After the Party

Today was every bit as long and exhausting as I predicted --in fact, more so. I got home from the Unnamed Largish Company's Year-End Celebration a little after midnight - and no, I didn't get a nap (or a haircut) today. I don't feel well now, so I'll upload a few photos and go to bed.



I asked John to take this photo before I left for the party. The actual lipstick was brighter than this, and the top was gold colored. Fortunately, the lipstick was mostly gone from my lips by the time I got there.


The highlight of the night was watching over a hundred middle-aged professionals in semi-formal attire dancing to Y.M.C.A.



These same stars (and many others like them) were outside the resort at last year's party.

Karen


Technorati Tags: Personal, Party, Tucson

Busy, Busy

No, I mean it. Here's how my schedule for this weekend is looking right now:

Saturday
8:15 AM - pick up T.S.
8:30 AM - Low Mass
9:00 AM - Post-Confirmation Class (I think we're getting free stuff)
10:00 AM - shopping with T.S.
12:00 Noon - donate blood (second attempt in two weeks)
1:00 PM - Lunch
2:00 PM - Toys for Tots shopping with John
5:00 PM - Dress up and all that
6:30 PM - Drive to a Foothills resort
7:00 PM - Try to find someone I know at the company Year End Celebration and make conversation without being dependent or getting sick from the stress
8:00 PM - Dinner at the party, preferably this time not seated at a table of total strangers
10:00 PM - Duck out and go home before people I like and respect are totally blotto.

Sunday
9:20 AM - Pick up Kevin and possibly Eva
9:45 AM - Check in at the sacristy and see whether I'm serving as crucifer
10:00 AM - Mass
12:00 Noon - Coffee hour, and take people home (or to other destinations)
2:00 PM - Take my pagan friend shopping for a Christmas tree
5:00 PM - Cleaning? Maybe. But definitely some computer time too, and possibly The Lost Room. And grocery shopping. And dinner. And working on the church directory.

Ack! All this being the case, I really should go to bed now.

Technorati Tags: Personal

Gimme That Toy!

Weekend Assignment #143: Imagine you are a kid today, age 10 or under. What would you want for Christmas/Hanukkah/Seasonal Holiday of Your Preference? Don't look back on the toys of your youth, now -- think about what kids have now that you would want if you were their age. Also if you're a parent, don't ask your kids what they want -- this is supposed to be about what you would want, if you were their age. I love my daughter, but I guarantee you, there are things she wants that if I were a kid her age I wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole.

Extra Credit: Do you kinda want the same toy now that you're an adult? Come on, you can admit it if you do.

I don't recall ever saying anything like the title to this entry, but let's assume that, like other little kids, I was both greedy and tactless. In fact, I know that's true. I remember getting a Chatty Baby (like the dolls shown below) when I was about five or six years old. I may have asked for a Chatty Cathy, but either way I was thrilled with it. Problem was, my grandmother gave me a drink-and-wet doll that same Christmas. When my mom asked me if I liked that doll, hoping to elicit some gratitude toward Grandmother, I churlishly said, "No! I like Chatty Baby!"

But I digress. The point is that back in 1962 I was greedy for a doll with cutting edge technology: it talked! Yes, it was just a little record operated by pull string, barely intelligible and quickly broken. But it was still a big deal at the time Two years later or thereabouts, I got Baby First Step, a motorized walking doll, and in 1968 I got Talking Stacey, Barbie's friend who not only talked, but did so with an English accent.

So while I haven't actually made a survey of current toys yet this year (John and I will do that during our annual Toys for Tots shopping spree on Saturday), it's likely that my wantlist as a child of the new millennium would be heavily weighted toward dolls and tech. I want a robot dog, a robot dinosaur, a "working" Phaser and communicator, a home planetarium, a spy kit with infrared goggles, and any number of other toys that weren't possible in 1964. And I saw a line of dolls the other day that intrigued me - not Mattel, not Bratz, but some new, fairly realistic line. As for Mattel, they seem to be moving on from the "pink box" style Barbies into dolls that are a little more appealing, at least to me. To be honest, I still want the current version of Midge, her husband Allen and family, including kids and grandparents. It's not exactly high tech, but it's progress of a sort. When I was a kid, there would never have been any suggestion that one of Barbie's friends would get pregnant, let alone give birth. Why, that would mean she'd had sex! It's also nice to finally see dolls in the Barbie line who are obviously more than 20 years old.

