Slimbolala

2012-01-29T09:20:00.002-06:00

My morning coffee: I have a set of four of these demitasses — a design of leaves, simple black on white, arrayed symmetrically all around the cup and saucer. They're some of my favorites. (They're all favorites, but these are some of my favorite favorites.)

2012-01-28T23:50:00.000-06:00

Continuing to mess around with the outfit, seeing what works. A gray trenchcoat-like jacket seems to work better than a brown rumpled jacket. And for whatever reason, I'm preferring a corn-cob pipe to a stoagie.

2012-01-27T19:26:00.000-06:00

I only had a bit of time of time for pigeon-doodling today, but I roughed in a hobo hat. I think I like it. Details (and perhaps a crumply brown jacket — and either a stogie or a corn cob pipe) to follow.

Pigeon-In-Progress, Part Deux

2012-01-26T17:14:00.002-06:00

So yesterday, I got Mr. Pigeon loosely filled out, roughly the right colors in roughly the right places. Let's see where we're at today:

My, my, Mr. Pigeon, look at all those details you have. This part of the process is really about harnessing the power of obsessive perfectionism for good rather than evil — stroke-by-stroke, painting the teeny-tiny lines that start to give that "realistic" sense of feathery texture, the roughness of the beak, the little details around the eyes. Oh, yeah. And I also changed the background, gave things a lively sky-ish hue. (One of the novelties of the digi-painting is that with the prudent use of "layers", one can paint behind other objects. I often find myself completely redoing a picture's background several times before I'm through.)

I'd say Mr. Pigeon himself is looking reasonably done-ish. There are always little tweaks towards the end, but he's about as pigeon-y as he's going to get. Tomorrow? The outfit (whatever it may be — I'm still thinking hobo). Stay tuned. Woot!

Pigeon-In-Progress

2012-01-25T21:38:00.001-06:00

Normally, what winds up on this blog is an end-product of one sort or another. Not to say it's always polished — there's plenty of half-baked crap — but it's generally as done as its going to get. Let's mix things up and post a little work-in-progress series. A pigeon-in-progress, as it were:

I've had a hankering to do an Alphabet Animal-esque portrait again, and we've been on a bird-kick recently, so some sort of feathered critter seemed appropriate. And I like pigeons. They have that rat-with-wings P.R. problem, but I find them generally amusing — little waddly busy-bodies — and often quite pretty, with their iridescent grays and purples and greens. Of course, this particular pigeon will wind up in some sort of funny outfit. I'm thinking something hobo-ish (in keeping with pigeons' downscale image), maybe a crumply hobo cap and jacket and stubby old stogie. Or some such. First the pigeon. We'll settle on the get-up later.

With that basic idea in mind, I first found a good reference photo (ah, the magic of Google Images), grabbed the iPad, sketched out a rough line drawing, and then started loosely painting in the colors. This is where I wound up tonight.

I'll keep this lil' guy (gal? guy, I think) going, embellishing and accessorizing. And I'll post future stages, until we arrive at whatever is deemed "done". Stay tuned.

Mr. Okra

2012-01-24T08:25:00.000-06:00

The old ways rarely die around here. More often, they transmute into something new and different and odd and pleasing. Case in point, Mr. Okra:

Old timers talk of the produce carts that were daily sights (and sounds) in many neighborhoods back in the day — hand-pushed carts ladened with fruits and vegetables, whose vendors each sang a distinctive song announcing their wares to the residents, who would come out and buy what they needed.

The hand-pushed carts are gone, but today Mr. Okra continues his own version of the tradition, working through residential neighborhoods in his brightly painted truck, singing his inventory over a megaphone:

Mr. Okra sings his wares

His song is always entertaining but not always comprehensible. (You'll hear June in the background speculating that Mr. Okra is Spanish, an incorrect hypothesis but an understandable one, given the decidedly exotic nature of his cadence and articulation). A transcription, to the best of my ability:

I have oranges and bananas.
I have [???].
I have carrots.
I have pineapples, and I have [???].
I have satsumas.
I have mangoes.

He's got a whole lot of his own thing going on. That's for sure.

Misdemeanor Country

2012-01-24T04:55:00.000-06:00

Growing up, I listened to a lot of Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings and those sorts of folks, and I like that music a lot. Sometimes, when pondering fantastic alternate lifestyles (as we all do — the particulars vary, but we all have our imaginings), I picture myself as an outlaw country musician. It's a pleasantly distracting fantasy. But then I think: all that drinking, and drugging, and bawling, and brawling, and marrying, and divorcing, and fisticuffs, and such — that all sounds like an awful lot of effort. Makes it hard to go to work next day. What if I just want to be a little bit outlaw country? What if I just want to be misdemeanor country? Can I be that?

2012-01-23T18:29:00.001-06:00

Tree, late afternoon

2012-01-22T21:13:00.000-06:00

Digital collage by Louise. I made that hipster ape silliness with a nifty little iPad app I recently stumbled across called Mixel that let's you collage together images snipped from disparate digital sources. Louise got ahold of it today and whipped up this creation. I dig it.

