Pretty pictures

The only photo on this page I took. Embroidered roses with butterflies on silk. Need to find a stand for it as the window light will bleach it

Tessa at the melting ice festival

they set up a small track where kids could try x-country skiing. This is Daniel

Aloes in bloom near my brother's house taken by my niece. Good to know there will be some flowers

anemone in tide pool near his house taken by niece as is the following

I looked at the weather for this area. Rain every day.

As I write this, ice pellets scour our windows. Winter is back.

Le quattro stagione

The 4 seasons Italian style: most restaurants offering pizza offer the 4 seasons option usually without explanation. I prefer spring, the artichoke quadrant

Pretty town, Lake Garda on Lake Garda where we had our 4 seasons pizza

Last night in the dense fog, we were off to see the Detroit Symphony perform Vivaldi's The Four Seasons at the Cherry Hill Village Playhouse. Apparently they have a program to bring culture to the local towns including the small village Shanna lives in. Steve predicted the program would be short, 40 minutes tops but as it turned out, they played Mendelsohn and some Shubert too.

Years ago, we ate dinner at my then new boss's house with his wife. He had set up background music, a loop of La Primavera over and over. Apparently he didn't have the other 3 seasons but at least it was the best season. L'autunno for instance is sort of boring.

The star of the performance was a beautiful Korean woman, Chee-Yun Kim, a renown violin virtuoso. She was fascinating to watch with her arms flying, waist length hair swinging all around. Threads of something hung to her bow which she tried to clear in the few milliseconds she wasn't playing. I assumed she kept tangling her flying hair in the bow; Steve thought her vigorous playing was shredding the bow. She seemed to collapse from exhaustion at the finish.

Towards the end of spring, there is a transition from the major to the minor chords that are so haunting beautiful. This alone makes La Primavera one of my favorite pieces. Steve prefers L'inverno though not in real life. We recently were offered a chance to go snowshoeing in our escape from winter later in the month. Snowshoeing in the mountains seems like diving right into winter, more winter than we are escaping from. Still mulling that over as it is probably beautiful. I am leaving that up to Steve.

Are all string instrument players right-handed? This is what I pondered during L'autunno. If lefties are 10% of the population , there should have been at least 2 there. My ex-coworkers seemed to have a much larger percentage of lefties, over 50%. Are scientists in general more likely to be left-handed?

And what season is it today. Not winter which is too bad for the planned Ice Festival. Should I start to run today? It has been almost 6 weeks....

Caramel

My happy visitor yesterday

Ask most people and they would say they prefer gas stoves to electric ones. However, most of my life I have using electric stoves and the adjustment to gas has not been easy. Usually I err on overheating. Yesterday I was preparing caramel for the bottom of the flan (or the top once it gets inverted). I've made caramel lots of times. One must watch it like a hawk as it takes just seconds to go from the desired amber color to a burnt  bitter mess. I managed to convert a 10 minute task into an hour one. I underheated the syrup such that the water evaporated leaving a white rock. Bits of it would fly off and catch on fire (which would never happen on an electric stove) After redissolving the mess several times, I finally was able to get to a very pale yellow (not caramelly enough!) syrup. But my stove is covered with sugar crystals that I haven't gotten around to cleaning. The flan itself was a cream cheese one. Hard to mess that up. It quickly vanished at the Mom's. I filled a few ramekins with some of the excess batter. Josh and Allie shared one. She cried when it was gone. I didn't use my farm eggs though tonight I did make an especially tasty roasted pepper and onion omelet from some of them. 

 

Making the caramel reminded me of reducing a nitrobenzene to an aniline, a task that just a second's inattention can turn into a disaster. Nitrocompounds are generally orange; anilines should be colorless but anilines can quickly be oxidized to bright red turning into black compounds so one would have to stop the reaction the second one sees no more orange. No time to assay what is going on (which takes a minimum of 5 minutes), one just has to watch like a hawk and be ready to step in to cool the reaction down.

 

When do children develop empathy? Allie likes to hit and pinch, not out of anger but because it amuses her. She pinched Josh for the umpteenth time and he finally pinched her back (not hard). She was outraged and announced

 

That is not Nice!!!

 

On to the Moms' even though it was not a weekend. A nice salmon dinner, lots of wine per usual and fun.

 

Today I visited my friend with the stem cell transplant. She was in a much better place emotionally as her physician gave her some hope: people in her exact position are still alive 5 years later so now she does not feel so doomed to an early death. They stopped most of the rejection drugs thinking that they were suppressing her new immune system (her brother's) They are hoping that her brother's cells attack her faulty potentially leukemic cells. If that doesn't work, they will harvest more of his lymphocytes to infuse into to fight her  cells. The cost of this is that she has to endure host versus graft disease.

 

Our local ice sculpture festival will be ruined by warmth and rain. I was able to bicycle yesterday though to day, it drizzled most of the day.

 

Steve and I will go shortly to hear the Detroit Symphony perform Vivaldi. Thank-you Shanna.

