Here comes the Sun!
Self-serve food and drinks.
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Sunglasses are in their regular spot next to the door
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Please recommend (and unrecommend the Cafe/Lounge from earlier)
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May the Chihuly be with you!
Froggybottom CLOSED: Please Unrecommend
That’s a Chihuly?? Wow. I thought it was some kind of exotic flower, never dreamed it was glass.
Hi, froggybottom, whoever you are!
I am totally missing my bi-annual business trip to Seattle, where they have a beautiful Chihuly right in the lobby of her hotel…
my hotel…bad typo…I must be getting what the kids are home sick with this week.
Is there any place in Seattle where they don’t have a beautiful Chihuly? I think there’s a law about it.
Probably is a law (this picture really doesn’t do the colors justice, but it’s all I could find):
There’s something hanging from the rafters in one of the buildings at Microsoft that looks like a Chihuly to me. (They actually have quite an art collection over there, and bring in speakers every once in a while to give lectures on parts of the collection.)
The Seattle Aquarium has a very nice set of Chihuly seashells.
And my personal favorite: As you come off of Edgar Martinez Drive and enter Safeco Field through the home plate gate, directly overhead you see a Chihuly sculpture made up of glass baseball bats!
to Utah!
Nice landscape. Where’s the visual double entendre?
sometimes a picture is just a picture.
First, that’s gorgeous. Very nice!
Second, Hi. No tea this morning. Diet cola. Caffeine points yes, style no. Oh well. Still crazed here on the writing front. I’m starting to feel like the white rabbit “I’m late, I’m late, I’m late.” Not on anything critical, but urgh. The promotional work on the unexpected arrival of the curriculum book has really blown a hole in the rest of my schedule. Promotion is high on my list of things to wish away. It looks like work, feels like work, and takes up time like work, and yet I never feel like I’m actually getting anywhere. Oh well. At least things have slowed down enough so I can stop in a chat from time to time instead of lurking when I should be working.
The first of many needed today:
How was the compleanos party?
I got to meet our newly-elected Democratic city council members and heard a keynote address by Jose Angel Gutierrez of the Univ. of Texas-Austin regarding the history of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and the events that led up to the land purchases between the U.S. and Mexico in the 1800s.
He’s a very blunt speaker, but his passion was contagious. We were all fired up by the end of the speech. It’s important for me, as a Mexican-American/Xicano, to learn the history of my roots. Unfortunately, as with anything of that nature, there are usually several versions of the truth.
About to head out for another erranding day — got to go to Calif DMV to get my state ID card renewed, might go by CompUSA across the street from there to pick up a “welcome home” gift for dad-in-law (he’s interested in Adobe Photoshop Album for working with his new digital camera once he’s up/about). Weather is going to be pleasant today; maybe I should drag my camera along to take photos that strike my fancy. 🙂
Back later…
A low tide view of a shallow Puget Sound bay.
I am very excited as a new dog has come into our life. She’s a beautiful Norwegian Elkhound about a year old, not wearing any tags. I always want to keep the lost dogs that come our way, but usually they have tags. My husband is not that crazy about living with animals, so I’m probably in for a bit of disagreement.
He’s not as gruff as he’d like to think. We’ve had elkhounds before, and I’m trying to convince him it’s the mysterious hand of fate.
All but two of our six dogs have been ones that were abandoned at our place and they have been a joy. I suggest going for the guilt trip — if you take the dog to the humane society, her chances of adoption aren’t that great since she’s a bigger dog and not a puppy.
‘Morning, all — glad to see everyone doing well.
No sunbursts here, unfortunately — only continual rain, dense fog, chilly temperatures. What little snow remains is melting away quickly. A fine morning to sleep in & clear one’s mind of gas fumes — disgusting dreams, however.
In any case, onward into the java. Thanks to everyone this morning for lovely images!
time to bring in the reinforcements:
Very nice!
