Round Robin: The Other Door

The Doctor: How many rooms?
Amy Pond: I'm sorry, what?
The Doctor: On this floor, how many rooms? Count them for me now.
Amy Pond: Why?
The Doctor: Because it will change your life.
Amy Pond: Five. One, two, three, four, five
The Doctor: Six.
Amy Pond: Six?
The Doctor: Look.
Amy Pond: Look where?
The Doctor: Exactly where you don't want to look, where you never want to look. The corner of your eye. Look behind you.

In the quote above, the Doctor is pointing out a door in Amy's hallway, a door she never noticed was there. In photographing doors today for the Round Robin Photo Challenge: Door Number Three, as suggested by Vicki of the blog Maraca, I had a similar experience - except, you know, less science fictional!

About a decade ago, perhaps longer, John decided to decorate a couple of the doors in our house with modernist designs. One of them is the door of my bathroom, decorated with circles and stripes:

 

Another, the door to the library, has what might be called a Mondrian desiign, with panels of color:

They're both at the end of a hallway, which has five, no, six, doors, excluding the sliding closet doors. Here are the two doors as seen in the same shot:

But wait - what's that in between?

Why, it's a plain, boring door, so unregarded and unnoticed that John's left his sneakers blocking it.

Okay, yes, I know that door exists, but it's where I never want to look. That door used to lead to the guest room, later called the eBay room. Now it's a storage room. I can't even get in that room, because it's full of stuff.

But the thing is, I never noticed before, or at least forgot, that in between John's two marvelously decorated doors, is one that's so excruciatingly normal and boring that we never look at it. It's slightly damaged at the bottom, which may explain why John never bothered with it.

There are lots of other unfinished projects around the house, so decorating this one neglected door is not a priority. And we may be moving to the northwest side of town, if this job works out; so customizing the old house further would not be a good idea. But I kind of feel sorry for this third, forgotten door.

Now let's see everyone else's trios of doors:

Linking List
as of Saturday, 2/26/11 at 7:34 PM

Vicki - Posted!
Maraca
http://mymaracas.blogspot.com/

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

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

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

Halie **Welcome, new participant!**
Shutterscapes
http://lifemomentsmemories.blogspot.com/

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

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

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

Karen

Weekend Assignment #358: Zoom Zoom

Ack! Forgot it was Wednesday!

Weekend Assignment # 358: Drive
Is driving something you actually enjoy doing, or is it merely a means to an end? Do you ever go for a drive for fun, or revel in certain kinds of driving? 

Extra Credit: If time and money were not at issue, and you wanted to go somewhere 500 miles away, would you prefer to drive, be driven, take a train or fly? (Okay, you can also choose to go by boat.)

This topic came about because a) my commute to my new job is 38.2 to 41.3 miles each way, depending on the route, and b) I was about to drive to Los Angeles solo on Friday night, stay over Saturday night and drive back Sunday night. The distance from home to the LAX Marriott was 510 miles, but I was leaving directly from work and stopping off near work on the way back. That's just 475 miles each way.

So how do I feel about that long morning drive? Well, if I could get a full night's sleep first, and if gas weren't going up in price almost daily, I wouldn't mind it at all. In fact I kind of enjoy it. Driving is a game, in which the object is to arrive safely but also quickly, and without drawing a traffic ticket by going too fast or doing anything stupid.

And sometimes there are fun things to see, and possibly even photograph, sticking a camera out the window while keeping eyes firmly on the road. Sometimes it's a sunrise or sunset, mountains or desert, a blimp or a hot air balloon.

Other times it's about the vehicles, like this Breast Cancer Awareness cement mixer. Amazing!

I am having trouble wrenching my sleep schedule toward early to bed and early to rise, but yes, for now I'm mostly enjoying the drive.

And I pretty much actively chose to drive the 1,000+ miles (actually over 1,100 on the trip counter) last weekend. It's true there weren't many options, though. Airfare would have been over $200, and would have meant getting another night's hotel stay. It also would have required me to procure transportation between the Marriott, where the convention was held, and the Travelodge a mile or two away. Rooms at the Marriott, if available at all, would have cost more than twice what I paid. Rail service between Tucson and Los Angeles is only a few times a week, and completely incompatible with a weekend trip west.

But it doesn't matter, because I like the drive. I have my traditional stops and landmarks: Picacho Peak, with a choice of old and new truck stops; Toltec Road, about a third of the way to Phoenix and site of a Carl;s Jr.; The option to take the "southern route" on I-8 between Casa Grande and San Diego, or maybe just to Gila Bend; the IKEA in Guadalupe AZ outside Phoenix; the nuclear power plant and the state prison;  mountains that look like piled rocks, sometimes topped by windmills; and the Wheel Inn in Cabezon, home of a brontosaurus, a T-Rex and now a robot dinosaur museum. Depending on which route I choose, I either stop at a rest area where I once saw a bobcat at dawn, or drive past the city where the transmission on my Capri died en route to an interview with Scott Bakula. I love it.

