Friday Photos

I love going to museums. The carefully arranged display cases, the history, the amazing art, the creepy, creepy sculptures lurking around every corner. I think the photo today speaks for itself.

As you can see from his leering, Ezekiel* is not messing around. You come near his fruit and he will take you down. The girls wouldn't go anywhere near him, but I was fascinated by the additional face on his belly. I think that creeped me out just slightly more than his overtly menacing expression.

* Not the sculpture's real name/title but, fitting, I think, nonetheless. He looks like what I picture the biblical Ezekiel as: Wild eyes, crazy hair, mouth open in amazement or hunger or a blood-curling scream of death.

Friday Photos

On their birthdays I encourage the girls to choose an activity for us to do. A few years ago it was camping. Camping in November and then again in January. Fun but cold. For Cyra's birthday this past November she opted for bowling.

There are three things that we know about bowling:

1. We love it!
2. We rather stink at it.
3. Scott isn't allowed to partake in the consumption of alcoholic beverages. Period.

How much polish do those floors get and can I get someone to do my floors like that?

STRIKE!
Sort-of.
Almost?

Is there a rule that all bowling alleys are a bit on the grungy side? I don't mind really, for the most part, but come people! GooGone is a major staple! Also there was a huge label on this ball return warning of the dangers of sticking your hand in the hole to retrieve the ball yourself. (Did that just come out naughty? Or am I just being thirteen again?)

I love racks of things. Guns, books, crafts, antlers, bowling balls. I especially love how all the balls gleam under the lights.

Heh heh. Gleaming balls.

I am the first to admit my immaturity.

And finally, my little decade old peanut with her big feet. Rather like a puppy I think! Big feet and gangly legs, she's got tallness in her genes and boy! are her growth plates working overtime lately. She can wear a ladies size 7 shoe and she is nearly as tall as I am.

Yeah, I bet you caught on to the date of these photos. November. Yup. I admit it. I pulled old photos. Ancient ones really. Almost four months old. But to be fair and honest, the past few weeks have been boring photo-wise.

Friday Photos

I find it oddly appropriate that today's photo is a bird of prey. There's a lawyer joke in there somewhere and next week I think I might get to it but for now...

One of the things I love about living where I do is I get a bit of country all tucked up nicely next to my city. I have a yard with critters and yet it's only a few minutes drive to Barnes and Noble. I have chickens* that wander through my yard yet I'm a mere three miles to the nearest major highway. I have a lovely dicotomy of a neighborhood. I rarely see anyone but when I do they are so friendly it's kind of spooky.

I came home the other day after picking Cyra up from violin lessons and saw a huge bird hanging out in the front yard. I say huge because it was clearly bigger than the blue jays, cardinals and robins that have so recently been chillin'. As I pulled in it just stared at me. Menacing dark eyes all broody like David Duchovny (interesting side story - I once almost named Ashleigh "Duchovny" because I loved the X-Files that much). The bird stood his ground as Cyra and I got out of the car and moved towards the house. It wasn't until Junie came bounding out through the open door that he decided to take to the skies.

Duchovny didn't go far (yup. I named him. I do that.) just up to a tree over hanging the gazebo. There, he continued to glare at me from on high. Fine, I thought, clearly this is a bird who likes to be in the spotlight. I called Junie in, grabbed the camera off of the dining room table and snapped a half dozen shots before Duchovny and his deep broodiness called it quits.

Pensive Duchovny surveying his dominion.

I bet he thinks all the lady hawks will swoon over that smoulder!

It turns out that this is a red-shouldered hawk. I think. At least that's as near as I can figure from comparing the photo to a bird identifying website. And you know, the internet never lies.




*Unfortunately those chickens are not my own. Someday, chickens, someday!

Friday Photos

Florida, like many places in the country, is full of the odd and unusual. Sometimes though I get the feeling that Florida tries just a little bit more than the rest of the U.S. I mean the state was essentially established as one big tourist trap because really how else are you going to sell a swamp that periodically gets destroyed by hurricanes? In any event, surprises that pop up around any corner are commonplace and really, one of the perks of living here.

Today's photo is a landmark that I've known about since I moved here back in 2000 but I've never been inside and probably only driven by it a handful of times. As it happened a couple of weeks ago I was bring my dad around on the scnenic A1A and decided to stop and point out this awesome building.

Behold! Castle Otttis!

I captured this from the road, just at the end of the castle's driveway.

This thoroughly medieval looking castle sits a stone's throw away from the beach just north of town. And although it looks as if Templar Knights could come pouring out of it at any moment it was actually built between 1984 and 1991 as an art project. Yup. It's just art. You can go only only by special arrangement tours. And I think you can rent it for weddings. Someday, I'd love to take a tour...oh the photographs I could take!

Friday Photos

Alright so these are older photos from December, but I figured that since Blogger and I were taking a break and all, I'd go pull some funny shots I would have shared if I could have.

