I finally spent some time this past weekend working on photos from, yeah, Yellowstone. Yes, they’re 18 months old, or nearly that. I know! But though the trip is long past now, it still gives me pleasure to work on the images, when I get around to it.
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Howdy!
That’s what I wore for Halloween last week… to work. I was much bedecked in finery for Halloween parties on Saturday night, but they were too fine for work. Cowgirl was good enough for work!
It is Monday, the Monday after Daylight Savings Time, so it feels later than it is. I was up by six a.m., making rice. Not for no reason, of course, but to take to work with the chickpea-spinach curry I made last night. Mondays are vegetarian potluck days at my office. Make lunch for the group once every couple of months and eat every other Monday for free. Nice deal! But it was my turn this Monday. It went well, but it wasn’t a surprise. I’ve made it a few times and I knew it was pretty good. All garlicky and curry-y and full of flavor!
It was a good, busy, quiet weekend. How is that possible? There’s been a flurry of activity related to yes-the-house-is-still-on-the-market: attempts at scheduling a showing, last-minute successful scheduling of a showing, an an open house. I managed to get the house clean, but the yard remains wild and unmowed. It’s not outrageous, but it looks a little unkempt. I just can’t get it on my schedule. Maybe this week? We will see!
Other than trying to get stuff done for that, it was a pretty typical weekend. There was some pretty weather and some dog wrangling, some doughnuts and NPR, a documentary about Robert Crumb, Indian food, some television, a family dinner at a down-home-country restaurant in Claysville, a comedian at Mojo’s, a trip to my parents’ house, brunch at Cafe Berlin, a haircut, and potluck-food-making… yes, it was busy, but it was a quiet kind of busy. I stand by my statement. And there was a lot of food in there, wasn’t there? Wow!
Tonight is the radio show that I do on Mondays these days. I have not been keeping up the blog, but I really should get back on that. I usually spend this time of the day looking at stories online to share on the show, but right now I’m blogging here. So I am going to stop this and go do that before I waste all my time doing this.
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Halloween weekend! And it looks to be a busy one, too. My costume is together, but I need to conjure up some Halloween party snacks and some food for a BBQ on Sunday afternoon, and I’m drawing a blank so far on anything creative. I guess I don’t need to be creative, but I’m invited to a Party Prep Party tonight, with the assumption that I have creative things to work on, and I don’t, so there’s that. I can just help out, though, and be a sport.
The weather turned chilly this week and fall is here. Tuesday was warm and sunny, and then Wednesday was cool and dark and rainy. It was a bad combination- I did not want to get out of bed, and I spent the day running behind and feeling crazy.
It was compounded by the fact that Jay* and I had tickets to a concert in St. Louis on Wednesday night, so we had to book it out of this town right after work and only skidded into St. Louis as the concert was getting underway, with a bite at Taco Bell in between. I had rough time getting out of town between the traffic and my own ability to lose focus in my attempts to get an overnight bag together and get out of the house. But we did do it. We did it. And the Adrian Belew concert was great, just great. I only recognized one of the songs, and most of them were instrumental. I have learned a lot in the past year, though, about music and music appreciation, and I think I liked the concert a hell of a lot more than I might have if I’d been to it last spring. I was especially psyched to see a 25-year-old woman playing bass guitar and just absolutely blowing the minds of all the old men in attendance. (About 78% of the crowd was men over the age of 40, and Jay said that it was even rarer to see a woman musician in a prog rock outfit, not to mention kicking some fucking ass at it.) On the way home, I looked her up and was delighted to find out that she was part of the Rock School documentary back in the day… well, six years ago. Awesome! Julie Slick, you are fantastic; I love your hair and I’m reading your blog.
I am hoping to break out my camera a little this weekend, after several weeks of not taking or processing any photos. It’s just not integrated into my life these days, unless you count the little vintage photos that I take with my iPhone. I don’t really count those, even though a picture counts for more than no pictures, but it feels like a cheat to me unless I’ve put some work into it.
