Cats, beads and cameras -- not a good combination!

Many things have kept me from the blog since I said I was back. Today I tried to shape up and focus on my blogs by taking some bead photos I've been meaning to get done for ages. Now that my other blog is back on schedule, I can't keep postponing it.

Unfortunately, if you sit outdoors taking photos because of the good light here, you will attract cats -- something I wrote about in this post (with pics of how it can look). Today I attracted Mimi and Figge. Mimi and photo set-ups are like moths and lamps -- she just have to get into them and sit in them! -- so I did my best to keep her and her dirty little paws as far away as possible. Which meant trying to make her lie down on the other side of the table. But while I was taking photos, she saw an opportunity to edge closer and closer. Finally, she was so close she bumped my set-up (one of these) when sitting down. You know, in that way cats do when they're offended because you don't focus on them when they want you to. Now that wasn't too much of a problem: I'm used to it and held on to the set-up.

No, the problem was when I had taken my last photo and was getting ready to turn off the camera and put all the beads back. I looked down at the camera for a few seconds -- seconds Mimi used to headbutt the lightweight plastic set-up off the table, spreading my little beads (silky beads, 4 mm cubes, 6/0s and 9/0s) on the old and dirty cracked concrete "terrace" where I was sitting. Well, not just on it: I was sitting by the edge so some beads probably fell down below -- in a field of weed, nettles and Himalayan balsam. Gaaah!

We're not going into what carefully chosen words I screamed... After banging me fist in the table, which achieved nothing but hurting my hand. Not even a satisfying loud bang. And my hand still hurts now, hours later...

Anyway, I managed to rescue most of the beads. Four silky beads are still lost as are two 4 mm lavender cube beads and an unknown, but luckily small, amount of the seeds.

I really like being able to sit outdoors, taking bead photos, as the light is better than anything I have indoors, but it sure does have its drawbacks... (For another -- not cat related -- example of this, see this post I wrote in 2010.)

So not a disaster, but it still feels like I'm having a Tycho Brahe day as I've had computer problems the rest of the afternoon. Really frustrating, headache-inducing software crashing type of problems. To top it all off, I accidentally deleted a browser add-on I find really useful when I was planning on removing another, which I suspect is causing the browser to run slowly and crash. And now I can't find it again.The computer mouse is just this far from being put in a meat grinder as it's getting inpossible to left click without it either interpreting it as a double (or triple) click or no click at all. This is the problem with living in the countryside: I can't just pop in to the nearest store to pick up a new one and ordering online cost money for shipping and take days. It just keeps getting better and better...

So a lot of time and energy focused on stuff like that instead of on blogging, editing photos etc. Still, hope to be able to show some pics soon and get back into blogging. It's also the reason why I haven't had much time to answer comments and e-mails these last couple of weeks.