Posted on

Happy Holidays!

Hi blog readers!

Just a quick check in – here are some photos from recent activities:

First is a photo of my finished garage – it is like daylight in there with the new LED tube lights.  And it’s nice and clean!

Next, one shot from the marching band – I took a quick photo while we were in between songs:

Next, some holiday greetings from Kenn:

And yours truly modelling my Koala “onesie” Christmas morning at the neighbors’:

OK – some errands to run – talk soon!

Posted on

Catching Up

Yes, it has been a while since I posted.  I caught a terrible cold right after Thanksgiving.  I slept 12 hours EVERY NIGHT for like 3 weeks in a row!  And I didn’t feel like blogging.  So sue me!

I am feeling better but I still cough when I get up in the morning and I am still phlegm-y.  Ugh!

Anyway, I had people over for Thanksgiving dinner.  I made stuffed delicata squash, vegan mac n cheese, mushroom gravy, and stuffing.  Chris and Polly brought a really yummy couscous salad.  Here’s our meal:

So, what else have I been up to … I finished raking leaves, and I’ve been painting.  I got the first floor bathroom floor replaced, and am in progress with replacing the insulation in the ceiling of the garage.  Drywall to be installed tomorrow!  And got a bunch of crap cleaned out of there while I was at it!

I made a “leaf tree” for my ex-boss who is retiring.  We had over 240 people sign each leaf individually.  I painted the tree, and then pasted all of the leaves onto it.  First time I’ve used Rubber Cement since high school I think!  Her party was last week and she (and everybody) really liked the tree!

And, I joined a Runner’s World Challenge – at least 1 mile per day from Thanksgiving to New Year’s.  I joined late because I was sick, and my IT Band is still acting up (although is much better) so I have been hiking rather than running, but, I’ve enjoyed doing the challenge anyway.  I usually do more than 1 mile.  And there is a Facebook page for it so everybody encourages everybody else, asks for advice, and posts their progress – it is world wide so lots of neat photos too!

  And we had our first snow! 3 miles on this trail

Here’s my latest painting:


Here is a little ‘colander art’ thanks to the sun coming into the kitchen the other morning and making a nice shadow!

Anyway, I think I’m all caught up now.  I saw a neat idea for making a ‘Christmas Tree’ out of branches wrapped in Christmas lights.  I’m going to give it a shot – I found some decent branches out in the yard.  I’ll check back in when I get it done!  Talk soon!

UPDATE:
I forgot to mention that I moved nine 50 lb bags of wood pellets yesterday – that’s 450 lbs!!  What a workout!  And I also helped a lady at the grocery store – she was doing self-checkout for the first time, and she needed me to walk her through it.  Anyway, I plan to make that branch tree today so I’ll do a new post later!

Posted on

Checking In

It’s been a while since I posted.  Not much going on, but here goes anyway.

What has been happening:
1.   LOTS of leaf raking and blowing – NOT DONE (but temporary progress made)!

2.  Trying to perfect my vegan mac n cheese recipe – DONE! (Sorry – I didn’t take a photo of it, but, it looks just like you would think mac n cheese would look).  The base of the recipe is raw cashews.  Pretty good if I do say myself!  If you want me to post the recipe, make a comment on the blog (it will be private).

3.  Tending to my sore ITB.  KT Tape is the best!

So, this particular application was for ‘sore knee’ in general.  Today I looked on their website and there was an application specifically for ITB so I put it on today.  If you’ve never used KT Tape before, it’s pretty miraculous.  It stays on even if it gets wet, so you can wear the tape for up to 5 days.  By the way, I’m not sure what I did.  I got up last Saturday morning and my knee felt a little sore, and then I went for a run/walk of about 4 miles and then my knee felt bad.  Yes, I know, bad idea.  I know that now.

4. Painting.

This is a surprise present for somebody.  I don’t think she reads my blog.  For those of you reading this, if you recognize ‘who’ this is – shhhh!

And more painting.   I did these two a few weeks ago.  The first shot shows the orientation of how I painted it (mostly white at the bottom)

However, as I was walking past it from a different direction, I decided that I liked it better ‘upside down’ as shown below.  I posted the two different shots on FB and about 99% of the people who commented also like it better upside-down.  This is the second painting that the final ‘orientation’ changed from how I painted it to something else.

You may notice that those two pictures are blurry.  My LG G5, which used to take phenomenal photos, has decided that it is stuck in ‘closeup focus.’  I Googled the issue and it initially sounded like it was a software update.  But yesterday I found that a few people returned their phones and got new replacements, for minimal cost.  I may check out that option.  The wide angle lens is fine, just the regular one is messed up.  Very frustrating!

So, that made me think about getting a new point and shoot camera, since I will be travelling a lot and want to capture as much as I can.  Went to a camera store yesterday, and for what I wanted (fit in pocket, point and shoot, wifi, not that expensive) the Canon Elph 190 IS was recommended.  I looked it up online when I got home and it was not particularly recommended.  But I think the online review was targeted to ‘real’ photographers who probably also have DSLR cameras with lots of lenses.  So, I think I will go get it in the next few days.  Stay tuned!

