Outpost Mâvarin

Round Robin: Tangles of Branches

2012-01-28T00:16:00.003-07:00

This week's Round Robin Challenge: Branches doesn't really need explaining, does it? Let's get on with the pictures!

An intricate tangle of branches stands out against bands of color in the late afternoon sky.

I think these are olive trees, but the shapes and angles remind me of bonsais,

or trees in Japanese paintings.

Branches melt into indistinct blobs against orange clouds.

Branches illuminated by a streetlamp at sunset.

Karen

Now let's see what the other Robins branched out with!

Linking List
as of Saturday, 1/28/12, 12:20 AM MST

Karen - Posted!
Outpost Mâvarin
http://outmavarin.blogspot.com

Freda - Posted!
Day One
http://fredamans.blogspot.com

Jama - Posted!
Sweet Memories
http://mummyjam.blogspot.com

Kara **Welcome!**
notes from the tiny napping house
http://notesfromthetinynappinghouse.blogspot.com/

Mary Tomaselli - Posted!
Mary Tomaselli's Photos
http://marytomaselli.blogspot.com

Tina - Posted!
Tina´s PicStory
http://tinaspicstory.blogspot.com/

Round Robin Challenge: House Is a Museum

2012-01-14T19:17:00.001-07:00

The Round Robin Photo Challenges topic this week is "Home," a word I have a rather different perspective on at the moment. Normally I go on about Casa Blocher, the Museum of the Weird, and I did indeed take some pictures of our household oddities for you, . But if you read my previous entry, it won't surprise you to learn I have a more serious theme in mind as well.

Let's start with our house. Come on in!

Casa Blocher is nothing if not a house full of collections: dolls, toys, scripts, video, games, tikis, midcentury modern decor, Disney stuff and so on. Some of it is fairly straightforward....

...while other things are a bit more unusual. This vintage shelving unit has a number of items from the 1950s and 1960s on it, plus some Southwestern Indian art items. These aren't so unusual in this part of the country, but I don't suppose too many of you have seen a pottery storyteller figure or a mudhead kachina.

Our house is more than a little messy at the moment, but we're working on it, off and on. We cleared out about 40 boxes of stuff in 2010 and donated it, and are in the process of sorting through a bunch of stuff that got caught outside in the rain a few months ago. (Long story.) John's been working 7-day weeks and I'm working two jobs right now in addition to dealing with various arrangements for my friend Jan. Ah, Jan. That's the other part of what I want to show you.

For fifteen years, Jan lived with her friend Patti in a house of the south side of Tucson. That changed in 2010 and 2011, with Jan home only briefly in between hospital visits and long stints in a nursing facility called Devon Gables. Meanwhile, Patti was diagnosed with dementia, declared incompetent, and sent to another facility. The house has been standing empty. Well, not exactly empty. There were two cats still in there, being fed by a neighbor, plus most of Patti's earthly possessions, plus Jan's, overflowing into a large, very full shed in the back yard. With Jan in the hospital, suffering from a serious lung infection, liver failure, breast cancer and who knows what else, it very recently became clear that Jan was never going to be able to be discharged from Devon Gables, gather up her stuff and move into an apartment. So on Tuesday, a bunch of us from church went out to the house and retrieved Jan's things, with the help of two movers and a rented truck. Unfortunately, I forgot to bring my camera along. Here's where Jan's lifetime of possessions ended up:

I've already lost the keys to the padlock, or I would open the door and give you a peek inside.
That's a 10' x 20' space, and it's very full. It's stuffed with Jan's furniture, books, papers, sheet music, lots and lots of knitting and crafts, a dulcimer and who knows what else.

But a storage space is not a home. It merely contains things that used to mean home.

Yet more of her things are stuffed in the trunk of my car right now, having been accidentally left behind when the movers and I (driving the U-Haul) drove away. Ila rescued these things and here they are, waiting for me to either find the storage space key or have the lock cut off.

Jan was moved to a hospice yesterday, and her parents have cleared Jan's day-to-day possessions out of Devon Gables. Jan's walker in in my office at church now, just in case, by some miracle, she's ever well enough to use it again. Jan never considered Devon Gables home; she pretty much hated the place, but for the past year and a half it's the closest thing she's had to a home. The hospital is certainly not a home, nor the hospice. It sounds mawkish or maudlin or something, but those of us who love Jan now wonder if she will soon be heading to her true home, the one you get to when you die.

Now let's see the other Robins' Home pictures, preferably more cheerful than mine!

Karen

Linking List
as of 7:11 PM MST
Saturday, January 14th, 2012

Karen - Posted!
Outpost Mâvarin
http://outmavarin.blogspot.com

Jama - Posted!
Sweet Memories
http://mummyjam.blogspot.com

Sherrie - Posted!
Food for Thought
http://100sweets.blogspot.com/

Mary Tomaselli - Posted!
Mary Tomaselli's Photography
http://marytomaselli.blogspot.com

Gattina - Posted!
Keyhole Pictures
http://gattina-keyholepictures.blogspot.com/

Two Lonely Cats

2012-01-11T18:57:00.000-07:00

Sorry I haven't been online much lately. This is the time of year when I do a little consulting work at a second church, plus I've been dealing with a close friend's major health crisis. Jan is in Tucson Medical Center with a serious lung infection and kidney failure, and has nearly died three times that I know about. I was the hospital's only contact person until this past Friday night, when I managed to get the names of Jan's parents in New Mexico and pass the info on to the nurses. Jan is seriously confused when she is conscious at all, absolutely miserable and restrained for her own protection. This is someone I was taking to church, out Christmas shopping and to restaurants just a month ago!

While all this has been going on, the Pima County Fiduciary Office has been badgering us to get Jan's belongings out of the home she lived in for 15 years, so they can sell the house. It belonged to Jan's housemate, who has been declared incompetent with dementia. Sale of the house will help to pay for the housemate's care. So yesterday, I rounded up some volunteers, rented a U-Haul truck and went out to the house to clear out Jan's bedroom and storage shed, and move it all into a $150 a month storage space which I'm hoping the family will ultimately pay for. It took eight hours and the hiring of professional movers to help, but we got it done, except for one important detail....

Sweet Pea has similar coloring to this cat, but shorter hair.

I wish I’d gotten a photo of at least Sweet Pea, but I’ll try to rectify that later. You see, Jan had two cats left behind in the house, being fed by a neighbor against the day Jan could move out of the nursing facility into an apartment. That's not going to happen now. Even if she does survive this crisis, Jan won't be able to live on her own, let alone care for two cats. We need to find a home for both cats, or two homes for one cat each.

Here are the details, as written up by another friend of Jan’s:

Sweet Pea is a youngish tortie cat, black and amber/orange, with a distinctive black splash down her nose. She lives up to her name. She needs an immediate new home.

Flash (temporary name I gave yesterday), her gold offspring, also needs placement but hasn’t had much chance to socialize with humans, and hides when approached.

The situation: Sweet Pea’s owner has multiple medical problems and has not lived at home for well over a year. She hoped to find a new location, but her condition is worsening. Her house-mate, the home’s owner, was caring for the cats until she was institutionalized several months ago with dementia. Neighbors have been feeding the cats and changing the litter box. The fiduciary is planning to sell the house.

Friends of the cats’ owner closed out the house as best we could yesterday (a protracted ordeal), and I brought Sweet Pea to my house. Flash is still hiding in the only house he/she has ever known.

The present: As of last night, Sweet Pea is living in my screened nook, safe but a bit chilly. She is bewildered but likes the food and being petted. Luci, the most temperamental of my three (already one over my limit) is scandalized, a state which she shows vigorously.

If I can’t find a placement or at least temporary fostering, Sweet Pea will probably go to The Hermitage late today or tomorrow. Ditto for Flash, when he can be lured into a cat carrier.

I am hoping we can avoid shelter placement at least for Sweet Pea. Let me know if you can help or have ideas.

What I can guess about the cats, and a promise: Probable ages are 2 to 3 years for Sweet Pea, and 1 year for Flash. Immunizations are probably overdue. I don’t know if Sweet Pea has now been spayed, and for certain Flash (of whichever gender, but probably male) will need to be neutered. The promise: If someone can foster one or both cats, I will ask our good friends at Spay and Neuter Solutions to refer for neutering, and I will make a donation to them at least equal to their costs. I am willing to negotiate re the additional vaccinations. Sweet Pea seems to respond well to other cats.

Help! I really can’t take on another cat, especially since I have to have a house-sitter all summer, when I am in Guatemala.

And thank you.

Ila

***

As of tonight, “Flash” is still out at the house, being fed and watered by a neighbor. I’m trying to arrange for someone to go out and retrieve her (I’m horribly allergic, and still have multiple rashes a day after being in that house), but that’s not the biggest problem. What we really need is someone to take in one or both of the cats. Is that someone you? If so please message me (mavarin on Tumblr and AIM, mavarin2 on gmail). Thanks!

Karen

Round Robin: Remembrance of Things Past (Part 2 of 2)

2011-12-31T00:00:00.004-07:00

As previously mentioned, this week's Round Robin Photo Challenge topic is The Times They Are a-Changin'. Several days ago there was a big change at Casa Blocher that marked the end of an era, maybe even the end of several eras. For years, John has been nagging me to donate our 1984 Dodge Ram van and our 1984 Chrysler New Yorker and get them hauled away. This week we actually did it.

The New Yorker was my mom's car originally, and the only talking car I've ever had. "Your fuel supply is low." This was cutting edge technology once. I thought it was kind of cool, but eventually John disabled it.

It became my car after I drove my mom in it from Florida to Tucson and after she gave up driving. It became John's car after Mom got me a 1997 Saturn in 2001. It became an unused eyesore in the driveway when it started losing power on John's long commute circa 2004, and he replaced it with an Alero.

The major hold-up in the car donation process was that I hadn't been able to find the title to the New Yorker, despite many hours of searching through likely and unlikely boxes. Just before Christmas I went down to the MVD with the VIN and the license plate number to get a new title, but they said it had been so long since the car was registered that the title had been purged from their records. I was advised to get it towed to Motor Vehicles for inspection so they could issue a new title. Like THAT was going to happen.

But the nice man at the service that arranges vehicle donations to charity noticed that the Vehicle Identification Number I read off to him was one digit too long. He took out an extra 9 and the car came right up in the Carfax database. I went back to MVD and $4 later walked out with a new title. Several days after that, the tow truck arrived, this time at no cost to us!

If the New Yorker was a reminder of my mom, the van was a reminder of our year of great adventure in 1986. That may be overstating things, but certainly it was an amazing year for us. The Dodge Ram was integral to those experiences. John finally came into some money from a trust fund, and we were sick of Ohio; so we put everything in storage, bought a van, put a mattress in the back and drove around the country, looking for someplace it wasn't winter. Two months later, John was negotiating over a pay phone to buy our first house, a mile or so outside the Tucson city limits.

Bye-bye, Mom's car. Bye-bye, faithful van. Bye-bye, reminders of times long past. But the driveway looks a lot better without you.

Karen

Linking List
as of Midnight MST
Saturday, December 31, 2011

Karen - Posted!
Outpost Mâvarin
http://outmavarin.blogspot.com

Jama
Sweet Memories
http://mummyjam.blogspot.com

Sherrie
Food for Thought
http://100sweets.blogspot.com/

Terri
Ways I See the World
http://teelgeephotos.blogspot.com/

Round Robin: Remembrance of Things Past (Part 1 of 2)

2011-12-31T00:00:00.002-07:00

This week's Round Robin Photo Challenge topic is The Times They Are a-Changin', and I swear I had nothing in mind in proposing it beyond the general notion of clocks and New Year's Eve. But over the past week I've been rather obsessed with my new toy, the iPad, which has nearly replaced my computer already. It occurred to me today that nothing tells the story of time speeding along for us as a society than the acquisition and discarding of computers and other technology. For example:

Our Commodore 64, purchased circa 1985. Now it's a monitor for an outdated VCR.

My iMac and my first laptop, circa 2004, photographed using our first
digital camera, a Mavica. The camera stored the images on floppy disks.

My brand new laptop, March 2005.

John's first two iMacs (c. 1999-2005) await recycling, 2011.

The latest and greatest going into 2012, and it's not even a computer.

My iPad 2 will soon be obsolete; the iPad 3 has been announced. And I don't care.

Two other pieces of outdated equipment left our home this week, leaving behind memories of times long gone. To avoid overloading aging computers with a picture-heavy entry, I'll tell you about that in a second post.

Meanwhile, let's see how other Robins mark the changing times!

Linking List
as of Midnight MST
Saturday, December 31, 2011

Karen - Posted!
Outpost Mâvarin
http://outmavarin.blogspot.com

Jama
Sweet Memories
http://mummyjam.blogspot.com

Sherrie
Food for Thought
http://100sweets.blogspot.com/

Terri
Ways I See the World
http://teelgeephotos.blogspot.com/

Karen

Testing...1...2...3...5?

2011-12-26T18:22:00.003-07:00

I got an iPad2 for Christmas. Hooray! Now I need to figure out which apps are actually worth using, and (this is the tricky part) actually learn to use them effectively.

Take this Blogger app I'm currently typing in an example. When I signed in, it took me to the archived Blogger version of the private AOL blog on which Carly and I used to keep notes related to the Round Robin Photo Challenges. It hasn't been used since 2008, but because it was first alphabetically on my list of blogs, this app assumed that was the blog on which I wanted to post. In fact it was rather insistent about this; it took me a not-so-good five minutes to escape to a list of my blogs! And what do I have to hit to accept the completed words the app occasionally suggests? Ah. That worked, sort of.

And I just took my first photo on this thing. Will it show up in this entry? Where? What size will it be? I suspect the iPad will never give me the control over the look of a blog entry that my computer does.

Still, I don't mean to gripe about this marvelous and expensive new toy. I've wanted something like this since the Newton and the first PDAs. Over time I'm sure it will only get more useful until it fools me into thinking it's indispensable. In the meantime I'll read books and Twitter on it (I gave John the choice of getting me an iPad or a Kindle Fire) and play with the Doctor Who Encyclopedia app.

And I firmly believe the learning curve on mastering the iPad operating system is a good and important thing to tackle. Years ago (I've probably mentioned this before) I saw a Scientific American Frontiers show about the aging brain. At least one study showed that learning something new later in life - not just more of the same but something markedly different from existing knowledge - helps to build new synapses and stave off the creation of the lesions that cause Alzheimer's. At least, that's my memory of what they said. I'm going to be 55 years old in March, and I'm already painfully aware that my memory is not what it was when I was younger. Learning to thumb my way around the quirky little QWERTY keypads and navigate the bare bones or nonexistent menus in iPad applications is proving enough of a challenge that it probably qualifies as a new skill. Got to keep my brain working in case anyone has need of it...!

Karen

Tucson Sunset: #413,941,038 in the Series

2011-12-17T20:01:00.000-07:00

Sunset over Thimble Peak, December 16th, 2011.

Karen

Round Robin: A Cactus is Also Ever-green

2011-12-17T02:28:00.004-07:00

For Round Robin Challenge: Evergreen, I asked to see any plant that stays green all year, whether it's a pine or fir tree or something very different from what we normally think of as evergreens. I can show you both, so let's get started!

Christmas tree lots aside, most of our pine trees and such are up in the Santa Catalina mountains, where the climate is cooler. Late this afternoon I heading up there with my camera and my dogs, hoping to make it to the evergreen forests that start around ten miles up. I was reasonably sure that's where I would also start seeing snow. Mt. Lemmon's Ski Valley, the southernmost ski resort in the continental United States, officially started its season today with a 14 inch base and over two feet of powder from the massive storms we've had over the past week. Not that those ski conditions mean anything to me. I haven't skied since I was about eight years old.

It was just about sunset as we climbed the lower reaches of Mt. Lemmon Highway, so I made the traditional stop at Babad Do'Ag Vista, one of the best sunset vantage points around here. You can't really see them, but under that gorgeous sunset are some ever-green cacti and palo verde trees (the name means "green stick").

See? Told ya!

Climbing higher, we reached the Ponderosa Pine trees (I looked it up) and the snow at about the same time.

By the time we reached the Middle Bear Picnic Area, dusk was closing in on this shady and snowy part of the mountain. My old sneakers weren't much good on the snow, particularly with two dogs pulling on their leashes in two different directions; so I settled for a few not-so-good shots and headed back down the mountain.

Really though, there is no need to climb mountains to see green plants in Tucson in winter, even Christmassy ones! These saguaros at the entrance to Tucson Medical Center are dressed for the season.

And on the street behind Calle Mumble is a seriously big Christmas tree, part of the biggest Christmas display in the neighborhood.

Now let's see what's ever-green where the other Robins live!

Linking List
as of Saturday, December 17th
at 7:53 PM MST

Karen - Posted!
Outpost Mâvarin
http://outmavarin.blogspot.com

Gattina
Keyhole Pictures
http://gattina-keyholepictures.blogspot.com/

Freda - Posted!
Day One
http://fredamans.blogspot.com

Jama - Posted!
Sweet Memories
http://mummyjam.blogspot.com

Pamela **Welcome, new participant!** - Posted!
Words Can't Express How Beautiful It Is
http://www.jdskids.blogspot.com/

Karen

EMPS: It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas - Almost!

2011-12-11T18:27:00.001-07:00

When I read the topic for this week's Ellipsis Monday Photo Shoot #153: Here Come The Holidays, I immediately took two non-flash photos of the only Christmas item on hand that wasn't buried in a storage bin or closet somewhere:

This fresh wreath is from a St. Michael's Day School fundraiser, and a gift from Father Smith and the church. A week later, it's still on my kitchen table. I thought John was going to put it up. He thought I was. I'll take care of it tomorrow.

I've got more interesting shots now, though, and certainly less grainy ones. Yesterday (Saturday), John took a rare day off to get work done at home. We had lunch together, went browsing at our local Ace Hardware, and spent the afternoon going through our Christmas stuff - most of it, anyway.

We had two huge plastic storage bins and five of the big cardboard ones. To free up storage space for other things, we managed to empty four of the cardboard ones.

We also made a bit of a mess, at least temporarily. It didn't make sense to put away everything we're actually going to use this year! But we did fill our big fallout shelter barrel (once used to store potable water) with trash, twice. We threw out melted candles, old Christmas cards, crumpled paper and broken boxes, among other things. We also filled one of the emptied boxes with stuff to donate to a rummage sale, a gift bag with stocking stuffers for the children of John's co-workers, and a small grocery bag with selected ornaments for a friend. Even after all that, we probably still have enough ornaments left to fill three Christmas trees. Come to think of it, I'm pretty sure we did have three trees up one year: the vintage silver one with the color wheel, a big pink one, and a small live tree that was my small rebellion that year. I've since learned to live without live Christmas trees, albeit reluctantly!

We ended up with two very full plastic bins plus a cardboard one. One problem: John's pretty sure the bins are now too heavy to lift back onto the top shelf in the laundry room!