2012-01-22T09:28:00.000-06:00

My morning coffee: On this gray, blustery, and oddly mild day, an English demitasse seemed appropriate: blue and white, a pastoral with quails. (With my now quite large assortment and a mind like a steel sieve — part of the reason I keep this blog, after all, is to remember what the hell happened in my life — I won't claim to recall the provenance of every one of my cups, but I believe this was one of the original few that came from my grandparents and formed the nucleus of today's much-grown collection. I don't believe that I've ever actually bought a demitasse. They've all, or nearly all, come to me through the kindness of family and friends.)

Planet of the Annoying Hipster Apes

2012-01-21T21:27:00.001-06:00

So what if a Planet of the Apes-type scenario actually happened, but instead of the apes becoming a dominant super-species that enslaves humanity, they just became a roughly-on-par-but-kind-of-lame species with an excessive fondness for foppish hipster attire and a habit of showing up at parties uninvited and drinking all the booze and eating all the bananas.¹ That would suck.

¹ Which would be particularly annoying because it's not like the bananas are even for the guests. (Who serves bananas at a party?) But the apes just help themselves. Take your stinking paws off my bananas, you damned dirty ape!

2012-01-20T14:45:00.000-06:00

Friday afternoon clouds over the lake (the sort of clouds that really make a person wish they were out where the clouds are rather than in where the work is). Let's see, we've got some cumulus, a hint of stratus, some cirrus. Yep, our clouds are as topsy-turvy as the rest of our weather this time of year.

2012-01-19T20:58:00.001-06:00

Well, except the eyebrows. President Obama with somebody else's eyebrows.

2012-01-19T09:51:00.002-06:00

South Claiborne, pre-dawn

Weird Business

2012-01-18T16:50:00.000-06:00

So this little woodpecker has been hanging out in the willow tree in our yard. Often, as I'm sitting on my balcony, I see him pecking away, a dozen feet or so straight in front of me, furiously going after whatever tasty little bug-morsels apparently live there, and leaving dozens of little holes in the bark. Recently, when we had one of our little warm spells, some sort of sap-type liquid started oozing out of all of the holes, drenching the trunk below. And then all these little black and orange butterflies¹started hanging out there, fluttering about, apparently drawn to the oozing sap-type liquid. And then one day, as I was sitting on the balcony, I looked straight ahead and saw Pearl, our crazy little kitty, clinging to the trunk in that exact spot, twenty-five-or-so feet above the ground, all wide-eyed and crazed. I exclaimed, "Pearl!" She looked at me for a moment, then scurried back down the trunk. I don't know if she was going for the woodpecker or the butterflies (or the sap-type liquid) or what. All I know is there's a whole lot of weird multi-species drama going on in that willow. Weird business.

P.S. Does anybody know off hand what kind of woodpecker that is? The photos not perfect, but perhaps you can see the swath of red on the top of its head as well as on its throat. And then the distinctive black and white stripes and markings.

¹ They're the same butterflies that were obsessed with our passion vine: they slurped its nectar, laid their eggs, spawned their progeny, and gobbled its leaves, going through several generations until, despite my efforts to save it, the poor passion vine gave up the ghost.

2012-01-16T23:17:00.001-06:00

Afternoon clouds

2012-01-16T21:43:00.001-06:00

House with palm tree in front

2012-01-16T17:36:00.002-06:00

My morning coffee: Japanese, elegantly simple (the Japanese ones always are), white with yellow, blue, orange, and red flowers; sipped on my balcony as church bell somewhere in Central City rang out marking MLK Day)

2012-01-15T17:59:00.000-06:00

Sketch-a-doodle: Man in red shirt against green background

2012-01-15T12:03:00.000-06:00

My morning coffee: Green with gold fleur-de-lis (Aww, gold fleur-de-lis. Our poor Saints — they played so hard and did so good, and we're proud of 'em. Next year, Saints win the Superbowl in the Superdome. So say I.)

"Well, He Is Ricky Riccardo"

2012-01-14T14:36:00.001-06:00

The girls, June in particular, are currently obsessed with "I Love Lucy".¹ They were watching an episode. Ricky was sofly strumming guitar and singing a lovely song in Spanish. I said, "Wow, he's good." June said, kindly, "Not as good as you." I said, "Thank you, sweetie, but I think he's better." She said, "Well he is Ricky Riccardo. He's a professional. But you're really good too." Aww, thank you, darlin'. Almost as good as Ricky Riccardo. My, my! (This is seriously very high praise from June right now.)

¹ As I've said, June is a natural Vaudevillian, and Lucy's comedic stylings are right up her alley.

2012-01-14T09:53:00.001-06:00

My morning coffee: White china with painted flowers and gold accents (and a little flower on the opposite interior rim — a number of my demitasses have that, a little surprise to catch your eyes when you take your first sip)

Slimbo Scissorhands

2012-01-13T16:21:00.002-06:00

I had an Edward Scissorhands moment over the weekend. I realized I like subtractive gardening, the kind that's about removing excess, cutting back, trimming, shaping — the kind of gardening that's like cutting hair. I cut my own hair, and this past Saturday, as I trimmed the wild-and-woolly oleander back into a shapely orb, pruned the bushy Angel Trumpet into an elegant little tree, upside-down-weedwacked the willow into a crisp bob,¹ I thought to myself, Ah! This is something I get. Good thing I live down here, where we've got plenty of vegetative excess, plenty of opportunities for subtractive gardening. The patient watering, nurturing, and coaxing of frail seedlings into delicate maturity just ain't for me. (My kids seem to use up all my watering, nurturing, and coaxing.) Now I just need some blades-for-fingers and a groovy leather jumpsuit (and a Cure-esque 'do), and I'll be all set.

