DESPERATE POSTS REQUIRE DESPERATE MEASURES...

...such as throwing photos up on the blog wall & hoping they stick...

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Snow on the Coast! At Sea Level! Here's what I saw when I poked my head out the window a few days ago. Snow! If you click the picture (it gets waay bigger), you can see the flakes falling. I've heard that each snowflake is a minor miracle, because many flakes start out as snow, but they don't end up that way. So to get all the way down to sea level, a flake has to be especially hardy. Most likely, there were a couple of snow clouds overhead that blew away later on, because about a half-hour I took this shot, the Sun had broken out, the ice melted off my steps, and Snow as we know it was all done, at least for a while. It makes me think, though, if it snows this much here, it's gotta be snowing a lot more inland. Having lived through quite a few snowstorms in my life, the ol' winter driving skills immediately return. Actually one of the worst times for driving, at least for me, is when it's raining at night; the precipitation causes the roads to get darker, they cause the car to hydroplane, and sometimes I can't see the fog line at road's edge because the raindrops splattering on the windshield, as well as reflecting light from approaching motorists, obscures my view of just where I'm at on the road. I've also heard that as a person ages, their night vision worsens. For a few years now, I've felt that the Nights are darker than they used to be. So now there's some medical evidence to bear that out. Just another sign I'm gettin' old.

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On one of the colder days last week, the sun was out, and so I went driving around. There are still a lot of places I've never stopped at in Coos Bay or North Bend, and there are some really drastic hills in this area, which juts out into the bay like a miniature San Francisco. Some of the roads go almost straight up, so maybe it's a good thing it doesn't snow a lot down here. What you're seeing here a steep hill leading down into North Bend, only the Camera doesn't really capture how steep this hill actually is. In the distance, off to the left, is the old North Bend Hotel that's undergoing massive reconstruction. You're basically looking down, way down, at the old downtown area of North Bend. There are more convenient ways for me to get home, but this is the 'road less traveled' in my case. Of course, I've made a fool out of myself, accidentally pulling into dead-end streets or roads that end up in a cul-de-sac; a lot of the streets here don't go all the way from one town to the other; you'd almost think the City Fathers of each town couldn't agree on connecting their roads with the other guys'...either that or the zoning laws are all out of whack, and I'd say it was a little of both.

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Just past the top of the hill, way, way up, I found this little Neighborhood Market that I'd never been in. And since my daily Wild-Cherry-Pepsi fixation hadn't yet been addressed, I stopped here and got that taken care of. This really takes me back; it's almost as if the concept of a small-neighborhood-grocery store is almost irrelevant in this hustling, bustling age of ours. This store is not on a main street, and traffic on this hilly road is nowhere near as busy as it is in other parts of town. Why am I making such a big deal out of this? I remember going to the little small neighborhood market, back when I was a kid. Mom would send my sister and me to go get bread, milk, and other small items that wouldn't justify a trip to a larger store. Back then, the days were so lazy and hazy, I was in the middle of Being A Kid, riding bikes with my sister, who sometimes went along with me. That's a good memory of a now-long-ago time. While one can never really go home again, it's nice sometimes to think about life back then. As such, I'm sure countless neighborhood kids go to this store for candy or gum, or getting a few groceries Mom sent them for. It's all just part of being a kid.

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The weather around here lately's been a whole mixed bag of tricks imposed upon us by Ma Nature, and she can't seem to make up her mind if it's gonna be clear or cloudy. The weather down here can change on a dime. The coastline here doesn't freeze up, as it can do further north, nor is it as arid and dry as a lot of the California coast seems to be. We get it all here. For example, in the course of driving 5 miles around here, I've seen sun, rain, hail, heavy winds, blue skies, turbulence and calm, all in one short trip. This photo shows Mother Nature's confusion, but maybe she's beckoning me to just have faith, because the sun is still shining up there somewhere, and amidst all the turbulence o fimposing dark rain clouds, there's also peace and the promise of more blue skies to come. Well, it's either that or, "hey, the sky looks like the weather is uncertain, hope the sun comes out and shines someday!"

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Finally, what would a photo-blog be without a couple Sunset photo or two? So, at left, is your ordinary cloudless-skies sort of Sunset, with a Winged Messenger navigating towards his home, or wherever it is that Seagulls spend the night. Actually, the gulls and many other birds around here "park it" for the night waay out on the end of a jetty, way out near the seaward end of that rock wall which juts out into the ocean. Contrasting with that photo is the sunset of another recent evening, with the clouds overhead making everything look Really Weird, almost looking like some massive starship on its landing approach. I think my camera, working under much duress, throws 'false coloration' into the mix when I'm trying to make it do what it wasn't made to do. The calm waters of the bay add to the overall strangeness of the photo.

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And there, just like that, is another post. Gotta feed the blog, ya know...or else I'll be in the "bloghouse", ha ha...this is a case of going to the blog-site, having had no prior idea what I was gonna write. And then I thot, "well, there's always photos I can use". Desperate times make for desperate posts, after all...