My sister’s first cat was named Kachina, although we just called her Kitty. When we got her we had just returned from a trip to southern Utah and the memory of Kachina dolls was still fresh in our grade-school minds.
Thank you, I hadn’t thought about that for about 40 years.
Afternoon sun over Citadel Ruin, Wupatki National Park:
Beautiful image, Indy — this seems like an exceptionally magical place. Thank you.
Glad you enjoyed it. 🙂 It is a magical place. And it was a very nice synchronistic moment that it posted directly below ManE’s kachina post.
Absolutely.
We seem to be pretty good at synchronicity here at the FBC 😉
is a must-stop whenever I’m in that part of the state. Thanks for the pic, it brought back some great memories!
Thank you for sharing the beautiful kachina image & informative link, Man E. I’m aware of the existence of the kachinas but had little knowledge of their significance & power.
Truly hope you see some rain soon. Whatever impacts these climactic situations of imbalance deserves to be addressed by any means at our disposal.
Thanks again for your post.
I’ve been collecting kachinas for almost 10 years now, and try to research what each figure symbolizes. The power of google has been very helpful 🙂 It all started with a three foot eagle dancer that I rec’d when I had my Eagle Scout ceremony. Lots of significance attached to the ones I own.
Hope you’re having a great day.
Your kachinas’ significance to you seems just as it should be. In years past I’ve seen a few of them in the possession of folks who didn’t quite understand — who seemed to view them as a type of trinket or emblem. Obviously, this isn’t where they belong.
Thanks for good wishes & the very same to you.
Very nice picture. Wonderful place. Ohio is never going to measure up.
I’m going to miss it here, and I do think it’s beautiful, but the truth is that I am not a desert girl anyway. I don’t know if it has anything to do with being born in the coastal tropics, but I desperately need the water and the green. Even more since becoming disabled and since the country got hijacked by fascist imperialists, I need for things to look & smell alive. So I’m very much looking forward to the change in scenery, and I’m so anxious for rain I’ll probably sleep in the backyard the first time it rains at night.
I know what you mean about the green. When I lived in California, I just kept wishing for my green grass and shady trees…it was such a bummer to always have dry, brown, prickly, grass everywhere. I finally had to come back to the east coast to get it.
(Ack, I’m supposed to be finishing my paper, and I keep coming over here between paragraphs…)
Well, dear, be glad the interruptions are by paragraph–I’m working by the sentence (course one German sentence, I suppose, is probably the equivalent of a normal US-english paragraph!) lol.
I did manage to get through the horrific Hitler speech–woke up the next ayem with an abscess in not one, but two of my teeth.
Told the dentist, “This happens every g.d. time I do a Hitler speech.”
Dentist: “You sure it was the Hitler speech?”
(I saw him on WEDNESDAY; he is not a big fan of youknowhooo; in fact, when he found out his lab was red, he switched. At least I don’t have to feel so bad about dumping so much money into his coffers–I’ve got a politically correct dentist, yay!….).
Shows how swift I am, I was wondering why he wanted to get rid of a dog just because it was a Labrador retriever with a red coat. 🙂
I took German for several years in high school. Your statement reminds me of a remark by Mark Twain, something to the effect that every time a German starts a sentence it’s like he jumps into the Atlantic Ocean and comes out on the other side with his verb in his mouth. (Twain was also particularly fond of the preposition “damit” until he found out how it was actually pronounced.)
Funny, Omir. Pretty good description of translation in general I’d say–and with that, I really ought to get back in the water here (on today’s menu: Goebbels.)
Good luck. I don’t envy you. Translation is usually tricky in any case (I say this, having translated some early Hermann Hesse back in high school); translating a specialized vocabulary like political writing has got to be a pain. Although on the plus side, the same words probably keep popping up over and over again.
I don’t think I could make a living doing anything else, Omir.
I have called myself a “pathological translator”–meaning it’s like I have this almost pathological compulsion to translate. For all I bitch and complain about life in these united states, this much (and it’s a lot) I can say: I spend 90% of my time and earn 90% of my living doing what I absolutely love–so much so that I cannot NOT do it–so it’s a damn good thing people are paying me to do it, or I’d be s.o.l.
