How Not to Save Time

1. Decide to take a "quick Blip" of the surprisingly nice sunrise that suddenly followed a gray, cloudy dawn.

2. Dash upstairs to the guest room window and over the course of 10 minutes, shoot a couple of dozen carefully-composed (or so it seemed) photos.

3. Wait five minutes for pupils to recover from the effect of the bright sunshine radiating through a gap in the trees in the last ten photos taken.

4. Download the photos and spend half an hour studying them, deleting the obvious losers.

5. Take a midmorning break downstairs, enjoying excellent lattes made by Phil (P/Pilipo) and delicious, feather-light cream scones from Avenue Bakery.

6. Go back upstairs and spend another half hour cropping the possible winners and playing with the admittedly limited "effects" on iPhoto 2008.

7. Narrow the competition to two images. Exercise eyes by looking from one to the other approximately 25 times, trying to decide which one to choose.

8. Make final decision, based on simplicity of image, and download photo to desktop. Look back in past blips to link previous image from the same location in this narrative.

9. Decide not to continue the "Spoilt for Choice" countdown. Look up "repeat" in the dictionary in case there is an interesting synonym to use in a new title. There wasn't.

10. Shrug shoulders and sigh. Write a descriptive title. Send journal entry into the Bliposphere and return to the guest room, this time to do what should have been the morning's first priority -- to search for holiday gifts bought several months ago and carefully put into a "safe place."