¹ As I said, this is a nutty time of year around here weather-wise. We haven't had a freeze yet, and it's possible we won't get one at all this winter, in which case, last year's growth will just keep on growing (unless artfully hacked back).

2012-01-12T11:30:00.002-06:00

Behold the Hypno-Monkey! Stare into his eyes. You are getting sleepy... very, very sleepy. You will do what the Hypno-Monkey says. Now, bring bananas... many, many bananas... (Please don't ask for an explanation. I have no idea. He started as an innocent little spiral doodle, and before I knew it I was staring into the eyes of this weird critter, the entrancing... immersive... eyes...)

Yep, Doughnuts

2012-01-11T20:42:00.000-06:00

I had a really weird dream last night, but I can only remember half of it. I remember that it was basically an alternate version of some major actual movie, but instead of the various parts being played by whichever actors actually played them, all the parts were played by doughnuts. Yep, doughnuts. I can't remember which movie it was. (Which is driving me crazy. I thought to myself in the night, "This is so weird, I have to remember it," but as it turns out, it was so weird, I can't remember it.) But I do remember that the main character, a female part, was played by one of those chocolate doughnuts (the through-and-through chocolate kind, not the chocolate-iced kind) with the bumpy surface texture and the light dusting of powdered sugar. (A "crumb doughnut", June informs me.) And the bumpy crumb surface corresponded to the elaborate hair-do of the actual actress playing the actual part. The movie didn't really play out in the dream. It was more just a conceptual dream: that-movie-(whichever-movie-that-movie-was)-with-doughnuts-instead-of-actors. Go figure. Maybe I'll dream the sequel tonight.

2012-01-11T20:23:00.000-06:00

Drunk-looking dude in ridiculously small hat. (I find him a little bit terrifying, but your mileage may vary.)

Topsy Turvy

2012-01-10T18:02:00.001-06:00

'Tis the time of year around here when the weather just gets plain old confusing, when one might run both the heat and the AC within a twenty-four hour period, might leave the house with a coat in the morning but be sweating in the afternoon. During the summer, I often don't check the forecast for weeks on end. What's the point? Ninety-plus degrees and ninety-plus humidity. Ninety-plus degrees and ninety-plus... etc. But these days, I'm checking the hour-by-hour forecast: "Okay, cold rain in the morning, then warm and clear, then windy in the evening..." It's confusing for the animals, for the plants, and for us people-critters. Oh, well. Keeps things interesting.

2012-01-10T17:53:00.000-06:00

Pearl stretching

Inane Musing of the Day

2012-01-09T20:19:00.002-06:00

Toffy and taffy: so similarly named but so very different. What's up with that?¹

¹ Sorry, it's apparently a slow day in the bloggy-brain. But with these Draconian post-quotas, you can't expect top-shelf material all the time. Quantity, not quality. (Maybe that should be our new bloggy-tagline.)

2012-01-09T06:36:00.001-06:00

June constructs nature art (following in her sister's footsteps): Spanish moss, sago palm fruit, and flower petals

Been Being Done

2012-01-08T20:36:00.000-06:00

Oh, hey! Remember that pledge? The pledge-month has been being done.¹ Since, like, yesterday. And my promise (with its attendant modification) has been fulfilled. Woot!

But, y'know, I'm liking this new busy-bee Slimbo-mode. I think I'll try to keep it up (to the extent reasonably possible): a text and an image photo each day (mostly), for the foreseeable future.² Woot!

¹ "Been being", that's one of my favorite vernacularisms. I hear it around here a lot and have found myself using it more than once; a special tense, distinct from the mere past tense—sort of in-the-past-but-ongoing. Something like that. There's probably a Latin tense with a fancy name that it roughly corresponds to. I'll just call it the Been-Being Tense. Try it. You'll like it.

² Not that any of the future is really foreseeable.

2012-01-08T18:53:00.000-06:00

Sketch-a-doodle: man with frazzly hair. I know how he feels. We've all had days like that (even if most of us have never had hair like that).

It's Fortunate...

2012-01-07T17:44:00.001-06:00

It's fortunate that my team's (the Saints') colors (black and gold) sync well with those of my personal uniform¹ (black and, well, whatever color I'm wearing on my bottom half). It'd be mighty hard to sport the pride otherwise. (Sorry, LSU. You'll never find me in a purple shirt.)

Who dat!

¹ My uniform has actually become even more dogmatically minimalist since that post. Don't ask why. Things simply are as they must be.

I Like the Word... (Redux)

2012-01-06T21:45:00.000-06:00

I like the word "tittle".¹ (I thought it was spelled "tiddle" until I looked it up just now.) What word do you like?