Would I really want these toys at age 49 and counting? You betcha!

More photos after our toy run on Saturday.

Karen

Technorati Tags: Christmas+presents, Christmas, Scalzi, Weekend Assignment, Toys, Dolls, Tech

A Closer Look

Tonight we're going to take a second look - and in two cases a third - at some photos we've seen before. I drove past two of those Christmas houses earlier this evening, and marveled again at how much more you see in person than in these 400ish-pixel-wide photos. Let's do something about that.


These first two are cropped details from the big green tree photo from last night's Round Robin entry. I like that this first one is a line of tree shapes. Notice that the trunk of the real tree is wider than any of the fake trees, "branches", cone shapes and all.



I love this one. I lightened it a bit, but other than cropping that's pretty much all I did. This little piece of the huge lit tree looks kind of like fireworks!


Meanwhile, at another part of the same house, a snowman sits on a roof. But what are all those shapes on the front wall?



Check it out! There are quite a few lit shapes here. Too bad I still didn't get a good picture of them.


And here's that other house, with more shapes.

Best I can do tonight, folks. I have a doctor's appointment in a little over 7 hours.

Karen

Technorati Tags: Photos, memes, Christmas, Holiday lights, Round Robin Photo, Tucson

Neighborhood Lights, Edited

It's Round Robin time! Suzanne of "New Suzanne R's Life" selected "Lights of the Holidays" as this week's topic.

I've spent most of tonight taking and editing these, and also troubleshooting my computer based on Carly's and Barbara's and John's suggestions. So now it's late again, and my sleep situation is getting desperate. So for tonight I'm going to give you only the briefest of descriptions. I don't remember exactly what I did to each photo, anyway.


If you've been reading this blog, you're probably aware that we have no Christmas decorations out (other than my snowman candle, and he's not for burning), much less any Christmas lights up. I thought about photographing the headlights of cars in holiday traffic, but instead I have pictures of three heavily-decorated houses, two of them in my neighborhood, the remaining one a few blocks away. This first shot is of the most extreme set of lights in the neighborhood. The reflection is off the roof of my car. I kind of like the effect.


This is another part of the same light display. I did a lot of adjusting on some of these so the tree wasn't red, as it tends to be in the raw photos.

Here's a vertical shot of that same tree, taken with flash and autocorrected to be a whole lot brighter. It's not the most naturalistic shot here, but I like the way it looks. It gives you some idea how big the tree is.


The house across the street from the one with the tree is modestly decorated in comparison. I think I took this with flash and then just brightened it, but I may have used sliders on the tone panel to filter out most of the red.


Same house, no flash, with the dark tones darkened further, leaving only the lights.


Another house with a tree. This was also a flash shot, saturated and brightened.

Now go see what everyone else has done for this Challenge, and maybe even join in yourself!

Karen


Linking List

Suzanne - POSTED!
New Suzanne R's Life
http://newsuzannerslife.blogspot.com/

Carly - POSTED!
Ellipsis... Suddenly Carly
http://ellipsissuddenlycarly.blogspot.com/

Janet - POSTED!
Fond Of Photography
http://fondofphotography.blogspot.com/

Linda
Blah Blah Blog
http://blahblahblog.wordpress.com/

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

Nancy - POSTED!
Nancy Luvs Pix
http://journals.aol.com/nhd106/Nancyluvspix

Sassy
Sassy's EYE
http://journals.aol.com/sassydee50/SassysEYE

Connie
Windswept/Connie's Country Life
http://journals.aol.com/maxsox5/WINDSWEPT-CONNIES-COUNTRYLIFE

Danella - POSTED!
Deep Red Style
http://www.maroongraphics.com/blog/index.php?xbrowse&category=14

Julie - POSTED!
Julie's Web Journal
http://www.barrettmanor.com/julie/journal.aspx

Steven
(sometimes) photoblog
http://sepintx.blogspot.com/

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

Teena - POSTED!
It's all about me!
http://purple4mee.blogspot.com/

Phinney - POSTED!
Paragon
http://journals.aol.com/geminiwilder/Paragon/


Technorati Tags: Photos, memes, Christmas, Holiday lights, Round Robin Photo

Tree Was My Co-Pilot

Note: I've been trying to upload the same five photos, one way for another, for well, about two hours. If it doesn't work this time I'm going the heck to bed. In the morning I'll try to finish this. See you then! (Update: I think I've got it fixed now - 9:15 AM.)

