A Photo A Day, Day 3

...and by "a day" I mean "whenever the heck I feel like it". Obviously.

Tonight's photo is brought to you by my friend who does face painting and balloon art as her job. Tonight she made this on my face:

1) I am the steampunkiest of lions.

2) you can't quite tell in the photo, but there is also glitter on my face.

3) did you see the monocle? It's glorious.

A photo a day... day 2

My coworker/friend and I got incredibly lucky, and rode in the wheelhouse on the Mark Twain steamboat in Disneyland. The view is just astounding and - as an added bonus - we got to pull the cords for the bell and whistle. Ah, bliss.

A photo a day... day 1

Here's me in the bathroom at Club 33 in Disneyland, which encompassed the lunch part of our business trip. The dining area is gorgeous, the food is fantastic, and the bathroom (to quote a friend) looks like 17th-century France.

Only, you know, with much better plumbing.

I and two of my coworkers were also seated with a huge Disney fan, who had a lot of interesting stories to tell over lunch. I had a great time, and I think everyone else did too.

A photo a day...

2011 has been off to a fantastic start - I flew out to California for a work meeting at the beginning of January, and stayed a few extra days to see the Southern part of the state with friends. I'll be posting a photo or two a day until I a) run out of photos or b) forget.

Also, there are plays! coming up soon. This Friday is The Importance of Being Earnest and next week is The Tempest. I never get tired of Wilde, so that's exciting, and the play next week gives me an impetus to read Shakespeare's play before the performance...

Happy Almost Christmas!

Monday marked the end of my hardest semester of graduate school to date. On the bright side, next semester is going to be even more difficult.

But for the next two weeks, at least, I'll have more blogging time. And photos!

For example:

The best shot of the last lunar eclipse of 2010 (and also the first lunar eclipse to happen on the solstice in hundreds of years):

Also, banana bread:

This is beyond cool

I got this email today:

I hope you don't mind me contacting you, but I noticed on your blogger.com profile that The Odyssey was one of your favourite books.

One of our Contributors, Victoria Hooper has created a wonderful multimedia profile of the book here:

http://www.bookdrum.com/books/the-odyssey/9780140449112/index.html

If you enjoy this profile, please let your friends know about www.bookdrum.com.

Well I don't, and it is, and I did, so I am.

I've only had time to take a brief peek at the bookmarks for The Odyssey, but the resources included look quite amazing. This site is definitely getting saved for future review, particularly since I suspect it will make a wonderful teaching tool in the future.

This is what it's actually like inside my brain

I can't finish movies on the first try lately. Case in point:

I started watching Different for Girls tonight - because it looks interesting and has Rupert Graves, who does a wonderful job as DI Lestrade in the new Sherlock.

First, I had to pause the movie 3 minutes in (when the cab driver starts talking) and make a mad dash for IMDB. Turns out the cab drivers in Sherlock and Different for Girls are played by the same actor.

Then, at 14:40, Graves' character puts on a record of a rather catchy tune... which I realize is Whole Wide World! Which I know! Except, I own and love the Proclaimers' version, which is apparently a cover of the Wreckless Eric version. So, I hop over to YouTube, give it a listen, and realize I didn't even notice the song when it was in Stranger Than Fiction (so I watch the relevant movie clip).

Eventually, I look the song up on Wikipedia. Where I am informed that Elvis Costello did a live cover of Whole Wide World and how could I not try to find it?

Finally, I decide to blog about my finds, because clearly everyone wants to hear three versions of the same song.

And so it's now taken me an hour to watch 15 minutes of this film, and I decide I'm going to give it another go tomorrow night.

The CA-Team

I don't remember why I sat still long enough to let M doodle the A-Team (as cats, of course) on me... but I can't say I'm displeased with the results.

I don't even

I finished the last three episodes of League of Gentlemen this evening. I have two thoughts about it:

1. What the whatting whats.

2. I have never laughed so hard while also saying "stop stop oh god ew ew stop no stop why".

(ok, three thoughts: 3. I'm glad I saw Sherlock first, because if I'd seen Mark Gatiss in drag before seeing him all seriously-attired and umbrella'd I would have lost it while watching A Study in Pink).