At the same time, though, I kind of hate taking pictures these days. I mean, I love taking pictures, but I hate being the one with the camera at events, family or otherwise. It just doesn’t feel good anymore. I used to think people liked what I did, but mostly I get the sense these days that I’m harassing people when I produce the camera and take pictures. Some people don’t like it when I post pictures online, but they don’t actually say anything about it to me, so I get passive-aggressive comments that are hard to interpret until someone snaps at me about it, which makes me never ever want to take another photo of them ever, or even be seen in their presence with a camera in my hand. Or they criticize the fact that I only take photos of kids (because kids don’t just sit/stand there like slugs), but when I go out of my way to take pictures of adults, I don’t ever hear any good feedback about the photos. I just hear negative comments, and it weighs on me these days.
Negatives. Ha ha.
So generally all I want to do is take pictures of nature or whatever, but I don’t have the time to do that with the same kind of frequency as in the past. I hope I do pick up this part of it again- it does make me happy to get good photos, and I like the peace and quiet of going out for a walk with my camera.
I haven’t inundated my friends with picture-taking as much as I have with my family. If I pulled out my camera and went nuts with it around my friends, they’d be mostly surprised, and happy to see the photos, probably. But there’s still residual stress about it for me, and so even if I manage to remember my camera to events, I usually either leave it in the car or don’t work up the nerve to pull it out of its bag. At the same time, I’m enjoying myself instead of spending all my time behind the viewfinder.
I am particularly interested in getting some photos of Jay this weekend as he is taking to the stage to play bass guitar in a reunion show with his now-defunct band on Sunday night. I haven’t done a lot of concert photography, but I am hoping that I will have the chance to take a few shots on Sunday night, while I’m rocking my socks off. So that should be the very least of camera-using this weekend, and maybe there will be more. Maybe!
The one upside to the whole not-doing-Halloween-at-my-place thing this year is that I have only bought a small amount of candy. Just fun size Butterfinger Crisps, specifically, because the full size Butterfinger Crisps are really hard to find these days! If they are discontinued, it will be the worst thing that ever happened to anyone ever. Specifically, to me. And I finished those a few weeks ago and still have managed to avoid buying bags of Kit Kats in the meantime. Which is good news! Next week will be time for Christmas candy already, and it’s one thing to be able to avoid bags full of candy bars that are easily purchased in single serving amounts (Kit Kats and Snickers are my weaknesses), but it’s another to only find large bags available of Cadbury, whole chocolate oranges, and boxes of Almond Crescents. At least with single servings available, I limit the craving. Whole boxes of Almond Crescents just disappear in an afternoon.
Christmas. I am somehow ready this year, but only because I have been looking for some things that I need to buy that are only available locally with the seasonal Christmas items. I have even already put all my Christmas music on my iPod. And I started Christmas shopping this week. I still haven’t ordered cards, though. Yeah, I know. I don’t want to hear it. It’s fine if you’re not there yet, but I am somehow already ready already.
*Getting tired of calling him “my boyfriend” in every post, so he is getting a nickname. It is not his real name.
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Feeling a touch frustrated with Google this morning, though my outrage is weeks (months) late. They are changing up my Google Reader and changing up my Picasa photo storage, and I am not happy with the changes. It is all meant to make me more Social, but I would like to keep some of these things semi-public rather than public.
Then I can remember that no one is actually looking at any of my shit, so I should just calm down.
Sigh.
It is edging on lunchtime, and someone is eating something in my vicinity that smells really good, both reminding me of home and also unusual at the same time. Is that green pepper? Yes, I think so. Smells awesome. Whatever it is, I want to make it right now! Because autumn makes me want to cook things, lots of things, and having a boyfriend means someone will eat the food I cook. It’s a nice combination! Last weekend, I made lasagna and we had enough leftovers to munch all week. It was quite nice! I didn’t cook dinner this weekend, but I did buy some cinnamon bread at Whole Foods in KC on Saturday, and used it to make some French toast yesterday morning. Can’t believe it took me so long to make breakfast for him, but it was a good one: French toast with pumpkin granola over Greek yogurt. I had coffee and he had tea. It was pretty nice! I like to cook, and I’m feeling more confident about it even though he is not a vegetarian and I am. I only cook vegetarian, of course, but he is not bitchy about getting meat with every meal and I don’t care if he eats meat as long as I don’t have to cook it. But most of my cookbooks are vegan, not just vegetarian. I had to buy a couple of Moosewood cookbooks to fill in the gaps and find some recipes where dairy products can be the protein. Hence delicious lasagna! Though I did put some Boca crumbles in that, and we both thought it turned out pretty well.