Karen

Round Robin Challenge: Families Where We Find Them

2011-12-02T23:50:00.010-07:00

I set myself a bit of a Challenge this time. The Round Robin Photo Challenge topic is Family, and how am I meant to photograph that? My dad is in North Carolina, my brother outside Cleveland. I haven't seen either of them in years. My own family is John, who doesn't like having his picture posted, plus the dogs, who have no opinion either way.

But I went to Reid Park, on a chilly day of intermittent rain, to see if there were any families my camera could find. I stalked one family from across the duck pond with my zoom lens:

I like that we can't see their faces. They become a generic family. The adults are both women, but they're still a family.

We don't know who these people are, really, what their actual relationships are and why they came to the park on such a blustery day. I hope they enjoyed the park and each other's company.

Okay, let's go for an even more generic family, albeit an extended one: the bronze people of Cancer Survivors Plaza:

According to my previous post on the subject, the entire sculpture (all the bronze bits) is titled "Cancer...There's Hope." It was the last work of artist Victor Salmones. The five figures at the back - a dad and his Picachu-toting little girl, the grandparents and a young woman - represent cancer patients and their supporters as the patients enter the maze of treatment with fear and determination.

In lieu of families like this, we build our families of choice, people we aren't necessarily related to at all. In my "church family" are two close friends I spend a lot of time with, Kevin and Jan:

So okay, I managed to find some substitute families to photograph. But at bedtime, after a bit of nagging, my own family graciously posed for me:

Now let's check out the families the other Robins photographed!

Linking List
as of 3 AM MST Saturday
December 3rd, 2011

Karen - Posted!
Outpost Mâvarin
http://outmavarin.blogspot.com

Jama - Posted!
Sweet Memories
http://mummyjam.blogspot.com

Freda - Posted!
Day One
http://fredamans.blogspot.com

Dave Richards - Posted!
daves(old short legs)photo blog
http://davesoldshortlegsphotoblog.blogspot.com/

Gattina - Posted!
Keyhole Pictures
http://gattina-keyholepictures.blogspot.com/

And it's not too late to join in yourself!

Karen

EMPS: Fantasy in the Sky

2011-12-01T00:24:00.002-07:00

This week's Ellipsis Monday Photo Shoot calls for an FX shot of something seen In the Clouds. Going through my photo archives, I soon came across this:

I don't know about you, but I see a baby in the cloud pattern on the left side of the sky. Let's take a second look:

See it?

Getting clearer!

Ah, there she is!

Oops! I hope my neighbor doesn't need his truck while the Sky Baby is around!

(The original baby is from a photo of a 2006 baptism. She had her father's arm around her hips, and no leg showing.)

For extra credit, Carly wanted a photo of a reflection of an object. The house is pretty dark these days due to cloudy weather and early dusk, so I dug into my archives:

Karen

See also: Round Robin: The Beatles' Fool, Illustrated

EMPS: P.S. - About Thanksgiving

2011-11-27T17:51:00.003-07:00

Carly's Extra Credit on the Ellipsis Monday Photo Shoot this week was about a favorite Thanksgiving dessert. I've got enough photos in my entry as it is, so let's do a quick entry as a P.S.:

St. Michael's had its annual Thanksgiving pot luck this week, and that's where I bent my diet for a little dessert. As some of you may know, I'm wild about "Pumpkin Anything." From pumpkin pie to pumpkin chocolate chip cookies, from pumpkin soup to pumpkin tea, I'll try almost anything pumpkin. This year, since I've been working seriously on my weight, low-carbing it, I've had to be very careful, taking my pumpkin in small, occasional doses. So for Thanksgiving, I had a thin slice of pumpkin pie, no crust or topping. As you can see, parishioners came up with apple pie, pecan pie, cream puffs and more in addition to pumpkin pie. So many people brought pumpkin that they didn't all get served on Thursday, and parishioners were urged today to have the leftovers to eat or take home. This time I had about a tablespoon of pumpkin pie filling, no crust.

At home on Thursday I made the most sensible low-carb meal I could without completely depriving us. We shared an individual side of stuffing from Boston Market to go with my mixed white and dark meat turkey roast. The only potato was a single sweet potato with nothing on it, to share between us, and the rutabagas were just a few tablespoons leftover from the pot luck. Instead we filled up on fresh steamed baby carrots with broccoli and fresh steamed green beans with almond slivers. For dessert I got John a single slice of pecan pie - his favorite. I'd already had mine.

Karen

EMPS: Signs of Thankfulness

2011-11-27T01:05:00.003-07:00

This week's theme for the Ellipsis Monday Photo Shoot was "Thankful." I had my doubts about coming up with anything appropriate until I noticed some papers posted outside classrooms this week at St. Michael's Parish Day School. I walk past some of the classrooms every time I go in to work at the church office.

"I am thankful for...." The kids mention friends and family the most, plus love, food and Earth. God, pets and even school are also mentioned.

I suppose as adults we tend to be embarrassed to even think about it, but would our own lists be all that different?

The school just had a canned food drive, which includes a bake sale and raises both food and cash.

The food goes to the church pantry, from which adult volunteers make up bags for the homeless and other needy people. They are always thankful to get something.

No, this isn't food from the food drive. This is my friend Jan, enjoying a deluxe platter of appetizers at our favorite Chinese restaurant (Peking Palace). Just over a year ago, months after surgery on a broken knee, Jan was hospitalized with an infected leg, the complications from which nearly killed her. It's been a rough year, and Jan found out a week ago that she has breast cancer. Despite all this, she is feeling much, much better. She told me today that this morning, she felt overwhelmed with thankfulness just to have survived the crisis of a year ago, and for how far she's come since then.

Karen

EMPS: The Geese on Barnum Hill

2011-11-20T08:10:00.004-07:00

This week's Ellipsis Monday Photo Shoot was called "A Walk in he Park." The weather has finally cooled enough, and the dogs' shots are current enough, that I was able to take them to Reid Park for the first time in many months. The tricky part was finding the time. Then my Thursday afternoon computer lesson (teaching, not taking) was postponed, so off we went!

After some fun in the dog park area...

...we headed off for a stroll...

...down by the duck ponds.

The geese at the left of the photo here are coming down from an area called Barnum Hill. They acted as if they ran the place. Cayenne was desperate to show them otherwise, and I had to hold the leashes tight to keep her from getting away as she lunged toward them.

The geese headed down to the second duck pond...

...where a cormorant was already hanging out.

Karen

Round Robin: Without Borders

2011-11-19T00:48:00.003-07:00

I tried to think of something uplifting and cheerful for the Round Robin Photo Challenge: Gone, and actually took some pictures to show tonight's sunset fading from the sky. But I didn't catch the sky with the colors of sunset completely gone, so I've reverted to my original concept.

From Round Robin Photo Challenges

Two weeks ago when I went for a drive with some friends on the western edge of Tucson, down Gates Pass and into Avra Valley, I took a few minutes to look for a restaurant I used to eat at when I was in travel agent school in 1987. Right at the end of Anklam where it merges with Speedway to become Gates Pass Boulevard, we came upon this Greek restaurant. This would have been handy had it been open, because we had a hungry vegetarian of Greek ancestry in the car. But alas, the restaurant was gone: derelict, empty. There was even a fallen tree in front of the place. I think this was the site of Daisy Mae's Steakhouse back in the 1980s. A very good restaurant it was, too!

You know about this place. This particular Borders was in Park Place Mall, a very busy and successful shopping mall since it was renovated in 1999. Strangely, however, the area immediately around Park Place, particularly on Wilmot Road just south of Broadway, is a hot spot for gone-away businesses.

This one is particularly notable. Immediately adjacent to Park Place in the days when it was called Park Mall, this was a Silo store. You can still see the remains of the lettering that advertised the electronics that were sold there. Silo has been gone for probably 20 years, but you can still tell what the place used to be. Since then it's been a warehouse for World Care (a charity, I think), the temporary home of Wilmot Library, and, most recently, one of those discount Halloween shops that pop up for a month each year. And yet it still looks like a dead Silo store.

The other weird thing about this building is that at one end you can see the remains of another business that was there in the 1980s: a surf shop. In landlocked, desert Tucson. Is it any wonder that's long gone?

Across the street and a few doors down is this place, which has only been gone since June. Do you recognize it?

I could show you several more closed businesses within a block or two of these others, ranging from a family-owned ice cream parlor to a building that was most recently a charter school. But let's finish up with this former Hometown Buffet, which closed around the same time as the restaurant across the street from it. The nice surprise today was seeing the Opening Soon sign out front for U Like Buffet. Okay, it's a terrible name, but I wish them well. I don't want them to be here today, gone tomorrow.

Karen

Now let's see what else is gone!

Linking List
As of Sunday

Karen - Posted!
Outpost Mâvarin
http://outmavarin.blogspot.com

Jama - Posted!
Sweet Memories
http://mummyjam.blogspot.com

Terri ** Welcome back!** - Posted!
Ways I See the World
http://teelgeephotos.blogspot.com

Sherrie
Food for Thought
http://100sweets.blogspot.com/

Dave ** Welcome, new participant!** - Posted!
Dave's(old short legs) photo blog
http://davesoldshortlegsphotoblog.blogspot.com/

Georgia ** Welcome, new participant!**
Mimi's Place
http://georgiamacdonald.blogspot.com

Tina - Posted!
Tina's PicStory
http://tinaspicstory.blogspot.com/

EMPS: A Harvest of Hangers

2011-11-13T17:57:00.003-07:00

Carly's topic this week for the Ellipsis Monday Photo Shoot this week was Happy Harvest, and she allowed for metaphorical harvests. That's good, because my photo of John's box of pomegranates would be really boring! Instead let me show you what I've been up to this weekend.

New clothes, one size down.

At the end of July I went on a low carb diet, part of getting my life and health in order while I still have time. For the first time, I had a diagnosis of Type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure, which I didn't have when my weight was lower. I've lost 35 pounds since then, and counting. On Friday I decided that I'd earned the right to get a new, smaller pair of pants and get rid of the ones I was wearing. I also bought a few new tops.

Starting to refill the closet after emptying it out.

But what about the clothes I had already? Surely there was something I'd dieted down into. It was time to take a look!

Friday night I started going through my clothes, sorting into too big and/or stained and/or worn out (get rid), too small (box up in boxes labeled Summer 2012) and stuff that fits now or is about to fit (hang up or put in a drawer). Most of the clothes in my closet, it turned out, were in the category "It was too small but now it fits, just about!" But it had been so long since I'd tried them on that they had dust on top of them!

So I pulled them out and started doing lots of laundry. And you know what I ended up with? Piles of clothes, yes...

...but also a harvest of hangers!

It got even more full of hangers later that evening.

Look! A bushel basket of harvested hangers!

Karen

Occupy Tucson and the Ballot Box

2011-11-09T00:53:00.002-07:00

I have to say that I'm rather pleased with the results of today's elections. Elsewhere in the country, the bill that gutted union rights was repealed in Ohio, and a proposition that would have outlawed most birth control was defeated in Mississippi. Up in Phoenix, the arch-Republican behind Arizona's SB 1070 lost his recall election, and in Tucson's Sunnyside school district., the intern who saved Gabby Giffods' life was elected to the school board. Democrat Jonathan Rothschild will be the new mayor of Tucson, and it looks like my Ward Four City Council member, Shirley Scott, has been narrowly reelected.

Meanwhile, in downtown Tucson, members of the Occupy Tucson movement have been living in tents in a city park. One of them got nearly 5% of the vote today as the Green Party candidate for mayor.

The election in Tucson today was kind of weird, though. We've had early voting for quite some time, and ID has been required to vote here for years. But this year the whole process changed, and John and I knew nothing about it until the primary at the end of August. Someone had the bright idea of conducting the whole election by mail, and that's what they did. For 35 years I've been voting in person on Election Day, but this year that was a little harder to do. Instead of dropping in at the neighborhood elementary school, we had to find the ballots that had arrived unnoticed in the mail, mark them, put them in the special envelope, sign the envelope, and, because we didn't mail them back ahead of time (not that I wanted to), drive them over to one of only seven polling places in the entire city and drop them in a box there.

Jan exercises her right to vote.

To be honest, that wasn't terribly onerous for us, once John found the ballots after I failed to do so. John stuck mine in my purse, and I marked it and drove it to the Udall Center a few miles away. I was more concerned about my friend Jan, who rode over with me. Jan, who has voted in every single election since she first became eligible, did not receive a ballot in the mail, as far as we can tell. She's registered at her home, but has been living in a rehab facility with multiple health problems. The ballot apparently did not arrive at the house, and she had not re-registered at what was supposed to be a temporary address. The good news is that she was able to give a sworn statement that she did not receive her ballot, and get a replacement one.

So that was good, but I wonder about the homeless. Where do their ballots get mailed?

Outside the 150 foot limit at Udall Center was a Green Party activist, who was giving out free bumper stickers and chatting people up about the Green Party mayoral candidate, Mary DeCamp. DeCamp conducted her campaign from Occupy Tucson, which I briefly visited last week. I don't agree with absolutely everything said by absolutely everyone down there, but DeCamp sounds pretty cool, and I might have considered voting for her if a) I hadn't also heard good things about the Democrat, Jonathan Rothschild, and b) DeCamp were capable of defeating the Republican this time out.

Unlike in New York, Oakland and elsewhere, the Occupy protesters have not faced any tear gas or police brutality. Both sides have been peaceful, with Occupiers lining up to get citations for occupying a city park after 10:30 PM without a permit. I used to think that Occupy should have gone through channels and gotten the permit, but that turns out to cost a reservation fee of $155 a day and a requirement for liability insurance. That's if the permit was granted at all. I suppose they could pass the hat, but it does seem an unreasonable restriction on the right of assembly. "Your right to expressive activities does not stop at 10:30 p.m.," Occupy Tucson's lawyer said in an interview. They've filed a lawsuit in federal court to stop the fines and arrests.

When I stopped by on Friday afternoon, there were lots of tents set up on two small strips of land between Congress St. and Broadway Blvd. downtown, plus an information book, a media tent and a conflict resolution, er, rock.

Although it all looked pretty organized to me, the guy manning the info booth told me that the place was in disarray because the night before, Tucson Police threatened to take people to jail unless they vacated Armory Park, which had been the main Occupy Tucson site. "We finished moving everything at four o'clock this morning," he told me. They not only moved to the other site, peacefully, but cleaned up the park they were leaving on their way out. Now they've filed a lawsuit to step the arrests and fines, and to forestall another incident of the police making them vacate a park or suffer mass arrest. The Thursday night order was purportedly to prepare Armory Park for two scheduled events. Since then the city manager has suggested that they might need to leave& Veinte De Agosto Park to accommodate a veteran's Day parade. However, the parade route doesn't go past that park.

From Occupy Tucson

My favorite shot from my visit is this one, of a woman decorating her Occupy Tucson tent. It quotes Gandhi: “Be the change you want to see in the world.” I'd say the Occupiers are trying very hard to be the change, and we should support them. "It's for all of us, you know. It's for you, it's for me, it's for everyone who doesn't live in the ivory towers," occupier Mike Robbins said in a recent interview. In other words, it's for us, the 99%.

Karen

Round Robin Challenge: The Biggest Scare of All

2011-11-05T01:35:00.005-07:00

No guard rail and a long way down: Sentinel Peak (A Mountain).

I initially had nothing in particular in mind for the Round Robin Challenge: Scary, beyond a vague idea of trying to show the real and imagined dangers of what I consider the scariest drive in Tucson: the drive up A Mountain, a.k.a. Sentinel Peak. It wasn't until today that I realized what my experiences on that road have in common with the pretend scares of Halloween and my actual terror on the Tower of Terror attraction at Disney's California Adventure. Ultimately, these scares and others are rooted in the scariest scare of all: the primal fear of death.

A burial today at East Lawn Palms cemetery.

What's interesting to me about the fear of death isn't the evolutionary usefulness of it or the ultimate inescapability of this thing we fear, but the elaborate ways we've developed to deal with that fear. The religious among us, for example, cling to the escape clause provided by our particular faith, such as the promise of resurrection or the cycle of reincarnation on the way to Nirvana. Or do I have that last bit wrong? I'm not criticizing this, by the way. We have our reasons. But beyond that, we speculate on what Heaven is like and exactly when and how we get there, and we develop rituals for how the body is disposed of, and we do afterwards to honor the people we've lost and smooth their way into the next world.

Styrofoam gravestones and a fake ghost.
Click the link below for more photos about deathly scares!

From Round Robin Photo Challenges

Halloween, beyond the party aspect, the fun of pretending to be someone else and the guilty pleasure of eating too much candy, is all about taming the fear of death. We set up tombstones made of Styrofoam, which unlike the real thing can be removed then the celebration is over. We take away the fear of ghostly spirits by depicting ghosts as nothing more than bedsheets with eye holes. We dress up as vampires and wicked witches and fantasy killers such Freddie or Jason, knowing those characters can be safely put in a box in the closet afterward, and everyone will still be alive.

Tucsonans dine with Dia de los Muertos skeletons at El Charro Restaurant.

Here in Tucson, there is a growing annual celebration of the Dia de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead. Taking its inspiration from the centuries-old Day of the Dead observances in Mexico, Tucson's All Souls Procession and related events (art shows, concerts etc.) is described in the Phoenix New Times as "a creative and chaotic cornucopia that's equal parts Burning Man, Halloween, and Mardi Gras all rolled into one." The main event is the All Souls Procession, with people in costumes, often carrying icons of deceased relatives, and sometimes even wearing a mask with the loved one's face. I have never made it down to see this, but I'd like to.

An All Souls altar at St. Michael's, containing traditional Dia de Los Muertos icons.

I read somewhere that one purpose of the original Day of the Dead, besides honoring, remembering and praying for the deceased loved ones, is to mock Death itself, not the actual dead people but the idea of death, which is unable to prevent new life beyond this world. Or something. Sounds about right to me, anyway. Day of the Dead decor is full of colorful and generally humorous-looking skulls and skeletons, which can be similar to Danse Macabre imagery in that the skeletons are depicted as being out and about, participating in human activities rather than lying decently in the ground. Children eat candy skulls, and families laugh about that time that Tia Madeleine, before she died, had that funny incident with the family dog (or whatever). Some celebrations are solemn, but many of them are joyful. It's a chance to take our fear of death and laugh at it, and say, "You don't scare me!"

A scary advertisement is all over town.

Of course some of fears associated with death have nothing to do with skeletons or fantasy monsters or an afterlife, and very little to do with a fear of the unknown. Ads like the one above are at bus stops all over Tucson right now. I assume that what Doug McClure (probably not the 1970s tv star) is selling is life insurance, so that at least if you die your family can pay for the funeral, and maybe be a bit less destitute afterward. When I parked to take this photo, two soon-to-be bus passengers offered their take on the subject of death. "We all have to go sometime," an older man said with a shrug. A guy in his thirties had a very different take. He told me that his friend was "dying very slowly," suffering a series of painful conditions that twist his body and subject him to pain. He's had surgeries, and one recent one almost killed him from the anesthesia. The friend told me that the man's stomach was pushed off to the right side of his abdomen and needed surgery, but now the friend was afraid to get it in case he died. Even in those extreme circumstances, the fear of death was a real factor in the man's decision-making.

