falling

It's been raining in earnest the last two weeks or so but we still need rain because it hasn't been raining water but leaves.

We weren't home even 24 hours last week and while we were gone the trees shed their leaves in earnest.

They had been dropping for weeks but not really serious about it.

Now, the yard lays under a blanket.

oak, pecan, maple, and tallow

gingko

fallbacks

I wish I could think of something smart or witty or topical to write about but we are closing in on finishing the mountain wall and that's pretty much all on my mind. At least the open house is over now so my days home will be freed up to read or relax or, more probably knowing me, finish up the peach box. I have two posts planned on some of the work we've been doing (the wall and the little castings) but not until it's all finished lest you tire of 'in progress' pics. Well, the little castings are done but I didn't get them photographed yet besides the group shot at the show in my last post.

On to my regular fallback...the yard.

Walking around the yard yesterday I noticed that the yellow jackets were swarming on the morning glory bush, harvesting the nectar I guess. I took several pictures but only these two came out. There were also a few of some other types of wasps and lots of lady bugs too.

Can you see all the yellow jackets? There were at least 8 on this cluster but I guess the other two flew away or are hidden.

This guy was trying to decide if I was a threat or not. Glad he made the right decision.

an arty glassy week/end

I'm tired and I don't want to go back into the city today. We just got home last night about 9:30. Now we are supposed to go back this afternoon for our work week on the mountain wall. This going into the city every week for the last 3 ½ months is beginning to tell on me. But we are so close to being finished. Two more weeks we think. We hope. The carving is done on panel 3 so we just have the shading to do and then the last panel.

We worked our week last week, came home Thursday evening and then turned around and went back on Friday for the open house at our friends' glass blowing studio. It was fun to see the regular participants, our friend Gene who does fused and stained glass, our friend Jennifer who flame works beads and makes some awesome earrings, and of course Dick and Kathy who host the open house in their studio and blow glass.

It was a different crowd this year seemed like. Some regulars showed up but many seemed to be missing. We did all right though. Sold a vase and a small bowl and one of the little pieces I made just for the show. Might have sold more but I just wasn't up for explaining over and over about why these small castings cost so much. Since we have so much commission work these days I wasn't motivated as much as I have been at past shows. For me, it was all about the socializing this year.

Saturday night after we closed down Marc and I headed over to our local gallery for their very last opening. Oliver and Nancy are retiring at the end of the year, closing the gallery. We'll have to find a new local gallery but it's going to be hard I think, finding the right one. Goldesberry Gallery was very unique, the only fine craft gallery in the city and they did very well for us over the years. We're going to miss them.

And Sunday after closing we all went to Star Pizza for dinner and relaxing and laughing with our friends which is why we didn't get home til 9:30 last night.

Now, today, I am ready for a day in which nothing is required of me.

fall reading list

-A very short list this quarter. I've been far too busy to read and my down time, what little I've had of it, has been spent mindlessly playing Spider solitaire.-

Goodbye For Now by Laurie Frankel – a love story of sorts. Sam, an exceptionally smart software engineer working for an online dating service develops an algorithm that actually matches you up with your soul mate. He tests it on himself and finds and falls in love with the one who happened to also be employed by the same company. In fact, it works so well, he gets fired because the company doesn't really want people to meet their soul mate on the first try because if they do then the company doesn't make money. When Sam's soul mate Meredith's grandmother dies suddenly, she is inconsolable and talks Sam into developing an algorithm that will let her email and chat with her dead grandmother. Eventually, with the help of Meredith's cousin, they develop it into a company to help people with their grief. As you might guess, the inevitable happens and Sam is left bereft. It's a sweet story about love, loss, mourning, and finally, living.

Black List by Brad Thor – what does it say about the reader (or about the heros) when the guys you are rooting for, the ones you want to win in the end, are basically cold blooded killers? Perspective is everything, right? The main character, Scot Harvath, a highly trained and skilled counterterrorism operative, kills, like, 21 people before the book is over. Granted, they were all bad guys who were trying to kill him first and his usual victims were government identified enemies of the state. Still... The story unfolds as a female hacker, Carolyn, is trying to send off terribly incriminating evidence of a plot to overthrow the government by releasing a virus to bring down the internet before she is caught and killed. There follows an attempt to kill Harvath, his boss, and all the other operatives that work for that organization, and it is mostly successful, in an attempt to set up a frame for the coming 'digital Pearl Harbor'. The story continues as Harvath meets up with an internationally known hacker, the recipient of the flash drive, as they try to unravel the attacks on Caroline and Harvath and the Carlton Group. It's a good story, well written, and there is a lot of scary information about surveillance techniques, the role of the internet, and just how often the government spies on us thanks to the abrogation of our civil rights in the aftermath of 9/11.

Corduroy Mansions by Alexander McCall Smith – I was a little disappointed in this novel which was fairly entertaining and enjoyable enough. It was very reminiscent of Maeve Binchy with a central location, in this case the old home turned into three flats, and separate story lines for all the characters that occasionally intersect but not as well done. I didn't feel like he tidied everything up in the end, there were a lot of loose ends. It's like the story just stopped without any resolution. But beside that it was a decent, but not great, read.