Every year I buy a gingerbread house kit from Wilton. I know I might lose some of my baking cred here, but I really don't like gingerbread all that much and for me rolling out dough is a pain. The kits are relatively cheap, offer an afternoon of shenanigans (and yes, it always ends with shenanigans!), and the end result is a pretty "creative" center piece during the lead up to Christmas.

This year I got the mini village kit with four tiny houses and another kit to make trees. What started out are a serious endevour quickly degenerated into a nonpareil food fight with Ashleigh and I slinging sprinkles across the table at each other. Cyra was definitely not amused. In fact, she was so serious and determined to make her two houses perfect that she didn't even throw one sprinkle! And she yelled at us to "stop acting like children."

Jeesh. Ten year olds are so bossy.

This was our finished project. I used two lemon Starbursts and molded them into stars for the tops of my trees. Ashleigh and I got crazy with the decorating and ended up making a mess.

Notice how the right side looks as though it has been attacked by the Cake Boss if he had broken all his fingers and his arm in three places and was psychotic. Yeah. That's Ashleigh's side.

Now the problem with leaving out an edible decoration, we've discovered, is that our dog Junie likes to counter surf. Nothing is safe. And though she has gotton much better about behaving now that I watch her like a hawk all day and keep the counters and tables free from temptation, I knew that a tray laden with sweet cookies and icing would be her downfall. In order to keep our village safe, each night I would slip it into the oven.

Surely nothing could go wrong with that plan.

Nothing that is until a few days before Christmas when I forgot to take it out and preheated the oven for dinner...

A delicious sweet smell wafted out from the over as I was chopping up a pepper. And all of a sudden it dawned on me: The Village!

Pulling it out of the oven I couldn't help but laugh. Cyra came running out to see what was so funn an nearly burst into tears.

"It's okay," I told her. "Look, only the icing roads and my stars seem to be melty. It'll be fine."

Unless, of course, you're the dingbat who pops it back into the oven that night and promptly forgets about it until Christmas morning, when once again, the oven required some preheating. This time, however, distracted by the chaos of the morning, I didn't remember until I was about to put in the blueberry stuffed French toast.

"Cyra," I cried out, "I did it again!"

"MOMMY!" she hollered from the living room as she rushed into the kitchen shiny new presents temporarily forgotten. Her shoulders sagged a little in defeat and my mom stifled a giggle. I couldn't help it. I burst into laughter. Cyra glared at me for a second before running back into the living. She returned a few seconds later camera in hand.

"Here," she sighed. "You might as well take pictures of it."

One of Crya's houses completely collapsed, but the others stood up well.

My handmade stars, on the other hand, didn't fair as well.

The lesson? Always check inside your oven before you preheat it. Or maybe just don't store things in your oven in the first place.

Friday Photos

Hey all! Me again back with a post. Remember way back when in November when I was doing the Photo a Day challenge and blogger so kindly informed me that I had reached my storage limit? I got quite frustrated and angsty and I took an Internet break.

We didn't break up mind you. I just needed some...space. I certainly don't need an apology from  Internet not will I bore Internet with a 30 page letter expressing my disappointment.

This is what I have discovered: in order to resize the photos on my blog, I would have resize them in picasa then delete from the original post and then repost them. That's a lot a photos, people, over 600. But I found a loophole. If new photos are resized under a certain limit then they don't count towards that 1 GB of space we are allocated.

So here I am testing that theory.

Back in November Cyra found a turtle in our yard. A beautiful turtle that, if it wasn't a protected species, I totally would have adopted then and there because, I loved him right away.

Meet Wilfred (or Winnefred) the Florida Box Turtle

PS - Yay! It worked!!

Friday Photos

Yay! Friday Photos Returns! Triumphantly? Well...maybe. This week I am featuring photographs of games that we have played over the past few months.

Monopoly is one of our favorites, unfortunately since it always takes us forever to play, we often never declare a winner. Scott won't play this with us because once (a really freaking long time ago) my mom and I cheated taking money from the Bank when he went to use the bathroom. Jeesh! It wasn't like we were going to win anyway! He had hotels on every side!

Risk is another game Scott doesn't often play with me. I'm working on a blog post about it...but let's just say, for now, no one like screaming jihads. Even when its only little plastic army pieces.

I'm green and I totally own South American. All those drug lords are working for me now! (Umm...not really okay? Remember it's just a game - so if there are any drug lords reading my blog...I totally Do Not Own You...or any property in South America at all. I've never even been there!)

Clue is one of my all time favorite games. Mostly because I win. A lot. It is one of the few games that I can consistently win. And that makes me supremely self-satisfied.

I love this photo because it took about twenty shots to actually capture the die bouncing across the board so perfectly. Sometimes awesome shots just happen...sometimes you need to make them happen!

Also this is me winning. I always play Colonel Mustard. Always. And I love it when I am the suspect!