¹ I asked a friend to pour me a little tittle (of bourbon, of course). He did. The tittle was rather littler than I'd truly wished. I asked if he could make a double tittle — a doppio tittle, as it were. A tittlio? he suggested. Yes, indeed. So there you go: "tittlio" = "doppio tittle" ('cause sometimes that's exactly what you want). Feel free to use it.

2012-01-06T09:36:00.001-06:00

Morning clouds

I Like the Word...

2012-01-05T20:02:00.000-06:00

I like the word "lollygag". (It's way better than just plain old "gag".) What word do you like?

2012-01-05T20:00:00.001-06:00

Blimp, drifting through the fog over Lake Pontchartrain. (It doesn't look so big in this photo, but when it first went right past our window, it was startlingly large. Retro-20s-newsreel and futuristic-Blade-Runner all at once.)

Ice, Ice, Baby

2012-01-04T21:49:00.001-06:00

When I left for work this morning, my car was covered, not with the thick dew it so often is in this drenching climate, but with crystalline webs of ice. And I don't have one of those window-scraper things. And I'm guessing the percentage of drivers in this city who do have one of those window-scraper things is in the low single digits. What to do? What to do? Well, I sat. And watched with weird pleasure as the defroster did its slow work, and Rorschachian blobs of clarity spread across the windshield, and at last I could go.

Ah, the irony: we can claw our way back from apocalyptic hurricanes but are immobilized by a brief wee-hours dip into the low thirties. That's alright. Work could wait a bit. And the ice was very pretty.

2012-01-04T08:07:00.001-06:00

Morning fog, City Park (as seen from a moving car (yeah, I know; but the road was really empty and the fog was really pretty))

2012-01-03T16:13:00.000-06:00

This is Albert. He's a bird. I'm not really sure what his deal is. I have a vague notion (and what is this blog but an assemblage of vague notions) that he's the first in a series (though only time will tell). Maybe a family of birds. And he's the grumpy uncle. Or sumthin'. (We'll workshop it.)

I Resolve...

2012-01-03T16:07:00.000-06:00

New Year's Resolutions are hard. And failure is so discouraging. This year I'm lowering the bar. I resolve to:

Wear shoes most days
Not curse at nuns
Avoid fraternizing with gibbons
Sleep
Not get my ears pierced
Not get a tattoo
Not bet on peanuckle games
Make at least one mock-(but-not really-all-that-funny)-list of New Year’s resolutions

What do you resolve?

Nice to Be Home

2012-01-02T16:09:00.001-06:00

Nice to be home (after our very brief little getaway). I suppose my life ain't so bad (or I'm a stuck-in-my-ways curmudgeon (or both)), if I'm always so pleased to return to my comfy old house and our kooky cats and all the business and bustle and jostle of the usual routine. O bla di. Jiggety jog. Etc.

2012-01-02T15:49:00.001-06:00

The gals, walking along... Hmm, how do I explain this? Um, the part of the panhandle we were in has these little specific sort of oceanside lake/lagoon/things-with-a-name-that-I-can't-remember-right-now, a sort that only occurs there and somewhere in South Africa. And those lake/lagoon/things-a-ma-bobs actually have these little waterway/outlets that run across the beach like little mini-rivers and flow out into the ocean. That was a terrrible explanation, but the lake/lagoon/thing-a-ma-bobs and their associated mini-rivers are quite lovely and cool. And the gals enjoyed traipsing their way through them.

2012-01-01T11:17:00.000-06:00

Little Miss Pink Shorts, at the water's edge

New Beginnings1

2012-01-01T09:07:00.000-06:00

So, having ended the old year in the dark Florida woods, I started the new year watching the sun rise over the Gulf of Mexico. Not too shabby. (Though I confess, my dominant thought at the the time was "Damn, I wish I’d brought my camera." Ahh, the affliction of modern livin’...)

¹ This was the best post title I could think of at the moment. It sounds like the name of a drug rehab center.

Auld Lang Syne

2011-12-31T20:01:00.000-06:00

Some New Years Eves are loud and raucous, big crowds and booze and bangs and hoopla. I like those. But I also like this year's: just the family, in a cabin, in the warm humid quiet darkness of the Florida woods, the new year entering on tippy toes — quiet, quiet, hush, hush. Enjoy, whatever sort you’re having. Bon soir.

2011-12-31T16:24:00.000-06:00

My morning coffee: black and gold demitasse with bird. (A lovely espresso machine came into my possession for Christmas, and so now I have the pleasure of drinking my morning coffee in whichever I choose of my many demitasses. Mmm, fancy-licious.)

Crazy Recent Bird Sightings

2011-12-30T09:54:00.001-06:00

I don't know if there are more birds of prey in New Orleans now, or I'm just paying more attention, but I've been seeing them like crazy of late. A sampling of a few recent sightings:

I was driving home, passing through a busy intersection. A pigeon swooped erratically in front of me, then smashed into the side of a cab going the other way. As my brain started to formulate the question, "What the h...?" I saw a hawk¹ swoop in to scoop it up off the pavement, and I realized its wild flight had been a desperate (and failed) attempt to escape. Oh. Dang!
There's been some sort of hawk hanging out around my office. I see it regularly fly past and hang out in nearby trees. We're on the third floor, and it sometimes flies below our windows. Cool to see its vivid top-side markings.
I saw a bald eagle twice in one day (again at work), drifting along the edge of Lake Pontchartrain.
The other day, I was biking through my neighborhood and was startled to see a big ol' hawk sitting on nearby fence, literally about ten feet away, the closest I've ever been to such a creature. It had some large cricket-like munchy in its beak. I skidded to a halt and tried to snap a photo, but it flew off and landed some distance away, to nosh its bug-treat in peace.

