March 2005 Archives

What's the best part about this drawing?

[Answer below the fold]

This Hallmark Encyclopedia is pretty cool. It seems to be more oriented towards flatware and whatnot rather than jewelry, but the photos are great and it's still interesting.

[Link from Coudal Partners Fresh Signals]

when he lets you sniffle and boohoo all over his undershirt and he doesn't mind. Thank you, MO. I'll do laundry pronto ;-)

I've long suspected that a Roomba would provide as much entertainment as itwould housekeeping help, and this confirms it. Gotta get one of these....

[Link from Three Years of Hell to Become the Devil]

I'm finally getting around to scanning the box of great-grandfather Helzel's photos. The scans are coming out very well! Today I scanned 100 images, and it looks like I'm about halfway through the box. Here are some (much reduced in size) samples:

This week, it's all about Melvin. She's been unusually photogenic lately.

First, a classic feline pose.

Second, an action shot. We call this "rabbitting". She rolls over on her back, holds the victim in her front paws and kicks the stuffing out of it with her back feet.

Finally, a lovely portrait. She may not be very bright, but she does know she's a beauty.

The Carnival of the Cats is up at Music and Cats. Lots of entries, cute kitty button graphics, and a link to a cool Carnival entry submission form. Neato :-)

I installed some code a while ago that tracks incoming search phrases, and just tonight it found this one:

This was on the first page for this search phrase at MSN search! How exciting :-) I neglected to mention in that post that the low-recoil shells were Estate. Since I got the recoil pad, I can shoot regular shells, but the low-recoils are still especially nice.

Here is a photo-essay by Burningbird detailing a trip into the Ozarks. The fascinating part for me is the story of the "Missouri dirt". Like many folk-tales, it's simplistic, but it's satisfying and you want it to be true.

My dirt just might be from Texas, but I'm not sure yet (which I guess means it isn't). The places I've found the most peace in have been here in Houston, but I've gone through some of my hardest times and done more thinking here than anywhere else, so I think that makes sense.

In last night's dream-time episode of Consulting Gone Wrong, I learned that the traveling consultants were getting a $53 per diem to cover the costs of wearing out their shoes (what, were they walking to the client site instead of racking up frequent flyer miles?) and I was tasked with taking an out-of-town partner to dinner. He wanted fish. I said, great, I know several good places. He said, no, he'd only eat at the Hilton. I said the food there sucks. He didn't care. He wanted quick and convenient. I said, why don't we just get McDonald's? It'll be cheaper and taste better.

So I'm batting 1000 on CLMs in my consulting dreams. Great....

• FarScape-o-mania: We've watched six (or seven?) eight FS episodes in the last few days. Finished up season two (most of which I hadn't seen) and had to squeeze in the first episode of season three since the season two finale was a To Be Continued.... This has been fun, catching up on the backstories, and especially nostalgic for me since the very first episode I ever saw was the third one of the three-part series that led up to the season two finale.
• New Shoes: I actually went shoe shopping. And bought something. Two cute new pairs o' peds--pink sandals and brown mules. I am a sucker for mules, even though they're stupidly impractical.
• Bad Dream: Last night I dreamed I was still working at That Big Six Consulting Firm and experiencing the project kick-off from hell. I was late to a meeting, got called for looking "less than enthusiastic" during said meeting, executed a CLM by making an unpopular (with the Firm) suggestion, etc. Ugh. I woke with all my muscles clenched and my neck is still sore. It was worse than a "OMG, I slept through my final" dream. After all, I've missed finals for real. I can handle those dreams!

Well, if it's a stuffed animal that's been sitting on top of your armoire for a while, you use the brush attachment of your vacuum cleaner. I was very glad to find out that worked, because I didn't think tossing them into the washing machine was going to be a viable option. Just call me Heloise....

Really, Lorax is more excited about the Carnival's first birthday than she looks. I couldn't get her to wear the party hat, but I know she's totally into it. See, she's smiling....

A coworker handed me a postcard the other day for an upcoming piano concert. (His son takes piano lessons from the performer's mother, which has nothing whatsoever to do with the story, but there it is.) The pianist is seventeen years old, and the blurb includes the following statements:

Adam has performed with the Houston Symphony twice. He is tall and confident, and owns the stage the moment he strides toward the piano. "Nothing makes me happier than performing," he says. "I love the entire experience; the music, the audience--everything."

Imagine that. "Owning the stage" at seventeen. It must be a heady sensation. I know there are child prodigies and whatnot, but by the time you're 17, surely you realize that you might make a mistake and life isn't fair and you've got a zit on the end of your nose and your girlfriend is acting funny.... But despite all that, you walk out on a stage, under a spotlight, in front of a paying audience, and you play the piano for them, and you enjoy it. That is completely unfathomable to me.

We all have our daily obstacles to overcome, of course, but last time I checked, nobody gets accolades or "owns the desk" for not breaking into a nervous sweat at the sight of a differential equation or a recursive function. Which may be just as well, actually, now that I think about it.

This Banfi Rosa Regale is ultra-sweet and soooo sippable! Not for every day (it really is very sweet) but lots of fun as a special treat. And since it won't keep (can't be losing our bubbles, ya know) you have the perfect excuse to slurp down the entire bottle :-)

I am from marigold seeds, from Volkswagen and granite jetties.

I am from the railroad tracks and the ditch, hot in the sun,
from the haze of the onion patch and the cool piney woods.

I am from the blackberry bramble, the dandelion, the round warm hen's egg.

I am from Boat Yard Saturday Night and Nonesuch Corner, from Ivan and Jeannette and Gay.