Earth Unaware by Orson Scott Card and Aaron Johnston – this is a prequel to Ender's Game and it centers on the first contact between humans and formics. Out in the Kuiper Belt, the free miner families excavate metals from the asteroids and send them by unmanned quickship to one of the Weigh Stations that buys the metals. The families live their whole lives on their spaceship homes in the outer reaches of the solar system. On El Cavador, Edimar, whose job it is to scan space and interpret the data from the Sky Eye, finds an object moving much faster than any human ship is capable of and decelerating on a path that will take it to the solar System. Unable to contact the Italians family with whom they have just had a trade meeting, they hurry to intercept them when they notice another small craft coming from the direction of, what they now believe to be, an alien spacecraft. They are too late however and find the four ships of the Italians to be just a debris field. While they search for survivors, the probe returns and they have an encounter with the aliens. On board El Cavador, Victor volunteers to modify a quickship and take the 6 month journey to Earth to warn the home planet at great risk to his life. After Victor's departure, El Cavador contacts two other ships in the vicinity to come up with a plan to try and stop the now obviously hostile aliens. It's a good book, but then I'm a big fan of Orson Scott Card. Ender's Game is the story of how humans finally triumph over the formics, the hero of which is a young boy.

Old Twentieth by Joe Haldeman – another sci-fi tale. I had a hard time getting into this one which is why it took me so long to read. I finally finished it this morning and my end reaction was WTF!? I thought I knew what the story was about but now I'm not so sure. A vaccine of sorts is developed that basically causes the body to repair itself ad infinitum making people, for all intents and purposes, immortal. Because, as we all know, when pharmaceuticals first come out they are exorbitantly expensive so that at first only the wealthy and powerful can avail themselves of it. Eventually it would have become available to everyone but panic took hold of the population and a war between the immortals and the nots broke out. The immortals won by developing a toxin that killed everyone that had not had the treatment. They soon discovered how much they had depended on the segment of society that hadn't been wealthy enough to have had access to the treatment. This is all narrated and filled in as background by a guy who was 16 or so when the war happened. He's over two hundred now and on a starship with 800 other volunteers headed for an earth-like planet 20 light years away. His job on this multi-ship expedition is to run the 'time-machine' for the residents, a sort of virtual reality travel agent/technician to the past (the total sensory illusions are built up out of people's memories and histories so only the past is available). At least half the story takes place in the time machine on the ship where Jake begins to notice 'anomolies' and one day on one of his 'observational trips' he meets himself and himself says 'we have to talk'. Anyway, people start dying, the first two while they were in the machine and then they hear from earth that people are dying there too, mostly first generation immortals, about half in their own time machines and true to form, a third person dies on the ship but not in the machine. There are discussions about going into suspended animation and Jake, as a 1^st generation immortal makes plans to submit until brighter minds can find out what is happening and fix it but before he does he wants to go back in one more time and talk to the program that has recently revealed itself as an AI. He has begun to realize that things are not what he thought. Life is an illusion and it's on a loop while the 600+ surviving in stasis immortals hurtle to their future 18 light years away in a dead ship. Or was that also illusion?

How It All Began by Penelope Lively – An older woman is mugged from behind, falls, and breaks her hip. The story starts as she hits the ground. Writing in a narrative style, the author tells the stories of the people affected by this happenstance and how their lives are changed because of it. The actions of a complete stranger cause a chain of events that affect far more than anyone would suppose. Took me a while to get into it but that probably has more to do with my state of mind than the quality of the book.

Z is for...

This is my last entry for the Alphabet Game. I am finally at 'Z'. Unlike my friend Jane of the messy hair, from whom I got this idea, who finished her series in a timely fashion, it has taken me 1 year, 9 months, 15 days to get through mine. Once again, if you haven't been following along all this time and would like to see the other entries, there is a link on my side bar under the heading 'stuff about me'. If you are from the link, keep clicking on 'older posts' at the bottom until you finally get to A.

Z is for...zany, zebra, zone, zipper

Z is for zipper.

I have a pet peeve. It's one shared by many people, I think, only my peeve is in direct opposition to theirs.

The peeve in question is how drivers act when approaching a lane ending sign on a highway.

Quite a few people believe that as soon as they see that sign they should, must, move over to the lane that continues even if it doesn't end for another 500 or 1000 yards. They dutifully move over as the traffic gets slower and slower as it approaches the merge point.

And they get angrier and angrier as they sit there 'doing the right thing' in their minds while other drivers speed on by to the merge point. A lot of road rage is generated this way with some people in the continuing lane edging over to try to prevent drivers from passing them in the lane that is ending further up.

I don't get that. What is the purpose of abandoning a perfectly good lane long before it ends just to get slowed down to a near stop as you creep toward the merge point? Perhaps they see it as good manners on their part and bad manners on the other driver's part.

Me? I'm one of those drivers that speed along to the merge point and then move over.

There are also overpasses where highways intersect that take you from one freeway to another, and these ramps often start out as two lanes and merge down to one. No one is moving over long before they get on the ramp even knowing it will merge down to one lane. No one gets upset, no road rage, no one trying to prevent other drivers from passing them before the merge point. The two lanes simply merge at the merge point and people continue on.