Mind you, I didn't love going to work on one hour's sleep on Monday morning!

Karen

Benton Vs. a Cyberman - and a Snarky Dalek

If I can figure out how to do it, I will add a YouTube video (raw footage for now) of John Levene (aka John Anthony Blake, who played Sgt. Benton on Doctor Who) trying to stage a heroic encounter with a Cyberman and the world's snarkiest Dalek. Meanwhile here's a photo (I hope!):



And here's the cutest-ever encounter between the Doctor and K-9:






I had a reasonably great time this weekend, and took lots of photos, almost none of them of celebrities. This is because I almost never manage to sit less than a hundred feet from the stage. For the big deal events involving the actors, my photos tend to be really, really bad:



Just like being there, huh? But I kind of like it. It looks as though everyone is on the verge of teleporting out.

Okay, this app doesn't like my YouTube info or the hotel connection or something. I'll post it later.




I am in the Marriott's sports bar, Champions, where every year I treat myself to one decent meal, a steak salad. Love it! After this I start the long driver back to almost-Tucson. My new job is between here and home, so I won't actually get home to John and the dogs until Monday night.

Karen

Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:W Century Blvd,Los Angeles,United States

Last Chance to See

I am in the main ballroom at Gallifrey One, where Peter Davison and six other classic Who guests are answering the first question of the last major panel. This is the first I've seen of the convention headliner. The demand for Davison's autograph was so overwhelming that I couldn't get it. I settled for one from Clayton Hickman. I'll explain later.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:LAX

EMPS: Love Birds on a Wall

This week's Ellipsis Monday Photo Shoot, appropriately, has "Love" as its theme. This being Valentine's Day, I thought I'd do the Monday Photo Shoot on Monday for a change. This is made possible by my having managed to sorta-kinda photograph something appropriate, something I have been wanting to photograph for the past week. If I'm very lucky, not to mention clever, I may even manage to edit, upload and post the photos by iPad.

Does it work? Well, set of, but only if the photos are on the iPad rather than online, and I have no interest in editing them at all.

Alternatively, I can try doing this from email. But again, that doesn't get the photos edited. Drat.

*****

This is an attempt to use a different app to create text and add a photo properly.

The good news: I can resize. The bad news: I still can't darken the photo. (The really bad news: the photo didn't copy over at all.)

Now to see whether I can select all and add this to the blog entry.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

***

No, that didn't work at all.








Here is the photo I first uploaded, which I've since edited online using an actual computer.

And here is the other shot, also edited online. iPad had nothing to do with it being here.

The explanation: this is a mural on the front of a building I drive past when returning home from my new job. The ridiculous way the freeway is set up around here means that I drive through downtown at rush hour, and often end up either stopped at a light or inching past this mural. I like it. The birds are vermilion flycatchers. I have very little concept of what the artist is trying to convey, but there is a valentine between two of these birds.And yet they have their backs to each other!

Unfortunately I failed to grab my camera quickly enough when I first passed the building today, so I detoured south to circle around for another attempt. That time, the light wasn't red, and my attempt to grab the shot on the fly, so to speak, wasn't entirely successful. A lot like my iPad experiments, then!

Karen

Location: Tucson

So far, so bad.

I was reasonably proud of myself. After about half an hour of setting up something called BlogPress on John's iPad, I wrote a brief blog entry as a local draft, saved it, tried unsuccessfully to add a picture from one of the online photo albums I had linked to on Picasa and Flicker, and hit PUBLISH. The app took me to the Outpost, but guess what? No new blog entry!

Let's see whether this one works. Obviously I'm less inclined to spend a lot of time polishing an entry that may disappear forever two minutes from now. What you see is what you get - or, equally likely, won't get. Phooey.

Karen


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

EMPS: Strangers, Their Backs to Me

My entry for Ellipsis Monday Photo Shoot #111: Walking Away is short and simple:



From January 2011 at the Pima Air and Space Museum: These people walked away to check out a 1950s era plane with the nickname Bungai Buckaroo.

We are about to redo our home wireless network from scratch. It may involve much time, effort, wailing and gnashing of teeth. With luck, I'll be back later tonight to post the new Round Robin Challenge and visit other Robins - but if I don't make it, you'll know why!

Karen

Update: Yay! We're back online, and the iPad is too!