A Garden of Textiles

Scarves, color, and spices were these theme.

Today, the roommate and I went to Lauritzen Gardens down in the old part of Omaha.  The indoor display was described as a fairy garden.  It was actually all about India, scarves, shawls, sashes, everywhere, draped to make tent like structures around benches and other displays.

It is probably the first time I’ve taken more photos of fabric that flowers at a garden.  There are some flower photos, but that is another story.  Well, two other stories. I’ll focus on this display for now.

Halloween colors and a slightly harvest feel.

It should come as no surprise that the black and orange display was one of my favorites. I’m sure everyone has seen grass grown long enough to go to seed and the while motif on the orange fabric very much looks like grass seeds or some other grain seeds.

Another favorite of mine.

You can see, there is a reason this looked more like India than a fairy garden. Fall chrysanthemums were everywhere but I didn’t really get and photo of them. I was too busy looking at fabric. There was even a spice market.

The spice market.

Actually, this display made me want to go to a spice shop and since the roommate wanted to go to Rockbrook to get a back up camera battery I did get to go spice shopping. I was out of ground mustard so I got that and two blends, one for meat and a Cajun one I intend to use on pasta.

Yummy!

Hanging over some of the secluded benches were flowers strung up like this….

Hanging from the ceiling were more sashes….

There was even an ornate elephant…

As you can see, not a fairy was in sight. Nothing felt or looked like a fairy garden. But India was well represented. So were salads but that was one of the other stories.

Preparing for a Trip Home

I’m getting ready for a trip home.  Or I’m not getting ready.  I’ve been really bad at doing all the things I wanted to finish before I left for a week.  Instead, I spent a lot of time on the couch taking medication and sleeping.  The current weather pattern has been killing my head and sinuses.

What I have done is bought a new camera, I love it and I will post the first photo’s on it here, just as soon as I get to Idaho.  I bought a new dress for my niece’s wedding that didn’t fit and fell off me.  I think their sizing chart is off or I did a really bad job measuring my chest.

One wrench in my plans was that I realized I needed to renew my Driver’s License BEFORE I left on my trip.  My birthday will happen when I’m in Idaho.  So I had to use the money I set aside to check my luggage to renew my license. So now I have to figure out how to everything into a small carry on suitcase.  I think I’ll take three outfits, wear one outfit, and do laundry at my mom’s half way through the trip.

I didn’t lose the weight I wanted to lose.  I lost that 13 pounds at the beginning of the year and never managed to lose any more.  I just stalled out.  The good thing is my mom has a really nice treadmill.  I miss my treadmill.  It died on me a few years back.

I hope to get out and about and take LOTS of photos.  I want to give a good overview of anything I can.  I’m sure my focus or goals.  Home no longer feels like home.  The town of 5000 that I grew up in exploded after I moved and now is over 28,000.  That is a huge jump.  It happened over about 15 years I think.  I graduated in 1988.  I can’t go back that far, but in 1990, the population was 7,700.  The 28,000 is from 2012.  At one point, they said it was the fastest growing town in the state.  The population quadrupled in 22 years.  No wonder it doesn’t feel like home anymore.  The populations when from 5011 when I lived near the population sign in grade school to 7,700 two years after graduation.  Very slow growth the entire time I lived there, then an explosion of people coming.  It is strange to me.

Downtown Post Falls along the Spokane River.

My flight is an early morning one.  And I have a lot to do.  Before work I managed to get a load of laundry started, emptied the dishwasher, cooked a back sandwich for breakfast and a steak for lunch, moved the laundry to the drier and started a second load, and that is about it.

Now I have to pack, and clean, and find the charger for my personal dvd player.  And try to find my mp3 player that has been missing for a year.  It has to be in one of the still unpacked boxes in my room.  I want to clean and unpack some of those boxes.  I feel like I have a lot on my plate that I left to the last minute.  Because I really did.  It is all my fault.  But trying to sleep just seemed like a good idea at the time.

So tonight, like most pre-flight nights, I’m going to be up late cleaning and up early to make a predawn drive to the airport.

About Sushi, Raspberries and Cameras.

Yesterday I had the most amazing volcano roll for lunch. It seems like every place that serves sushi has a volcano roll but it is different at each establishment. It was also beautifully made. It really wasn’t as fancy as some. It was basically a California roll that was wrapped in thin layers of crab with a more spicy than usual spicy sauce and then sprinkled with some kink of crunchy flakes. It was also just a little bit salty.

I finished off the sushi with a cup of raspberries. They were on sale. Anytime I see them for 2.99 I buy some.  It is what I think of as the ‘normal’ price.  Sometimes the same sized containers can go all the way up to 5.99.  Far to high.

I would loved to take a photo of the delicious and beautiful food but I cannot.  My camera will not charge.  It works perfectly fine when plugged into the wall. This is why the people to whom I took the camera say that it must be a completely dead battery that will no longer take a charge.  Only new batteries, which were very hard to find, also didn’t charge.   I do not have a separate batter charger.  I’m wondering if I should try getting one and seeing if the batteries will charge when charged by an external charger.  Maybe something is wrong with the camera charger and not the batteries.