And on that downer note, let me end this and pass you on to the scary photos of the other Robins!

Linking List
as of Saturday, November 5th
1:35 AM MST

Karen - Posted!
Outpost Mâvarin
http://outmavarin.blogspot.com

Jama - Posted!
Sweet Memories
http://mummyjam.blogspot.com

May - Posted!
May Rodrigo
http://www.mayrodrigo.com

Please note: I am helping out at a conference at church in the morning and early afternoon, so I won't be near a computer to update the linking lists or comment on entries. I'll catch up with all this when I get home later in the day. In the meantime, try to have fun without me!

Karen

EMPS: Happy Halloween Hangover

2011-11-03T05:24:00.000-07:00

For Ellipsis Monday Photo Shoot #148: Sweet Halloween Greetings, Carly wants to see a greeting that depicts Halloween treats. I think it's time we celebrate the days after Halloween, when we have all that leftover candy, and Halloween decorations to clean up. Yes, it's time for Halloween Hangover Days!

We had 22 bags left Halloween night, out of 80. John dug into some of the leftovers for Snickers bars. I had one Starburst fruit chew (not one mini-package, but one chew) on the 30th, one mini-Snickers on the 31st and one mini Almond Joy (10 grams of carbs) on the 1st. That was it for me for candy this year, at least until Christmas. I shouldn't have had that much. The rest went to the work room at the Church office, and I ate a limited quantity of grapes that day instead of more candy.

Either a wind came up overnight or a mischievous ghost went around and knocked down our tombstones, and even my raven, who had been perched on the roof of our old New Yorker. But I got it all packed up tonight, ready for next year.

Karen

A Moment of Syracuse Nostalgia

2011-10-30T19:28:00.000-07:00

As I think I've admitted before on this blog, I've become a bit of a Tumblr addict. In case you haven't heard, Tumblr is the latest and greatest in social media/blogging sites. Think of a cross between Blogger, Wordpress and Facebook, only with more pictures, and populated almost entirely by teenage girls. That's pretty much what Tumblr is like. President Obama is on Tumblr now, so you know it's cool.

I've started cross-posting most of my Outpost bits, or at least excerpts thereof, on my Tumblr blog. I have no idea what the Tumblr kids make of these. They probably skip over them, because those posts have no Doctor Who, Harry Potter or Sherlock content, or teen angst about not being in love and flirtations with the idea of suicide. Oh, it's an emotion-fraught world, Tumblr! It's full of extravagent, animated gif-filled posts about One True Pairings of characters whose romances the kids wish to experience vicariously!

But last night, in a Halloween mood, I went looking for postings related to Baron Daemon, the Syracuse horror host of my youth. I wrote about him here at the Outpost back in 2008. Baron Daemon, a corny comedy vampire, was played by local features reporter Mike Price when I was a kid. I remember the show, but I don't remember his 45 record, The Transylvania Twist, which was a big hit locally, according to what I've read. Last night I found several recordings of this 45 on YouTube, along with clips from the Baron's tv capers of long ago. I thought I'd post them here too, because I can, and because I tend to get more feedback over the years from my Halloween and Syracuse-related posts than from everything else I write about here. So here we go:

Monster Movie Matinee opening credits:

The silly locally-produced stuff at the beginning of the Sunday afternoon creature feature was much more interesting to my child-self than any of the movies were.

More fun with Dr. Witty and Epal.

For Baron Daemon we have:

The Transylvania Twist. This has just a still image of the original 45, but good sound. Not a bad song, either.

The B-side, introduced by the Baron on a local oldies station in the 1980s.

This is my favorite of several Baron Daemon outtakes on YouTube. Search for Baron Daemon and you'll find several more, plus a Syracuse house whose Halloween display lights up in time to the Transylvania Twist.

That's all for now!

Karen

EMPS: Pepper's Earth Tones

2011-10-30T17:56:00.010-07:00

When Carly asked to see Earth Tones for the Ellipsis Monday Photo Shoot, I immediately thought of my dog Pepper. Here's why:

Pepper is a digger, especially when she's got a bone or rawhide she can bury, or when she's just been groomed. And there's nothing more earth toned than dirt! Above is John's attempt at a flowerbed. He's added bricks to discourage Pepper's digging and protect the flowers, but that doesn't stop her. At all.

See what I mean? She's incorrigible!

This is the fence between us and one of our neighbors. John added the rattan or whatever it is to help hold back the dust Pepper kicks up when the dogs are running back and forth, barking wildly. This happens pretty much every night and every morning, and who knows how many times during the day when we're not here. There! I just heard Pepper out there howling!

Here's the Trouble Dog herself, considering her options. Notice the cement blocks John has placed next to the rattan. I'm not sure whether that's to hold the rattan up or fill in holes that Pepper dug. Probably both!

We have a few theories. One is that Pepper is trying to keep bones and such away from Cayenne, so she can have them later. She's been known to carry the things around for days on end, and even try to bury them in the couch or the bedclothes. Sometimes she gets so anxious about the buried treasure that he asks to go out in the middle of the night to guard it.

The other theory is that, as a furry dog intended to herd reindeer, she likes to make a nest of cool dirt. Both are true, I think.

Karen

EMPS: foregrounds and backgrounds on the grounds

2011-10-22T18:21:00.001-07:00

For Ellipsis Monday Photo Shoot #146: Foregrounds And Backgrounds, Carly wants to see "an image that shows one or the other in fine detail, while keeping the other in enough focus to tell what it is." I was at St. Michael's today to get photos of the walkway to the church door, which we need for an event flyer or a brochure or something. (I'm not the one doing it, only providing the picture.) I love photographing the church grounds, which can be quite a challenge because it's hard to get the right lighting, and the trees tend to block views of the building. It occurred to me that it was a good subject for this foreground-background thing.

Oh, and for the extra credit, Carly wanted the same subject with the "opposite effect." I'm interpreting that to mean that neither the foreground nor the background is particularly in focus! With a little fudging, I came up with this:

Karen

Round Robin: Boxes of Ticky Tacky?

2011-10-22T01:28:00.006-07:00

When I announced the topic "Little Boxes" for this week's Round Robin Photo Challenge, I inevitably thought of two things. One was the song popularized by Pete Seeger:

Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes made of ticky tacky,
Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes all the same.
There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one,
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.

I used to live in a little box like that, more than once in my life. The house I lived in as a young child was so small that my brother's room was only accessible through mine. He didn't allow me in his room, and of course I couldn't keep him out of mine. Once in revenge I locked his door from the inside and closed it, creating quite a fuss as my parents (and, if memory serves, a neighbor or two) tried to get it open again.

Many years later, in the early 1990s, John and I lived in a miserably small house with concrete block walls that I dubbed The Shoebox. I was going to photograph that for you, but I never got over there with the camera. Some other time.

The other little boxes I thought of were these jewelry boxes, which are currently a horrible mess. This is because I recently packed up the bits of my mom's jewelry that I could bear to part with, and took it to a local antiques and collectibles store. I got $20 for the ten or so items they deigned to take at all, and even at that the implication was they were doing me a favor. But enough of my whining. Let's see what's left, box-wise!

Here are two of the more interesting boxes, in terms of the boxes themselves. My favorite is this wooden one, given to me by my grandmother when I was a little girl. I've always been under the impression that it was from Morocco, probably because Grandmother gave me a little round camel-hide purse from Morocco at about the same time. As an adult I found a larger version of this same wooden box in an antique shop. Naturally, I bought it.

I should mention that I'm embarrassed to show you my favorite box in this condition, so thick with dust. It settles in the cracks of the carving, and is a bear to get out completely. I usually rinse it off with water, which can't be good for the wood.

The other box, made of cardboard, was my mom's. I find it a little remarkable that something this flimsy has survived so many decades.

As an adult I lined my carved wooden box with red fabric stapled around bits of cardboard, and filled it with some of my better (or at least, my favorite) pieces of jewelry. If you look carefully you can see an IDIC lying upside down in there. I bought this piece of Vulcan jewelry (as in Star Trek) from Lincoln Enterprises circa 1972. I haven't reorganized things properly since the debacle with the second hand store, but sometimes I have a silver Hopi ring in this box, and a Zuni one, and my grandmother's ruby ring, which doesn't fit me properly.

Inside the cardboard box is a letter opener that I thought might be ivory, but which is probably bakelite or some other plastic. My mom also had quite a bit by way of of fake pearls and cultured pearls, but more than once I've gotten them out only to play 52-Pearl Pickup as a string broke on a bracelet or necklace. To be honest, my Mom's jewely has not behaved in a way that encourages me to wear it. It seems that everything either breaks, is missing stones, or is too small for my wrist.

This plastic box dates to the mid-1980s, when I worked at a Columbus, Ohio record store chain called Buzzard's Nest. (I've told that story before, so let me just link to that and move on.) This particular image of John Lennon, based on the picture of in in the 1968 "White Album," was very popular on merchandise in the years after his murder. I found this box recently in a storage box, and have been pondering what to put in it. Paper clips? push pins? It's a little larger than a pack of cigarettes. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that, back in the day, lots of Lennon fans used these little boxes to store their marijuana and/or hash pipe. (I didn't.)

You can tell the size of this little box by what's immediately above and below it. Inside is a sewing kit and a few other odds and ends. I think it came from a gift of candy in my First Magnus days (2005-2007). I kept the box because I like it a lot. The old fashioned winter sceene continues on the inside of the box.

Here are two little boxes that I didn't think of at all in connection with this topic, until I happened to spot them looking for the lid of another box. They contain the ashes of two of our dogs, Tuffy and Noodle. I'm sorry to feature something so depressing, but it didn't seem right to leave these boxes out once I'd noticed them.

But my all-time favorite gift-in-a-little-box came on my birthday in March, 2008. This plush dog was in this little striped box, and for a moment I couldn't understand why John seemed so proud of such a paltry (but cute) gift. Then he said, "Did you look on the inside of the box lid?" There was a piece of paper, which said, "I.O.U. one genuine dog or puppy of your choice." Within a week, we went to an adoption fair at Petsmart and come home with Lady Heather, soon to be known as Pepper. Best birthday present ever.

Karen

Now let's check out the other Robins' little boxes!

Linking List
as of 12:23 PM MST, Saturday October 22

Karen - Posted!
Outpost Mâvarin
http://outmavarin.blogspot.com

Jama - Posted!
Sweet Memories
http://mummyjam.blogspot.com

Sherrie - Posted!
Food for Thought
http://100sweets.blogspot.com/

Gattina - Posted!
Keyhole Pictures
http://gattina-keyholepictures.blogspot.com/

Tina - Posted!
Tina´s PicStory
http://tinaspicstory.blogspot.com/

EMPS: Pumpkins and Scarecrows

2011-10-16T17:54:00.002-07:00

Carly wants to see autumn decorations for the Ellipsis Monday Photo Shoot, and also wants to know whether we think scarecrows are cute or creepy. Well, I'd say that the ones at St. Michael's are definitely on the cute side!

I also get this shot of "heirloom" pumpkins (old fashioned, non hybridized ones) at Trader Joe's. Taking photos there is not allowed, but I snuck in a shot anyway!

Karen

I am the 99%.

2011-10-14T13:32:00.000-07:00

azspot:

Here’s What The Wall Street Protesters Are So Angry About…

This.

Despite my accounting degree, I can’t get a permanent job in this economy. I worked for a mortgage company and it went bankrupt. I worked for an RV dealer when gas was $4 a gallon, and it went bankrupt. I worked for a travel agency for 12 years before that, and it later went the way of the buggy whip. Most recently I was part of a massive layoff at a company that had a big downturn in business. Now I work about 8 hours a week at my church, and I’m grateful to have that job. Half of my pay goes to student loans.

I am the 99%.

Karen

EMPS: A House Full of Faces

2011-10-08T21:20:00.002-07:00

The topic for this week's Ellipsis Monday Photo Shoot was Faces, with extra credit given for a montage of faces. Let's start with that. I was surprised, once I got started, just how many human faces one can photograph here at the Museum of the Weird without photographing even one real person!

The top row here is all Disney characters, including an original sketch by legendary Disney artist Marc Davis. Dopey is from the cover of a vintage Disney book called Fantasyland. Quasimodo is a plush toy. Esmerelda, Mulan and Li Shang are all from Mattel, with Mulan and Li Shang packaged together.

The second row features miscellaneous dolls. I have two Chatty Baby dolls because I couldn't remember what color hair my original one had. So I bought one of each. Spunky is a friend of Jan, the Remco Japanese character doll I had as a kid, herself a friend of Heidi, who was probably meant to be Swiss. The best troll dolls from the 1960s were the "DAM" dolls, but Wishniks were the next most popular, and are still being made I think.

On the bottom row are some of my vintage Barbie dolls. The first doll from the Barbie line of products I ever had was Tutti, followed by a straight-legged bubble-cut Barbie I got in trade from my friend Cindy. My favorites at the time were the only other two I got as a child, Casey (left) and Talking Stacey (right). I never had a Skipper, a Midge or a Ken growing up, but they're iconic, aren't they? I got those three over the past 15 years or so, and the ponytail Barbie shown here at a toy show just a few years ago.

Now let's leave the house and check out a much larger character with a face. This giant lumberjack is known locally is Glenn Stone, or even "Glenn Stone, the axe murderer." He stands at the corner of Glenn St. and Stone Ave., and why not! There's also an intersection of Glenn and Campbell nearby! Rumor has it that new beat cops in Tucson are sometimes sent to this intersection to check out a police report of a "large man with an axe." Roadside America calls all such giant figures "Muffler Men" because historically many of them held mufflers instead of axes.

Our Glenn recently got a nice, badly-needed paint job, apparently courtesy of the Coronado Heights Neighborhood Association, judging from his shirt. He's all shiny now.

Karen

Round Robin: The Blochers Relax

2011-10-08T00:20:00.002-07:00

This week's Round Robin Photo Challenge is Relax! That's quite an individual thing, isn't it? I mean, I find formatting spreadsheets relaxing, but that's probably not very common. John's favorite way to relax is downloading old, obscure comics, or playing with his iPad. But I also have one slightly more photogenic way to relax:

This is Mount Lemmon Highway, of course, also known as Catalina Highway or Sky Island Parkway. My favorite way to relax is to drive up this narrow, twisting road, and take in the wonderful, familiar views along the way.

Paradoxically, part of the "relaxation" I get from the 30 mile drive up or down Mount Lemmon (not that I usually get that far up) is the challenge of negotiating all those curves, inclines and switchbacks, sometimes with rain or snow on the road, sometimes with darkness coming on, and almost always with other cars in front and behind that want to go faster or slower than I do. Can something be exciting and relaxing at the same time? Yes!

The dogs, on the other hand, have much simpler requirements for relaxing:

Cayenne generally prefers the couch, and doesn't care if the cover is half off it. In fact, she often pulls the couch cover down as she digs herself a nest on the couch. And she doesn't care if there are a few boxes strewn about as we get ready to bring in an exterminator. (Long story, and I'm not prepared to tell it now.)

Pepper likes the couch, too, and the bed even better if we're in there. But she sometimes prefers the unconfined freedom of the floor of the den.

Karen

Now let's check out the other Robins' relaxing photos!

Linking List
as of 12:12 AM MST, Saturday October 8th

Karen - Posted!
Outpost Mâvarin
http://outmavarin.blogspot.com

Jama
Sweet Memories
http://mummyjam.blogspot.com

Freda
Day One
http://fredamans.blogspot.com

Rachael
The Smile Spot :)
http://smile-spot.blogspot.com/
Healthy, Sexy, You.
http://healthysexyyou.blogspot.com/

Chris
CJPhotography Blog
http://theotokos.christopherjosephphotography.com/

Sherrie
Food for Thought
http://100sweets.blogspot.com/

Gattina - Posted!
Keyhole Pictures
http://gattina-keyholepictures.blogspot.com/

May Rodrigo **Welcome, new participant!**
May Rodrigo
http://www.mayrodrigo.com

Jeanette
Net On The Net
http://netonthenet.blogspot.com

Kim, USA
A wifey blog
http://awifey.blogspot.com

Tina - - Posted!
Tina´s PicStory (Goodies for a Pleasant Life)
http://tinaspicstory.blogspot.com/

EMPS: Puppy (and Kitty) Love

2011-10-02T17:54:00.009-07:00

This week's Ellipsis Monday Photo Shoot topic was "Pick an Emotion," and I was almost certain I'd be photographing doggie emotions, mostly because I'm shy about asking people to let me photograph them. But today was the Blessing of the Animals at St. Michael's, and the emotions most on display were on the faces of the pet owners. Check it out!

The emotion is obvious, isn't it? It's love, the love of a human for a pet. Yes, it's mixed with other emotions, mostly pride and joy. But most of what I saw today, despite the dark church and my shaky camera technique while holding two leashes and looking at a dead battery warning light, was clearly Love.

Oh, and the cat photos were taken just before my dogs started barking at them...!

One last shot, and it represents the photo I didn't get. During the Eucharistic Prayer. John (the teenager walking in front here) was kneeling before the altar, and lifting the candle (torch, in ecclesiastic parlance) at specific moments in the ritual. The crucifer (the person who holds the cross on a pole) held the leash meanwhile, but the dachshund was able to reach John's feet, and at one point climbed onto John's calves. Eventually John completed his torch raising duties with one hand while scratching his dog with the other. The calf jump was the cutest thing I've ever seen at church, but I could never have gotten a decent photo from my vantage point, a good twenty feet away! So instead here's a photo of the walk back to the sacristy after Mass was over.

Karen

Round Robin: My Favorite Obsession

2011-09-24T00:34:00.007-07:00

Listen, for the Round Robin Challenge: My Favorite, I really did try to come up with a different favorite subject from the one I'm going to feature here tonight. Favorite toy? Nah, already showed you. Favorite vista on Mount Lemmon? Didn't make it up there. Favorite book? Variable, and not very interesting to photograph. And so on. Nothing really did it for me, and I was running out of time.

So I'm going to show you parts of my Doctor Who collection, from my all-time favorite television show. Doctor Who. It first aired in the UK on November 23, 1963 and lasted until December 1989, was revived in 2005 and is again going strong on both sides of the Atlantic, in something like 40 countries around the world.

At first, I thought I wouldn't have anything interesting to show you. I don't really buy much by way of Doctor Who toys and collectibles. I own a few hundred books and nearly as many videos, but how photogenic is that? So I set up some of the box sets on a shelf, along with a few other things I do have. Clockwise from left, you can see a heavily-autographed copy of The Doctor Who Encyclopedia, box sets of Series One through Five (2005-2010) on DVD or Blu-Ray, a fan novella called Paradox that I wrote in the early 1990s, the last Target novel I needed to complete my collection of novelizations circa 2000, a TARDIS bank (that's the blue thing, representing the faux "police box" the Doctor travels in), a sonic screwdriver, the new issue of Doctor Who Magazine, a cartoon sketch of the Tenth Doctor (David Tennant), and a disappearing TARDIS mug.

Here's a better look at the sketch and the autographed book. The latter has been to two Gallifrey One conventions in Los Angeles, and has been autographed by numerous writers, actors and behind the scenes people.

