Me & My Shadow Stalking Litter At The Tandy Hills

I've been up since a little after 3 this morning. This type behavior always makes for an interesting day.

Right now I'm thinking about Deep Fried Butter. The Big Tex Choice Awards final eight were announced today, with the winners to be announced on Labor Day. I blogged about the Big Tex Choice Awards yesterday, saying this year's contestants had not yet been announced. And now, this morning, they have. I'll blog about this year's other bizarre fried concoctions in another blogging.

Sometime around 5 I felt like taking a dip of the skinny sort. The overnight low had the water being a bit cold for the first time in a long time.

Around 8 I started feeling constricted by interior spaces with a need to be in exterior spaces. I chose, like I often do, creature of habit that I am, to go to the Tandy Hills Natural Sanatorium Area for some early morning hiking. You can tell it's early morning by the long shadow I cast in the picture. Hiking around noon there are no long shadows.

Early morning light changes the look of the Tandy Hills. I was seeing things I don't usually see. For instance, I was startled by a root that I reacted to like it was a snake. I've walked over that root many times and never thought it was a snake. But the early morning shadows gave that root rattlesnake like markings and so I jumped.

Another thing I'd not noticed before was in one of the dry creek beds. I've always seen litter in the dry creek beds, but this morning's low light and shadows revealed way more litter than I'd ever noticed before. One creek bed, that I cross every time I'm at the Tandy Hills, had a soccer ball amongst its litter collection. I'm sure it's been there for a long time, but I never saw it til this morning.

My other excitement today has been being perplexed by data that does not make sense. Short version. I use something called bit.ly to turn a long URL into a short one, suitable for Twitter. For instance, I Twittered about the State Fair of Texas, then used bit.ly to make the link back to the blog. Bit.ly provides stats. Bit.ly says that there were 24 clicks on the bit.ly link in Twitter. However, none of those clicks show up in my other stat thing called FeedJit. So, one or the other, or both, are wrong.

Like I said, it's perplexing.