Weekend Assignment Results: Having Fun?

This ride's not my idea of fun. California Adventure, 2005

Last week, I asked what you folks do for fun apart from the obvious, "the obvious" being defined as reading books (because we've discussed this before) and doing stuff online (because here you are!). Those of you who responded came up with a dizzying variety of fun activities, including but by no means limited to the following:

Mike says, "I like to play golf. I'm not great at it, but I usually have a good time. I like getting outside and trying to get that stupid ball in the stupid hole. No, I never get irritated while I play it, why do you ask?"

Julie says, "What's so fun about bowling? Several things for me. First and foremost, it's a chance to get away from the computer and get out and talk with adults."

Sarah says, "Since I am, fortunately, not a complete wreck, I am pretty freakin' good at having fun in all sorts of ways. I like to try anything that might be fun and if it is, I'll probably do it again. Lots more times."

Florinda says, "For a long time, I've been an "appointment" television viewer; I have certain shows I enjoy watching, I schedule time for them, and that's pretty much it. Since we got a DVR three years ago, I can make my "appointments" at my convenience, and I love that."

Duane says, "A fun thing for me to do is get out in it however possible -- a long walk around the neighborhood, a day trip to a park or a nearby historic site, a hike through the woods, fishing, camping, bird watching, sky gazing, anything that gets me outdoors communing with nature."

Kristi Wachter says, "My idea of a good time is a day spent taking notes, memorizing bits of information, and quizzing myself on what I've learned. For me, studying is tremendous fun."

Kiva says, "Fun thing #1: I play with my grandchildren. I love having the fun without the responsibility. In fact, in a couple of weeks, I will have a new grandchild with which to play!"

Sounds like fun, folks! Thanks!

The new Weekend Assignment will follow shortly.

And the Trend Continues.

My streak of "interesting times" continued today. In theory, I could be employed by Friday. Supposedly my main recruiter is about to secure an interview for me doing the kind of work I particularly enjoy. The good news: it's for considerably more money than my previous job. The bad news: it's in Oro Valley (probably about a 40 minute drive from here), and it's only for 90 days. If I get it, I have to bow out of the job I interviewed for last week, and hope something else turns up when the time comes. The saving grace of the location is that John already commutes out there; we may be able to share a car.

Now. Tuffy.

Her appointment was at 1 PM, and we probably had a good half hour wait to see her oncologist. Just like my primary care physician, she tends to fall behind as the day wears on, because the patients' problems can't always be dealt with quickly. Tuffy spent almost all of the wait like this:


Dr. K., when she came in, was disappointed that the prednisone hasn't helped Tuffy all that much. She's eating better, and is perhaps a little livelier and more sociable, but she still walks with her head down, and is still unsteady on her feet.

Based on this, Dr. K. wanted to send Tuffy to a neurologist, for at least $2,000 in additional tests. I told her flat out that we can't do that as long as I'm unemployed (unsaid: and maybe not even once I have a job). But I did authorize X-rays, blood work and sedation so Dr. K. could examine her tongue and see whether the cancer had returned. The X-ray was to check whether cancer had spread to her bones, and possibly see a slipped disc, which is the suspected diagnosis. The blood work is to check for Valley Fever and other possibilities.

So I sat in the exam room for another half hour and read my Wrede book while Tuffy was off getting all these tests. The one immediate result was good news: the tongue looks great, with no sign of cancer. The X-rays didn't have anything that jumped out at Dr. K. when she had a look at them, so probably no bone cancer. But she's sending them on to be examined by another specialist. When that and the blood tests came back, they'll call me.


Meanwhile, I don't quite know what to think. It's obvious to me that Tuffy is not comfortable, but not so obvious whether her quality of life has become unacceptable. Nor do I have any idea what can be done, even if we get a clear diagnosis. We may yet have to make that horrible decision I was fearing early last week. Actually, unless she dies on her own, I know we'll have to make that decision. The only question is how soon that day will come.


One thing of minor interest happened as I let Tuffy do some quality sniffing outside before we got back in the car. Just a foot or two away from her, a tiny white butterfly was struggling to avoid being blown away in the strong winds we had all afternoon.

I can't compete with our resident expert butterfly photographers, Carly and Steven, when it comes to closeups of insects. I have neither the equipment nor the patience. But here's the best I could manage. May that butterfly and Tuffy both hold out a little longer.

Karen

Good News, Bad News, No News (As Usual)

It's been a bit of a good news, bad news, no news day. (I seem to get a lot of those.) On the bad news side, I had no phone calls about jobs, and saw no new listings worth pursuing. Also, I discovered that a service I signed up for yesterday accidentally combined two line items and sent an email to a male friend of mine, addressed to "Mary." I tried to apologize in a separate email, but his mailbox is full. Sigh. Also, when I returned to my office after an hour of watching Doctor Who tonight, this was on my computer screen:


I rebooted and so far things seem fine. But I'm not at all convinced that my current versions of Vista, AIM and Firefox are mutually compatible right now, and that I don't have a missing or corrupted file somewhere.

