Tallin, Estonia to Riga, Lativia - May 26

Snippets from my travel journal:
We have our breakfast and are on our way by 9:00. This is going to be a long driving day - without stops it would be 4.5 hours. Good roads, nice looking farms. Two days ago I saw red foxes. Today I saw a large white with black wings and tail, stork, walking in a field.
Sylvia, our most excellent tour guide, tells us about amber. Amber is pine resin petrified. The Baltic Sea has expanded over old pine forests and so much amber is found in the Baltic Sea. White amber has more air in it. Green amber has moss, etc., in it. Red amber is heated. We purchased a piece of amber with an insect in it.
Very nice lunch at Parnu which is a resort town and we walked to the Baltic Sea over a board walk on this lovely sandy beach.
Next top was an old castle with the love story of 'Rose", a foundling. Of course, she falls in love with an unsuitable man, and ends up tricking the suitable one into killing her. I have lost the gist of the story and even the name of the castle. The group went up the stairs in the tower -- apparently there was a superb view. I stayed down and this afforded me time to actually compose some shots... no wide angle, though. There is yet more to this very lovely day, packed full of information. We did not get information sheets, and my notes cannot possibly mention all we learned and saw.

I have had a couple of fairly busy days at home. We have now arranged for someone to put the UV blocking screen over the outside of the skylight. We have carpet samples at home to consider and have settled on a nice medium green, no borders. We shall go see Rob at Hourigans, tomorrow. We hope to get Wally to do the job. He is a perfectionist floor covering installer. This will leave the bathrooms, kitchen and my room to be redone, after the kitchen reno happens.

Denise and I have finally settled on the verticals and the material for the draperies. Hopefully the verticals, at least will be installed in 2 weeks. I have paid her for half of the costs of materials, installation and taxes. So, with the kitchen reno yet in the works, I must go see Brian, the banker, tomorrow.

I have arranged for a composting company to deliver me a bin. They pick up my full bin, monthly for a $20 per month fee and $95 refundable on the bin. I get the bin on Saturday. I am sure I have a binfull of stuff ready to go now. Probably have to cut it up a bit more yet. Largest size wood they take is a 6 inch diameter. That's quite big. If I have that size, it probably goes into the fireplace.

I spent some time, yesterday, with Cyrus and the slideshow for the new site, and a few other things. Man, this is going to be one terrific site for photography!

This morning I went to my computer to find that Windows had updated and left my Jpeg icons with a new ugly orange icon that looked like a garbage bin. I spent quite a bit of the day learning about icons and how to change them. I now have my jpeg icon as this very green tree... so I have gone green on my desktop... should match all the gold and green that's going to be in my house .. by year end, I hope.