And there's been plenty more sightings, though they escape my brain at the moment.

¹ I say "hawk". I can't really definitively distinguish between the various flavors of hawk/falcon/etc. down here. Definitely a big bird of prey. Let's just say "hawk" is close enough.

2011-12-30T08:41:00.001-06:00

Man in green sweater and striped tie

Silly Crap Around My Office: Doofus

2011-12-29T14:36:00.001-06:00

We build software. When building software, one has to make sure the software will work on the full range of potential end-user machines, from fancy-and-new to crappy-and-old. To test the crappy-and-old, we have Doofus, the crappiest oldest computer we could scrounge up:

Doofus: vintage PC, running XP, takes about fifteen minutes to boot up and get its mind right, sounds like an airplane taking off, runs like a sloth in a barrel of molasses.¹

And of course, a computer named Doofus ought to have a big yellow dunce cap and ridiculously oversized ears. Doofus—so doofy.

¹ I just made up that folksy metaphor. I'm not sure how legitimate it is. I suspsect a sloth in barrel of molasses actually wouldn't do any running at all. But you know what I mean.

Darth Pong

2011-12-28T20:32:00.000-06:00

One of the great advantages of being handy at digital drawing is that you can snap a photo of someone, then do all sorts of ridonkulous things to it. For example, if my co-worker keeps crushing everyone at at ping-pong in a dominating, authoritarian, Star-Wars-Empire-like fashion, I might christen him Darth Pong, snap a pic, duds him up accordingly, and broadcast the rendering to the world like so:

So watch your step, 'cause the iDoodle is mightier than the sword. And I'm armed and dangerous.

2011-12-28T09:42:00.001-06:00

Mr. Close-Crop. (Remember when that was such a big thing, the long on top and shaved on the sides?
What, the '80s and early '90s or so?)

2011-12-27T23:30:00.000-06:00

Lil chickadee (and today's (well, actually yesterday's) fulfillment of my image-post quota). Isn't it cute?

Game Changer

2011-12-27T23:00:00.000-06:00

I'm changing my bloggy quota rules mid-month:¹ instead of one "text post" and one "photo post", it's now one "text post" and one "image post", and "image" can mean either a photo or a drawing ('cause the doodles were getting slightly short shrift).

And this counts as today's text post. Sneaky, huh?²

¹ How can I change the rules at this late date? Because I'm the Prime Mover of this goofy little universe, and my arbitrary notions are its axiomatic principals. That's how.

² Plus I actually fell asleep early last (Tuesday) night, before fulfilling my daily bloggy-quota, so I'm actually posting this in the pre-dawn hours of the next (Wednesday) morning, and I'm back-dating it. Sneaky, huh? (Oh, the wicked webs we weave...)

The Gingerbread House That Wasn't

2011-12-26T17:03:00.001-06:00

So, constructing a gingerbread house has been a family holiday tradition for a couple years running, and this year the tradition continued. But with less successful results:

Sarah baked the gingerbread. The girls had made two icecream-cone-and-M&M trees for out front. I did the initial construction and was shingling the roof with Necco wafers. Then it all went to hell. The walls started warping and collapsing. I tried to save it: realignments, reenforcements, more icing-glue. It held for a while. But then... flump. There were a couple further attempts to salvage it, but we at last deemed it fundamentally strucuturally flawed, and we abandoned the task.

We were a little mystified. We'd done everything the same as years past. What was different? We learned we weren't alone. Friends had almost identical travails, a city-wide gingerbread house calamity. (I'm extrapolating here from an admittedly very small set of data points.) The cause, apparently: our near-seventy-degree temperatures and current sauna-like humidity, which rendered the gingerbread soft and loosey-goosey.

Hmm. Collapsed roofless houses. Water rendering them structurally unsound. Sounds kind of familiar. A very New Orleans sort of holiday failure. Oh, well. Next year. (If ain't seventy and sweltering.)

2011-12-25T17:51:00.001-06:00

June serves tea. (This photograph has no holiday theme, whatsoever. Oh, well. Quotas are quotas.)

Sketchy Santa*

2011-12-25T10:58:00.000-06:00

December 26 must be the hardest day of the year for Santa: the many months of preparations, the build to the deadline, the frenzied rush of Christmas Eve, Christmas Day with its revelries, the warm glow of a job well done, and then... then what? It starts all over again. Do you think Santa gives himself a little "me time", perhaps a spa retreat? a cruise? before restarting to the annual grind all over again?

* "Sketchy" in the drawing sense, not like, "Whoah! that Santa at the Oakwood Mall was seriously sketchy looking."