The more I worked on this entry tonight, the more I remembered other things I could show you. I'll spare you the photos of the TARDIS towel, trading cards, TARDIS Time Lore fanzines and the FoDW keyring, but what about this? This original art by Ruben Calvillo is about 24" x 36", and made with either colored pencil or pastels. It cost me $100 at a local convention circa 1996.

This poster was on the back of my office door here at home for about 16 years. Until tonight. It's from a 1991-1995 Doctor Who exhibit of props and costumes (etc.) at the Museum of the Moving Image in London. The exhibit was called called "Behind the Sofa," which is where British children are said to hide when Doctor Who episodes get scary.

And finally, here's an autographed photo of the late Patrick Troughton, the second person to play the Doctor on television. Unfortunately, I never met him myself. I have met four of his successors, though.

You can find more photos here. And if you're interested in Doctor Who, you may want to follow my new Tumblr blog.

Now let's see what other Robins singled out as favorites!

Linking List
as of 12:32 PM MST Saturday

Karen - Posted!
Outpost Mâvarin
http://outmavarin.blogspot.com

Jama - Posted!
Sweet Memories
http://mummyjam.blogspot.com

Freda - Posted!
Day One
http://fredamans.blogspot.com

Sherrie - Posted!
Food for Thought(new blog)
http://100sweets.blogspot.com/

Chris
CJP Blog
http://theotokos.christopherjosephphotography.com/

Tina - Posted!
Leckeres für Mensch und Katze - Goodies for a pleasant life
http://leckeresfuermenschundkatze.blogspot.com/2011/09/wonderful-moments.html

Karen

EMPS: The Mermaids of Disneyland

2011-09-12T01:29:00.000-07:00

Carly asked to see sand sculptures or mermaids, neither of which are a natural fit for life in the desert. So I went to my archives:

First off, here's Ariel, the Little Mermaid herself, photographed at Disneyland on Christmas Day 2005. There's a better than 50-50 chance that John took the photo, but I did the editing, including the framing.

More recent, but definitely my work, is this shot of the ceiling at my local Chuy's Mesquite Broiler, taken a month ago.

Finally, here's a playful composite I made from about five different photos. The scene is the submarine lagoon at Disneyland, now home to the Finding Nemo attraction. There are mermaids on the ride itself, but I got no photos of those. These are, or course, the mermaid Barbie dolls from the ceiling of Chuy's! The two subs are both from other photos taken the same day as the lagoon itself.

Incidentally, back when the original Submarine Voyage attraction first opened, there were live "mermaids" in that lagoon!

Carly also asks whether I'd rather have sand of grass between my toes. Neither would be best, but failing that I'll go for some nice, clean, dry sand. I'm allergic to grass!

Karen

EMPS: In Living Black and White

2011-09-11T17:58:00.006-07:00

For the Ellipsis Monday Photo Shoot: Black and White Photography isn't exactly what I posted Friday night, but it's a similar concept! Here are some fresh shots:

And, in my best attempt at Ansel Adamsness, at least for the moment, here's a black and white treatment of a shot from a month ago:

Karen

Round Robin: Did I Cause This "Shades of Grey" Day?

2011-09-09T21:03:00.005-07:00

It's the tail end of the Arizona monsoon, Tucson's summer rainy season. I hate to complain about too little rain when elsewhere in the country houses and bridges have washed away from too much of it; but the fact is that we didn't get much rain over our house this summer. There's been a bit of thunder and the occasional ten minute storm, but not much more than that. And now we're at the time of the year for even that to end.

Nevertheless, inspired by a cloudy sky, I set this week's Round Robin Photo Challenges topic as "Shades of Grey." Frankly, after that, including this morning, the weather around here started to clear up. Then, around 5 PM, which is usually when our storms start, if at all, I heard thunder. It was as if the sky was offering to help me with the grayish shots I needed. A little later, after it actually started raining, I got the following photos:

There's just a touch of sunset here, but mostly it was all just grey and dramatic.

One thing I like about this photos is that it's 100% in shades of grey, even the tree and the bit of roof. Yet it's a color photo, completely unedited except to resize and sharpen.

Just a bit of a skyscape, this one, again unedited except to resize and sharpen.

I did reduce this one to grayscale, but you're not missing much.

Now let's see what shades of gray the other Robins captured!

Linking List
as of almost 10:45 AM MST
Saturday, September 10th

Jama - Posted!
Sweet Memories
http://mummyjam.blogspot.com

Freda - Posted!
Day One
http://fredasvoice.blogspot.com

Karen - Posted!
Outpost Mâvarin
http://outmavarin.blogspot.com

Robin R Robinson **Welcome, new Robin!**
The Back Story - My Controlled Chaos
http://robins-chaos.blogspot.com

Rachael - Posted!
The Smile Spot :)
http://smile-spot.blogspot.com/

Kim - Posted!
My Pride and Joy
http://niecesandnephew.blogspot.com

Peg - Posted!
Who Can Discover It?
http://whocandiscoverit.blogspot.com/

Gattina - Posted!
Keyhole Pictures
http://gattina-keyholepictures.blogspot.com/

Tina - Posted!
Goodies for a Pleasant Life
http://leckeresfuermenschundkatze.blogspot.com/

Karen

Round Robin: The Great Outdoors on a Cloudy Afternoon

2011-08-27T01:24:00.003-07:00

The Round Robin Photo Challenge this time out is "The Great Outdoors." Not having a lot of time this week to really explore the topic, I headed for my default bit of the Great Outdoors: the lower reaches of Mount Lemmon Highway in the Santa Catalina Mountains, just north of Tucson.

From Mount Lemmon Highway

As I'd hoped, there was a cyclist on the road as I started up. I almost always see one or more of them, on the way up or on the way down. Mountain biking is an extremely popular way to enjoy the Great Outdoors around here. To me, though, it seems like an awful lot of work, especially in the heat and humidity of late summer in Tucson.

For once I skipped Babad Do'Ag Vista, the site of many past photo shoots for this and other memes. Instead I made my way to Molino Basin Vista. There are a few short nature trails here, one of which led me almost to the water below.

The trail in the other direction leads me toward a lovely cleft in the mountains. Unfortunately, the weather and the time of day meant that I could not take a photo as dramatic as what my eyes saw. If the land was properly lit, then the sky was whited out...

...and setting the aperture to catch the dramatic monsoon clouds meant leaving the land in shadow.

So I created a composite from two different photos!

I always enjoy my trips up Mt. Lemmon, even the abbreviated ones that take me just five or ten miles from the base. This particular trip was marred by the echo of nearby gunfire. I'm pretty sure it was guys from a pickup truck near which I'd parked my Kia, illegally shooting into giant saguaro cacti. Not that I would dare to confront such people. Heck, they might shoot me instead!

You don't have to be on a mountain to enjoy the Great Outdoors, of course. Even the drive back was dramatic because of the clouds and the beginning of sunset.

If you are facing clouds and rain this weekend due to Hurricane Irene (or any other storm), respect the Great Outdoors - and be safe!

Linking List
as of Saturday, August 27th
at 1:22 AM MST

Karen - Posted!
Outpost Mâvarin
http://outmavarin.blogspot.com

Jama - Posted!
Sweet Memories
http://mummyjam.blogspot.com

Gattina - Posted!
Keyhole Pictures
http://gattina-keyholepictures.blogspot.com/

Tina - Posted!
Goodies for a Pleasant Life
http://leckeresfuermenschundkatze.blogspot.com/2011/08/herziges-blau.html

Anybody else this week?
Karen

EMPS: Apple Bubbles

2011-08-20T01:46:00.001-07:00

This week for the Ellipsis Monday Photo Shoot, Carly wants to see Apples. So naturally I went into the bedroom where our apples are kept, and photographed these:

Confused yet? How about this?

This is how Costco sells at least some of its apples: in plastic bubbles. Open the plastic and here are (what's left of) the apples:

Here's a better shot of the bubble shell packaging. If you look closely you can see the green of pears and mangoes underneath the apples:

The explanation: John has been on a juice fast, living on concoctions of juiced fruits and vegetables. He recently took a couple of weeks off of from his nothing-but-juice regimen, but when he's going all out, and I'm buying salads and veggies and such for my own diet, the fridge gets very full! That's when we put some of the hardier fruit in the bedroom, which has A/C going at least part of the time.

The bad part is that the dresser the apples are on is under the window, and also it seems excessive to run the room's air conditioner 24 hours a day for the sake of apples, pears, mangoes, Cayenne and Pepper. So I only run it most of the time.

Today after I photographed the apple bubbles, I pulled a pear from underneath and ate part of it. It was old and mushy. Guess that's what we get for not juicing it soon enough!

One last shot. I deliberately left this at the wrong rotation for artistic purposes. This way, the bubbles and apples look like strange ornaments, or maybe a bunch of grapes.

Be sure to check Ellipsis every week for the Ellipsis Monday Photo Shoot!

Karen

EMPS: Quick! Get That Sunset Posted!

2011-08-14T16:56:00.002-07:00

Carly is asking for my favorite photographic subject this week: sunsets, specifically summer sunsets. Unfortunately the weather hasn't been right for it this week, my computer died yesterday and the online connection on my new computer varies from almost none to none at all. So quick! Let me post this before I lose the connection again!

Both of these shots were taken in front of my house (well, more standing in the street!) on August 4th, 2011. This is not my favorite vantage for sunsets, but sometimes I get in a quick shot when I arrive home that turns out to be fairly decent.

My Gateway's hard drive decided it was on the verge of failing yesterday, so much so that I could not back up the files properly and had to pay Staples to do so today. That means I've probably lost my cheap photo editing software completely. Also, as I mentioned above, my new HP's ability to get online at all has been extremely iffy in the day that I've had it. Wish me luck, drop in a prayer or think good thoughts that I get it all resolved soon!

Karen

Round Robin: What's That on the Ceiling? #3 of 3

2011-08-13T00:43:00.000-07:00

For The Round Robin Photo Challenge On the Ceiling, the last place I went was a nearby location of Chuy's Mesquite Broiler. Their restaurants are all adorned with silly Mexican beach-themed decor. Somewhere in Tucson there is, or was, a seafood restaurant where you can look up and see the bottom of a boat with legs or a shark or something sticking out. I forget exactly where I saw that. This Chuy's had nothing like that, but it was well worth a look anyway:

No boat, but lots of fish, and big beer bottles!

Yes, that's a chandelier made from (mostly) Corona bottles. And what are those things behind it? Lobsters? Mermaids?

Ah. Mermaid Barbies. "Are you photographing my girlfriend?" the manager asked - meaning Barbie!

And that's it! Please check out the other participants' entries.

Linking List
as of Midnight MST
Saturday, August 13th, 2011

Karen - Posted!
Outpost Mâvarin
http://outmavarin.blogspot.com

Rachael
The Smile Spot :)
http://smile-spot.blogspot.com/

Jama
Sweet Memories
http://mummyjam.blogspot.com

Kim
My Life's Journey in Focus
http://www.kissess4u.com

Erin
Worth A Thousand Words
http://erin-worthathousandwords.blogspot.com/

Karen

Round Robin: What's That on the Ceiling? #2 of 3

2011-08-13T00:27:00.000-07:00

For The Round Robin Photo Challenge On the Ceiling, I first went back to Mission San Xavier del Bac for a quick shoot. But I wanted something else for contrast. As I discussed this with Nancy in the church office at St. Michael's, I looked up, and this is what I saw:

My particular office wasn't as nice on the ceiling as Nancy's and Father Smith's offices, but that's fine. After all, I didn't even notice the wood beam ceilings until now, let alone the wooden boxes covering the duct work.

One more entry to come...

Linking List
as of Midnight MST
Saturday, August 13th, 2011

Karen - Posted!
Outpost Mâvarin
http://outmavarin.blogspot.com

Rachael
The Smile Spot :)
http://smile-spot.blogspot.com/

Jama
Sweet Memories
http://mummyjam.blogspot.com

Kim
My Life's Journey in Focus
http://www.kissess4u.com

Erin
Worth A Thousand Words
http://erin-worthathousandwords.blogspot.com/

Karen

Round Robin: What's That on the Ceiling? #1 of 3

2011-08-13T00:16:00.000-07:00

For The Round Robin Photo Challenge On the Ceiling, I went back to Mission San Xavier del Bac for a quick shoot. This centuries-old mission is gradually being restored, leading to quite a bit of variation in the condition of the paint, plaster and icons inside. Let's take a look!

I later photographed ceilings in two other, very different buildings. Those will be in the next two entries.

Linking List
as of Midnight MST
Saturday, August 13th, 2011

Karen
Outpost Mâvarin
http://outmavarin.blogspot.com

Rachael
The Smile Spot :)
http://smile-spot.blogspot.com/

Jama
Sweet Memories
http://mummyjam.blogspot.com

Kim
My Life's Journey in Focus
http://www.kissess4u.com

Erin
Worth A Thousand Words
http://erin-worthathousandwords.blogspot.com/

Karen

EMPS: Citrus - in the Fridge and in the Yard

2011-07-30T18:11:00.000-07:00

For the Ellipsis Monday Photo Shoot #134, Carly wants to see Citrus Fruit, specifically our most and least favorites. My favorite, Clementines, are a little hard to come by this time of year, but here's what's on hand:

Limes for John's juice fast.

My citrus of choice, most of the time.

I've been cutting back on soda, even though I only drink diet, and experimenting with water and flavored water. This is an orange flavored water, lit by orange light. It's not as good as Diet Sunkist or Diet Crush. I'm not sure it's even better than basic Arrowhead water.

We've been working on having home-grown citrus. John planted this tangerine tree about two years ago. Tangerines were my favorite until I discovered clementines.

This grapefruit tree, planted within a month or so of the tangerine one, barely survived last winter. It replaces a mature grapefruit tree that died about four or five years ago. I'm not a fan of grapefruit. At all.

Karen

Round Robin: In Hiding

2011-07-30T00:56:00.003-07:00

Hi ho! This week's Round Robin Photo Challenge topic is "Hidden." I'm sure I had something in mind when I came up with that theme, but I've since forgotten.

Still, there is one place where stuff gets hidden on a frequent basis: the fridge! John's on a juice fast, so the refrigerator is especially full of fruits and veggies, plus my low carb stuff. But as the shelves fill up, older stuff gets pushed to the back, or buried under the new stuff. And I'm looking for my mini-cucumbers. Are they hidden under the fresh anise and apple-chicken sausages? What is hidden under and behind there?

Well, there's my spinach salad, and a big thing of blueberries, and...I'm not sure I really want to know what's in the back!

How about the bottom shelf? What's hidden under and behind the five pound bag of carrots?

Well, there are some cucumbers. But they're John's extra large ones, not my mini-seedless ones.

Somewhere on this bookshelf is a more...deliberate hiding place. Can you spot it?

Can you see it now?

Hey, folks, anyone else want to photograph what is hidden? Check out the Round Robin blog for details!

Linking List
as of Saturday at 9:43 AM

Jama - Posted!
Sweet Memories
http://mummyjam.blogspot.com

Karen - Posted!
Outpost Mâvarin
http://outmavarin.blogspot.com

Kim - Posted!
My Life's Journey in Focus
http://www.kissess4u.com

Peg - Posted!
Who Can Discover It?
http://whocandiscoverit.blogspot.com/

Karen

Archival Butterflies

2011-07-24T17:01:00.003-07:00

This week Carly wanted to see butterflies for the Ellipsis Monday Photo Shoot. If I were still working in Marana, I would have stopped off in Oro Valley on my way home and looked for some, but as it was, in this hot, monsoon-locked city, I knew the chances of finding any butterflies right now were slim to none. So let's hit the archives!

In the summer of 2008 I had a temp job for three months in Oro Valley, Arizona, on a road that had a lot of fields and flowers. I spent quite a few lunchtimes trying to capture butterflies with my camera. I was never all that successful, but I did get a handful of good shots and some fairly decent ones. This was one of the better ones.

Here's another, in the fairly decent category I suppose. I'm pretty sure this was a pipevine swallowtail, although the light in this case makes it look more brown than black or iridescent blue.

And by the way, there's another insect I managed to photograph that summer. I have no idea what it is.
ETA: It's a Large Milkweed Bug, which is a "true bug" rather than a beetle. Apparently there's a lot of variation in the colors (red to light orange) and markings.

You can see more of my shots from that summer in my Picasa album Butterflies of Southern Arizona.

That was also the summer that my dog Tuffy died. On one of her last trips to the vet, I saw this butterfly just outside the vet's office entrance.

From Tucson Botanical Gardens

Last summer's afternoon at the Tucson Botanical Gardens was rather pleasant in many ways, but when it came to butterflies it did not live up to its advertising.

From Tucson Botanical Gardens

Aside from one shot of a real live butterfly, I had to settle for pictures of butterflies, such as the ones on these tiles.

This is a pipevine swallowtail (probably) that I sort of rescued from my bathroom window last August. Poor thing was much the worse for wear!

Karen

Word Salad Poetry

2011-07-22T10:08:00.002-07:00

Word salad from this spam comment amuses me:

Hamlet's Nike Soliloquy

by Anon.

et assessments this legitimateness of movie star weibos
and contains certified this Radiohead weibo since true
That seashore can Discount Burberry be relaxed,
In Sina
Your regal set pleased the several 1000 men and women gathered
to begin simply by jogging over Ed Hardy
to move hands and prevent for any rapid speak,
although some given these people flowers,
like the east coast Burberry cheap Canadian flower, Lupins,
and also hand-held Canadian red flags, though nipping pics
LAUREL, Mont A neighborhood classifieds, this Billings Gazette,
Nike Air Jordan Cheap provides function photographs of the turtle
and also a gang of pelicans unsurprisingly with acrylic about them
"Right right nike air jordan shoes now
our primary attention is ensuring that most people are included
Two of this alerts faulted the organization for Nike Air Max
the crisis reply and pipe deterioration
This individual had not been sporting your life vest
this guitar rock Air Max Shoes band explained

Epic! I can almost hear David Tennant's Hamlet declaiming it.

The text above is untouched except to leave out the links and to break up the block of text into lines of poetry. Commas and lack of periods are as they were.

Karen

Round Robin: A Tale of Two Buildings

2011-07-16T00:37:00.008-07:00

The title of this week's Round Robin Photo Challenge, "Something Old, Something New," is self-explanatory, but I'll explain anyway. The idea (first suggested by Ruth, the ScrabbleQueen) is to show old and new examples of the same basic thing. My old and new things are buildings, two blocks apart on Broadway Blvd in downtown Tucson.

This is the Charles O Brown House, reputedly the second oldest building in Tucson. Another source lists it as the very oldest, dating to 1840. Brown purchased the small adobe house in 1868, and expanded it at least twice over the next two decades. Its rival in Tucson's pre-Gadsden Purchase, very-old-homes derby is La Casa Cordova (circa 1848), which is now part of the Tucson Museum of Art and Historic Block.

The house in 2007, the day I first noticed its existence.

