Stuff that drives me crazy...

A blogger friend of mine recently asked if I was still blogging, because I haven't posted in a really really long time, about 6 months.  It was a good wake-up call for me.  I've had a lot going on in my life (some good, some not-so-good; it all balances out somehow and just takes up time; maybe I'll share some of it down the road) and somehow the blog fell to the bottom of my 'things to do' list.  There's a bunch of other stuff on the to-do list I haven't done either.  Anyhow, I don't suppose I can totally catch up for 1/2 year of missing posts, but I'm gonna try.

I thought for fun I'd start with a quickie post of a few things that annoy me lately, to let you know I'm still the same old snarky blogger I was 6 months ago.  (I think this great blue heron was pretty annoyed that this fish didn't fit in his mouth, and I think the fish was pretty upset that the heron repeatedly picked him up and tossed him around.)  *By the way, all photos in this post are mine exclusively.  So here goes:

1) Crooked horizons on photos, unless intentional for a specific reason.

 It only takes a moment, whether on your phone, tablet, laptop, or whatever, to straighten your horizon, as I've done in the photo above.  You don't need Photoshop to fix it.  Also crooked horizons on paintings.  I have an artist friend who does lovely plein air landscape paintings.  Here horizons are always slightly off-kilter and she doesn't realize it and I don't dare tell her (she doesn't respond well to critique of any kind).  Having one of her paintings in my home would be like having a painting hanging crooked on the wall; it would drive me bananas!  I wish she would notice it on her own.

2) Boomerang videos. 
Why do you think I want to see the same jittery movement over and over and over again?  I don't.   They give me headaches.  Please stop.

3) Instagram stories. 
I mean, I admit I do look at them sometimes (particularly those by 1bike1world; if you've never  heard of him, check him out.  He's a lovely young Scottish man traveling the world on a bike, who rescued a kitten he found who now is his traveling companion). But anyhow, they annoy me so much when there's text and the image flips before I finish reading it and then I can't get it back again to finish reading it.  Or I have to watch the whole damn story again to see the one part with the text I didn't finish.  Ugh.

4) Over-saturated colors on autumn photos. 

Autumn colors are beautiful on their own.  I can understand someone giving the colors a little saturation to pump them up, or even warming the color balance a little, but dramatically over-saturating the colors make them look fake, not beautiful.  The pic above is straight from the camera, unedited. 

5) Profile photos with Snapchat filters.  I don't have a lot to say about this.  The cutesy stuff simply gives me the creeps.

That's enough for now.  Next post will be back to art education stuff, including the finished projects I was posting about last April, and what my students are working on now.  By the way, here's a link to two other posts where I've previously written about pet peeves of various sorts: PET PEEVES POSTS.