5.  Watching some interesting movies.  Went to see “78/52 The Psycho Shower Scene” – if you want to see that scene deconstructed and learn about some of the detail of how it was shot, then go see it!  It was fascinating.  Watched “A Cure for Wellness.”  This is one of those movies that you either love or hate – I doubt there’s much in between.  It was beautifully shot, but had a lot of disturbing things in it.  I feel like I need to watch it again to take it all in.  The acting was top notch.

6.  Shredding.  I had paperwork from the EIGHTIES!!  Gotta get rid of that sh!t!

7.  Other ‘get rid of stuff’ cleaning.

OK, I know this was not the most interesting post, but it just seemed like I hadn’t posted in a while so I thought I’d check in.

I’m going to be trying out some new recipes next week – stuffed delicata squash, vegan mushroom gravy.  And I’ll probably spring my vegan mac n cheese on my unsuspecting guests.  I’ll report back on how those go.

All righty then.  Back to it!  Talk (relatively) soon!

 

 

Posted on

I HAD

Yes, I HAD.  Hiked Across Delaware!  15-ish miles!

This was a walk organized by the Wilmington Trail Club.  We met in Delaware City DE and were bussed to Chesapeake City MD and walked back to Delaware City along the C&D (Chesapeake and Delaware) canal, on the north side.  I did this with my friend Priscilla.

You can see the canal below:

It goes from the Delaware Bay to the Chesapeake Bay (or vice versa)

We began on the Ben Cardin (Senator in MD) Trail:

Most of the walk was right along the canal, and this entire trail is paved.  There aren’t a lot of ‘get on /get off’ spots so the path is used more by bicyclists than walkers.

The Ben Cardin Trail turns into the Michael N. Castle Trail when it passes into Delaware (previous governor of DE)

 Beautiful Trees

 Rest stop location

  Nice Pasture

The bridge in this photo is for trains.  The lattice-y part raises up when tall ships need to pass thru.  It’s raised up in this photo – but we saw a train go over the bridge earlier in our walk!

The Summit Bridge (DE Rt 896).  About 4 miles in. (Actually, now that I look at it, I think this is the Roth Bridge (see more below).  I guess I didn’t take photos of the Summit Bridge.   And, I didn’t take a lot of photos on the hike – we were trying to not let anybody pass us so I didn’t want to stop too much!

The Roth Bridge (DE Rt 1).  I think this was around 8.5 miles in.

The St. Georges Bridge, DE Rt 13 (you can also see it in the background of the Roth Bridge photo).  The Roth Bridge is now the main way people go when they are headed to lower Delaware, where there are a lot of beaches – St. Georges bridge used to be the way to go,.  The Roth Bridge isn’t all that old, and is named after William V. Roth Jr, who was a DE Senator.
By this point we had walked a little over 10 miles.  Our legs were aching and we wanted to be done!  We stopped here for lunch, so we able to sit down and get off our feet for a little bit.

A few miles later, we knew we were getting close now – we were heading away from the canal and into Delaware City.  This is about 13.5 miles in.

The African Union Church Cemetery – you can see it fenced in, in the background

Beautiful fall colors!

15-ish miles later, we made it back to Delaware City!

Our post-hike feast!  Smoked mussels, smoked shrimp, chips, popcorn, and, of course, WINE (both Red, and White)!

Until the next adventure …

Posted on

Day x Photos

I finished my Day 7 photos, actually going to Day 8 because I accidentally took a photo of myself – I’m not even sure how I did it!

Anyway, here they are:

DAY 1:  This was part of Longwood Gardens’ lantern exhibit

DAY 2:  I took this photo in Truckee when I was on my 27 day trip.  I thought it had good texture that would be enhanced by changing it to B&W

DAY 3:  One of those humungous groups of birds, flying overhead when I was out for a walk

DAY 4:  A bluebird house with a squirrel deterrent, at a local park.  I thought the tilted birdhouse looked a little ‘jaunty.’

DAY 5:  Longwood Gardens, on a meadow walk.  The clouds over Longwood always have an interesting shape

DAY 6:  Taken while I was waiting for help at the local AAA office – looking into travel insurance for my trip to Norway.  They were having a big sale so I scored an eyeglass fix-it kit, power converters and a car/home phone charger – all for $5!

DAY 7:  View from the beach house sun room

DAY 8:  I have no idea how I even took this photo, and didn’t even know I took it until much later in the day when I was looking at my photos folder on my phone!  I thought it was a funny shot and angle though.

I took some other photos at the beach – including them here for fun.  They are not B&W though!


I love this hotel – The Sands.  I think of Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra every time I see it!

  Great Halloween House!  It’s a Bed and Breakfast Inn!  Would YOU stay there?

 Revelation Brewery


An unhappy deviled egg – Oh no Mr. Bill!


Found treasures at the local park.  There must have been a kiddie event – these were scattered all over the pavilion

Posted on

Downtime

While I’m home and not travelling or doing stuff to the house, I thought I would still try to stay creative.  So, I decided to go through some photos I’ve taken over the past few years and post them here.