The only thing is that I’m not that happy with the camera.  It never was as good as my old camera.  But it was the closet one to what I had before.  That camera still worked but the view screen was damaged.  I had the camera in my pocket when I closed the door of the car.  Apparently it crushed something in the viewer.  I could take photos but I could not see what I was taking a photo of.  So I couldn’t see if I was pointing it correctly to get the image I wanted. The repair to that was going to cost as much as the camera was worth.  The part wasn’t terribly expensive but the labor to replace it cost twice as much as the part.

So my mom bought me a new one that was okay but not great.  And now I can’t find batteries for it and it won’t charge properly.  I didn’t think it was that only, only about 4 years.  But everyone else thought that was old for a camera.  Who goes and gets a new camera every year?  It isn’t like an iPod or a smart phone.

According to my roommate, new cameras are released about every 6 months.  His camera was only in production for 3 months and they stopped selling them about 8 months after the initial release date of that model.  So basely a 5-year-old camera would be like a 10-year-old car.

So now I’m thinking that I really want a new camera.  My oldest niece is getting married in June and I want good photos.  So maybe it is time to get a more expensive camera.

The irony is that my all time best camera was a 60$ film camera I picked up at a drug store before going on a vacation many years ago.  Eventually I had problems with the door to the film compartment.  It was my last film camera. I still miss it to this day.  My mom grumbled all through our Hawaii trip one year because my 60$ took better ocean photos than her 300$ camera.  It was funny.

So, until I get a new camera, I’m going to have photo problems with my blogs.  I might have trouble finding the photos I need from my collection of personal photos.

A Multitude of Thoughts

Not everyone will be happy. But I am.

To start with, I’m very pleased with the apparent election outcome.  And not only does it look like Obama won the electoral votes, but they are thinking he probably won the popular vote as well.  They can’t say that officially yet because the counting isn’t done and it seems close enough in some places that they don’t want to commit to that just yet.

At the very very beginning of the primary race, I thought Romney might be a viable Republican option.  But as the primaries continued, and then after the nomination, and after he picked Paul Ryan, (Okay BEFORE he picked Ryan) I knew that I wouldn’t go near him with a 20 foot pole.  Maybe 100 yards would be better.  Isn’t that the distance on a restraining order?

My roommate, on the other hand, is not happy.  He feels as I do.  Only his sentiment is directed at Obama and not Romney.  So he is less happy this morning.

We are both still cranky and ticked off at one member of the wedding party from the weekend.  The fact that she is in a polyamorous relationship doesn’t bother me at all.  She seems to be a happier, stronger, more confident person than when she was with her ex-husband.  So it has been good for her.  What does bother me is that she treated the weekend as an opportunity for everyone else to take care of her little boy.  He is not yet school age. 

I know that it was a special weekend and they let him stay up later than his normal bedtime.  But she left it up to her boyfriend to make him go to bed.  She was too busy drinking and partying with the other members of the wedding party to make sure he got to bed. 

She asked her sister to watch him while they ran some errands in town and took off, without leaving the car seat and everyone wanted to do something that day.  But with no car seat, that meant someone had to stay back to watch the little boy.  And his mom couldn’t be bothered to answer her phone while they were out.  So we couldnt’ get them to drop the seat off or find out where they were so someone could pick up the car seat.

Then, at the wedding dinner, mugs were a party favor and people were told to find a spot based on the mug they wanted.  I put my camera in the spot I wanted.  I was more concerned with not being trapped in the back because I’m mildly agoraphobic.  I don’t like being trapped or surrounded by to many people.  She then comes over to me to say that she and her boyfriend and the other girlfriend are sitting in the three spots on that end.  Of course, then NEVER put down anything to mark those places as occupied. 

Did you notice that she only had three spots?  She never even thought about where her little boy was going to sit.  She was more concerned about her boyfriend.   Basically, he ended up in the only empty seat left.  She also didn’t even bother to make sure he got a plate of dinner.  It’s like he didn’t even exist for her during that dinner.  It was left up to the people around him to make sure he got fed and behaved well.   One of those people was his step-grandpa.   But he was also surprised that the boy’s mother didn’t bother to think about her son that evening.  So it wasn’t like there was an arrangement for him to sit near his grandpa.

It is two days later and I am still pissed off about this behavior.  Not even Election Night was able to distract me from it. 

Looking at photos, ones in which I appear, I hate to see myself.  I used to LOVE to be in front of the camera.  Every time I see a photo, I can’t believe it is me.  I do not see myself as being that huge.  I guess I have some kind of reverse anorexia.  You know, where the person w/ anorexia draws pictures of themselves as huge when they are in reality a walking skeleton.  I know I’m over weight, but my mental image is apparently much smaller than my real body size.  I can’t really reconcile the me I see in photo’s with the me in reality.   Maybe that’s part of the reason I have so much trouble losing weight?  And today the top of my butt cheeks hurt a lot.  No idea why. 

Actually, I think it may be a result from distracting myself from the Polls.  I would watch 15 minutes of a show, pause it, check the Polls, then clean for 5 minutes, and repeat.  So I was up cleaning for 5 minutes out of every 20.  All evening long.  That is a lot of up and down and up and down.  I suppose that could do it.