So this weekend was mostly going to Kansas City (to visit my grandmother who is a rehab facility to recover from shoulder surgery), shopping while there (at Whole Foods & Trader Joe’s, with a stop by Planet Sub for dinner), and making breakfast on Sunday. I also worked on constructing some Halloween costume accessories yesterday- I’d bought all the pieces, but needed to put together some Crab Hands and Antennae for my Sexy Yeti Crab costume! I think I’m done with the costume, other than maybe some make-up and of course the actual assembling of the costume on the night itself (Saturday night, for a party at a friend’s house).
This will be the first year since I’ve lived in my house that my family won’t come over for Halloween. Halloween is a Monday this year, so trick o’ treaters will come while I’m at the radio show. I was trying to put something together for Sunday night, but a few things conspired to come together on that night. It will be a busy weekend! And no Halloween party for me. Too bad! It was never the dog’s favorite activity, anyway, since she had to stay in the back bedroom. She was always upset about it.
This week, we are headed up to St. Louis to see Adrian Belew at the Old Rock House. I have been trying to listen to some of his music on Spotify so I know what to expect. It should be good! But it will make for a very long week because I won’t have any time off until Thursday.
We went out on Friday and saw Tucker & Dale vs. Evil at Ragtag Cinemacafe (our local arty theater). It was HILARIOUS. I highly recommend it if you can see it near you; I’m sure it will be on DVD soon.
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I have a 70% trustworthiness rating on this random website I found while googling my domain name today.
70%? I would not trust that. Don’t buy from me. However, I am not selling you anything.
Or am I? Can you trust me?
It’s 70% true.
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It is a beautiful day in the neighborhood! I am just kinda aglow after a wonderful weekend and feeling pretty much on top of the world.
Part of all this happiness is just bouncing back (way back) from a bout of strep throat that took me down last week for several days. Most of the week, in fact! I was really sick. I got back to work by the end of the week and was able to do some email catch-up before the weekend. And the weekend was busy in a normal sort of way, so I was able to recover entirely.
It was Homecoming weekend for MU, the 100th anniversary of Homecoming. A huge big deal. Campus was buzzing by Friday afternoon. I walked downtown to eat lunch with a friend and the line for Booche’s hamburgers was out the door. (We didn’t eat at Booche’s, of course- we had Main Squeeze.)
I have never been to any Homecoming event as an alumna. Well, possibly there was a high school Homecoming at some point in there, but I don’t remember attending it on purpose, except maybe to support my younger sister or younger brother after I’d graduated. Anyway, I usually avoid Homecoming activities as they are not usually directed at people like me. I wasn’t into sports or sororities or traditional student life. But it’s not like I wasn’t in any groups or clubs or didn’t have any friends. It’s just that I had the kind of friends who would not go to Homecoming activities. There was a reason we were friends, after all.
But this year was different. A college friend who was involved with the LGBT Center on campus decided to put together some Homecoming activities, and I decided to go to one of them. I was only on the periphery of those activities, but it was definitely part of my college experience. So it was kind of exciting to see some people I knew from back in the day. We are all old and grown-up, with kids and mortgages and responsibilities. I am not sure if any of us are the people we thought we would be, back in college when there was a lot of fight to fight. But it was really cool to see that, too.
So that was Friday night, drinks with old college friends. Then I went home and crashed with my boyfriend while we watched a documentary about the Ramones. I love the biopic documentaries about bands I don’t know very well. So many questions get answered! Like, I was under the impression that the Ramones were all related to each other. But that is the very opposite of true. In fact, none of them have the last name of Ramone and none of them are related to each other. A few weeks ago, we watched a biopic of The Who and another documentary about the making of U2′s The Joshua Tree. I don’t even love U2, and I still found it pretty interesting. Music is a whole world to me that is kind of mysterious and unexplored. Netflix Instant makes it easy to access documentaries that fill in some blanks.
