Messing With Siri
She‘s an awful serious sort.
And most of the time she says to me “I don’t know what you mean by….”
But occasionally she’s on her game:
Month: November 2011
Old Dogs and New Tricks
Woof, baby…this ol’ New Mexican just learned something new.
I knew the the Zia on our state’s flag was a Native American symbol representing the sun. What I didn’t know is there were meanings going far deeper than that.
I was idly Googling my homestate and came across this from the Grants/Cibola County Chamber of Commerce website.
So there you go! Our simple, elegant flag with a complexity of meaning. I do love that about my Fair New Mexico.
Bonus Factoid:
According to Wikipedia: “New Mexico has the best-designed flag of any U.S. state, territory or Canadian province, according to a 2001 survey by the North American Vexillological Association.”
The Earth Has Turned
I suppose it’s time for me, a summer lovin’ sunshine dancin’ kind of a gal, to admit that it is, in fact, winter. Or at least very late Fall.
The weather has turned. It’s getting a bit colder.
And so I present the surest sign of winter. In the same way they yank a startled Punxsutawney Phil from his burrow, here is my own animal based divination tool:
A cat with her butt on the heater vent.
Not just any heater vent, the best vent in the house. It’s a cut out in the bathroom cabinets and the ten pound animal steals all the heat. While taking a shower on a rather cold damp morning, I might wish to enjoy the heat from that vent. That would be a no.
As soon as the heat kicks on, there she’ll be.
It starts out with a simple “oh hey, that’s not bad.” Just the back end getting toasty. It’s simple. Demure.
Once the tail region has achieved critical warmness, then a self-satisfied flop ensues.
I don’t even know what to say at this point. I’m almost offended. (and if I think about the physics of the thing….the warm air is headed straight up Broadway, right? Can that even be comfortable?)
“What?”
Grace. Class. Dignity. None of those words can be used to describe my feline.
All photos Copyright 2011, Karen Fayeth and subject to the Creative Commons license found in the far right column of this page. Photos taken with my brand spankin’ new iPhone 4s and the Camera+ app.
The First Time – NFL Edition
Sunday rolled around and The Good Man and I had something special on the agenda. We had a date with Candlestick Park and a dance with the San Francisco 49ers football team.
The Good Man had attended professional football games in the past, but I never had. I’ve spent much time inside Candlestick, but it was back in the late 90’s, watching my beloved San Francisco Giants get brutalized. The Giants moved to their new yard in 2000 and I hadn’t been to Candlestick since.
I wondered how the ‘Stick had held up over the past eleven years. The answer? About how you’d expect.
Photo by Karen Fayeth, Copyright 2011
Once upon a time I was a huge 49ers fan (going back to living in New Mexico where they were my team of choice). But over the past decade they kept stomping on my heart over and over, so I had to break up with them.
But this year…with their shiny 8-1 record…I might have been woo’d back to their side.
I think I’ve finally worked out my issues with this guy (that’s the long suffering quarterback, first round draft pick, Alex Smith).
Photo by Karen Fayeth, Copyright 2011
I gave up on him when I kept shouting at my television “THROW THE DAMN BALL ALREADY!!!” and he wouldn’t throw the ball. And then he’d get clobbered.
On Sunday, he threw the ball. Oh he threw it, indeed. And he ran it, and he handed it off and did everything a calm, cool quarterback should do.
Photo by Karen Fayeth, Copyright 2011
Oh, hello Kendall Hunter. Welcome to the end zone.
Photo by Karen Fayeth, Copyright 2011
This morning, the local sports radio show keeps talking about the amazing atmosphere at the ‘Stick on Sunday.
It was crazy.
Isn’t it always like that?
Photo by Karen Fayeth, Copyright 2011
For the non-baseball fans, I hear a lot of talk about how baseball is so slow, there’s waiting around, blah blah blah.
You know what? There is a lot of waiting around in football too.
Photo by Karen Fayeth, Copyright 2011
But there is an awful lot more blood in football. Yikes.
Photo by Karen Fayeth, Copyright 2011
I guess that tends to happen when your whole intent, play by play, is smashing into very large people. Our seats were great and I sure did see a lot of men crash into other men. Sometimes I had to close one eye and look away. That’s usually when the guys around me would shout “yeeeah!”
Boys. Hmph.
Photo by Karen Fayeth, Copyright 2011
Football is a crazy sport. A crazy, fun, outrageous, holy cow YEAH baby kind of sport.
In short…I loved it. Seeing it live was really something spectacular.
All photos by Karen Fayeth and subject to the Creative Commons license found in the far right column of this page.
Camera Obscura
According to Wikipedia: “A camera obscura (Latin; “camera” is a “vaulted chamber/room”, “obscura” means “dark”, camera obscura = “darkened chamber/room”) is an optical device that projects an image of its surroundings on a screen. The device consists of a box or room with a hole in one side. Light from an external scene passes through the hole and strikes a surface inside where it is reproduced, upside-down, but with color and perspective preserved.”
According to me, a camera obscura is one of the fun, wacky, quirky things I discovered in my first tentative days living in the Bay Area.
Down at Ocean Beach, over by the Cliff House, there is a really wonderful camera obscura that was installed in 1946.
Just for whimsy, it’s actually shaped like a camera (the camera obscura was a precursor to pinhole cameras and the beginnings of photography).
Photo by Karen Fayeth, Copyright 2011
The camera obscura at the Cliff House used to be right next to the Musee Mechanique, a mesmerizing collection of vintage penny arcade games. The Musee Mechanique moved to Fisherman’s Wharf in 2002, but the camera obscura lives on at Ocean Beach.
The little triangle mirror apparatus at the top spins slowly, so you get this really enchanting 360-degree view of the beach, Seal Rocks, and the surroundings. It’s all reflected onto this white dish shaped table in the center of the small, dark room.
Between the camera obscura and the Musee Mechanique, I could get lost for hours. Fresh off the highway from New Mexico, it was some of the coolest stuff I’d ever seen in my life.
When The Good Man and I paid a visit to the Cliff House this weekend, I was so excited to see the camera obscura is still there. It wasn’t open that day, but it’s there. And that makes me happy.
It was added to the National Register of Historic places in 2001, and is now under the conservancy of the National Park Service, so hopefully it will project on for many years.
The camera obscura makes me so nostalgic. I adore it!
That’s me. My purse was under my jacket, so that’s why my jacket tails are sticking out at such an angle. That and the fact that I’m simply a dork of epic proportions.
Photo taken by The Good Man, Copyright Karen Fayeth 2011
Photos Copyright Karen Fayeth 2011, and taken with an iPhone4 using the Hipstamatic and the Camera+ apps.