Category: weekending

Didja ever…

Have a meal so good, you actually missed it when it was gone?

Yesterday, The Good Man and I spent the morning on house clean up. We’re still going through boxes and boxes of “combined home” items, getting rid of stuff, repacking, cleaning up storage, all of that.

By lunchtime, I was sweaty, my back hurt, and I was hungry. I had a hankering for a tasty sandwich, and remembered that a local spot, Max’s, has a good offering.

I’ll spare you all the gory details and cut to the chase. Max’s serves up a very, very nice Reuben. I mean the kind with the perfectly toasted rye bread, melty cheese everywhere, tart sauerkraut, delicious salty corned beef and thick thousand island.

Oh yeah, baby!

Served with cucumber salad on the side, TGM and I dove in with gusto. So delicious.

When the feeding frenzy was over, bellies round as we pondered the world around us, the TGM said it, “that was good….I wish I’d eaten slower…I kind of miss it now.”

Truth is…today, I still kind of miss that sandwich.

Now that there is the sign of some good eats.

I’m *certain* we both worked hard enough all morning to justify the outrageous calorie consumption…right….?

Oh Dear!

I believe we have a rogue deer in my part of the world.

How, might you ask, would I know that?

Because, I am a woman of New Mexico, daughter of a hunter and champion poo identifier.

That, my friends, is a healthy, well-fed ruminant.

So normally this wouldn’t bother me, but this little deposit, made Saturday evening, is located less than a foot from my home.

True, I live pretty much in the suburbs, but it’s not THAT suburban. We do have some open land a couple miles away from us, but it’s pretty tight housing and people where I’m at.

Here in California, we are SO anti the mountain lion, one gets spotted at a fair distance and the *freak* out happens. Quickly it’s captured and relocated or killed.

See, if we hadn’t killed all the mountain lions, those stick-legged animals wouldn’t be leaving their leavings in my front yard!

That’s the circle of life, people!

I’d be more than happy to help Bambi the Yard Visitor make his or her way onto my dinner plate, but noooo, California can’t have *that*.

Bambi is cute and doesn’t have sharp paws, so he gets to stick around, ruining fences, gardens and causing havoc but the feline meat eaters get ostracized.

*sigh*

(Note to my readers: oh yes I DID just post a poo photo on my blog! If the award winning Pioneer Woman can do it, well, so can I!)

The humble beginnings…

…of a really good glass of wine. (or for that matter, a really bad glass of wine….)

It all begins here:
(click for bigger view)

This weekend The Good Man took me up to wine country for birfday celebratory fun. And some tasty wine!

Photo by Karen Fayeth

That’s how you know…

At dinner Friday night with a friend I hadn’t seen in a while.

We discussed my birthday lament.

She looked me dead in the eye and said, “You do not *even* look forty!”

Whether true or a total lie, that’s how you know you have a friend who is a keeper.

Seriously old school

Technologically speaking, I seem to be regressing.

Been using my high end Canon camera with all the whizz bang features and fancy lenses for a while.

And then I go and buy some cheapie plastic cameras and start having fun with 35mm film again.

This weekend I went one step farther back to luddite-ville. I went to Cyanotype. Known to the real world as Sunlight Prints.

Billed as a toy for kids, I’m having a heck of a lot of fun. I bought a kit off a sale table at Barnes & Noble a while back and used up (and ruined most of) the paper. Then I bought a paper refill at a toy store and kept trying. My technique is improving.

The whole thing is a chemical process kicked off by ultraviolet light from the sun.

So you get this light blue piece of paper with the right stuff chemical on it, compose your arrangement of items (in the shade), expose to the sun, then rinse it off with water and voila!

This is the same stuff that original blueprints were made from.

I guess Cyanotype isn’t so out of style, though, because in one of the buildings where I work, they have a huge art installation of sunlight prints on slabs of wood showing a variety of ferns. It’s gorgeous! Maybe I should peddle my prints for a buck to the powers that be at work, eh? *grin*

Anyhow, here I am, rocking it 1842 style! With a little help from a blooming rose bush in my front yard and a sunny April Saturday afternoon.

(These scans don’t do the Prussian blue any sort of justice. Also, where you see a double image, that’s because the wind was blowing my compositions around….)