Fresh eggs

So far, this is my favorite find of all. Downside: very heavy. Will mount it somehow in our living room

Beautiful handmade Mexican plates my friend gave me. Each one different. Do I need more plates? They were so beautiful, I couldn't pass them up. Plus they will match my dining room

today's sunrise

Fresh eggs my hairdresser gave me. Her hens are out producing the demand

The producers of my fresh eggs. Different colored hens yield different colored eggs. Her bantam hens used to produce tiny eggs. Alas, they became hawk food

Yesterday was busy starting with driving Maya to school. Temperature in car: 16 but she still wanted to play in the playground before the doors opened. We went by the old house, which is just a 2 minute walk away from the condo. She wished we didn't move and claims she likes the old house better than the new. Kids are not impressed with granite and high ceilings. I hadn't seen the house since we had sold it 7 weeks ago. Still no window treatments. Steve threw the old ones away. I drove through the old neighborhood that I am no longer a part of, a strange feeling. We had lived there almost 32 years.

It was too early to visit my friend on the westside but fortunately the downtown consignment shop was open. I hadn't visited it in a while. Buried under a bunch of glass (which I bypassed though I will look up some of it), was my mosaic tile shelf. So, so pretty. I had wanted a shelf for the living room to keep some of my glass away from curious children. I was thinking of oak floating shelves (which I haven't found though there are plenty of floating shelves to be had). It is somewhat reminiscent of Gaudi's broken pottery sculptures (which when I get time, I want to try to replicate) but the mosaics were made from art tiles instead. The owner couldn't tell me anything about it. As it weighs about 15 pounds over my current weight restrictions (which I have been violating), I asked for help saying I was recovering from reconstruction surgery. Turns out she was a tattoo artist in a former life creating false nipples to mastectomy patients. I said I still had my original ones though they were re-implanted.

So last night I amused myself researching my new find helped by one of the tiles containing the artist's name (which I thought initially were initials). Michigan seems to have a thriving industry in artistic tile production stemming from the Pewabic tile company in Detroit. Aside from producing tiles, Pewabic Tiles trains artists that later go on to form their own tile companies such as Motawi tiles in Ann Arbor, which has a national reputation (my Art Deco woodpecker tile received as a gift was from there). Ms. Tyge, living in Traverse City, also learned her tile making skills there. But she also studied cabinet making too. She has combined her wood crafting with her tiles. She seems to a one person operation concentrating now on small tiles and ceramic jewelry. She creates beautiful things.

My friend will have to move in a few weeks to a place considerably smaller than her present place. Downsizing will be very difficult. I will help before I leave. Discarding stuff that doesn't belong to me is much easier than dealing with stuff I am attached to. She showed me some beautiful dishes that she has never used. Will I use them? Yes I will though I have a huge set of pink fine porcelain from my grandmother that I rarely have touched. Pink....Maybe this will be in fashion again during the lifetime of my grandchildren or theirs.

Still it was too early to visit my hairdresser. Senior Day at the Salvation Army! More jeans for Maya and one 4x6 frame for me. At some point, the default reprint size went from 3.5x5 to 4x6. There are plenty of the smaller frame sizes to be had. I have cut some photos down to fit them. I have used mats to convert 5x7 into 4x6 (most look tacky). Last week I bought this beautiful handmade iridescent fused glass frame, 5x7. The cardboard  matting looks bad in it. Once I find the ideal photo to show off the colors, I will get another reprint.

I took too long to do this plus I hadn't eaten any breakfast. I had planned to stop at a nearby produce store that has fresh take away food but I had run out of time. It would be close to 3 by the time I got home so I stopped at a chain fast food place paying way more for a sandwich whose meat was questionable than I would have at the Italian store. I had tried to eat it while driving leaving me covered in BBQ sauce. Yep I am classy. The weather was quite nice yesterday so getting stuck in the snow was not a possibility as it has been in the past. I drove by the two alpaca farms and see a vulture soaring. All the vultures at my house seemed to have headed south so I was surprised to see it. 

I do like my hairdresser full of interesting stories. I now have shorter and considerably darker hair. Her largest hen  Lovey came running out to greet me. Where was Napoleon, the bantam rooster who liked to peck at my feet? Didn't I read her Facebook page concerning his demise? She swore I commented on it. I think I would have remembered. He was less than half of the size of the flock of hens he commanded and thus easier to carry off by the hawk. They are protected by predators at night but by day, it's up to them to look for hawks. Lovey has seemed to get bigger since she is the stand-in rooster. Not having a rooster has not cut down egg production. I never had a fresh egg before. Again I am not an egg fan but I do eat omelets so I will see if I can tell. One of the Moms raised chickens until a very dexterous raccoon undid the clasp to the coop. She had served us fresh hard boiled eggs once but I can't eat them.