Make It Better

Great post for National Coming Out Day, courtesy a librarian I am very fortunate to have as a pen-pal/internet friend: Make It Better

He really should be wearing glasses.

Only in Austin, and (hopefully) only at the Corner Shoppe.

Last Trip Post, 2 of 4

More photos than words, this time.

Day two of the busing part of the trip included an early-morning stop in a tiny little town:
and across a weak bridge
into Wales to visit Tintern Abbey.







Which was gorgeous enough that I'm not surprised there's even a poem.

I'm still half-convinced that Welsh is a trick played on tourists
but I've found a few sites and plan to learn to at least read it before I go back.

The last stop of the day was Bath:


where we had a nice lunch (shepherd's pie) and a nice walk and saw the Roman Baths.



We also saw a frankly hilarious street performer with a great routine worked out (chains, whips, broken glass, and breadsticks? Marvelous). I think he may be my soul-mate, which perhaps explains a lot about my life.

Next time: post 3 of 4, in which we see Very Old Rocks and get lost in a bookshop.

Interesting Post

Over at Big Fat Deal: Women Can Only Eat in Movies if They Look Like They Don't.

Which, despite the number of movies I watch, is not something I'd noticed about the average Hollywood movie.

Granted, I rarely see people truly eat in movies and television as a general rule, which I imagine is because it's hard to take someone seriously while they're scarfing down pasta. But on the other hand, the blogger raises a good point:

When did you last see a fat woman eating in a movie when it wasn’t a fat joke? Even in Shallow Hal (which I watched recently… so close and yet, so fucking far) when they show the fat character eating, it’s Gwyneth Paltrow not Gwyneth-In-A-Fat-Suit-Paltrow. How are we ever supposed to get over the idea of body shame when the very idea of us nourishing our bodies is clearly revolting to the rest of the world?

Interlude

I completely forgot about doing a post today.

In my defense, I was distracted by this glow-in-the-dark Iron Man cross-stitch.

Last Trip Post, 1 of 4

Ok, so.

Day 3 of the trip took us from London to Stratford-upon-Avon. Like so:

We had lunch in Oxford, after visiting Christ Church, which inspired much of Hogwarts in the Harry Potter movies.


The tour guide, who was just phenomenal, walked us across town and gave us a mini-tour of part of the campus. This included him pointing out (we didn't have time to enter) the Bodleian Library. I had a moment of silent cheering in my head, because a) I love old libraries and b) I can now put a "face" to the place when it's mentioned in a series I quite enjoy.

Despite getting lost (as usual) near Christ Church and almost leaving my hat in Pret A Manger (of course I went back; it's not like I was just going to be passing through Oxford again anytime soon), we made it to the bus on time and continued on to. . .

. . . Bladon, where we saw Sir Winston Churchill's grave.
We also made friends with a black cat; it seemed like the Done Thing when hanging out in a graveyard.
From there, it was a short jump to Anne Hathaway's cottage - which still looks lovely.
And from there to Stratford-upon-Avon where we got an interesting tour of Shakespeare's birthplace.

I have no photos because of laptop doom (working on that), but I can tell you that the house is staffed by knowledgeable people with tons of interesting facts. We heard about the color choices in the parents' bedroom where the babies slept - red and green, if I remember correctly, to help keep the kids healthy and safe.

I also loved the room that preserved some of the original glass window panes. It apparently used to the the Cool Thing to leave one's mark when visiting tourist spots. For example, the parents' room has been repainted, because it was once covered in scrawls and scribbles. People wealthy enough to own a diamond would etch their name into the glass instead, and several of the more memorable names were pointed out.

According to my notes, we were so tired when we got back to the hotel that (after dinner and a walk) Alek fell asleep in his clothes. I wish I'd taken a photo, but the last entry in my book is "Hotel has me down as 'Ms. M [fulllastname]'. Have decided to change my name to 'Mycroft'." That's presumably when I fell asleep as well.

Next Time! Last Trip Post 2 of 4, wherein I muse on the Great Welsh Conspiracy and meet my soul-mate.