Actual Wishes Yelled by Two Children at a Penny-Filled Fountain

2011-12-24T15:41:00.001-06:00

Child #1: "I wish I had candy!"

Child #2: "I wish I was rich!"

Child #1: "I wish I was rich so I had candy!"

Kids. Darnedest things. Say.

2011-12-24T15:31:00.001-06:00

"Fun dad" breakfast, served up during my rooster-tending-the-nest weekend.

Louise Said To Me...

2011-12-23T20:57:00.000-06:00

Louise said to me,

"You can do stupid things without seeming stupid."

High praise, high praise indeed. (I should put that on my resume.)

Thursday, In Photos

2011-12-23T09:20:00.000-06:00

Rainbow over Lake Pontchartrain, seen from my desk (which now overlooks the lake since we mutinied and took over the sweet office across the hall). It was a weird time of day for a rainbow, midday. (Most of ours happen late in the day, as the the horizontal sunlight slices through the remnants of afternoon thunderstorms.) The sun was high overhead, and only a shallow arc of the rainbow showed over the horizon (as opposed to the fuller half-circle one sees towards sundown).

My bike, and irises

Our Angel Trumpet is in full bloom

As is our rose bush

And our Dwarf Bottlebrush

Gold car and associated reflections

Christmas decorations

Late afternoon, wires and houses

Recent fire (undoubtedly the most Gothic picture I took all day)

Lone streetlamp and evening sky

Louise, having a "Grey Gardens" moment

Silly Crap Around My Office: The Globe

2011-12-22T13:55:00.001-06:00

The globe used to be June's. It was in her room, on a stand. At some point the stand got lost, and the globe rolled around on the floor for a while. I was cleaning up one day. I found it. I thought, that would be better off in our office at work than it would rolling around on June's floor. I took it to work. We needed to hang it. We found some sort of stretchy nubby-ball slingshot-thing that had a long chord (and the nubby ball part fit into the globe and held it good.) We hung it from the ceiling. There it is. You can't see the chair directly beneath it. Whenever anyone who has never sat in that chair before sits in it, they almost invariable, at some point, look up and say, "Oh, I never knew [such and such feature of the southern hemisphere] was there." Like clockwork.

Gone Fishin'

2011-12-22T13:25:00.001-06:00

The Wall, the big crazy thing being built out sort of in the old MR-GO that's, I believe, part of shutting down that whole waterway that caused so much trouble during Katrina. It is also, apparently, a good winter fishing destination. (You may start to figure out that I really don't know what I'm talking about here.)

Jeff, the captain of our little craft

Window, water, marsh, machinery

Restricted

Sunset

Shrimp boats

I Love the Word...

2011-12-21T09:34:00.000-06:00

I love the word “tornadic”. What word do you love?

2011-12-21T07:30:00.000-06:00

Willow tree, day time

Silly Crap Around My Office: Progresso the Chicken of Progress

2011-12-20T12:00:00.000-06:00

May I introduce you to Progresso the Chicken of Progress:

Progresso started life as a Muses throw, (a damn fine catch, if I may say). I brought it¹ to work. (The last thing I need is more Mardi Gras crap at home.) One day, stuck on a particularly gnarly technical problem, I rigged the chicken up to the extensible badge holder I'd been given at orientation, added wings made from index cards, and hung it from the ceiling. At some later date, we started charting our daily progress by raising the chicken higher as tasks were completed. It was dubbed The Chicken of Progress, and later, Progresso the Chicken of Progress. Soar, Progresso, soar!

¹ Him? Her? Hmm, we have a gender issue. "Progresso" is a male name, yes? (Progresso, not Progressa,) but chickens are by definition female ('cause they ain't roosters). Hmm.

2011-12-20T08:57:00.001-06:00

Men in Red Shirts: Monsieur Frenchy Stripes

2011-12-20T08:21:00.002-06:00

Willow tree and moon

Willow tree and moon, later

Willow tree and moon, later still

2011-12-19T14:05:00.001-06:00

Latest in installment in our "Men in Red Shirts" series: Man with large nose in red shirt

Silly Crap Around My Office: The Devil Mask

2011-12-19T14:00:00.000-06:00

Introducing today's feature in the Silly Crap parade, the Devil Mask:

The mask itself was found abandoned on the ground one day. The eyes are ping-pong balls with Sharpied-on pupils. (They can be adjusted to stare straight at you, wherever you are in the room.) And then there's his torso and associated outfit, which can change at whim. New day? Newly doodled Devil Duds. Keeps things interesting. Today he's got a bit of a "hell freezes over" look going on.

2011-12-19T11:57:00.001-06:00

Blue toy car

2011-12-18T19:27:00.000-06:00

Man in red shirt with yellow stripes

Silly Crap Around My Office: The "DOH!" Hat

2011-12-18T18:09:00.001-06:00

A new series, Silly Crap Around My Office:

What's an essential component of an effective office environment? Lot's of silly crap everywhere. (So say I.) My current office thrives in this regard. Let's take a tour of the silly crap. First up, the "DOH!" hat:

Yours truly in the "DOH!" hat (and Stephen in the background, at his standing desk, which is actually one desk stacked on another desk, plus a complex arrangement of inverted trash cans and Community Coffee cups). For the record, this was just a test run. I hadn't actually done anything "DOH!"-worthy.