On the good news side, I received my final check from FVD, finished cleaning the kitchen except for scrubbing the stove and fridge, and cleaned up the bathroom a bit. Oh, and I cleared a bunch of messages off the land line, very few of which mattered in the least. My problem with that phone is that almost all the incoming calls are robocalls, and we very seldom dial out on it. So it takes me weeks to notice that there are messages on the thing, and when I do, I don't want to sit through 11 messages of reconfirmations of past appointments, refi or real estate offers, political pitches, and someone wanting me to fill in for someone else in church three weeks ago. I can't fill in for anyone anyway - I'm already needed as crucifer or torch, every single week now. But still, today I got all the messages cleared, again, and I feel good about that.

I also finally went back to Mâvarin - or rather, the writing and editing thereof. Because I've slacked off for so long, I took it from the top: Heirs of Mâvarin, Chapter One, beginning to end. I managed to improve some phrasing and cut 60 words. My word count spreadsheet now gives a total of 159,092 words for that book, down from over 160K, probably as much as 162K or higher. The manuscript page count is 533. The last time I worked on it for any length of time, I got as far as chapter 9, so there probably won't be major cuts until the last four chapters. Still, it's worth going through it again from the beginning, partly to refresh my memory of the current version of everything, and also because it's been long enough that I might actually notice typos and awkward sentences that slip past me when the material is too familiar.

And when I get to the end, I'll do my best to market it to agents and YA publishers. I promise.

Tomorrow is Tuffy's followup with the vet. I'll let you know what the verdict is, if any.

Karen

Fun With PhotoStudio

Today was the first day of my unemployment that I really felt I had the day off. I actually did a little online jobhunting stuff, but I also cleaned up the kitchen (well, most of it), watched Doctor Who, messed around online, solved my Firefox problem and, best of all, got 10 hours of sleep.

And I had some photo editing fun.

As I've mentioned from time to time, I don't have PhotoShop on my computer. I have ArcSoft PhotoStudio, which came free with my Canon Scanner, and again with my VAIO computer. But even that is capable of doing lots of fun stuff.

These photos are all from Sunday evening:

This one is a fairly innocuous edit. All I did was boost the saturation and lighten the highlights to make the popcorn clouds stand out from the blue sky better.


This sunset/dusk shot, taken a little later, I have not lightened, darkened or saturated, or even sharpened. But I did use the "emboss" tool on a low setting. Can you tell?


I did saturate this one quite a bit, but I'm still not satisfied. That pole is in the way.

Twenty minutes with a cloning tool later...ah, that's better. Just don't look too closely at the parking spaces.


Here's another one I saturated. But let's do one more thing:

This was done with the pastel effect tool. I also tried out Watercolor and Oil Painting, but this was more interesting. It reminds me of sailboats in a harbor.


This last shot is a composite of two screen captures, only one of which was mine. The girl is a character in this past week's Doctor Who story, "Silence in the Library." She has a mysterious connection to a library the size of a planet, and about one minute into the episode she freaks out a bit because "Someone's in the Library." People on the Doctor Who Forum have been having fun putting various images on her tv; I thought I'd show her the people in a completely different library - the one at Sunnydale High!

Going to bed now. Try to amuse yourselves without me for a bit. I know you can!

Karen

Monday Photo Shoot #23: Open Up!

New Monday Shoot #23: Open up something and show us the treasures thus revealed. The thing you open can be a door, a window, a drawer, a box, a jar, a refrigerator...well, you get the idea. If it opens, it counts. Heck, I'll even accept open enrollment, if you can take a picture of it!

Here's what gave me the idea. Yes, it's those silly Matchbox cars again:


As I went to put them away this evening, I accidentally flipped open the hood on the Opel Diplomat sedan, revealing the little engine inside. It turns out that each of the three cars from the other night has a different thing that opens. The trunk opens on the Rolls Royce Silver Shadow Coupe (the teal convertible), and both doors open on the gold Lamborghini Miura. In case you were wondering, I had no idea what kinds of cars these toys represent until tonight. The info is printed on the bottom of each car.

Now let's open up some other fun stuff at the Museum of the Weird:


This is Spunky, a "pocketbook doll" and friend of Heidi from the early 1960s. Let's open her pocketbook:



Ta-dah! Spunky keeps several changes of clothing in her oversize purse!

Now let's open a few drawers in the storage unit where the Barbies, Remco dolls, china animals and Matchbox cars are kept:


Top drawer: Calamity Jiddle, her rocking horse and her rather shapeless cowboy hat; a Scott Bakula action figure from Enterprise; a Kiddle Kologne, various metal or plastic people, aliens and animals, a couple Hot Wheels cars and a Matchbox ambulance; an Avon cat and lots of other stuff.

