Spider Fight!

Spider Fight!

In the left corner, weighing in at, uh, next-to-nothing is Araneus diadematus

Just before leaving for soccer last weekend we noticed a pair of spiders duking it out in the front yard. I rushed back in the house to grab my macro lens and tripod and snapped away. I assumed this was a fight to the death but after reading up a little bit online it looks like this may have been spider mating behavior.

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Buttermilk Biscuits

Buttermilk Biscuits

My favorite food in the world are Marla’s buttermilk biscuits. They’re flakey, buttery and gosh-darn good. To make excellent biscuits you must use soft, winter wheat flower. The lower protein and gluten content makes for softer, flakier biscuits. We like White Lily, which we import from afar. (We’ll do a “macrotastic” set of Marla baking them one day.)

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Pardon Me, Waiter.

Pardon Me, Waiter.

Pardon me, waiter, but there’s a spider in my pear!

The beginning of this set has a few photos of me and Emma headed to the Brownies Hawaiian Dance at the end of February. She was so excited to be getting fancy and dancing with Daddy. I know this won’t last much longer, so I was glad to go. (In fact, it didn’t even last until the dance. Once we arrived she had no interest in hanging out with Daddy.)

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macrotastic lemon bars

macrotastic lemon bars

I treated myself to a few new lenses a few weeks ago, one of which was a macro lens that I’d been wanting for ages. In the winter, of course, all the bugs are dead, the spiders have gone away and there are no flowers to speak of. What’s a guy to do with his new toy?

Why capture his wife making delicious treats, of course!

We had a few lemons left on my scraggly looking tree so Marla decided to put them to good use in the form of scrumptious lemon bars. The tree is an “Improved Meyer” and is much sweeter and less acidic than the Lisbon lemons you get in the store. Yummy, yummy stuff!

Marla was, as always, very patient with me as I circled around her with the camera lens just inches from the ingredients.

“Wait, wait… let me pre-focus.”

“Darn. I missed it. Do you need more eggs? You can add one more, right?”

“Oh, wait! Don’t pour that in yet!”

Focusing…

“OK, now you can pour the batter in.”

Marla later remarked that the hardest and most time consuming part of the process was putting up with me.

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