I made this the other day from the frames of a pair of 3-D glasses and the other side of the Pendaflex that I had cut to make the "DOOFUS" hat. (We'll get to that later.) It's a Quality Control (QC) tool: Anybody who does anything really stupid, really "DOH!"-worthy, has to wear this rig. (Ooh! I should write a book: "The Managers Guide to Medieval Shaming Techniques".)

2011-12-18T07:23:00.000-06:00

Momma was away for a little overnight hen party, so Ol' Mr. Rooster here and the lil' chickadees had a party of our own. And apparently when the cat's away, the mice get all Martha Stewart with it. (That's a lot of animal metaphors.) Marshmallow treats by June; cookies by Sarah (extras from the hen party preparations); sparkling lemon-limeade by yours truly. (That lemon-limeade was a hit: juice a couple lemons and two limes, add a generous wallop of simple syrup, some ice, fill with club soda, stir.)

11:29 p.m.

2011-12-17T23:29:00.000-06:00

Crap, it's 11:29 and I haven't filled today's "text post" quota. Got to get cracking. Um... Hey, what about this weird doodle-guy:

He's a picture, but a picture's worth a thousand words (as they say). So this post is actually hyper-textual (and hyper-linkable). That counts, right? (I say it does, so it does, since I made up the rules, and I can therefore abuse them as I see fit.)

On a separate note, there seems to be a trend toward guys with the heads colored outside of the lines? Really, what's up with that?¹

¹ I love observational humor. You can do it with anything: Trash cans. Trash. Cans. What's up with that?

2011-12-17T16:11:00.001-06:00

June, preparing a "potion"

Dzzz, Dzzzzz, Dzzzzz, Dzzz...

2011-12-16T20:27:00.000-06:00

I love it when, late on a warm humid evening, or early on a cool foggy morning, the electric wires out front hiss and crackle in the wet air, the current abandoning its engineered path to spark and pop pointlessly but pleasingly. I don’t know why I love it. It’s presumably "a bad thing" from a well-maintained-city-infrastructure point of view. But love it I do. What pointless-but-pleasing thing do you love?

2011-12-16T19:40:00.000-06:00

My new guitar , a Danelectro 59. De-lovely, non? I do adore it.

A Fair Bit

2011-12-15T12:52:00.001-06:00

"A fair bit", I use that phrase a fair bit. Is that a country thing or a regular thing? I don't talk too country too often (though occasionally I do talk a bit of Southern¹), but I did grow up in the country, and perhaps sometimes little rural-isms slip in. And right now I'm thinking too hard about "a fair bit", and just like anytime one thinks too hard about a word or phrase (or the spelling thereof), it starts to sound (or look) weird—the background part of the brain that normally handles such nuances gets trumped by the foreground part that comes blundering in and says "Let me think very deliberately about this," but that foreground part doesn't really know much about such things, and it gets confused and makes a mess of it. So, "a fair bit"—country or reg'lar?

¹ Hmm, country vs. Southern. Not the same, though they might overlap. And when I say "country", which country? I think I mean Virginia-country. Help! Is there a geolinguist in the house?

2011-12-15T08:08:00.001-06:00

Soccer balls

2011-12-14T20:55:00.001-06:00

Store front, Oak Street

Slimbo Three-Oh

2011-12-14T16:47:00.003-06:00

Yeah, I've been futzing with the look-and-feel again. I can't help myself. Few things bring me more pleasure than minutely tweaking fonts and layouts, noodling with colors and white-space. (What did people like me do before the personal computer made such do-it-yourself design viable? Dunno.) And now that we're all hot-and-heavy with the posting again, a lil' spruce-up seemed due. Anyhoo, here ya go: Slimbo Three-Oh (3.0). Or somesuch.

Slim's Parenting Tips: "Spoiled First World Children"

2011-12-13T15:33:00.000-06:00

One of the principal jobs of a parent is to teach his or her children to keep things in perspective. But how? I suggest you teach them with a song. For example, whenever my youngsters start fussing that they don't like their dinner, or they wish they had this or that gadget or doo-dad, I sing them a little ditty:

Spoiled First World children,
You fuss all day long.
Spoiled First World children,
This is your song.
Your bellies are full.
You laugh and play.
But not all children
Live that way.
Spoiled First World children,
I sing this song for you.¹

It has a cheery little melody. The lyrics vary each time, depending on the circumstances. Feel free to use it. Let me tell you, kids love it.²

¹ In their defense, they're really not very spoiled (not by First World standards), but I like to think this song is helping keep them that way.

² Okay, that's a lie; they hate it. But it is effective. Now, all I have to do is hum a couple of bars, and they instantly quit their fussing (so they can shriek, "Papa, stop!").

2011-12-13T15:29:00.001-06:00

Virgin Mary amidst flowers. (I'm a sucker for those little Mary statuettes. I wonder how many photos of them I've taken over the years.)