I first found out about the Charles O Brown House while on a stroll downtown when I had jury duty in 2007. For the past several months I've been driving past it nearly every day on my way home from work. That ended today, at least for the time being: I've just been laid off today from my non-church job in Marana. I'm not going to write about the layoff, except to say I hope to work there again eventually.

But I digress.

Until very recently, this mid 19th-century blend of Mexican and Victorian architectural styles was leased out by the Arizona Historical Society for $1 a year to a company that was supposed to help restore it. They didn't, and the adobe walls are in sorry shape, which threatens the building's structural integrity. If you look back at my photos of Fort Lowell from 2009, you can see what time and water do to adobe unless it's cared for: it wears away and crumbles back into the earth from which it was made. Even in my drive-by photo above, you can see the patched, unpainted stretch of wall on the west side of the building, and the rotting wood above the door. Now that the neglectful tenant that was supposed to manage the property is no longer in the picture, let's hope that something will be done to preserve this historic old building.

This is the newest building in downtown Tucson, more or less, so new they haven't finished building it yet! (The scheduled completion date is this December.) It's to be the new headquarters of UniSource Energy, the parent company of Tucson Electric Power. The current UniSourse HQ is the Unisource Energy Tower, one of the tallest buildings in Tucson and located even closer to the COB House.

The really neat thing about this building, aside from the unique asymmetrical design, is that it's designed to be very green in the ecological sense, and energy efficient. The nine story, 170,000 square foot building is to have solar panels built into its south and east walls, according to the initial press release from last year, and the design is meant to minimize exposure to the brutal Tucson sunshine. Its garage will include electrical vehicle charging stations.

Here's an earlier shot, taken back in May:

The not-so-great thing about this building is that it's on the site of the historic Santa Rita Hotel, which was torn down a couple of years ago. Well, not exactly. The 1904 hotel was torn down in 1973, and replaced with another hotel of the same name that lacked the beauty or historic significance of the original. If you Google images for "Santa Rita Hotel Tucson," you'll find some really striking pictures of what Tucson lost long ago. May we do better with the Charles O Brown House!

Karen

Now let's see what old and new things the other Robins have to show us!

Linking List
as of midnight MST

Karen - Posted!
Outpost Mâvarin
http://outmavarin.blogspot.com

Freda
Day One
http://fredamans.blogspot.com

Jama - Posted!
Sweet Memories
http://mummyjam.blogspot.com

Rachael
The Smile Spot :)
http://smile-spot.blogspot.com

Jenn Jilks - Posted!
Cottage Country
http://mymuskoka.blogspot.com/

EMPS: Gone the Rainbow

2011-07-14T22:39:00.001-07:00

When Carly announced that this week's Ellipsis Monday Photo Shoot was about Rainbows, I thought, "Great timing! The monsoon has started, and it's raining almost every day here. All I have to do is keep my camera with me and watch the sky on my way home from work."

Then the monsoon weather in Arizona went away for a bit. Today there was not a cloud in the sky. Foiled again!

So here are two rainbows from past monsoons, as found in my files:

Jun 26, 2009. A Double!

Jul 16, 2010

As best I can tell, I've never posted either of those shots before, although I did edit them at the time.

If the monsoon comes back by Sunday, I'll add something new. I really did see a rainbow just the other day - but I was driving and it was gone two minutes later. D'oh! It was a really faint one anyway.

Meanwhile, there's this variation on the theme:

Air Show - Mar 17, 2010

This is one of the shots I took while trying to photograph planes as they flew over Calle Mumble during an air show in 2010. The planes I'm trying to follow with the camera frequently go "climbing high, into the Sun," as the Air Force Song puts it, with colorful results!

Air Show - Mar 17, 2010

And this is the next shot I took that day. At Carly's suggestion, I've put an SFX frame around it.

Karen

EMPS: The Daily Cloud

2011-07-10T17:58:00.013-07:00

The topic for the Ellipsis Monday Photo Shoot this week was Looking Up. This time of year in Tucson, that means one thing: weather watching!

Thing is, I don't seem to look so much up at the clouds as out at them. The interesting stuff is on the horizon, where the most interesting clouds tend to build up during the monsoon.

For example, I've seen this cloud to the north of the Rincon Mountains - or one very much like it - several times this week.

Here's one worth looking up at!

But I can't resist sharing one more atmospheric phenomenon from this week, even though it wasn't so much up as up ahead, and eventually all around me. Did you see the big dust storm in Phoenix on tv this week? I drove into a somewhat smaller version of it outside of Tucson:

Apparently this was the same "haboob" that covered Phoeinix so dramatically an hour an a half later.

Karen

EMPS: White Isn't White

2011-07-03T17:58:00.002-07:00

Carly wants to see pictures of White stuff for the Ellipsis Monday Photo Shoot, with maybe a guest appearance from the color black. Well, I tried. I set down the white iPod power cord and black headphones on a white table by a white curtain. But the effect wasn't very white at all, even when I forced the camera to use flash:

From EMPS

Those are the least color saturated of the pics I took, and they still don't give the impression of whiteness. I'm going to have to cheat:

Similarly, I have a black and white dog, sort of. Pepper just got groomed yesterday and is all pretty. Cayenne, of course, can't even pass for black and white. She's the Red Dog of the family!

And here Pepper is in all her grayscale glory:

Karen

Round Robin: Give Me a Sign

2011-07-02T00:18:00.009-07:00

For the Round Robin Challenge: Signs of the Times, I asked to see photos of signs that in some way reflect the times we live in. Some of the signs I'm about to show you definitely meet that Challenge, while others are, well, a bit of a stretch. I'm going to show them to you anyway.

This is definitely a sign of the times: a billboard advertising of of the many payday loan companies found on practically every street corner in Tucson. I worked inside one of these places for three days once, and I'm very glad the law that allows them to operate here runs out in another year or two. There must be a better way for people in a financial bind in these trying times to get by than to get ever further in debt to a payday lender.

A few miles further north and west than the payday loan billboard is this classic. Like the South of the Border billboards in the Carolinas, The roadside attraction called The Thing? is touted for many miles in each direction along I-10. (It's at a truck stop/Dairy Queen/souvenir stand in Southeastern Arizona, more than an hour from Tucson and miles from anywhere. I went there once and paid the admission. It was sort of a Believe It Or Not type museum on the cheap, everything from a 1930s car reputed to have once carried Hitler to bizarre folk art to exhibits from history's junkyard, often accompanied by signs that work the words "THE THING" into the description. (A little video tour can be seen on the Roadside Attractions website.) The main attraction is a mummified...well, I'll leave you to guess. I don;t quite know what it is myself, and I've seen the Thing!

On a less lighthearted note, this particular billboard makes a joke about The Thing being "Dead" ahead - but at the base of the billboard is a white cross, a shrine to someone killed at or near this spot on I-10 near Marana. (The original photo had a black triangle in the lower right corner where my car was in the way, but trust me, the cross was there, and part of it was showing in the unedited version of this scene.)

Here are signs that show contrasting attitudes toward immigration, an issue for which Tucson is pretty much Ground Zero. The sign with the Biblical quote was dedicated in front of St. Michael's about a month ago. A reporter interviewed Father Smith and a parishioner afterward for one of the local news shows, but apparently it wasn't sensational enough. Or something. (Note: I had a glare problem with plexiglass over the sign's image. I've resorted to pasting a better photo of the same sign from when it was inside before it was erected in situ. You can see the original versions of these photos in Picasa if you doubleclick on a photo and explore a bit.)

The other sign is outside the large building under construction that I featured in the announcement for the BIG challenge a month ago. That "No Soliciting, No On-Site Hiring," along with the fence, seems a mite unfriendly to me, but it's more than that. The construction industry in Arizona is notorious for hiring undocumented workers as day laborers, sometimes picking people up off the street for the work. Not at this worksite. I'm not saying that's good or bad per se, but it rubs me the wrong way.

I happened upon this scene one day recently on a side street as I tried unsuccessfully to drive through a neighborhood instead of going back out onto grant Road. The Dead End sign next to the dead tree and the boat in the driveway of a landlocked desert city struck me as evocative if nothing else.

Now let's see some other signs of the times!

Linking List
as of Sunday evening

Karen - Posted!
Outpost Mâvarin
http://outmavarin.blogspot.com

Rachael - Posted!
The Smile Spot :)
http://smile-spot.blogspot.com

Jama
Sweet Memories
http://mummyjam.blogspot.com

Gattina - Posted!
Keyhole Pictures
http://gattina-keyholepictures.blogspot.com/

Kim - Posted!
40's and Fabulous
http://awifey.blogspot.com

Peg - Posted!
Who Can Discover It?
http://whocandiscoverit.blogspot.com/

Jenn - Posted Sunday!
Cottage Country Reflections
http://mymuskoka.blogspot.com/

LG Tina - Posted Sunday!
Leckeres für Mensch und Katze (Goodies for a pleasant life)
http://leckeresfuermenschundkatze.blogspot.com/

Karen

EMPS: A Night at St. Michael's

2011-06-26T17:56:00.005-07:00

For the Ellipsis Monday Photo Shoot, Carly wants to see some night photography. As it happens, I worked until midnight Wednesday at St. Michael's as part of a long day working at both jobs. This is where I put my dying camera (long story) to the test. Here's the best of what I got:

This was the most interesting thing I managed without flash. I like the angles.

I really wanted to get the camera to see what I saw here, but it just wasn't capable of that. I've lightened this a lot, and used the de-noise filter. That's not a window with bars on it. There's no glass, and the "bars" are saguaro ribs. (Check out the link - it's one of my favorite blogs about Arizona flora and fauna.)

I had to resort to flash for this, and I was afraid it would make it look too much like daylight. It didn't.

And another shot of the garden just outside the front walk.

The Clarion Write-a-Thon has begun! More on that anon! (My main blogging about this so far is on my LJ and fiction blogs.)

Karen

T Minus Six Days and Counting

2011-06-20T22:31:00.003-07:00

Once upon a time, many long years ago, I was this person:

This was Karen Funk, age 20, at the Clarion Writers' Workshop in 1977. Back then, this workshop for science fiction and fantasy writers was held at Michigan State University. Nowadays the flagship version of the workshop is the Clarion Writers' Workshop at UC San Diego.

This year, Clarion is hosting a satellite event for those of us who can't go out to San Diego and take instruction from John Scalzi et al. As you may have noticed from my sidebar, I've signed up for the 2011 Clarion Write-a-Thon. This means that while the 2011 Clarion Workshop at UCSD is taking place, June 26 to August 6, I'll be working every night on the Mâvarin novels, particularly Heirs of Mâvarin. As of tonight I'm on page 369 of 708 manuscript pages in my current edit. That's not quite as big a book as it sounds, but it's a good chunk of editing and revising to get through. I'm also hoping to get a scene or two written for the book's prequel, and, if there's time left, move on to the Mages of Mâvarin trilogy.

Why am I doing this, while working two jobs and doing all the other stuff that fills my days? The fact is, I haven't given good, consistent effort to my fiction since shortly after I went back to school in late 2002 to get my accounting degree. If I'm ever to get these characters I love from my hard drive to the bookstore, this needs to change. This seems like a good motivator to get my writing going again. And yes, I'll be blogging about it, probably on two or more of my poor, neglected blogs.

Help Clarion continue; Help Mâvarin come to be! Sponsor me!

There's another aspect to this, and really, it seems fair enough. Write-a-Thon participants are asked to seek sponsors. Proceeds from sponsors' donations help to keep the workshop going. I've always said that the specific workshop John and I attended in 1977 was the "failed Clarion," but I did learn a lot, although some of it took years to sink in. Plus I got a husband out of it, so I've got a lot to be grateful for!

If you're just scraping by yourself, then I don't expect you to jump in with a donation. But if you can afford to support this good cause, here's the link:

Clarion WRITE-A-THON.

Overcome your inertia.

http://www.theclarionfoundation.org/writeathon/wrtn-writerpage.php?writerID=5260

And here's my offer: I will match all donations up to $20 per person, and will sponsor any friends who participate as writers for that same amount.

So, how about it? Will you join me as a Write-a-Thon writer or sponsor? Failing that, Will you help me stay motivated with a little judicious nagging and encouragement? Ready...set...!

Karen

EMPS: Critters in the Garden

2011-06-19T17:56:00.006-07:00

For the Ellipsis Monday Photo Shoot that ends right this minute, Carly wants to see garden creatures. Well, I saw a katydid or cicada in my den, and chased a lizard under a dumpster at church, but the only critters I actually caught on camera in my garden this week were these two!

And at Easter, a very different creature approached a garden at St. Michael's, looking for eggs:

But if I hunt through my archives for creatures of gardens past, what will I find? Well, when I think of critters in a garden, I always think of this guy, caught in the act of eating the garden at the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum last summer:

I'm shown him to you before, but not this particular shot. And, from the same day, there's this woodpecker:

Best I can do!

Karen

Round Robin: Big - The Great Pyramid of Marana

2011-06-18T00:11:00.006-07:00

This week's Round Robin Photo Challenge has a simple, one-word topic: BIG. You know that I live in the desert, and that my commute takes me outside the city. But did you know that I pass a pyramid on the way to work each day?

Here it is, as photographed by me on the way back from my job interview this past February. As best I can tell, it's basically a massive pile of dirt, as close as the Sonoran Desert gets to sand. This isn't a sand dune, though. It's graded dirt, for sale as landscaping material. This is not where it's sold, just where it is stored.

And here it is again, photographed from the other direction a few weeks later. When I first started working at my job, I used to arrive on this road right around dawn, having left home nearly an hour earlier. This was quite a shock for someone who often used to go to bed at 5 AM!

Today I photographed it again on my way home from work. It's not really taller than the Catalina Mountains in the background, but it is impressively large. It can be seen from the freeway, and for a mile or two in each direction.

It's hard to get a sense of the scale of the thing, since I had no people to pose nearby, and there are no buildings in camera range. Sometimes I see birds flying over it, hawks or vultures or Chihuahuan ravens. But the green thing at the right is a Palo Verde tree, about fifteen to twenty feet tall. The dark spots on the pyramid are bushes. When the wind is just right, some of the dirt can be seen twisting away into the sky.

From the north side one gets sort of a multiple pyramid effect from several piles of graded sand. The shape of the main pyramid from this particular angle on this particular day (Friday, June 17th) makes this especially true. There's also a great earthen wall - not a barrow or burial mound, nor a fortification, but most likely more graded dirt in a different hue.

Now let's go see what BIG discoveries the other Robins have made!

Linking List:

as of 7 PM MST

Saturday, June 18th

Freda - Posted!

Day One

http://fredamans.blogspot.com

Karen - Posted!

Outpost Mâvarin

http://outmavarin.blogspot.com

Jama - Posted!

Sweet Memories

http://mummyjam.blogspot.com

Amanda - Posted!

Amanda's Weekly Zen

http://www.amandasweeklyzen.com/

Rachael **Welcome, new Robin!** - Posted!

The Smile Spot

http://smile-spot.blogspot.com/

Kim - Posted!

40's and Fabulous

http://awifey.blogspot.com

Carly - Posted!

Ellipsis

http://ellipsissuddenlycarly.blogspot.com

LG Tina **Welcome, new Robin!** - Posted!

Leckeres für Mensch und Katze

http://leckeresfuermenschundkatze.blogspot.com/l

Peg - Posted!
Who Can Discover It?
http://whocandiscoverit.blogspot.com/

Jenn - Posted!
Cottage Country Reflections
http://mymuskoka.blogspot.com/

Karen

EMPS: Too Rare to Even Photograph

2011-06-05T17:35:00.004-07:00

Carly came up with an interesting combination of words for the Ellipsis Monday Photo Shoot this week: Ellipsis Monday Photo Shoot #126:Rare Whte Scales. Not having ready access to albino rattlesnakes, I cogitated all week about this. Then I had a great idea! I would photograph our "butcher cover," a rare Beatles album cover.

But our Beatles records are inaccessible right now. I know: I tried, fighting my way past stacked boxes and furniture to the wall where the record crates are, pulling out LPs at random and examining them with the help of a flashlight. I didn't find the main Beatles crate. But I'm going to show you, courtesy of someone's eBay item, what I wanted to photograph for you:

This is a "pasteover" copy of Yesterday and Today, a US Capitol Records album that basically compiled songs the American distributor left off previous albums plus a few non-LP 45s. When they did the photo shoot for this album cover, the Beatles originally let the photographer do something surreal and Dali-esque...and, to American sensibilities, in grossly bad taste:

It wasn't long before this cover was pulled out of stores, probably a week at most. Rather than throw the print run away, Capitol hastily pasted over the butcher cover with the bland "trunk cover." But if you look very closely at these "pasteover" copies, you can just make out the V of Ringo's black shirt showing through the white album cover. And there you have it: it's rare, it's got a white background, and it involves (musical) scales.

But those aren't my photos, so let's move on. Check out these exhibits from the Museum of the Weird:

Here are some of Harlan Ellison's older, rarer books, all with mostly white covers. Especially rare is this one:

I got this for $2 at my very first science fiction convention. It was worth about $80 at the time, at least according to Harlan. That was 35 years ago. The book dealer was miffed that the guy helping out at his table let it go so cheap, but he honored the deal.

These books haven't much to do with scales, I admit. So let's introduce this guy:

This lizard was chowing down on a cactus at the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum last July. I don't know how rare either the lizard or the cactus was. The lizard was completely wild and unconfined, not part of an exhibit.

Okay, you want a rarer and whiter creature? Okay, but it's almost certainly John's photo:

Here's one of the Siegfried and Roy white tigers, photographed seven years ago. This was about six months after the incident that ended that show. This may or may not be the particular tiger that accidentally injured Roy Horn.

And that's the best I can do on the topic Rare - White - Scales! Hope you liked it!

Karen

Round Robin: Stealth Photography in the Park

2011-06-04T01:18:00.005-07:00

For Round Robin Challenge: In the Park, I asked for photos taken in a park, any kind of park, preferably with people enjoying the place. I have a zillion photos in my archives of Gene C Reid Park and other Tucson area parks, and I figured that in a pinch I could surely find something to post that I hadn't used before.

From Reid at Random

But today when I left work I headed for 22nd Street instead of my usual route, knowing I'd be passing at least two parks between the freeway and home. There were three, actually. At least one of them is frequented by homeless people in the daytime, but I chickened out of trying to photograph evidence of this. Instead, after an agonizing interlude of stop and go traffic with no discernible cause, I made it to Reid Park, site of so many past photo shoots. The dogs weren't with me, but that was okay, because I was in a hurry. After a brief drive around the ballpark, I parked near 22nd Street, jumped out of the car and followed behind this mother and her daughter as they headed for the duck pond.

I felt like a bit of a stalker, but that didn't stop me from taking several pictures of these two people, all from behind. To be honest, I'm too shy to go up to people all the time and ask whether I can photograph them. I very seldom ask, in fact. I'd rather take candid photos from a distance. In a public park, according to my courses in Business Law, one has less of a "reasonable expectation of privacy" than in other places. And by photographing the little girl only from behind and at a distance, with no identifying name, address or facial features, I give potential stalkers, kidnappers, etc. no basis for targeting this particular anonymous child.

But come on! Even from behind, she's pretty cute! And I mean that in the nicest, least predatory way possible!