Must admit: esp in terms of political terms, specialized vocab, etc., google is a godsend to a translator. Sometimes shake my head and ask myself how folks did some of this stuff B.G. ;)–even with as many dictionaries as reference works I’ve got on my shelf, even with library privileges at one of the best research libs in the world, just dunno how the hell some of this could be managed w/o google.
Alas, google is also never far from Booman….and here I am “detouring” again.
What the hey–got 3 paragraphs out of the way here….!
Having lived with a translator of French language fiction for many years, I can attest that the pre-Google discipline involved — yes — piles of dictionaries 😉
(As well as multiple library visits & a fair amount of overseas travel & extensive snail-mail.)
Indeed, I’ve been doing it for a good 20 yrs now, too, so I guess it’s like asking myself “how the hell did you do this before?”
Recently, tho, had a “timetable” of history that had to be updated to include developments in the arts, science, culture, technology and religion, etc. over the past 15 yrs. (the existing volume covered from 500 BC — 1990).
That project probably would not have been possible w/o google b/c so much of the stuff was so current that there exist no public or published records of it.
I also work extensively–by email–w native speakers in the countries of origin: that too would have simply been cost prohibitive in the past.
(also why I’m 100% certain my data’s been mined, undermined and über-mined to Buxtehude and back:
90% of my correspondence is in German, so I can only hope the spy machine pays its translators well!
Whaddya think? Should I apply for a job there? lol.
Good thing you’re not translating Arabic, Farsi or Peshtu.
==:0
At this point, seems to me it doesn’t even matter what foreign language you translate (or communicate in): they are suspicious of and willing to vilify anything “foreign” (just like the Nazis were, I might add).
It’s the “freedom fries” syndrome! If it doesn’t walk, look and talk like an American (as they define ‘American’), kill it, incarcerate it or corrupt it–just don’t set it free.
Unfortunately, my understanding is that the spy machine isn’t the most cordial to their translators 😉
Yep, I can understand asking yourself how you ‘made out’ before Google. My friend just caught a glimpse of what was possible on the ‘net before he passed on; he would’ve loved it.
(Whoops! Busted margin .. ?)
If they ever asked me for a work sample on a background check, I could submit this one–that oughta be enough to keep them from so much as consider subjecting this translator to their brand of “cordiality”, yathink?.
Amazing. Yes, recommended!
Thanks. That’s the fun stuff: b*sh-bashing at the Nobel Prize level. YEah, I can live with that. lol.
Now, back to the BS….
I gotta say, having a job you love is a wonderful thing. That’s the great thing for me about working in computers. If I wasn’t getting paid for the stuff I do I’d be at home doing it for free.
Hear, hear! I’m with you completely on ‘the water and the green’, Indy — & I think those of us who know what naturally sustains us are very, very fortunate, especially if we can access it.
Personally, I have absolutely no attraction at all to the more arid climes. Give me rushing water, dramatic seasonal change & green abundance every time!
since I’ve always said that there’s no way I could leave the woods.
And the good news is that if you move down near the Ohio, come summer the humidity will feel just like Florida.
Humidity’s actually worse in Ohio than it is in Florida. I wouldn’t have believed it — in fact, I didn’t believe it — until I experienced it. I was blowing fog in 70F degree weather in Ohio, a thing that never once occurred over 25 years of spending half of Christmas Day somewhere on Miami Beach.
I wouldn’t leave your woods either, they’re gorgeous.
Well I was thinking of the hellish weather in Jacksonville and Tampa in summer and assuming that Miami was the same.
I view those as different climates, actually, but that’s probably just from growing up in SoFla. Jax has a climate (physical & political) kinda like the Deep South™ while Miami’s is more like the Caribbean islands. (I don’t know much about Tampa.)