Your Monday Photo Shoot: Show off your Christmas tree and/or Menorah and/or other seasonally appropriate holiday centerpiece. So if you celebrate the Solstice or commemorate Kwanzaa, or, heck, just plain like them all, you're covered. We're focusing on this year's decorations, so recent pictures are preferred. But if you haven't gotten all set up yet, you can reach back in your archives.

Oh, the things I do for you folks! Okay, it's really for me, but you know what I mean.

As you may have guessed, we still haven't dug out the decorations, for reasons too depressing (an earlier typo here: repressing) to mention. So I went out tonight to Walgreen's, partly in hope of getting fruitcake in a gold-colored tin, and partly to take pictures of mini trees for sale.

Here's what I found, at least as far as live trees went. And no, they didn't have the fruitcake.

So I went on to Safeway, because I knew they had some cool little trees and tree-like objects. Look! They had a tree made out of trees...

...and little forests of little trees...


...and rows of tres moderne treelike objects.

Now I'll admit I have a bit of a mania for real trees at Christmas, despite my genuine affection for our vintage silver one. So I selected one of these little, living trees and headed for the register.


And here is the second-weirdest tree picture you're likely to see today: Tree (full name: Ms. Perpetua Verdant Tree-ee) posing in front of the Safeway.



Now for the title photo, and the reason I called the previous shot the second-weirdest one. I strapped Ms. Tree-ee into the passenger's seat for the drive home. Her basic driving advice is pretty sound: "Watch out for that Tree-ee!"

She's still in the car now, although I'll need to redo the seat belt in the morning. She's going to keep my cubicle plant company until Christmas Eve, and then come home with me.

Karen

Technorati Tags: Monday Photo Shoot, Scalzi, Christmas Tree, Christmas

Books, Computer, Priest, Reindeer

Most of my L'Engle books are no longer
falling over as much due to gaps.

I didn't get the yams cooked, although I may nuke 'em while doing the dishes a few minutes from now. I didn't do laundry. I didn't clean, either, except for one desperately-needed task: I put away about twenty L'Engle books, in date order, and most of the Thurbers as well.

My computer is acting up every day now, with programs "not responding" and the hard drive endlessly chugging away, doing nothing. My hard drive was critically close to being full, but I deleted the AVI files of a couple Doctor Who episodes, some photos and some screensavers, which ought to help. It didn't, though, as far as I can tell. My CD drive, which formerly burned CDs and played DVDs, no longer does either reliably. If I can't burn CDs, I can't back up data and free up more disk space. You know about my keyboard problems, and lately I've even had intermittent problems with USB connections: camera, scanner, iPod and mouse. In short: it's becoming painfully clear that I need to replace my computer.

Father Ireland and his new stole

That being the case, I am very nervous about the fact that I just transferred 39 photos from my camera, because of the storage it will eat up. All but two of them are from church this morning. We were celebrating Father Ireland's 25th anniversary as a priest. He took the opportunity to mention in his sermon, as he does every year at this time, what a sick and twisted story the song Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer tells. His take on it is that Rudolph is teased for being different, and Santa, who should love and comfort him, does nothing to help - until the crisis comes, and Santa finds he can exploit Rudolph. This is a running joke with Father Ireland, although I think he really means it. This year, I offered him an alternate interpretation: Rudolph is a Christ figure, a suffering savior. He is unique and special, but ostracized, misunderstood, mistreated and ignored, until the day he comes into the world at Christmas, bringing a gift no one else can give and saving the world from a darker fate, filling it instead with joy and love and generosity. Something like that anyway. Father Ireland was delighted was this, and plans to incorporate it into his Rudolph rant--uh, sermon--for Advent 2007.

The heck with the dishes and the yams. I'm going to bed. Sorry, John.

Technorati Tags: Computers, Episcopal, Rudolph