On Saturday, I was out and about in the morning, getting caught in Homecoming traffic. Ran back home to listen to NPR shows on the radio, a favorite Saturday morning activity. After lunch, I went shopping again, and with the game on, no one was really out and about. I got to run several errands and felt very accomplished.
My boyfriend and I have been dating six months as of this weekend, so we had a little celebration on Saturday. I made lasagna and apple crisp and we listened to records. I got to look at a scrapbook of baby pictures too, and of course I was very pleased about that. I don’t like to get very personal about stuff on here, but things are going great in this relationship. We are making plans to spend the holidays together. Our Halloween costumes are vaguely related. We are a very happy couple.
On Sunday afternoon, I went up to my parents’ house. They did BBQ and I brought some pumpkin bars & candy apples to share. We had a nice time chatting about all kinds of things, and then we took a walk through the woods. I got a few pictures with my phone, though I was too lazy to get my real camera out of the car. It was a great time.
It was a beautiful weekend, weather-wise. I think we’re a little past the peak of autumn color, but I haven’t seen a good show of reds in the trees yet. Temperatures were in the low 70s. But today is different! Today is chilly and rainy, and we’re supposed to get our first frosts later this week. I will have to make some room indoors for all the outdoor plants. And I will need to make a date to mow the grass one more time, and to do a big clean-out of the flowerbeds to prep for winter. I guess I still have some weeks for both of those activities, but I’m so happy to have the yardwork over for the year that I’m rushing it in my excitement.
So that’s what I did over the weekend.
Everything is pretty good these days. The house is still on the market, and will be for about another month until the realtor contract expires in late November. I have definitely let things slide in the last few weeks, though. And my vacuum cleaner broke last week, so that’s not helping the situation.
I did dig my comforter out of the garage, though I have not unearthed my winter clothes yet. The comforter got washed and dried and the duvet cover got washed and dried, and I put it all on my bed last night and slept very well. I still have not turned on the heat in the house, though with the frost coming, I will likely have to do it pretty soon. I’ve still enjoyed a few weeks of very nice weather that does not cost me anything in terms of utility money.
Heading up to Kansas City this coming Saturday with my mother to visit my grandmother, who had shoulder surgery last month and has been in a rehab facility for the past few weeks. It will be good to visit. I finally ordered print copies of photos to take to this grandmother, who is not online and never ever will be. I always forget to make prints, but she won’t see the pictures if I don’t. My other grandparents made that switch already. Yet those grandparents are politically conservative and my offline grandmother is politically liberal. What’s that about, exactly?
Happy mid-October!
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Yes, yes, it’s a beautiful Friday in October. Beautiful! It’s been a warm and sunny October already, all blue skies and light breezes and the leaves are turning colors in front of our very eyes. And no end in sight, says the Weather Channel. Maybe some rain next week, but all seventy degrees and pleasantness, as far as the eye can see.
Last weekend was spent at the Lake of the Ozarks with my family on the annual vacation. This was our fourth year for the fall trip somewhere together, and it was a good one! My father rented a large house on the water. It had four bedrooms, two huge decks, a foosball table, and a dock. It was plenty of room for eight adults (including my boyfriend).
We had dinner together and played foosball on Friday night after everyone got in (though we were all coming from the same place, we mostly arrived separately). On Saturday, our first outing (after breakfast) was Bridal Cave. I’d never been there before, despite seeing the billboards all over Central Missouri. It was an okay tour; our guide seemed to rely on making stuff up when she didn’t know the answer to our questions (but we did have a lot of questions). After the cave tour, we went to lunch at a place that was literally on the water (a large dock), and then we went down to the Strip to play some of the ancient video games in the arcades (similar to what is available at Logan Hardware in Chicago, only you pay for these and it’s not ironic). After that, we had some rest before dinner and then board games afterwards. On Sunday, we had breakfast together before we split up and some of us headed home.
It was great, as always! The house was beautiful and the weather was gorgeous. The hills down there at the Lake were already showing some signs of color. In Columbia, the yellows are gorgeous and we’re starting to see peeks of red and orange.