Miami is its own brand of hell in August, but that’s not just about hurricanes, heat & humidity — the latter two are indeed very bad but tempered to a degree by the Atlantic, which also brings us the former so, you know. It’s also about the already-present extreme insanity that only ratchets up during the hottest months of the year, and which is a bit more complicated to navigate in 14 languages than in only 2 or 3. Miami’s Motto: NYC Only Wishes It Was As Crazy As Us.
After living in Ohio for 40 years I can tell you that it doesn’t even come close to rivaling the suffocating heat and humidity of the South™
All I can say was that the humidity in Yellow Springs in May was way worse than anything I’d ever experienced in Miami — but Miami ain’t the Deep South™ neither.
Jacksonville, Tampa, and Savannah are three worst places I have been for heat/humidity combos. My first time in Tampa which was in April, I decided to get up early so I could take a walk before going into the customer site. I stepped outside at 6:30 a.m. and almost went right back in — it was something like 75/90 heat/humidity. When I went into the customer site, I asked them if it was always this bad and they had no idea what I was talking about.
Yep, that’s what it’s like here from May through August. No matter how early you get up you just can’t get any fresh air. It actually feels like you’re suffocating. I pretty much hibernate during those months.
I used to travel back and forth between Miami and Fairbanks every year, leaving for Alaska in mid-June and returning to Florida in mid-August. The relative temperatures were actually not vastly different but the humidity sure was. Once I’d get back home, that first step out of the air-conditioned Miami International Airport was always like walking into a wall of jello, and then trying to breathe it in. When I’d say the first thing about it my mom was always like, “Quit being so dramatic,” lol. Locals are funny like that.
Concur on the jello, Indy.
A good part of what’s turned me off to air travel were those December arrivals in Miami’s deep soup after boarding the plane in crisp, chilly NY. Too unreal.
Agreed on your take of Miami’s ‘aggrivated insanity’, Indy — having spent much time there throughout my life as a matter of familial connection.
As a native New Yorker, I’d also agree that its own insanity has always been comparatively ‘cooler’, so to speak — not quite as tempestuous, but rather like a subtle rhythmic hum, the subway rather than the tropical wind.
‘Course, nowadays I understand NYC has lost much of that subcutaneous vitality, that edge — & is quickly becoming more of a playground than a madhouse.
throughout Ohio and well up into Ontario and Quebec in the summer, many days and nights in summer. I sweltered many a year along the Lake Erie shore well out of sight of land.
Puget4 and I sailed most of a day once on a charter from Kelly’s Island up to the harbor at the north end of Pelee IS Canada, completely in our birthday suits, and even being on open water and in the wind we were seriously stressed.
Hi everyone. We spent the day (I took a cough…sneeze…wheeze, sick day) checking out the Super Bowl activities. Damn, I wish that Detroit was lively like that more often.
Could you teach Jim how to do that because he believes that entire school system is incapable of functioning if he isn’t there.
Tell Jim to read his contract. Likely the district will only pay out for so many sick days upon retirement. Anything beyond that is waste, so he should think of taking a “sick” day as reducing waste.
Personal days and sick days roll over and Jim now has so many that he could call in sick the first day of school and every day thereafter until the end of school.
That sounds like fun!
Gray skies, but lots of people. It was fun.
A Cloak Of Elvenkind – Marcy Playground
Hot For Teacher – Van Halen
Rhiannon – Fleetwood Mac
Magnet & Steel – Walter Egan
I Can’t Go For That – Hall & Oates
I Need Love – Sam Phillips
Hey Jesus – Indigo Girls
Arizona – Mark Lindsay
The Ballad Of John & Yoko – The Beatles
Murder By Numbers – The Police
Sorry I’ll miss another Friday night party around this place, but I’m fading fast; I hope to return to enjoying more extended hours soon. Meanwhile, I hope everyone has a fun and safe weekend!
If you’re still around, I’m about to post HH…
Come on over! (And don’t forget to unrecommend ths one on your way out, please.)