Of course, the mother and child weren't the only people in that part of the park this afternoon. These two women, for example, were having a chat, apparently oblivious to the birds that surrounded them.

And I snapped this gaggle of youth, again at a distance with no identifying features to speak of.

Still, there was one photographic subject in the park today that I didn't have to sneak up on. This scrap metal elephant is a new addition to the collection of large art installations at Reid Park.

Now let's see what and whom the other Robins found in the park!

Linking List
As of 12:22 PM MST Saturday

Karen - Posted!
Outpost Mâvarin
http://outmavarin.blogspot.com

Jama - Posted!
Sweet Memories
http://mummyjam.blogspot.com

Freda - Posted!
Day One
http://fredamans.blogspot.com

Erin - Posted!
Worth A Thousand Words
http://erin-worthathousandwords.blogspot.com/

Kim - Posted!
My Photography in Focus
http://www.myphotographyinfocus.com

hip chick
hip chick photos
http://hipchickphotos.blogspot.com/

Gattina - Posted!
Keyhole Pictures
http://gattina-keyholepictures.blogspot.com/

JennyO
JennyO's Weblog
http://ostranderblog.wordpress.com/

Karen

EMPS: A Long Way to Go to See a Bush

2011-05-22T01:16:00.000-07:00

My participation in the Ellipsis Monday Photo Shoot has been spotty lately, largely because of how busy I've been, working six day weeks with lots of overtime, and then running around all day on Sunday on behalf of friends. So when I left work a little earlier than expected today - yes, on a Saturday! - I decided to take a little field trip in search of my least favorite photo subject in the world: flowers. Carly's asking for fresh pictures of Spring Blossoms And Flowers, which aren't the easiest things to find in Tucson in late May, when the temperature often tops ninety degrees and significant rain is a month and a half away.

So instead of heading south on I-10 East (yes, you're reading that correctly), I drove the ten miles or so in the opposite direction, toward Picacho Peak. On years when there are good winter rains, which this wasn't, early spring, which is long over, sometimes sees Picacho Peak State Park covered in wildflowers. But when I got to the park gate, this is what I found:

Yes, the park was closed, and not just because it was late in the afternoon. Let's zoom in closer:

The park is "closed for the season." What season is that, exactly? Probably "State Budget Cutbacks Season," combined with the eight month season in which the snowbirds and tourists stay away from Arizona.

Clearly, nobody but me is running up to Picacho Peak these days, particularly in search of flowers. But wait, what's that white bush?

That's it, my glorious bouquet of wildflowers, which I sought out 50 miles from home, at the end of a 59 hour work week, assuming I don't work tomorrow. Which I probably will. It's no horticultural or photographic masterpiece, but the background scenery is terrific! I just researched what it is, this pale shrub with yellow flowers, but without success.

Come to think of it, we just came to the end of a season of yellow, allergy-inducing blossoms on the local mesquite and Palo Verde trees, which greatly afflicted a number of people I know. But I didn't think to photograph those.

Karen

Round Robin Challenge: 55 MPH Graffiti Hunt

2011-05-21T00:37:00.002-07:00

It was nearly 6 PM on a Friday, six hours before I was scheduled to post my entry for the Round Robin Challenge: Graffiti, as suggested by Gattina of Keyhole Pictures. I wasn't remotely ready, of course. I had worked about 54 hours this week already, and knew I'd be working again on Saturday. When was there time to go hunt down some good graffiti? Yes, okay, I have a few things in my archives, but it would be nice to have something fresh, even if it wasn't especially artistic.

So as I drove east along Aviation Highway probably a little in excess of the 55 miles per hour speed limit, I glanced off to the right, where train tracks run parallel to the road. Railroad cars are prime targets for graffiti, providing a large, canvas for taggers. Sneak into the railroad yard with your spray cans, avoid getting caught, and soon your self-aggrandizing bit of word art is rolling along next to I-10 and other major routes, displaying your handiwork for all to see and, um, admire. Or not.

Driving home at 55 MPH isn't exactly a suitable opportunity for staring at railroad cars. So I pulled out my camera, turned it on, rolled down the passenger side window and pointed my camera at the continuous line of railroad cars, snapping away every few seconds while keeping my eyes firmly on the road. Well, mostly. I had no way of knowing until how many of the six shots would show evidence of graffiti, how well I'd aimed the camera in the right direction or at the right angle, nor whether any illicitly painted lettering would be legible if photographed at 55 MPS. I wasn't even sure whether the trains themselves were moving, not that it mattered much under the circumstances. Still, I lucked out with a few halfway decent photos, as seen above. My favorite is the "Echo Tango Charlie" one. It was a challenge to read it, and I'm intrigued by the use of that letter code, the "police alphabet" as one site calls it. There's also someone on Flickr with that handle, and their photostream is almost all graffiti or graffiti-inspired. Hoe or she does not appear to be my tagger, however.

Last September, I did a Weekend Assignment entry about the writing on bathroom walls at my local Safeway. I posted several really interesting specimens in that, whole written conversations among strangers as well as random comments. Here's one shot I didn't post originally:

It's a little hard to read, but displayed here are two opposing opinions, "God is LOVE" and "God is FAKE."

The mini-argument about God is not the only religious expression in my graffiti collection. A couple of years ago I took a long walk just east of downtown, literally on the wrong side of the railroad tracks. There I saw some truly impressive art on the side of an abandoned railroad car, or truck trailer, or whatever it was. I frankly find most outdoor graffiti to be ugly and pointless, just some kid making the world uglier just to assert his presence in it. But this particular piece beautifies and uplifts the world, just a little tiny bit, as you walk past it.

Now let's go see everyone else's pictures of graffiti:

Linking List
as of Saturday, 5/21/11, 12:30 AM

Gattina - Posted!

Keyhole Pictures

http://gattina-keyholepictures.blogspot.com/

Karen - Posted!
Outpost Mâvarin
http://outmavarin.blogspot.com

Freda
Day One
http://fredamans.blogspot.com

Jama - Posted!
Sweet Memories
http://mummyjam.blogspot.com

Monica
Shutterly Happy
http://monica-frameofmind.blogspot.com/

Erin - Posted!
Worth A Thousand Words
http://erin-worthathousandwords.blogspot.com

And if this is May 21st, it's not too later to join in yourself! Or May 22nd. Or any time before the 28th. How about it?

Karen

What happened to Karen? She never posts anymore.

2011-05-16T22:39:00.003-07:00

Yes, I gave up on the Weekend Assignment and sometimes fail to participate in the Ellipsis Monday Photo Shoot. Consequently I'm barely posting at all.

But I can explain.

Stuff I can't disclose is making things extra busy at my non-church job in far-off Marana. I've also got a lot to do at church, paid and otherwise, and I'm spending all day on Sundays with two mobility-impaired friends (and a friend whose mobility is fine, except that he doesn't drive).

Some days I'm working both jobs, which last week led to my leaving home at 7 AM and getting home at 11:10 PM on Thursday, and being gone from 7 AM to 10:30 PM on Friday. I had a conference on Saturday, and got home from church and friends after 6 PM on Sunday. I haven't been this busy since I was working full time and studying accounting at night. I haven't been MORE busy, methinks, since I pulled crazy hours at year-end at First Magnus, back in the day.

But I just got a check from First Magnus Liquidating Trust for most of the rest of the pay they owed me from 2007. Add that to what John and I have been earning for our crazy hours lately and we're looking good for a quick trip to Disneyland in June. That's if I can get away, and that's a big if. My boss hasn't okayed it. But if we go, we'll take a night at the Disneyland Hotel for the first time ever, possibly the only time we'll ever do so. It's over $200 a night!

Stay tuned. I'm not done with this blogging lark, but my entries may be thin on the ground for a while, and inadequately illustrated.

Karen

Clearly I need a long drive North and West

2011-05-09T19:49:00.001-07:00

visited 38 states (76%)
Create your own visited map of The United States

Some of these places I barely remember, but I've been there, all up and down the East and the Southwest. (Okay, okay, I'm only 80% sure of Vermont.) But for many years I've wanted to drive north from Santa Barbara California (as far north as I've been in Calif.) and keep going, all the way to Alaska. And I want to see Utah, and the Dakotas and all the rest. Will I ever make it? My mental Magic Eight Ball says either "Cannot predict now" or "Don't count on it!"

visited 17 countries (7.55%)
Create your own visited map of The World

My world travel stats, by contrast, are decidedly pathetic. So much more of the world to see, if only I had the time and money!

Thanks to Ruth the Scrabblequeen for the map link!

Karen

EMPS: Art Conspired

2011-05-08T00:23:00.003-07:00

For Ellipsis Monday Photo Shoot #122: Art Inspired, Carly wanted us to take a photo based on or inspired by a particular piece of art work. My schedule being what it is these days, I decided not to even attempt to do the assignment as written, creating new photos in camera that remind one of the painting or sculpture or whatever. That would be way too ambitious for me, probably beyond my skill to even do. So I did the next best thing. I took existing photos from my archives, plus one new one, and edited them into four iconic pieces of art. Here they are:

This first one is based on Chinese Girl (1950) by Vladimir Tretchikoff. I started with an existing photo of the vintage print hanging in our den, and a self-portrait photo I took last night. Basically I pasted in part of my face - trust me, you don't want to see my actual neck and chin- and built up layers of color to try to reproduce the tint. It's not completely successful, but it's interesting!

Next I went with the obvious choice:

The original photo of my face is from 2005 or so. I was surprised that when I finally matched up the size of the face to that of Leonardo's model, I was floating a bit above the torso. Plus Mona Lisa's nose ends higher on the face.

Lest it all be about my face, I next worked the trees in front of our house into Van Gogh's Cypresses:

I had to paste each of the trees in several times over and a bush about three times to fill up the picture, but I like the result. It's less nightmarish than the original, which scared me as a child.

Last, I finished the transition from serene to scream, with The Scream by Edvard Munch:

The tricky part was reshaping my face, again from quite an old photo. The sunset is from January, and the water is from two photos of the main duck pond at Reid Park.

Fun stuff!

Karen

Round Robin: Reinventing the Wheel

2011-05-07T00:02:00.002-07:00

This week's Round Robin Photo Challenge, Big Wheels, Little Wheels, was suggested by our friend Carly . I've been too busy recently to go looking for large wheels, so I went for a contrast between the medium-sized driver's side front wheel on my KIA and...well, take a guess!

Okay, so I didn't manage to get the second wheel in the picture on the first try.

Ah! There it is! Two of them, actually, on the dirver's side of a vintage Matchbox car. Let's go for a close-up:

But that's kind of boring, isn't it? Let's break out a few special effects:

From Round Robin Photo Challenges

Of course, if the tire really looked like that last edit, it probably wouldn;t carry you very far!

Now let's have a look at the other Robins' wheels:

Linking List

Karen - Posted!
Outpost Mâvarin
http://outmavarin.blogspot.com

Jama - Posted!
Sweet Memories
http://mummyjam.blogspot.com

Kim,USA - Posted!
My Photography in Focus
http://www.myphotographyinfocus.com

Ruth - Posted!
The ScrabbleQueen Knits, Too
http://scrabblequeen.wordpress.com

Peg - Posted!
Who Can Discover It?
http://whocandiscoverit.blogspot.com

How about you? Care to show off your wheels?

Karen

#IfIHadATimeMachine: My Temporal Mystery Tour, Revisited.

2011-05-05T01:33:00.002-07:00

BBC America is asking what viewers would do if they had a time machine. Heck, I've been refining my mental checklist of destinations since high school, over 35 years ago. I wrote about a few of them in my first blog, Musings from Mâvarin, back in 2004. I think that list is overdue for an update, don't you?

Destination One is, and pretty much always has been, a whistle stop tour of Beatles prehistory. We'd start off at the Woolton Parish Church Garden Fete, in a field behind St. Peter's Parish Church Hall, Woolton, Liverpool on 6th July 1957. This is where John Lennon first met Paul McCartney, and was impressed that Paul could play the Eddie Cochran song Twenty Flight Rock. Paul was soon invited to join John's band, the Quarry Men, and eventually accepted. A reel to reel recording of the Woolton Fete gig actually exists, but how much better it would be to have a state-of-the-art digital recording. Of course, when I first had this dream, "state-of-the-art" for portable recording was a cassette tape recorder!

From the Woolton gig we'd move on to some Silver Beatles era gigs in the Cavern Club and elsewhere. Then it would be on to Hamburg, to record the Beatles in their five-man line-up with Pete and Stu, as well as a Ringo gig with Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, before finishing up with the very day at the Cavern in Liverpool when Brian Epstein went to check out the band that recorded My Bonnie for Polydor.

My other time travel destinations, most of them, are a bit less iconic, except for the really obvious one. Yes, I'd want to visit first century Galilee and Judea. If I go there, my time machine had better be the TARDIS, because I'll need those translation circuits.

But never mind all that, because there is fun to be had closer to home. Did you know that James Thurber played himself in 88 performances of A Thurber Carnival on Broadway in 1960? Well, he did. That's pretty remarkable considering the man was blind by then, and died the following year. File and Forget is one of my very favorite Thurber pieces, and I'd love to see it performed by the great man himself.

And who could resist a few dozen visits to Disneyland throughout its history? I want to ride the phantom boats and the flying saucers, take a rocket to the moon, and be shrunk inside a giant microscope, singing Miracles From Molecules. And I wouldn't be done there until I had Walt's autograph!

Aside from checking in on historic and cultural events, a time machine would be handy for shopping, particularly in the 1960s. John and I would undoubtedly buy some Eames and Miller furniture, a few copies of Amazing Fantasy #15, and every toy, game or china animal figurine we ever owned as kids, or wanted to own. We'd bring back stock certificates, exotic clocks, original Disney art from The Art Corner, and rare Tiki mugs.

But perhaps the most important thing to do with a time machine, assuming that something like the death of JFK is a fixed point in time that should not be messed with, is to visit the BBC in the early to mid 1970s. Faced with a storage problem, and unaware that such home video formats as VHS, DVD and Blu-ray would soon make many of their old recordings commercially viable, the BBC junked many early Doctor Who episodes, along with Jame Burke's coverage of the Apollo space program and other important programmes. My plan would be to sneak in just before the junkings started, digitally reproduce every Doctor Who tape I could find, and make multiple return trips to retrieve things from the trash and preserve spare copies of everything. The first lost Doctor Who serial I would watch would probably be Marco Polo (1964), but there's tons more beyond that. One I'm particularly looking forward to is Power of the Daleks, which is both the first Second Doctor story and the one that helped to inspire Mark Gatiss to write "Victory of the Daleks."

Look at me, saying I'm looking forward to the results of a time travel trip, just as if I thought it would actually happen. But the time is, silly thing that my brain is, I kind of do.

And yeah, eventually I would get around to checking out the future. And, if I could, go sideways in time as well to check out alternate realities. That's the only way to meet face to face with certain people who loom large in the imagination: Zorro, Doc Brown, and, if we allow for realities with completely different laws of physics and biology, Mary Poppins, Gandalf and, of course, The Doctor!

Karen

Karen and Dalek at Gallifrey One. Photo by John Blocher, February 2004.

Weekend Assignment #366: D'oh!

2011-04-27T22:35:00.001-07:00

I can't put this off any longer:

Weekend Assignment #366: You're Doing It Wrong
Tell us about a mistake you made: directions botched or misunderstood, minor disasters suffered because you did something incorrectly. I'm thinking of problems with "Some Assembly Required" projects, maps misread and appointments missed, problems learning to use technology, etc., preferably with hilarious results!

Extra Credit: How good are you at giving directions, or teaching others to do something correctly?

I'm almost certain I had an amusing story lined up for this, but darned if I can remember what it was. The best I can think of right now is the time in college when I was supposed to meet my then-boyfriend at the corner of, I don't remember now the exact intersection, but let's say South Salina and Colvin Streets, which is almost certainly wrong. Whatever the agreed-upon intersection was, I was there with my friend E., maybe two minutes late at the most but quite likely on time . It was winter in Syracuse, after dark, maybe 7 PM. We waited, peering out into the night, staring at every car that went by. No Bob. Remember, this was over thirty years ago: no cell phones or pagers or email providers were available to facilitate communication. All we could do was wait, or abandon the spot and go look for a pay phone.

After 45 minutes or longer, we finally decided that one of us would continue to wait where we were while the other checked out the other apparently deserted parking lots at the same intersection. If I recall correctly, that was how we found Bob, and boy, was he mad! We had all been right where we had said we'd be, but missed each other in the dark, simply because it didn't occur to Bob that we might be shivering in the cold in the grocery store parking lot on the northeast corner of the intersection, not warm and safe in the bar on the southwest corner.

Many years later, John was to semi-duplicate this situation. My Mom and I were to meet him at Millie's Pancake Haus, and John was pretty sure he knew where that was. Only he didn't. I gave him the right intersection, but he either wasn't listening or assumed I'd gotten it wrong, and went to where it was in his faulty memory. Needless to say, he was late!

This would seem to imply that I'm not good at giving or taking directions. I'm not sure I'd dispute that. When I was in elementary school. we took standardized tests called the Iowas. My lowest score each year was the section called Map Reading. When I was an enurmerator for R.L. Polk in 1977, my favorite part of the job was getting lost on my way to or from the assigned addresses.

I'm pretty sure that tomorrow, instead of announcing the new Weekend Assignment topic, I will be announcing my retirement from this meme. After all, I've been participating in it for over five years, and doling out most of the assignments since John Scalzi left AOL a few years ago. Participation has waned, and it has become more of a chore than a pleasure for me. If anyone wants to take it over, please contact me and I'll gladly pass the torch.

Karen

EMPS: Motivating on the Move: The Patience of Jan

2011-04-24T17:58:00.011-07:00

Carly is asking for Motivational Messages. I've been wracking my brain all week, trying to come up with something in the motivational poster format that is both motivational and funny, or at least one or the other, using one of my photos, new or existing. Now I'm out of time. I can show you a few fake not-very-motivational poster images I did years ago, and then I'll add a new one that may actually fit the parameters. I'll get to that shortly, but meanwhile here's what I've got:

But never mind those. I had to run over past the deadline to finish, but I have a poster design that I think is truly motivational.

This is my friend Jan, and the quote, minus the word patience, is something she actually said today. She had knee replacement surgery last year after tripping over a rolling stepstool at a bookstore, and nearly died over the fall and winter when the leg became badly infected. Her blood sugar was at a lethal level, her blood pressure dropped like a stone, her larynx collapsed, and her edema was the worst I've seen in anyone ever. It's been a long and tedious road back for her, stuck in a rehab and elder care facility most of that time, when she wasn't in one hospital or another. (She's been in three different ones since this began.)

But today she got out of Devon Gables long enough for Easter Mass and coffee hour, a fabulously indulgent lunch at Olive Garden, and a trip to Bookman's, the local used books and media superstore. It made for a long day, and I spent a lot of it positioning the car as close as possible to doors and ramps, and waiting for Jan to get where she was going. But I have to be inspired too. She's been through an awful lot this past year or so - losing her job, multiple health issues, financial difficulties and so on. But she's battled through it all with patience and a positive attitude that I really admire. Brava, Jan!

