Random Pictures

Joe seems to think I take interest in (and therefore, pictures of) some random things. I guess he's right, but they really seem interesting to me at the time! And, with a digital camera, my taking random pictures habit has only grown. Here's a few examples from the last couple of weeks:

I have a basil (which I keep accidentally pronouncing "basal") plant that I bought from A&M. When I planted it in the pot, I found a brown caterpillar on it. After chastising the little bug, I put him outside. Later that week, many more leaves had died on the plant. After some inspection, I found a green caterpillar with a guilty expression on his face (he also got moved to the front yard). A week later, the plant looked horrible and I ended up finding 5 more little green caterpillars! My stern talking-to had apparently not worked. Each time I had pulled off all the partially eaten leaves (because I was afraid it was a disease killing it), so I was surprised with even more leaves looked bad the week before now. I pulled off the bad leaves, and in the pile found a chubby green caterpillar. Here goes:


Next, an injury. For the 12 Week Challenge we had an obstacle course to compete in. It involved running, stooping under something while running, going up and down a LOT of bleachers, mini-hurtles, throwing a weighted ball, doing dips, and more running. We had to do three laps. Now my middle name, Anne, means graceful. People who know me well have pointed out that it must mean full-of-grace (in the forgiving sense) and not mean be actually being graceful (in the ballerina sense). They are right, and it gets much, much worse when I'm tired. To cut the story short, on the second lap I ended up tripping on a hurtle and slamming into the ground. I landed mostly on my right knee and left hip, so that's where the worst of the bruising happened, though scrapes could be found in many more places. Thanks almost entirely to the encouragement of others, I finished all three laps! (Life-lesson: dips on very cold bleachers when your hands have been scraped raw are VERY painful!) I walked funny for a couple of days, but recovered. I thought about taking a picture of the wind pants I had on (with a huge hole in them), but abstained. They were my favorite pair, you'll probably still see me wearing them. Here's part of the bruise on my hip almost a week after the incident (sadly, the biggest part is cut off, but you can see it start on the bottom left):
Finally, another caterpillar-like thing. This is from just tonight (yes, this is how I spend some of my Saturday nights). Joe ran in (after I had spent 15 minutes photographing the creature both inside and outside) and said he got dibs on blogging rights. So I guess I will just show the pictures: (Yes, he had red stripes. No, I did not touch him.)

edit: If you have trouble finding the green caterpillar, he's on the middle leaf on the right half of the picture.

P.P.S. Turns out, Joe was kidding when he said he had dibs on the caterpillar story (because it was obvious that I cared about it and he didn't). Oh well, I'll leave room for a little mystery. kp