Shanna and Tessa were still there when I returned. Hadn't seen them in a while. There was still a bit of time before sunset to go for a walk. The temp had gone up to 38 degrees. Almost tropical.I passed a herd of  about ten deer. I did take a photo but them appear as dots. A stag did walk across our yard last week in the middle of the morning.

Today, I will make a dessert for tonight maybe using some of the 3 dozen eggs I now have. And it is unseasonably warm again with no wind. I should be outside.

Surviving winter

Early morning frost and sun

Frost on the chestnut tree. Chestnuts were quickly harvested by our pair of pesky squirrels

Yep I should be taking the trees down But some of the ornaments are so pretty, I don't feel like boxing them away such as my handblown glass pear. Looks pretty when the afternoon sun makes it sparkle

This is not my favorite time of year. I love to be outside but not when it is so cold. The other day, just as I as preparing to go out for a walk, heavy snow squalls developed covering the streets with slippery snow. I ended up walking in the basement (larger than our house) back and forth in boring circles though I have my podcasts to listen to. Out again on the dirt roads yesterday.

 

So what have I been doing other than chasing squirrels away? Not much yet I feel busy. Yesterday I spent a good portion of the day helping Naomi with an on-line class. Today I go very early to watch Maya before taking her to school, then visit a friend, then drive to the opposite end of the county to fix my hair. Tomorrow we are having a Mom's group. Yep on a Thursday. Our conflicting schedules made weekends impossible for a while. Friday, Steve and I go to a concert compliments of Shanna. And then I should resume vacation planning and then leave hopefully to a place warmer and greener.

I am still healing. It's been over a month since I had the ladies fixed. The wounds aren't completely healed but feeling is coming back and they are becoming more flesh colored. I will resume running next week.

 

 

Little things that make me smile

new 'art'

Finders-Keepers beach Lincoln City OR

Maya and Allie

junior scientists

Thought this was funny

After the garden center yesterday, I went to the most disorganized thrift shop that in the past, I've bought many inexpensive things there. The place is dirty, dark, smelly and unheated. No prices are marked. The one legged woman who runs it gives very arbitrary values and will not negotiate. The artwork and picture frames are all jumbled together in boxes after boxes. Usually things are quite dirty. I have to take each item outside to see what it really looks like and if I could clean it up. I have no idea how much item costs. She just gives me a total: $8 for 9 items.

 

So how I amuse myself. If the art work is signed, I do a Google search. I found the artist Hess who made the molded paper sculpture shown above. He worked in the 1980s for this art shop called Figi graphics which went out of business in 2001. Before working there, he had made custom surfboards. The mold for the paper was carved out of surfboard foam. He was one of Figi's most prolific artists and often signed other names to his work. The artworks were sold at department stores, not galleries so I imagine they didn't cost much but still probably more than the $1 I paid for it. He now makes spray painted artwork on helmets, surfboards and motorcycles.

 

Also learning factoids like how 'polls' were named. The poll is the top part of the head. Votes used to be counted by counting head tops. Right after I learned this, I opened the page of my new bird book to that of the red poll, which has a red dot on the top of its head.

 

As for the Finders-keepers Beach, glass floats from Japanese fishing boats used to be carried by the prevailing currents to this beach in on the mid-Oregon coast attracting tourists beach combing for them. But at some point, the Japanese started using cheaper floats so no more glass washed up. How to keep the tourists coming? Every few weeks release a bunch of glass pretties for the tourists to find. And if they are too lazy to hunt for them, they can buy them at the local shops. So we will be stopping there on our big trip in a couple of weeks.

Edison lights and rainbow quinoa

part of my Xmas present from Josh and Julie. These replaced silly , tiny aluminum candles that produced very little light

package of quinoa seeds I bought today. I looked up real photos to see if they were exaggerating the colors and found they are even brighter in real photos. Note this is deer resistant. Will it be bird resistant? Usually grows in Peru at high altitude. We will see if it can grow here

lit-up (they are in dim mode) they produce lots of light

2 layers of painted glass It looks nicer than this photo

half frozen pond on today's walk

cute photo Josh took of Allie

Josh had a dilemma: should he buy the wall sconces that he likes or what he thinks I probably would like. He went with what he would like reluctantly showing me the back-up candidate which yes, I would have preferred. He installed them the other day as Steve is not one for electrical work. But they are a huge improvement over what the sellers had.

 

Today I spent some time in a garden store mulling over what to buy for my gardens. They had some unusual seeds, ones that I would not  find established plants in nurseries. In my rock garden back at the Albatross, I had California poppies for many years. They reseeded themselves until they stopped one year. They have to be grown from seed as they can't be transplanted but until today, I've had trouble finding the seed. I bought some fancy cosmos and some sweet Williams along with the quinoa and CA poppies

 

Despite the cold, I've been walking at least an hour every day. Maybe after a week, I can start running again.

 

On New Year's Eve, we had drinks with some friends. I fell asleep well before midnight. No resolutions for me. How many times have I resolved to lose weight and haven't?