I don’t know what’s on the tap for this weekend, except for a party tomorrow night to which I’ve promised to bring pumpkin bars. I guess I will need to do some baking tomorrow afternoon! I also have another couple of cooking projects in the works, as well as a couple of costume projects for Halloween (though that is still a few weeks away). My costume is coming together and I only have a few things that have to be assembled. I took the rare, dreaded trip to Hobby Lobby yesterday for something. I hate Hobby Lobby, but I hate most that their checkout processes are so slow. It’s not the equipment, it’s the customers. Every customer seems to want to argue about prices, and it takes forever. But I got out of there after only having to wait about twenty minutes in line for a couple of dumb things. Huzzah. But I will probably put off assembling these things for the costume for another week or two. Why do it now when I can procrastinate?
I am overdue for some serious house cleaning. There have been some steady house showings, and though the house is uncluttered, it is not clean. I am ashamed at the state of the floors, specifically, and it’s about time for the annual clearing-out of the flowerbeds. Bah, gardening! I do not want to do any gardening. Anyway, I ought to do some dusting and floor mopping and weeding, and we will just see about that. We will just see.
I had a grand time watching Downton Abbey this week on Netflix. I love me some BBC genre drama. There have been several movies in the theaters lately that I wanted to see, but somehow I haven’t had time for them. I need to keep better track of what’s around so that I can take advantage.
Life is good. Life is great!
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Some reading & pretty stuff to get you through the weekend:
[recreading]
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You can buy prints of some of my photos at Art.com, I discovered today.
Here’s a link: http://www.art.com/gallery/id–a252690/abbie-brown-posters.htm?ui=F4E169863BE04E03B268598F659A11F1
I am sure I don’t make much money if you buy a print that way, and I’d be happy to sell you the same items for the same price if you wanted to help me line my pockets. But it’s still pretty cool.
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The light is changing! It is definitely changing. It is affecting me this year, maybe more so than previous years? I don’t know. I am very aware of it. Mornings are blearier; I am get up in the dark and must turn on lights so that if I lay back down (and I always lay back down, yes, I know, but it’s part of my process and I WILL NOT BE BULLIED ON THIS) so that if I lay back down, I will not doze off so quickly.
It is darker earlier now at night. My radio show has been lit from the windows for the last three months, but last night we were relying on the overhead lamps by the end of the show, for the first time. And I am putting off mowing my lawn until Thursday, but I will need to run home to do it after work because it will be dark by 7:30pm.
I am mourning the light!
But I like the cool days and the cool nights. And I look forward to not having to mow my lawn for many months, and that is just weeks away at this point as we inch closer to our first frost or freeze. I do like autumn!
I had a great weekend. My trivia team celebrated many weeks’ of wins on Friday by using a stack of gift certificates for dinner and drinks, and it was a nice loud party. On Saturday, I slept in and went to my parents’ house to watch the Missouri-Oklahoma football game. Sunday was relaxed- I had a good breakfast at Cafe Berlin and followed it up with a nice walk through the neighborhoods to my house. It was a beautiful day for a walk! Later, I did some successful vintage shopping and hung out at a record swap! I also played up until nearly the end of Portal, a great puzzle video game. I still want to finish it, but I’m at a point that requires dexterity, good reflexes and hand/eye coordination. These are not skills that I have naturally. But I want to finish the game, and I want to play the sequel!
I’m looking forward to a Wynton Marsalis concert tonight on campus with my friend, and this weekend is my family’s annual weekend trip. We’re headed to the Lake of the Ozarks this year. My dad rented a vacation house for us for the weekend, and that will be pretty cool. It’s right on the water and looks amazing. It will be a great time- too much food, too much family, too many strange trips to touristy destinations around the Lake of the Ozarks. I don’t see how it could go wrong!
No new house information, though I did have a showing on Friday night that lasted longer than necessary. Showings haven’t entirely dried up, but they’re dribbling out now and then, maybe once a week. With my luck, I’ll get a call this weekend while I’m out of town. That would suck! But I will try to leave the house in good condition in case it happens and something can be managed. But, nope, no new news. Just the same, perennial house-for-sale.
Looking forward to October, no really, despite the light changing. Come back, light!
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