I am from the artistic temperament and the romantic tendency,
From may we please be excused now and deck us all with boston charlie.

I am from the blue book and the purple book, feeling Grace breathe life into the ranks of the pipes.

I'm from the-ship-after-the-mayflower, sweet cornbread, black-eyed peas and parfaits.
From when Rob cracked his head and I theoretically learned about tact, from croquet in the back yard, and never getting the joke behind pulling Grandfather's finger.

I am from carbon-copied onion-skin pages titled Research,
a box of black-and-white five-by-sevens,
war medals and newspaper clippings.

Slides projected on the refrigerator door taught me my own unremembered history and
decades later negatives projected in the darkroom showed what went before.

Continuing on my Fragments from Floyd roll, this is in response to a series of posts (here is one) suggesting a sort of memory exercise based on a template derived from a poem (written in the house that Jack built--oh wait, that's something else). I'm not suggesting that what I ended up with is anything approaching poetry, but it has led me down a lot of forgotten paths over the past week or so. And somewhere along the line Fred said he's trying to collect 100 WIF's by June 1, so I wanted to help out :-)

Fred First of Fragments from Floyd has photos on flickr!

(Just couldn't resist all that alliteration.)

So I got myself a Flickr account and I'm messing around with it. The previous post was created from within Flicker (cool!) but I don't know why it looks double-spaced. Too tired to deal with it now, but maybe I'll figure it out over the weekend.... I sure hope it's stays this pretty for a while--I'm ready for a break from the rain!

The last few days have been absolutely gorgeous. I took this picture this morning from the deck of the parking garage. It's so sad to go into a stupid office building when the weather is like this--I'd much rather be outside!

Just go on and read this. It'll either make sense or it won't. And if it doesn't, well, bless your heart, there's hope for you yet, I'm sure.

I received an advertising email sporting this logo:.

Now, who thought that was a good look? It looks like they didn't have quite enough room on the page, so they smooshed it a little. If all the words were jumbled, maybe it would fly, but as it is, it seems like a mistake. And if you have to jumble up that middle word, why not jumble all the letters? What's the matter, O and U are just too straight-laced to jump up and down with their friends? And while I'm at it, I don't like that conjoined OO in the last word, either. "Infinity" is not a good connotation for a consulting firm or project. (This is going to last/cost/suck how much? Infinity. Right....) Bleah. The whole thing is horrible.

Yeah, right.... I didn't even know it had an official name.... Russ at TacJammer rants about people like me who don't know their Alphas from a Hotel in the Golf where internationally-accepted verbal spelling is concerned. I was just recounting to my coworkers my attempt to get "cgi-bin" spelled across a bad cell-phone connection during an emergency tech-support call from the M.O. I don't remember what I came up with for the first part, but I used Beer, Internet, Noodle for the last part. Hey, it worked, and it still kinda makes me giggle :-)

There's a huge Ark this week, complete with some inter-species rivalries brewing....

Update: And the Carnival is at maximum stacy, despite computer problems. The kitties will not be denied!

I've finally admitted that I just don't "get" netting 'cause whenever I try to design a netted piece myself, it just doesn't work. Here is an attempt from a few weekends ago:

Great colors (really--I know you can't tell from the picture--it's carnelians and citrines with lime-green and rust-brown glass) but very stiff and weird. So I took that all apart and ended up with two single-strand necklaces that I really like.

Anyhow, since this admission, I've given myself permission to actually follow patterns instead of winging it, and now sometimes I end up with netted stuff that's actually good! Here is today's example:

This is a very-near copy of the "Lacy Loops" project by Lois Fetters (in the Vintage Style section of the April 2005 issue of Bead and Button). I used 13-0 charlottes instead of regular 11-0s, so I ended up with a more delicate net and more loops, and I didn't use an accent bead color in the net, but other than that, I pretty much followed the directions. And unlike my usual "I'm going to follow this pattern if it kills me" episodes, I actually finished it, and I actually like it :-) I'll be wearing it tomorrow, of course!

Full name: Flora, the Lily of the West. Which means she even has a theme song :-) After a couple-hundred rounds, we are good friends. The M.O. has a new gun to name as well, and it's very nice, but I was captivated by my lovely Flora....

Joan Baez, Joan Baez Ballad Book
Tim O'Brien, Odd Man In

(If Amazon actually HAD the Joan Baez CD, I would have ordered it instantly. This was one of my favorite records when I was a little kid, and I would loooooooove to have it on CD. I even went to the Vanguard Records site, which is attractive but barely functional, and couldn't find it there. I sent them an email, we'll see what happens....)

I put the Tim O'Brien link because it has a sample of the song. It's all wrong, of course ;-) since it's not Joan's version, but it's better than nothing.

PS - If the Amazon frame looks stupid, I have no idea why. They used to look okay.... I guess I'm going to have to switch to the "host your own picture" format. What a hassle....

Update: I zapped the frames. They didn't have a picture for the Joan CD anyhow....

We've had some pretty weather this week,

the bluebells are already coming up in the park,

and Melvin can be hard to see in the dark.

When I got home from work today, there was a gray plastic box on my desk. Its label looked like this:

and its contents looked like this:

My very own .22 pistol! Seems the M.O. found a good deal on this Browning Buckmark at Collectors, and, ever sensitive to his lovely wife's needs (the wise words of Kim there), purchased it for me. Now honestly, what more could a girl ask for? My husband rocks!

You just can't beat the Kalashnikitty tshirt. Even the M.O. wants one, so I've ordered two :-)