It's like a zipper. You take turns. One car from this lane, one car from that lane, one car from this lane, one car from that lane. Easy.

So why is it different when a freeway or highway or even a surface road loses a lane and traffic must merge? Because there is a sign that alerts you to the loss of a lane?

It's a zipper, people! Just keep going til you merge at the merge point. Be polite, take turns, don't be a jackass if you choose to move over early and get slowed down by the drivers passing you and merging before you.

Now, those people who use the shoulders to pass a long line of slow traffic and then barge in in front of drivers in an actual lane is totally different.

I'm all for paint balling them as they pass.

If I had a paint ball gun that is.

fun day

Yesterday the family came out to the country house for Thanksgiving, children and spouses and a friend and grandchildren. Even my sister stopped by on her way home from spending the day with her daughter and grandkids. The kids all came loaded down with food and all we had to do was cook the turkey which Marc did early in the day.

We pulled an assortment of chairs (an antique wheel chair, 2 beach loungers, plastic patio chair, metal patio chair, and a 5 gallon bucket) out into the Big Back Yard, put up the hammock, and sat around enjoying the beautiful afternoon, drinking beer and messing with the kids.

Mikey and his dad were throwing the football around when it went into one of the pecan trees and pecans rained down. The game with the ball quickly changed to knocking pecans out of the trees. The grandkids dragged out one of the ladders and climbed into the trees with a baseball bat. The ball was no longer thrown to another person but kicked into the canopies.

Warming up all the food in a timely fashion was a challenge in our one oven but no one seemed to mind that everything was less than hot. We crowded around the dining room table and stuffed ourselves.

When evening came, Mikey pulled one of the burn barrels up by the lawn chairs and started a fire, not that it was cold, and Mikey's friends from down the street showed up with fire crackers so the boys all had a grand time.

Eventually everyone headed home except for the four grandkids who are staying with us til Sunday.

It was a good day.

Y is for...

sun salutation

This is the second to last entry in my alphabet game. If you want to read them all, there is a link on my side bar under the Stuff About Me heading but you'll have to scroll down all the way to the bottom to get them in the proper sequence. Not that it really matters.

Y is for...yellow, yarrow, youth, yoga

Y is for yoga

I was introduced to yoga when I was 20 years old...I think. It could have been a year or so earlier when I was initiated into TM (that's transcendental meditation) when I was 19 but I don't really remember any instruction in yoga, just sitting in the group sessions or alone at home with legs crossed trying to ignore how uncomfortable I was becoming. The meditation thing didn't last long with me. I was only successful with it a time or two. Mostly I just fell asleep or was fidgety trying to focus on my mantra til the time was up.

But the following year, the year I lived in Chicago, some friends and I hitch-hiked to D.C. for the anti-war rally and we met some folk who were involved in Ananda Marga, a meditation group with a different spiritual leader than TM. I had become disenchanted with TM early on because they were very much about the money. They charged you to be initiated into their organization.

In D.C., my boyfriend and I had become separated from our friends and we were waiting, had been waiting for a while, at the designated 'meet up again' spot when we were approached by a couple of guys offering us respite and an eye out for our friends.

They offered us food and water and a bathroom and rest, united us with the rest of our group and found us a ride back. They asked for nothing in return. Neither did they try to convert us or entice us in any way but they were so serene and selfless and kind and you name it and so we learned some stuff about who they were. Which I am not going into now because this isn't really about them.

It happened that there were only three teachers in this country at the time who were qualified to initiate anyone into their 'meditative' life and one of them lived in Chicago. So one evening found some of us at the home of an Indian man and his family while he talked to us about his spiritual leader and meditation and yoga and then he led us in some simple yoga to relax our bodies and he initiated us one by one into meditation with a mantra. I don't remember if it was all on the same night or if it was the second time we went but what I do remember is that while he softly spoke to us, his aura expanded with a bright white light until it filled the room. Seriously. It was awesome.

My friend and I continued to go once a week for a while but we had to take the train out to a suburb and it was in the evenings because the man had a regular job and then a few months later I moved back to Texas. I did not become an adherent to the Indian guru but I did retain the yoga and the mantra.

Even though I've never been able to develop a daily or even weekly home practice I find yoga to be very beneficial and it's one of the things or habits that I attribute my fairly good health to. It keeps you limber and agile and strengthens your muscles. It massages your organs and helps them function, it rids you of toxins through measured breathing and teaches you to pay attention to your body.

I have used meditation and yoga sporadically as needed or as opportunity presented itself in my life. For the past 20 years or so I have been involved in one or another weekly gatherings with a teacher, though not always every week or even every year.

My most recent weekly get together was in the home of a wonderful amazing woman who would lead a small group of friends in yoga and meditation. Alas, she moved to New Orleans to be near her daughter and her family.

It's been over two years now since I have done any yoga on a regular basis and I can feel the difference. Out here though my options are limited so I best find a way to set aside a little time one day a week at home if I want to continue being able to get up off the floor.

Not that I'm on the floor a lot unless I'm doing yoga.