YELLOWJACKET NEST

I was out at the Hardcore Texas ranch house in Aledo, Texas one summer afternoon visiting my buddies Hippy Steve and William Bryan Massey III, head of kitchen operations at Fred's Texas Cafe, and spotted this yellow jacket nest up in one corner of the back porch.

So I got good and close and pointed my Nikon D80 up at it and took some shots.

As I was shooting, the yellowjacket on top of the nest turned my way and hunched down and fiercely stared at me, ready to attack my intrusion. I just said, "Hold on, buddy, I'll be finished in a sec."

Can you see the progress of the baby yellowjackets in the cocoons? See the one cocoon with the black head all shiny and seemingly ready to take flight? If not, click on the photo to get a closer look.

Man, insects are cool.

These yellowjackets look fierce as all get out and they are. Click for more about the yellowjacket flying badasses.

NO 'MO DOMINOS

Me and my buddy, Motel Todd, get together on Friday evenings and drink beer and watch movies and political shows and talk and order pizza. For the past couple of months we've been ordering from Dominos. We were doing this because Papa John's stopped delivering to the area of town I live in. Then the Dominos pizza scandal exploded on the Internet Tubes and so I said to myself, and later to Todd, "Screw Dominos! I ain't ordering from Dominos EVER again! I watched a news station report posted on YouTube of those two employees (with the female employee being a registered sex offender on top of it!) farting and boogering up those pizzas. So forget it, man! Never again!"

Todd suggested we get some pizza from Perrotti's Pizza, a long time Fort Worth institution.

I said, "Anything but Dominos, bro."

So we ordered from there and the pizzas were great. Todd, who has diabetes and is adamant about taking care of himself, got a six-item 14-inch veggie pizza and me, who has weighed 230 for the past 5 years at least no matter what I eat, got a six-item 19-inch all meat pizza.

Boy, what can I say. Todd says his was delicious and so was mine.

Now, I'm not a total freakin' pig --- just an average one. So I ate half of my enormous pizza Friday night and ate the rest of it on Saturday 'cause there's nothing better than leftover pizza.

This macro/micro shot, using Nikon's Nikkor AF-S Micro 105mm f2.8G ED VR lens (which I've finally started using after purchasing it two months ago --- it is SUPER good), is of Todd's all veggie pizza, the exact middle of it. Looks good, eh? And, best of all, you can see that there's no snot or butt boogers on it.