For this post, today anyway, I’m just going to put one photo.  I’ll either add more to this post or add multiple photos in future posts.  I’ll see how I feel and how ambitious I am with my creativity.

This morning I actually was just trying to clean up some photos and I came across this one.  I don’t remember composing it this way specifically, but I think it’s cool how the guy’s bowed head is in between the arms of the 3 statues.  The name of the sculpture is ‘The Three Shades.’

In Dante’s Divine Comedy, the shades, i.e. the souls of the damned, stand at the entrance to Hell, pointing to an unequivocal inscription, “Abandon hope, all ye who enter here”. 

I think I need to drag out my Word Press ‘how to’ books to see how to add larger photos here.

Stay tuned!

UPDATE:  I decided to play with some editing stuff on some photos.  Here they are.  All of the photos have been cropped and enhanced in some way.


This is a lake in Oregon.  I believe I posted a photo of it before, but I cropped it and enhanced the image, trying to make it look like an old postcard.  This is from the return trip from Bend to Reno.


This one is also from the eclipse trip, but on the way from Reno to Bend.  Again, enhanced to look older.


This is from my trip to Tennessee.  This was in Virginia, down the street from that cyborg that I posted about earlier.


This is in Tennessee, on the lake near Chip’s family home.


This is from the hash we ran in Tempe.  Rotated, cropped, enhanced.  We had stopped so the other crazy people could build a human pyramid.  I was more interested in the fact that there was one shoe lying next to a trash can.  Where is the other shoe?  Somebody asked me if it looked like it was my size.  It did.  But, I didn’t want to put my foot into it.  I wonder why …

This has been fun.  I think I’ll try to be more timely with my editing from now on!  Hope you enjoy!

Posted on

A Comment from a Celebrity!

Wow!  I got my first comment from a celebrity!  L. Ron Hubbard!  I approved the comment so you should be able to see it!  It’s attached to the post I did on October 13!  He asked me about goat yoga – how did he know I got some info about that??

I’m thinking I should go visit him!  Maybe he’ll introduce me to Tom Cruise!!!

Posted on

Gettings Things Done

Been home a week now, and fidgety to get something done.  Not quite ready to go anywhere … yet – but, I am thinking about Falling Waters (Frank Lloyd Wright house) and/or Mount Rushmore maybe before the year is over.  Falling Waters would include a stop in Pittsburgh since I have only been through Pittsburgh, not TO Pittsburgh.

NOTE – this post is probably going to be relatively boring, but what the heck

So, wanting to get things done, I did a bit of looking around this week.  First off, I picked out new wallpaper for the first floor bathroom.  This bathroom originally had a drop ceiling (I didn’t really know why until I had it replaced with a drywall ceiling – the contractor had to add ‘sister joists’ because one of the pipes – I think the toilet – hung too low to attach a drywall ceiling to the existing joists).  So, I have to finish priming that drywall so I can paint the ceiling.  And while that was going on, I removed the existing wallpaper in that bathroom, which was really dated.  And I was going to just paint the walls, but they’re not in too good a shape, so, I decided to re-wallpaper the walls.  But, of course, I have to finish priming those too.  But anyway, I ordered the new wallpaper, it will be ‘in’ next week, and I am going to try to finish priming this week so I can get it hung when it comes in.  I picked out something somewhat neutral but I think it’s pretty cool.

So, today I put in the wallpaper order.  After stopping at the flooring store.  I went back to the place that installed my living room carpet – it is not a chain, and they did a great job, so I wanted to give them my business again.  Picked out a bathroom floor sample (replacing sheet vinyl with plank vinyl that has a wood look) and a bedroom carpet sample (bedroom carpet is original to the house – I can’t even tell you what color it is – not taupe, not tan, some color that has no name but was probably cheap – about time right?  House was built in 1986).  This new carpet is low pile but with a little bit of design ‘carved’ in.  Just need to figure out the right color.

I did all the square foot calculations multiplied by the $ per square foot – not too bad!  Hope I did them right!

So, I am excited to have a new bathroom floor and carpet, sometime soon!  I think I have picked out the colors!

All right.  I will stop boring you with these household things.  I’ll keep you posted as I finish ordering and the installs start.  Wallpaper will probably be first – that will be done by me.  Wish me luck!

Posted on

The Stats – Part 2 (Clothes Worn)

As promised (or warned, depending on how you look at it), I am going to give you the list of all the clothes I brought with me.  Keep in mind I travelled with my purse, a backpack, and ONE suitcase.  And I wasn’t dinged for my suitcase exceeding the weight limit on my flight back from PHX.  It took a lot of thought to pack for this trip due to the many changes in climate that I went through.  Remember, I experienced rain, snow, hot (Phoenix was 99oF one day) and cold (Truckee got down to 22oF) and everything in between!  And, also remember – I had no idea when I was coming back, or where I was going to  end up (to a certain extent) Continue reading “The Stats – Part 2 (Clothes Worn)”