Second drawer:


Original and repro Barbie dolls and boxes, a Pirate of the Caribbean (pre-Depp), and more Remco doll clothes.

Bottom drawer:

Vintage barkcloth and other fabric, including more curtains like the ones we have up in this room. The yellow airplane is for Remco's Heidi doll, and is missing some parts. But I'm keeping it anyway.

Your turn: open something up and photograph whatever is revealed. Post the result to your journal or blog, along with a link back here. Then come and leave a link to your entry in the comments below. I'll be back in a week with a roundup of results. Have fun, and have a great week!

Karen



P.S. While I'm at it, I may as well tell you how I did the round the world picture for the Round Robin. The shot above was the halfway stage. I placed the three cars at the base of the globe bank and took the photo. Then I used a magnetic lasso tool to select the cars and the surface they were on, and applied a motion blur to them.

Next I wasted time pasting a Hubble star field over the image and then erasing the stars to reveal the globe and cars beneath. I wasn't satisfied with the results, so I started over with the starfield as the base image. I used a circle select to copy the globe, pasted it over the stars this time, and used a soft edge to get rid of stray pixels around the edge of the globe itself. Finally I used the magnetic lasso again to select all three cars, and pasted them higher in the new composite photo. I merged the layers and voila! Cars in orbit! - KFB

Monday Photo Shoot Results: Magazines

Last week for the Monday Photo Shoot, I asked to see your magazines. Here's what people came up with:

Pat (DesLily) presents a variety of magazines featuring DeForest Kelley.

Jama raids her son's magazines for us, AND shows us one in which she's an "accidental model."

barrettmanor shows us two classic, vintage science fiction magazines.

Laura comes up with whole collections of magazines on a variety of subjects.

Kiva issues a dispatch from the road - the railroad, that is - as she shows us a coffee table full of reading material.

Good stuff, folks! One thing, though: several of you forgot to leave a link to your entry, or left the wrong link. I hope I found everyone anyway! If I missed someone, please let me know.

After hours of struggles and restarts, I've been forced onto Internet Explorer tonight because Firefox is almost completely dead in the water for me. I suspect that a new AIM update has either caused a conflict or corrupted a file. Phooey! Nevertheless, I should have the new Monday Photo Shoot topic posted very shortly.

Karen

Tiny Legacy

I'd better make this quick, and for the usual reason: it's late. In fact it's dawn, give or take a couple of minutes. I haven't been to bed yet. I've spent all afternoon, evening and night on Round Robin stuff, on watching, rewatching and reacting to the best episode of Doctor Who so far this year ("Silence in the Library" by Steven Moffat), on digging up stuff, photographing it and editing shots for this entry, and (believe it or not) on cleaning my desk.

In making the rounds of other Robins' entries, I had a few ideas about additional tiny things I could show you, stuff I forgot even existed. One thing in particular I thought of was my mom's old charm bracelet from the 1960s. It used to be on my desk, and I know I've photographed it before; but I can't find either the bracelet or the photos. Not in the short term, anyway.

But in looking for it, I went through a box in the bedroom, at the very bottom of which I found two more old pairs of my glasses, one of which I'm wearing now as computer glasses. I also went through my jewelry boxes, most of which used to belong to my mom and are full of her old jewelry and other tiny treasures. That's when I found these:


From left to right, we've got a felt pouch containing a single cut opal, an old cross and religious medal set, a musical globe pendant and a tiny wooden box from Guatemala. Let's take a closer look at each:


I suspect that the opal was a replacement stone for one of her rings that had an empty setting. I have at least one ring of hers like that. In the early 1980s I had an opal ring made for her, but this is a better stone than the little slivers in the one I commissioned.

The cross and the two medals (Sacred Heart and either Joseph or St. Christopher, not sure which) are attached to the patch of black leather with little steel brads. There is no writing on them to explain the significance, if any, but it strikes me as being something other than your basic religious jewelry.

I may have bought the little box at St. Michael's at an Advent bazaar; certainly Mom never made it to Guatemala. The lid doesn't fit the base very well, but it's handmade and may have expanded or contracted or both over the years.

The globe is the twin of one I received as a Christmas present from Worldwide Travel one year. I can't remember now whether Sandy of Worldwide gave my Mom this one for some reason, or whether I came across these for sale after receiving mine, and bought one for Mom. I suspect the latter.

Here it is with the writing on the tag showing. It's got something inside that makes it tinkle like a bell, sort of.

And here you go: a real closeup of the thing itself. It's not the most detailed map of the world, but it is a pretty little thing.


One more thing that turned up wasn't jewelry: this tiny padlock. I did not find a tiny key.

Karen