A few years ago, Scott and the girls got me Munchkin for Christmas and every so often they add a booster pack. We have so many Munchkin cards it is almost impossible to play with them all. Up until June of this year, we always played with post-it notes to track our levels. But then I watched this episode of TableTop (and if you aren't watching Geek & Sundry - SHAME ON YOU!) and lo and behold, they played Munchkin on an offical Munchkin board! I didn't even know those existed. Being crafty and perpetually short on cash, the girls and I made our own board! And we use our D&D miniatures as our tokens!

The object is to get from level 1 to level 10 by defeating monsters. It's a spoof of D&D and it makes me laugh every single time we play. The girls and I try to gang up on Scott because if he is playing, somehow he always wins!

The more I look at this, the cooler it gets. Now, I wonder if I can add a 3D effect to the board...maybe some pop-up walls and doors that really open?

More recently, during the Birthday Fiesta O' Fun (I swear on all that is holy, unholy and only slightly sacred I will be posting about this soon) Sara and her husband introduced the girls and I to Settlers of Catan. I vaguely knew about the game, but I hadn't ever played before. But I have to say...I am pretty sure that Santa will be bringing this to Someone because Holy Monkey Butts was it fun. They had the travel edition which seemed friendly albiet a bit small, so I'd be interested in playing a full sized version!

Also during the Birthday Fiesta O' Fun we played a game Sara got me for my birthday: Zombies!!! Trapped in a town infested with Zombies you have to make your way from the Town Square to the Helipad killing zombies and backstabbing other players to do it. Along the way, if you can make it, different stores have bullet and life tokens that will increase your chances to survive.

Players build the town as you go so often the town itself makes no sense whatsoever!

Fighting zombies is mandatory, but luckily only one zombie can occupy any one space - so no crazy hoards piling up on top of you. 

Sara taught me how to play Cribbage just about forever ago. When she went to Japan, I was Jonesing to play so I taught Ashleigh. We don't play it as much as I played with Sara (which was very nearly all the time) but it is a highlight of my day when we do play.

Ashleigh already off to a strong lead!

Coming into the home stretch...Ashleigh still in the lead and even though it was my crib, she had a really strong finally hand and took the game! Curses!

Friday Photos

On the 4th of July, I took the girls on an official tour of Flagler College.

The front entrance to the school. This leads into the Rotunda.

The west bell tower. Back in the hotel days it served as a water tower.

Detail of a decorative fountain do-dad on the outside of school.

Detail of the shells surrounding the front entrance. Flagler built the hotel with three themes: Spanish, Nautical and Lions.

I actually learned something new on the tour - the fountain in the center courtyard serves which serves as a working sundial and also represents the twelve seasons and signs of the zodiac (which I knew) ALSO was designed to resemble the hilt of a sword - which is the part I never knew.

The dome of the Rotunda.

One of the 8 women painted around the Rotunda - each represents a different thing. Four represent the four stages of Spanish exploration and four represent the elements. This one is Water.

More women (I think the same women) surround the ceiling in the dining hall. Each represents the four seasons. This is Winter.

One of the many Tiffany stained glass windows in the dining hall.

Fall on the left and Summer on the right.

In the Flagler Room which houses furniture and art original to the hotel. No flash photography so the pictures in here didn't turn out as well.

Two of the evil cherubs on the ceiling in the Flagler room. The room was originally the Ladies Lounge and is very feminine with all the Tiffany blue on the ceiling, crystal chandeliers and demonic cherubs that watch your every movement.

The fireplace in the Flagler room.

Detail of the clock.

 The last two photos are lamps that flank the entrance to the dining hall. I never gave them much thought when I was going there, but they really are beautiful in an extravagantly creepy sort of way.

It occurs to me that I didn't take many...any "traditional" photos: looking into the Rotunda or the dining hall, things like that. Maybe I'll add some more later.

Debby Does My Yard

When we first moved in to our house, we were excited by the prospect of having a pond out front. Unfortunately, the pond at the time was little more than a muck hole because of the severe drought conditions that Florida has recently gone through. Unsurprisingly, Tropical Storm Debby and Tropical Storm Beryl have helped alleviate the dried up pond.

Debby did a bit more than fill up the pond though and we are lucky that we didn't have the amount of flooding that others in the state suffered - washed out roads, rivers exploding over their banks. Despite Florida's need for rain, this was not exactly the way we wanted the problem solved.

During a break in the rain, I was able to snap a few photos of the pond.

 

Just a few minutes later the rain started up again and within ten minutes the yard was flooded...again.

I wish I could have gotten a better shot of the neighbor's yard in this one. Their yard is virtually flat and it was nothing but water.

I wonder if all this water will take care of the fire ants and moles...

The next set of photos are from after the storm passed and the sun broke through the clouds.

Those ripples? 50 gajillion tadpoles just eating and growing and plotting.

This was the high water mark. I was amazed that the water level dropped so quickly after the storm. That might be a testament to how low the aqueduct levels are but I'm not waterologist so don't quote me on that!

Junie very much appreciates having a pond...Guess how many bathes she'll be getting in the coming weeks?