Karen

Round Robin: The Two Easters

2011-04-23T00:41:00.003-07:00

For this week's Round Robin, I asked to see "Springtime Celebrations." Lest it be all about just Easter and Passover, I pointed to a fun page full of April holidays and observances, many of them quite obscure and some of them downright silly. But for me, this week has been an immersion in Holy Week, the most church-intensive week of most Christian calendars. I serve at the 7 PM services on Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, the Easter Vigil on Holy Saturday and the main service on Easter Sunday morning. My friend Kevin and I ate lamb at the Maundy Thursday communal Seder-inspired meal, and later kept vigil last night at the Altar of Repose. Kevin is in the parish choir, and has been singing all sorts of special songs, hymns, canticles and chants this week.

Here is just a taste of what parts of Holy Week have looked like at St. Michael's this year:

Holy Week starts with Palm Sunday, a week before Easter. At St. Michael's it starts outside, where, among other things, palm branches are blessed and then carried into the church.

The Passion (any of the four Gospel accounts of the death of Jesus) is sung several times during Holy Week. The guy with the beard is singing the words of Jesus. St. Michael's doesn't do a full Passion Play, but some choir members are given specific roles to sing.

This is the sacristy, just off the main church, where the clergy and others prepare for services.
The plaster candlesticks seen here are so old and fragile that one of them broke in the middle of a Holy Week service last year. The candle part is a plastic tube containing lamp oil and a wick. Bob here is replacing the wick. And hooray! Brooke and I managed to carry these candles to and from the back of the church without therm breaking again.

All of these Holy Week services lead up to Easter, but since that's not until the day after this Challenge, let's move on.

I seem to go on about religious ceremonies a bit too much in this blog, and so I think it's time to point out that there's a separate Easter celebration that has very little to do with what Jesus did at Passover nearly 2000 years ago. Secular Easter, like secular Christmas, has a lot to do with food, decorations and gifts. For example:

For some reason, the traditional Easter dinner involves ham. Safeway has a whole bin full of hams, each of which would feed John and me for a week. Only we're not going to do that!

The traditional Easter flower is the lily. I don't know why.

Kids get gifts from the Easter Bunny, theoretically. Here are a bunch of Easter-themed stuffed animals and balloons.

There was a time when Easter baskets were filled with hand-colored hard-boiled eggs. That's what Paas food dye is for. Dyed eggs are also hidden in homes and yards so kids can have an Easter egg hunt. My mom once told me I was in an Easter Egg Roll on the White House lawn during the Eisenhower era. I must have been two or three years old at the time. That was over 50 years ago. I suspect that most people don't bother to color eggs anymore. These days it's all about the candy: Cadbury creme eggs, chocolate bunnies, jelly beans and so on. Marshmallow Peeps are practically a cult unto themselves. I don't like them much myself!

Now let's check out other Robins' Springtime Celebrations!

Linking List
As of Saturday, April 23 at 9:25 AM

Karen - Posted!
Outpost Mâvarin
http://outmavarin.blogspot.com

Jama
Sweet Memories
http://mummyjam.blogspot.com

Ruth
ScrabbleQueen Knits, Too
http://scrabblequeen.wordpress.com

Peg - Posted!
Who Can Discover It?
http://whocandiscoverit.blogspot.com

K.

The Departed Leave Baggage Behind

2011-04-19T21:39:00.001-07:00

Twice recently I've encountered a situation in which a recently-deceased person, loved and respected by many, left behind ill-feelings from some old hurt. One of these I won't be sharing with you, because it wasn't my hurt. All I'll say is that I had an email today from someone who had an unpleasant child experience with someone I personally never met. I was able to acknowledge the correspondent's feelings without either defending or denigrating the deceased.

The other case is my own, and I think it would be churlish of me to mention who it was. It was a business issue, but it lingered long after the business was concluded. Basically, I was sent to approach this person and others with a contract, make immediate payment if the contract was accepted, and start arrangements for further negotiations if the proposed payment was deemed inadequate. I was far from home, acting as an agent for my husband's company. John was not with me, and my instructions were based on what we had been advised to do to secure these contracts. The advice came from a company with whom these people had a longstanding relationship. But I wasn't with that company, and the people I approached, with one exception, had no idea who I was or whether the company I represented was a legitimate one.

Within half an hour of my starting this process, one particular person had been delegated by the others to interrogate me about this project, asking who had told us to approach the people in this way, who set the amount of money offered, and whether anyone would really be paid. Before the night was over I was practically in tears. This was someone I admired, as were all the people approached. And I was being treated with deep suspicion if not outright hostility.

Eventually a contract was written that was acceptable to this particular person, who was promptly paid, receiving more than some of the others because of the relative value of the contribution. Other people received extra money in return for specific added services they performed for us. Happy ending, right? That's what I thought, but I was wrong.

A year or so later, I heard about a similar situation involving someone else's company, someone else's product. It seems that the same people who worried about not being paid by us were, in fact, stiffed by this other company. (I think it was a case of the other company not making enough money off the product to meet its obligations, and consequently going bankrupt.) The two products were not all that similar, but the experience stuck in the minds of some of the people affected, and not just in connection with the company that really didn't pay them. About 15 years later, one of these people, who had performed the extra service and received the extra money, someone I knew personally, asked whether we had ever paid him. Granted, it was a long time ago to remember such details, but it bothered me to think that even this person who knew me thought I might have cheated him.

As best I can tell, some of this lingering suspicion stemmed from that very same person who gave me the third degree that night. As recently as 2009, this person was telling people that we had never paid them, probably because of the other company's failure to do so. I considered writing to the person to try to clear our name, but I let it go. John's company is long gone, so who was really being hurt by the inadvertently false accusation? Then the person making the claim died, so it was too late to straighten things out with them.

Understand, this person was admirable on many levels, talented and honest and generally kind to others. Even the questioning I got that first night can be seen as a righteous advocacy on behalf of a whole group of people who might otherwise be cheated. Nobody but me cares that my feelings were hurt, and even I shouldn't care. I need to let it go. This person should be remembered for all the good things they did, not a minor misunderstanding with someone they met only once.

Similarly, the hurt feelings expressed in the email I received today do not overshadow the good things done by the other deceased person in decades past, as remembered by people whose experiences were largely positive ones. Nobody is perfect, and even this person's most ardent admirers tend to acknowledge the foibles along with the undeniable accomplishments. It is not up to me to judge or arbitrate the matter.

Funny old thing, death. It cuts you off from mending relationships, resolving misunderstandings, handing out or accepting apologies. Yet it leaves you with all those feelings from the baggage left behind, pulled out from a cupboard and left on the bed for you to deal with.

When my Mom died, we had long since resolved a relationship that was more than a little rocky after her divorce and for years afterward. What little baggage she left behind mostly involved other people, not me. When my friend Tracy died, we had no issues to resolve, and I had a painful but valuable opportunity to speak with her by phone on her dying day. When John's mother died, he spoke with her by phone as well and gave her his love, having no warning sufficient for him to say goodbye in person. When my childhood friend's father died, he left behind a misunderstanding caused by the dad's Alzheimer's, which left him believing something about his son that wasn't true.

Now my own dad isn't in the best of health, and although our relationship is a good one I don't want to take any chances. I am very grateful to my stepmother Ruth for sending him out here for a visit this past January. There's a chance I may never see him again. At the very least, things being as they are, I need to call him more often. When I lose him at last, I don't want to find our shared baggage on my bed.

Karen

EMPS: Where the Birds Live

2011-04-17T18:58:00.005-07:00

For EMPS: Birds, I could have gone with archive shots, but instead I took a few minutes to stop at Reid Park, site of many happy rambles with my dogs. I didn't have time to go get Cayenne and Pepper today, so it was just me and my friend Kevin. And the birds of course!

From Birds of Reid Park

I just added a slew of pics to this and I've having trouble weeding out the less-good ones. You see, there are so many kinds of birds at Reid Park. Here, for example, are two cormorants, a couple of ducks and a coot. Cormorants are ocean birds, but these two don't seem to mind this desert oasis.

A flock of doves takes wing.

The line-up: Black-crowned Night Herons hang out.

A mature night heron looking especially handsome.

He's just a Mallard, but I was impressed with how close he let me get. Of course, that's because Cayenne wasn't with me!

Great-tailed grackles and an immature heron.

Doves. Or pigeons, if you prefer.

Karen

A Poem For Palm Sunday Eve (sort of)

2011-04-16T21:11:00.000-07:00

“Half a Mustard Seed”

There’s a seed caught
Between my teeth.
I don’t always notice,
But sometimes it nags at me
And I must speak.

It’s a tiny thing,
Just a mustard seed.
It may even be half-gone,
Neglected, bitten and spat out.

Should I dig it out,
Throw it away,
Ignore and forget it?
Or swallow it, water it,
And see whether it grows inside me?
–Karen Funk Blocher †

Weekend Assignment #365: Terminating Tax Time Terrors

2011-04-14T00:21:00.001-07:00

My taxes are done at last! Are yours?

Weekend Assignment #365: Tax Time
What is your strategy for doing your taxes? Do you get them done as soon as you can get hold of the paperwork, put them off to the last minute, or something in between? Do you hire someone, do the work yourself, get your spouse to do it, or share the load? Do you mail forms or e-file?

Extra Credit: Have you ever had to revisit a tax return after filing, due to an audit or other circumstances?

On April the 8th I posted on Facebook, using a handy link from a software package I'd been struggling with for the past week. Here is what hit my wall:

Karen Funk Blocher
Phew! Done!

Great news - My taxes are done!
socialmedia.intuit.com
Woohoo! Thanks to TurboTax, my taxes are done! Start yours now for free.
April 8 at 9:30pm · · · Share

Krissy Knox and Sarah Kishler like this.

Okay, so maybe it was a little crass to promote TurboTax that night, all things considered; but at that moment I felt like celebrating. I had gotten through all of the knotty problems of this year's tax return, and the refund was going to be better than expected, enough to rebuild the cash cushion we wiped out in January with the down payment on my KIA. John wants to spend it all on house repairs and such, but it's still good news.

John was pleased about the refund, but less so about how long it took me to claim it. Even though I'm an accountant, and furthermore rely on my favorite tax preparation software, income tax preparation still intimidates me, almost every year. This year I was worried about the amended tax forms I got from First Magnus Liquidation Trust, and about the 40 boxes of donations to St. Michael's to sell at the English Faire, the dregs of which I hadn't finished cataloging after many hours of work on it. Plus I recently started working full time again, and had less time for chores at home. So I'd put it off until the very end of March, or possibly the first of April.

The First Magnus thing turned out to be far less intimidating than expected, but other issues more than made up for this. Wells Fargo had sold my student loans, which made it hard to find out how much I paid in interest on them last year. The screens about John's Health Savings Account asked about stuff I'd never heard of, and I ended up going through them over and over until they made sense to me. And I did a certain amount of wrangling and negotiating to get John to produce some of the info I needed to finish. You see, for the first 20 years of our marriage, John either did the taxes or hired an accountant because of the business he used to co-own. When I was partway through my accounting degree, John declared the taxes my sole responsibility from then on. He finds them stressful, too, and doesn't want any part of the process except the spending of the refund.

Still, John did get the answers I needed about his HSA and other insurance, the e-file has been accepted by the IRS and the state, and the money should hit the bank in another week or so. Hooray! Now all I have to do is get the 2008 amended return into an envelope and mail it. That's nothing compared to what we went though one year, over taxes we thought were over and done with. Somehow we thought the CPA had mailed in our tax return that April, and he thought we had done so. The IRS eventually got in touch, wanting to know where it was! The CPA wrote a letter, we sent it in and everything was fine. But we're not making that mistake again!

Karen

Round Robin Challenge: Museum of the Tikis

2011-04-09T00:27:00.012-07:00

It's Tiki Time again! This week's Round Robin Photo Challenge topic, as suggested by Marina of MilePebbles, is "Collections." We have many different collections here at the Museum of the Weird: classic Star Trek toys and collectibles (mostly in boxes, alas), Quantum Leap scripts, vintage and mod era Barbie dolls, trolls and Wishniks (some of which had their hair pulled out by Cayenne on at least two different occasions), old toys and games, Doctor Who novels, Disneyland postcards, and on and on. But I think one of the most photogenic collections, certainly one of the most accessible, is the Tiki collection. I've shown you many of our Tiki artifacts before, but let's jump in again, shall we?

Most of our Tiki mugs are on sagging paperback bookcases that we bought used a decade ago. Here are some of them:

Easter Island Salt and Pepper

Other Tiki items are perched atop a wall of crates housing our record collection. You can also see our vintage swizzle stick collection here.

These are a plastic set, from K-Mart of all places.

It's not just about mugs. Among the Tikis are bowls, a lighter, salt and pepper, and of course this poster.

Now let's see what other Robins have collected!

Linking List
as of Saturday, April 9th at 4:07 PM MST

Karen - Posted!
Outpost Mâvarin
http://outmavarin.blogspot.com

Peggy
Who Can Discover It?
http://whocandiscoverit.blogspot.com

Linda - Posted!
Mommy's Treasures
http://mommystreasures.blogspot.com

Ruth
The ScrabbleQueen Knits, Too
http://scrabblequeen.wordpress.com

Jama - Posted!
Sweet Memories
http://mummyjam.blogspot.com

Manang Kim - Posted!
My Life's Journey in Focus
http://www.kissess4u.com

Erin - Posted!
Worth A Thousand Words (new blog!)
http://erin-worthathousandwords.blogspot.com/

Gattina - Posted!
Keyhole Pictures
http://gattina-keyholepictures.blogspot.com/

Kat - Posted!
In My Dreams I Can Fly
http://inmydreamssfk.blogspot.com/

Update:
Oops! I forgot about our outdoor Tikis!

For anyone who doesn't know, Tikis are representations of Polynesian gods and other mythic figures. Around the time Hawaii was becoming a state, the U.S. mainland developed a fascination with all things Hawaiian, including Tikis. (WWII veterans returning home from the Pacific had something to do with it as well.) Tiki bars and restaurants sprang up around the country, featuring tropical drinks and Polynesian decor, including Tikis. Sometimes these places played Hawaiian music and Hawaiian-inspired exotica, including the music of Les Baxter and Martin Denny. All this "Tiki culture" was a major strand of the "lounge" scene, circa 1960. And when people went home after drinking their Mai Tais, Scorpions and other lethal concoctions, they often brought home a Tiki mug! -- KFB

Weekend Assignment #364: Partly Cloudy

2011-04-06T21:43:00.002-07:00

Weekend Assignment #364: Ahead in the Clouds?
Suddenly the marketing departments of Microsoft and other tech giants are all about "the cloud" or "clouds," the practice of storing large files online and streaming them rather than everyone storing them locally on their hard drives. Do you think this is a good idea, a bad idea or both?

Extra Credit: Do you still buy CDs and DVDs?

At this moment, John is watching YouTube videos in the bedroom on his iPad. Walking by there a few minutes ago, I heard the distinctive voice of the Eleventh Doctor, and immediately joined John on the bed to watch the two brief Doctor Who videos from this year's British comedy/charity event Red Nose Day. We compared notes about BabelColour, a particularly good maker of Doctor Who-related videos on YouTube, and then I moved on. We actually do have downloads of the mini-episodes "Space" and "Time," but we watched the streaming versions anyway on John's silly little tablet. He also uses it to stream Netflix.

All in all, though, I'm not that much into using cloud-based streaming and storage in preference to having the file locally, or even a physical object. I don't buy many CDs, but I do buy every Doctor Who CD from composer Murray Gold more or less as soon as it's available in the U.S. A few of them I've bought twice, because I've been known to wear them out.Then I rip them to iTunes at work and at home. If the CD player in my car worked, I'd play the actual CDs on it. And I often raid the CD shelves for Beatles CDs to add to a computer or my outdated iPod Mini.

Videos? Okay, yes, I'll settle for YouTube streaming if the video is short and amusing and I don't really care about it, or if I know I'll eventually have a good commercial copy, or I can't get it any other way and I need to see it right now. Otherwise, I'd rather have a download for stuff I'm going to watch once or twice, or watch about a dozen times in the next few months until the DVD comes out. Mostly, I have the same attitude toward video that I have toward books: if it's something I know I like, I want to own it, and have it instantly available to me at any time, day or night. I suppose I could stream something at 3 AM just as easily, but will that same show be available to watch online at 5 AM on a Wednesday morning three years from now? Maybe, maybe not. I'd rather not take that chance.

Then again, there's a certain Luddite undercurrent to my protestations. I don't know how to stream something from Netflix or iTunes, and I don't especially want to learn. If I really had a good reason to do it, I'd do it, and it probably wouldn't even be hard to figure out. But I'm not there yet.

I do host photos remotely on Picasa and Photobucket and Flickr, but with very few exceptions I have the same exact edit of every image on my hard drive, and probably on my G drive as well. The few files I have on Google Documents instead of my hard drive in Word or Excel format are either things I got from other people or needed to share with Carly for a meme. Really, the only files of mine that exist in a cloud and not on my computer or my emails.

Still, if I had an iPad or even an iPhone, I'd probably start to embrace cloud technology. I saw at the Gallifrey One convention that an iPad not being used to the fullest extent of its capability is hardly worth having, especially for the price. Even so, the more time John spends in the bedroom, streaming Dr. Horrible on his iPad for the fifth time this week, the more I want to get into the act - clouds and all.

Karen

Up, Up and Away!

2011-04-01T12:38:00.003-07:00

My flight instructor.

Now it can be told: when I started this new job, 40 miles northwest of my home, I decided to take advantage of the opportunity to study for my pilot's license. As of today, I've been given the go-ahead to enter an elite training program that prepares pilots to operate vintage aircraft at air shows and other venues.

After a period of apprenticeship at the Pima Air and Space Museum (one of my favorite places in Tucson!), I hope to qualify as a pilot on a B-17, the same kind of bomber on which my dad was a navigator in World War II for seven missions before going down over Czechoslovakia in a sabotaged plane. Exciting, huh?

So far, I've only flown a Hawker and a Falcon, but my instructor is very encouraged. I must say I'm rather proud of myself.

Even if I don't end up in the B-17, Tucsonans may well see a vintage plane in the sky at the air show next March, with me in the cockpit!

Karen

ETA: What the pictures are, really:

The pilot of one of the two airplanes owned by First Magnus, July 2007. Almost exactly a month before the company collapsed, the accounting department made a field trip out to the hanger where the two planes, a Hawker and a Falcon, were housed.
My dad at the Pima Air and Space Museum, January 2011.
One of the First Magnus planes, July 2007. It's probably the Dassault Falcon.
A grouping of planes from the annual air show in Tucson, flying over my house several years ago.

Weekend Assignment #363: (Almost) Scammed!

2011-03-30T22:01:00.000-07:00

For Weekend Assignment #363: Scammed!, I asked,

Weekend Assignment #363: Scammed!

Have you ever been successfully scammed? Was it a phone fraud, a phishing email, a trojan worm, or something else? How did they fool you, and what have you learned from the experience?

