Introducing...

Lara's Loose Threads

I was trying to figure out how to incorporate my needlework and quilting stuff into the re-worked version of my homepage and I realized that the answer was staring me in the face. A blog! There isn't a whole lot up over there yet, but I'll be posting more photos in the future.

Today's Best Spam Subject Line

Today's winner is: sandwich 376 fetishists - This one has a lot of comedic potential. I'm picturing 376 peanut butter and jelly fetishists being squeezed together.

Start of a semi-regular series "Best Spam Subject Line of the Day"

Between the four email accounts I use regularly, I get a lot of spam. While it annoys me greatly to have to spend so much time sorting through it to make sure that some real mail hasn't been caught in the filters, I've found that the subject lines can sometimes be quite amusing and sometimes even profound in an existentialist sort of way. Most of my amusement comes from the emails where they take two or three words and randomly pair them in the subject heading, but I do have to admit that I'm also getting a chuckle out of the fact that even the spammers are riding Harry Potter's robe-tails and now "enhancement" products are using "magic wand" as a euphemism for a certain part of male anatomy.

So here are some from today's haul of spam that made me grin:

Worldly tripod - this one actually kind of works for me. Makes me think of travel photography.

A pretty-pretty fly - What happens when an insect ends up in a supermodel's teleportation device.

Dirt-encrusted squid - What happens when you drop your calamari

A few photos from West Texas

I didn't get a chance to take a lot of photos when I was out in West Texas last month, but I did post the few that I did take over on my Flickr page. If you click the photo above, it will take you to the West Texas photo set, which also includes photos from when I was out in December 2003 (and has a lot more photos of actual telescopes!).

As you can see from the photos, it was the rainy season in West Texas. While that isn't great for using telescopes or having outdoor functions at a meeting, it does make for pretty green scenery and nice sunsets. The last night I was out there though was crystal clear and beautiful. I ended up not even looking through a telescope ... just sitting on a porch and looking at the Milky Way!