Back to politics as I remember something else from last night.  I was playing SWTOR in the later evening.  Everyone was doing really really well with NOT talking about politics.  Oh, there was the generic comments about the polls and such, but nothing about political opinions and beliefs. 

Until one idiot decided to announce that anyone who votes for Obama was a traitor.  All we said was that we felt the person was being a bit to extreme.  But the one person kept going on about it.  One person left the guild because of it.  After about half an hour, in which he couldn’t get anyone else to take sides at all, he (that is an assumption there) left the guild.  A comment right after was that if you ignore someone trying to stir things up, it becomes a self-correcting situation. 

A smart rule is to never discuss politics in Guild Chat.  People on both sides get upset.  People trying to ignore the discussion get upset.  In the past, I’ve seen guilds fracture and split in half over politics during election years.  It is too volatile a topic.  It is worse than religion.

Backed up and bogged down.

During the day, I sometimes find that I can’t ‘like’ posts and sometimes can’t get into the comments sections.  This drives me nuts and I have to wait and find the time when I can do it and get it to go though.

This can back up my blog replying and bog down my inbox.

Sometimes, when I get up in the middle of the night, I can crank through a bunch of it and get close to something resembling ‘caught up’.

That did not happen tonight as I typed some long comments.  That seriously slowed me down.

Friday, I’ll be heading out-of-town for 4 days.  My only lap top with a wireless card is OLD.  But it still usually lets me get online.  It is just a real pain to use.  So I may end up getting REALLY behind if I have to go four days without access.

I’ll use the hot tub at the lodge to console myself.  Hmmm, I wonder if I can get my Netflix to run on it… (the laptop, not the hot tub, that would just be weird).  And then there is all the photo taking I need to do.  But there may not be much snow.  I was hoping for snow.

Something Pretty Before Bedtime

I wanted to post something pretty before I went to bed.

I may have a strange definition of pretty.

For all the ‘batty’ people out there…..

I got out of the Kia, turned around, and this greeted my face:

Batman and Robin. Better than all the ‘family’ decals on every other vehicle you see.

So, if you are Batman fan, a Robin fan, or a Nightwing fan, this ought to work for you on some level.

Sometimes it just doesn’t work…..

The sun on the way to work.

The last two mornings had the most amazing view of the sun from the interstate. And it was a huge ball of fluorescent orange color. I figure it must have has something to do with the moisture in the air in the mornings. Or something as I really had no clue and it was to pretty to really care about the mechanics of it. Perhaps I don’t care is less about it being too pretty to analyze and more about me not being a morning person and researching it is too much science for me before 10:00 am.

But I had to drive the last two mornings and wasn’t able to try to get a shot. Today I was riding with my roommate and got my camera ready for ‘Photos while Driving’. Go figure, today would be the one morning with actual clouds. I missed a couple good shoots juggling the stuff he picked up at the drive through. Then I got a lot of really blurry ones. Pictures while moving at 65 miles per hour can do that. Then the sun was too far behind the clouds.

And the incredible red-orange fluorescent color didn’t really come out well on the camera. I’m bummed about that. But I’ll give it another try tomorrow. Maybe there won’t be as many clouds and I’ll get a good, open sky, photo of it.

I can only hope.

Just a few florals.

This is part of what I did Sunday. I have no idea why the editor puts all my pictures in reverse order.
Animals coming soon, Wednesday most likely.

Anticipation. I'll have to go back and find out what they become when they bloom.

Pretty

White

Red

Yellow

I wish you could smell these.

More Lilacs

Lilacs

Even Closer Close up of Movie Theater Tree.

Pink buds on Movie Theater Tree.

Close-up, movie theater tree

Movie theater tree

Unknown Tree outside of Movie Theatre

Random Lunch-Time Update

I shall have to clock back in from lunch soon so I shall type a few sentences to share.

Due to a technical difficulty, I can’t post pictures for an update on the TARDIS project, the pumpkin project, the yarn projects, and various other projects. (I left the cord in another bag)

I did use most of lunch to try to catch up with all the blogs I follow.  I’ve gotten a bit behind.

News articles left me feeling more misanthropic and politically annoyed than usual and I may rant about it at another time.  If I remember.

Half a dose of Pain Killer PM is enough to make you drowsy enough to sleep through alarms but is not enough pain killer to make a pulled muscle and headache go away quickly.  I’m pretty sure it was the cat’s fault.

Coffee taste never lives up to smell and it takes 14 creamers and 10 sugars to make it at least drinkable.

Why do people think their claims can be handled within three hours of being turned in?  In an age when 3 minutes in a microwave is too long to wait everything must get done instantly.  Right?

I’m rereading too many of my Terry Pratchett books.  I found myself writing about ‘punnes’, you know, plays on words.

I have a large stack of fantasy, mystery, sci-fi novels to read and I keep buying more, but they just seem to dark and I’m not in the mood for dark.  So I keep rereading the lighter, amusing stuff I already own.

Time may be up now.