Extra Credit: Tell us about a scam that didn't succeed in tricking you.

I think I was hit by a Facebook worm once, and an AOL phishing scam years ago (well, it would have to be years ago, wouldn't it?). My credit card issuers get hit more often than I do. On numerous occasions in the past several years, a bank has sent me a new card and a new card number long before the old one expired. It almost always turned out that the bank was worried that some credit card database had been hacked. On several more occasions, a bank called to ask whether I really spent money outside my usual spending patterns, or I noticed something I didn't authorize. Sheesh.

But scams can be much more interesting than that. Last week, a guy with a heavy Asian (India/Pakistan or something) accent call the land line here, claiming that "Your computer has a virus." Which computer? Mine? John's? The iPad? I didn't ask him that, though. "Go to your computer and let me show you," he said. Yeah, right. First of all, the land line interferes with my internet connection. It's not supposed to, but it does. Second, this guy has not told me anything that indicates he knows anything about me or my computer whatsoever. He has not used my name, identified the operating system, mentioned the presence of more than one computer or the broadband connection, etc. Third, if someone could somehow detect that your computer - yes, yours! - had a virus, wouldn't the logical way to contact you be online rather than by phone? Fourth and finally, I have both Norton and McAfee. If they can't protect me, no random guy on the phone is swooping in to save me.

So I told the guy I wasn't going to take his word for anything or give him access to my computer, and I hung up on him. Then I did a little research. Apparently there are companies that claim you have viruses, and install something on your computer that shows you these alleged viruses, in some cases leaving a big warning on your screen that you can't close. Then they tell you that Norton and other companies can;t help with this, and sell you something to save your computer from this thing they just caused, which according to what I read doesn't work. Nice, huh? And I'm not convinced that any of this is a virus in the usual sense. When I was Googling for images to put in this week's Weekend Assignment computer screen picture, I found a picture of a window reporting the presence of viruses, or something. (I didn't save the image, for reasons that will soon become clear.) When I clicked on it from the Google Images search page, it took me to a little dialog box that quickly started racking up the count of alleged viruses on my computer. I closed it after a few seconds, and Norton hasn't found anything since then but tracking cookies. My guess is that the thing was a very realistic animated gif, designed to show anyone and everyone that their computer is infected, and desperately needs the scammers' solution. But it was still pretty alarming!

There's one other telephone scam I heard about recently from a friend with Fibromyalgia and other health issues. Arizona voters recently passed a medical marijuana law (again), and my friend is interest in pursuing this for pain management. Although her doctor has already approved her for this, a naturopathic doctor's office has been trying to pressure her to pay him $150 for an appointment to obtain eventual access to medical marijuana. My friend initially made an appointment, checked with her own doctor, and did not go to the other alleged doctor. She further called the state's consumer protection division to alert them of the probably scam, but apparently the woman on the phone was disinclined to investigate, since my friend was not actually out any money.

So, tip of the week: if someone calls you up wanting to help you clean up your computer's viruses or get yourself some medical pot, don't believe them!

Karen

EMPS: Historic Tucson

2011-03-27T22:10:00.002-07:00

And now for the NEW Ellipsis Monday Photo Shoot! I don't want to let the week slip by again, and I suspect I won't have time this week to get out for a ramble with the camera. So let's dip into the archives for this week's topic, which is

Ellipsis Monday Photo Shoot #117: Historical Places

I've been to many places around Tucson that are historic in one way or another, and taken pictures of all of them. For example, I've been to Fort Lowell Park, site of a fort from 1873 to 1891. I posted photos of it for a past Round Robin Photo Challenge, but here's one I haven't used before:

From Fort Lowell, Arizona

Another place I've photographed extensively is the Historic Depot - and yes, it's actually called that. The old train station in downtown Tucson was very important in the early growth of the city. It's also where Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday shot a man named Frank Stanton. Here's a 2005 photo of my dad with Wyatt and Doc:

From The Historic Depot

And if that's not enough, the Historic Depot is across the street from Hotel Congress, where John Dillinger once stayed, and it led to his being captured soon afterward.

Dillinger Days 2008. From My Tucson

And here's Agua Caliente Park, where people used to come and "take the waters" back in the late 1800s:

From My Tucson

That'll do for now. If I get time, maybe I'll take some new photos of old places for this next weekend.

Karen

EMPS: A Mixed Drink

2011-03-27T20:43:00.003-07:00

Carly's asking for a picture of a cold drink, and it's not as though I haven't had any this week; but I got distracted and didn't photograph one until now.

Normally I like to mix fruit juices with diet soda, but it doesn't work as well with diet cola as with Diet 7-Up and its rivals or else diet orange. Diet Pepsi is all I have right now, so cranrasblackapple juice it is!

Karen

Round Robin: The Blustery Edge of Spring

2011-03-26T00:01:00.011-07:00

This week's Round Robin Photo Challenge, as suggested by Suzanne R of SuzyQ421'S Photo Blog, is "Winter Meets Spring." Living in Tucson, where wintry weather is rare and spring is nearly undetectable, I had serious doubts that I would find anything suitable. But on March 21st, which I usually think of as the first day of spring, the weather was extremely blustery. At the hanger-like building I work in northwest of Tucson, the wind whistled down the hallway all day long. I came out after work, drove toward the freeway and photographed this:

and this:

Chasing further pictures for this Challenge, I got off the freeway several exits closer to town, and photographed this:

Unfortunately once I did so I was pretty much forced back onto the freeway going the wrong way, back toward Phoenix.

I soon turned around and headed to Tucson, only to get off on what I hoped would be the scenic route. It made the drive home much longer, and I never really got a good vista to photograph. The best I managed was this:

When I got home, though, the sky over Calle Mumble did not disappoint:

So that was how Winter met Spring in Tucson this year--except that it turns out that it wasn't the first day of Spring after all. According to one of those websites that list easily obtained facts in the hope that you'll click on them and see their ads, we're halfway through a run of six years in a row in which Spring starts on the 20th instead of the 21st. Really? How did that happen?

Karen

Now let's see the juxtaposition of Winter and Spring in the other Robins' cameras!

Linking List:
As of 10:58 AM MST

Karen - Posted!
Outpost Mâvarin
http://outmavarin.blogspot.com

Erin - Posted!
A Hardcore Life
http://erin-hardcorehensel.blogspot.com/

Freda
Day One
http://fredamans.blogspot.com

Linda - Posted!
Mommy's Treasures
http://mommystreasures.blogspot.com

Monica
Shutterly Happy
http://monica-frameofmind.blogspot.com/

Kara
Hip Chick's Home
http://hipchickshome.blogspot.com/

Cheryl Ann **Welcome, new participant!** - Posted!
desertsouthwest
http://desertswest.blogspot.com/

Ruth - Posted!
ScrabbleQueen Knits, Too
http://scrabblequeen.wordpress.com

Peggy - Posted!
Who Can Discover It?
http://whocandiscoverit.blogspot.com

Weekend Assignment #362: Two Cinnamon Candles and Clear Plastic Tape

2011-03-23T21:40:00.000-07:00

For Weekend Assignment #362: Emergency! I asked:

Weekend Assignment #362: Emergency!

How prepared are you for emergency situations? Do you know how to do CPR? Does your home or business have an evacuation plan or do fire drills? Do you have a generator, duct tape, candles, first aid kit, fire extinguisher, sandbags or other emergency supplies on hand? Why or why not?

Extra Credit: Does your smoke detector (if you have one) have fresh batteries in it?

Listen, it's a darn good thing we don't live near an ocean, in a tornado alley or war zone, or near a major fault line. We are so unprepared for emergencies that I feel a little guilty as I admit to you the Awful Truth: our entire stash of emergency supplies consists of two cinnamon and nutmeg votive candles and two partially used boxes of matches. I was going to say that at least we have duct tape, but John corrected me. What we actually have is several rolls of clear plastic tape, suitable for mailing packages. I mentioned this accounting of our disaster preparation inventory to John: two candles and clear plastic tape. "We're ready!" John asserted ironically.

Around here, there's a very slight chance of a minor earthquake, but I've never felt one, anywhere. Not a real one, anyway. In the early 1970s, I once reported a possible earthquake in Manlius NY to a local tv station. The station's news anchor called me back to explain that what actually shook the ground that day was an excess of explosives used in doing some blasting at nearly Green Lakes State Park. I never found out what the blasting was for.

Tornadoes are possible in Tucson, but again, I've never seen one, only dust devils. Obviously we get no blizzards around here. The big danger, which might sound counterintuitive for a desert city, is flooding. Anyone who builds on a "500 year floodplain" around here is asking for trouble. Up in the mountains there is also the danger of wildfire, but in the city, not so much.

I guess John and I aren't very big on preparing for low-probability disasters. That's probably foolish of us. In fact, I'm tempted to either put batteries in our smoke detector for the first time in a decade, or replace it with a better one. It used to drive us crazy, beeping whenever we cooked or took a shower. But what the heck: we have a working alarm system. It consists of two dogs, Cayenne and Pepper. Day and night, they are on alert, protecting us from all dangers. Well, maybe not all dangers, but at least from cats in the alleyway!

Karen

Weekend Assignment #361: Giving It Up!

2011-03-16T21:15:00.003-07:00

For Weekend Assignment #361: Give It Up!, I asked...

Weekend Assignment #361: Give It Up!
Lent has begun, and in certain denominations, people are "giving up something for Lent" - in other words, not indulging in some pleasurable food or activity between now and Easter. Have you ever abstained from something for a period of time for a religious or spiritual purpose? What was it? How successful were you at avoiding it?

Extra Credit: Regardless of whether you believe in doing so, if you were to give up something you enjoy between now and April 24th, what would it be?

For years, Father Smith at St. Michael's has sort-of advocated against "giving up something for Lent," suggesting instead that one do something positive. Some years I've made a special effort to read specific parts of the Bible, catch up with my webmastering duties for church, do some kind of volunteer work, or some other attempt at a Good Thing. Often, though, I fall back on the same kinds of Lenten sacrifices that many folks do. I've given up, or tried to give up, a number of things over the years:

Mahjong. One year, I gave up playing Mahjong on the computer for Lent. It was one of the games on a Disney Mulan software package, and I'd become quite addicted. Giving it up cold turkey was a really good thing to do. Did it bring me closer to God? I'm not sure, but I certainly don't regret my choice that year.

Ice Cream. Okay, this one is not very original. I think I held to it pretty well, though.

Carbs A disaster. Trying to lose weight in general, or do a low-carb regimen, has never worked for me during Lent. Maybe it's too ambitious - or maybe, that's more about doing something for myself than doing something for God, and not applying any discipline or motivation. I'm not likely to try this one again. Not at Lent, anyway. Now, a New Year's Resolution, on the other hand...!

So what am I doing this year? I'm giving up french fries. Yes, it's seriously unoriginal. Thing is, though, I hit fast food and hamburger places fairly often, and it's all too easy to automatically go for the combos. I'm not even that big a fan of fries, so why do I get them? Well, for now I'm not getting them any more, and at least trying to make this a sacrifice rather than a self-serving thing. I'm not sure how to do that, to be honest. Also, I accidentally ate one french fry the other day.

But I'm trying to do a positive thing, too. I'm taking over the church newsletter, The Messenger. I'm a little nervous about it; it's been more than a decade since I last edited a newsletter. But I'd better tackle it soon: it's due out in two weeks!

Karen

See also: beliefnet: What I'm Giving Up For Lent

EMPS: Cell Phones and Potato Bags

2011-03-13T22:17:00.002-07:00

For this week's Ellipsis Monday Photo Shoot, Carly wants to see what the cameras on our cell phones can do. As it happens, I was at a new burger joint recently without my "real" camera, so I took a bunch of pictures with my Samsung/Verizon phone. Here are the best of them:

The name of the chain is 5 Guys Burgers and Fries. Or something like that. Like Whataburger and In-N-Out Burger, they have a red and white retro look to the decor and signage. Unlike the other chains, however, this extends to the display of red and white bags of potatoes. This reinforces the fact that the fries are hand cut and made fresh from whole potatoes. (In-N-Out makes theirs from actual fresh potatoes as well.)

Another unusual thing they do with their potatoes is use them for crowd control. The line from the cash register, which that night went all the way back to the main entrance at the other end of the room, is herded past a barrier of stacked potato bags. The crowd thus becomes a captive audience for a wall full of glowing food reviews and testimonials from around the country.

When some new food chain hits Tucson, large numbers of Tucsonans show up to check it out. About ten years ago, when Krispy Kreme first opened here, people drove across town and stood in line for twenty minutes or more for the dubious privilege of eating a fresh glazed doughnut. About four years ago, In-N-Out Burger arrived, and the local press reported a 90-minute wait for their wares. The In-N-Out people hired a large staff to process as many people as possible as efficiently as possible, and did so very well. Even so, it was quite a while before one could get one of their burgers in 10 minutes instead of half an hour or more. Now it's 5 Guys turn. At this newest location, the wait was about half an hour, I think.

So was it worth it? Well, I wouldn't want to wait that long for a burger every night, but yes, it was good. The basic cost is a bit higher than at most places, but for that you can add as many toppings as you like in any combination you want. I got mine with cheese, ketchup, mushrooms, lettuce and tomato. John's had jalapeños and I forget what else. Needless to say, however. John did not join me in line for all this. John does not like lines. At all.

When I pulled these pictures off my phone tonight, I discovered that the little card in it is well on its way to being corrupted. I'm lucky these photos survived long enough to be posted. All, in all, though, I think my cell phone did okay that night.

Karen

Round Robin: Ages 98 and Up

2011-03-11T23:10:00.002-07:00

This week's Round Robin Photo Challenge is called "Ages." I asked people to show us "not just one age, but a comparison, a contrast." As busy as I've been recently, I haven't been able to take any relevant photos, so I'm dipping into my archives to show you Eva, one last time.

I met Eva Osburn on May 18th, 2003, her 98th birthday. That was nearly two years before I got my first decent digital camera, so I have no pictures of her that young. The shot above is my earliest one of her, taken ten days before she turned 100 years old. Here she is with her daughter Harriett, and Harriet's daughter Irene. Three women, three ages, and a strong family resemblence.

Eva's 100th birthday party was a multi-generational affair. I think it was at the home of her great-granddaughter. The little girl here is a great-great granddaughter. The photo is blurry but I like it.

At age 102 (and a half!) Eva was still fairly active, but she did move in with Harriett. And a dog.

The following year she moved on into an assisted/independent living facility, where she remained until her final days. Here she is on her birthday in 2008, age 103. A retired nurse, Eva saw herself as a helper and advocate for her fellow residents.

And here she is the day she turned 104, May 18th, 2009. She died in April, 2010, so she didn't quite make it to 105. But 104 is pretty impressive! At her funeral, the electric bell at St. Michael's tolled 104 times. It seemed to take forever.

Now let's see what ages the other Robins have photographed!

Linking List
as of March 12th, Midnight MST

Karen - Posted!
Outpost Mâvarin
http://outmavarin.blogspot.com

Jama - Posted!
Sweet Memories
http://mummyjam.blogspot.com

Freda
Day One
http://fredamans.blogspot.com

analee
sugar and spice and everything gneiss
http://theoutcrop.blogspot.com

Nancy
Nancy Luvs Pics
http://nancyluvspix.blogspot.com/

Ruth
The ScrabbleQueen Knits, Too
http://scrabblequeen.wordpress.com

Gattina - Posted!
Keyhole Pictures
http://gattina-keyholepictures.blogspot.com/

I have to work on Saturday, possibly at both jobs, but I'll catch up with you again Saturday evening!

Karen

Outpost Mâvarin

Round Robin: Tangles of Branches

Round Robin Challenge: House Is a Museum

Two Lonely Cats

Round Robin: Remembrance of Things Past (Part 2 of 2)

Round Robin: Remembrance of Things Past (Part 1 of 2)

Testing...1...2...3...5?

Tucson Sunset: #413,941,038 in the Series

Round Robin: A Cactus is Also Ever-green

EMPS: It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas - Almost!

Round Robin Challenge: Families Where We Find Them

EMPS: Fantasy in the Sky

EMPS: P.S. - About Thanksgiving

EMPS: Signs of Thankfulness

EMPS: The Geese on Barnum Hill

Round Robin: Without Borders

EMPS: A Harvest of Hangers

Occupy Tucson and the Ballot Box

Round Robin Challenge: The Biggest Scare of All

EMPS: Happy Halloween Hangover

A Moment of Syracuse Nostalgia

EMPS: Pepper's Earth Tones

EMPS: foregrounds and backgrounds on the grounds

Round Robin: Boxes of Ticky Tacky?

EMPS: Pumpkins and Scarecrows

I am the 99%.

EMPS: A House Full of Faces

Round Robin: The Blochers Relax

EMPS: Puppy (and Kitty) Love

Round Robin: My Favorite Obsession

EMPS: The Mermaids of Disneyland

EMPS: In Living Black and White

Round Robin: Did I Cause This "Shades of Grey" Day?

Round Robin: The Great Outdoors on a Cloudy Afternoon

EMPS: Apple Bubbles

EMPS: Quick! Get That Sunset Posted!

Round Robin: What's That on the Ceiling? #3 of 3

Round Robin: What's That on the Ceiling? #2 of 3

Round Robin: What's That on the Ceiling? #1 of 3

EMPS: Citrus - in the Fridge and in the Yard

Round Robin: In Hiding

Archival Butterflies

Word Salad Poetry

Round Robin: A Tale of Two Buildings

EMPS: Gone the Rainbow

EMPS: The Daily Cloud

EMPS: White Isn't White

Round Robin: Give Me a Sign

EMPS: A Night at St. Michael's

T Minus Six Days and Counting

EMPS: Critters in the Garden

Round Robin: Big - The Great Pyramid of Marana

EMPS: Too Rare to Even Photograph

Round Robin: Stealth Photography in the Park

EMPS: A Long Way to Go to See a Bush

Round Robin Challenge: 55 MPH Graffiti Hunt

What happened to Karen? She never posts anymore.

Clearly I need a long drive North and West

EMPS: Art Conspired

Round Robin: Reinventing the Wheel

#IfIHadATimeMachine: My Temporal Mystery Tour, Revisited.

Weekend Assignment #366: D'oh!

EMPS: Motivating on the Move: The Patience of Jan

Round Robin: The Two Easters

The Departed Leave Baggage Behind

EMPS: Where the Birds Live

A Poem For Palm Sunday Eve (sort of)

Weekend Assignment #365: Terminating Tax Time Terrors

Karen Funk BlocherPhew! Done!

Round Robin Challenge: Museum of the Tikis

Weekend Assignment #364: Partly Cloudy

Up, Up and Away!

Weekend Assignment #363: (Almost) Scammed!

EMPS: Historic Tucson

EMPS: A Mixed Drink

Round Robin: The Blustery Edge of Spring

Weekend Assignment #362: Two Cinnamon Candles and Clear Plastic Tape

Weekend Assignment #361: Giving It Up!

EMPS: Cell Phones and Potato Bags

Round Robin: Ages 98 and Up

Karen Funk Blocher
Phew! Done!