewhere. I looked way out and there were a couple of seals heading towards the islands, and evidently what I heard was the low, loud call of a huge macho sea lion (perhaps in seal lingo he was saying something like, "hurry up, Doris, we ain't got all day to git there!). My little Canon Powershot camera really sucks up the battery juice when I'm trying to focus on faraway objects (maybe my rechargeable batteries are fizzing out on me), and the seals were quite a ways out there...so I followed the sound of the Lion's call, focused on two little black dots in the ocean, and came away with this photo:

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How about that! With limited time to get this photo (due to depleted batteries), I got 'em, almost in the center of the picture. I'm proud of this! Of course, it's hard to make out very much detail here, since the Ocean is so large and the Sea Lions are so comparatively small. So, I went into my PhotoExpress program, made a cutout, which distorted the image, rendering it out of focus. Ah, but not to worry; I can 'sharpen' blurry photos, and the first time around, I got the photo to come out somewhat better. Then I sharpened the previously sharpened photo, and, voila! You can actually see the Male Sea Lion hollering at his mate; in seal-ese, he's probably yelling something like, "C'mon, no sandbagging, let's GO!"

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Ah, isn't it wonderful? Domestic bliss in the Wild Kingdom. Arf, Arf, Arf. Oh, by the way, "Time of the Season" (the title of this post) is a song by The Zombies, who recorded it in 1967, and had been long-split-up by the time it became a Big Hit in 1969. Rod Argent, leader of the band "Argent" (who had a hit with "Hold Your Head Up") was a Zombie back in the old days.