2011-12-12T21:20:00.001-06:00

Canoes

Things I Wish For: Coffee Yoga

2011-12-12T21:14:00.003-06:00

Continuing with our yoga theme:

So there's been a proliferation of different types of yoga now available to the yoga consumer, right? Hot yoga, speedy yoga, yoga-lates. (Am I making those up? They may have other actual names, but I think those are all real-ish.) I'd like to advocate for a new offering: coffee yoga, morning yoga classes with a full coffee service. Seriously, I can't imagine much of anything better than going to a Saturday morning class and, between poses, stepping over to the side to pour myself a steaming hot mug a good hot black coffee. Sipping on it during the seated poses. Slugging it down once it reaches Perfect Gulping Temperature. Mmm, namaste-licious.

2011-12-12T09:20:00.000-06:00

Man in yellow sweater, with gray curly hair. (So I laid out elaborate rules for our text and photo posts this month. But what about drawing/painting posts? Lagniappe, baby, lagniappe!)

"Go Pound Sand"

2011-12-11T21:17:00.001-06:00

Have you ever heard the expression, "You can go pound sand"? I learned it recently. ("Tell him to go pound sand." "Whuh?") That's a weird one, basically the equivalent of telling someone to "Go to hell" or "Go frak yourself" or "Go fly a kite" or "Buzz off" or "Go take a short walk off a long pier". Hmm, what is it about the expressing of hostility that induces such a rich and varied use of metaphor? Are we at our most poetic when we're at our meanest? Curious, curious.

2011-12-11T18:03:00.001-06:00

Delilah amidst Christmas lights, fixing to wreak havoc

Father/Daughter Dance

2011-12-10T17:33:00.001-06:00

'Twas that time of year again, the Father/Daughter Dance. (Though I only had Miss June as a date this year. Miss Louise had decided that she was no longer interested in such silliness.) It really is a hilarious business, from the anticipatory fanciness:

to the dance-floor silliness (though it's a very serious sort of silliness, chock full of entertainement for my inner armchair anthropologist: the fathers training the daughters in the cultural ritual of the sock hop, the young ladies glancing at each other for pointers, oscillating between faux-adult formality and giggling girlishness—and everyone checking each other for the correct moves to the latest synchronized dance craze¹):

to hula hooping:

It always ends in hula hooping.

¹ I got pretty solid on the Cupid Shuffle a few years back, and I've been milking for everything it's worth ever since. I'm a lot rustier on the newer moves. I'll have to do some YouTube research next year in preparation.

2011-12-09T18:00:00.000-06:00

Railroad crossing

"That's What..."

2011-12-09T13:00:00.001-06:00

I'll confess, I'm a user and abuser of "That's what she said" jokes. I haven't watched "The Office" in a while, but the joke has stuck, latched onto by that little Tourretic component in my brain that thrives on such silly impropriety. I have a background process (a "daemon" as we say in geek-speek) that scans all incoming sentences for "Twss"-viability.* So...

I was in yoga class. Our teacher was explaining how to set up for a pose.** "...You might only need two blankets, but go ahead and add a third to the stack, because once you're in the pose, it's a whole lot easier to pull it out than it is to stick it in...." The dim meditative light hid my big goofy grin. But then from the back row, another student with an apparently similar juvenile sensibility (and a less effective verbal editor) whispered, almost inaudibly, "That's what she said," and I lost it, falling into a snorty giggling fit, as did the whisperer. The rest of the class (all higher-minded individuals, apparently) turned to stare at us. The teacher, puzzled, asked what was so funny. For a moment, I actually started to explain, "Um, well, you see, you said...", then realized I should quit while I wasn't too far behind. "Yeah, never mind..." Yeah. Really. Never mind. I'll grow up one of these days.

* And I define "viability" broadly. I love a good "That's what she said" zinger but also take a weird pleasure in applying it where it doesn't really apply (that's what she said), watching the joke land with an awkward plunk as everyone furrows their brows, thinking "That doesn't..."

** I do Iyengar Yoga. We use lot's of props in our poses, folded blankets and wood blocks and the like.

2011-12-08T20:55:00.001-06:00

"BEWARE of DOG", pink and white house

"Y'all Can All Y'all..."

2011-12-08T20:45:00.001-06:00

To my wife and daughters, I recently found myself saying:

"Y'all can all y'all really lose yourselves in a book."*

I believe that's the most Southern** sentence I've ever said in my life. It's pretty funny sounding. It's also perfectly legitimate in Southern Vernacular,** the "all y'all" providing emphasis which the "Y'all can" by itself lacks. Y'all can all y'all... Y'all can all y'all... Y'all can all y'all...

* It's true. They're all ridiculously focused readers, to the eternal amazement of this rambly mind.

** Not "Southern-most" but "most Southern".

*** Some wayward souls may think that "perfectly legitimate in Southern Vernacular" and "funny sounding" are redundant, but t'ain't so. Y'all can all y'all borrow our vernacular anytime you choose. Try it on. We think you'll like it.

2011-12-07T14:00:00.000-06:00

Apparently June has been learning in school about holiday traditions around the world, because she came home a couple nights ago talking all about filling shoes with carrots and how St. Nicholas was coming that nightand would replace the carrots with candy. I tried to suggest that while St. Nick might visit the far reaches of Europe on the wee hours of Dec. 6, here in New Orleans, he sticks to a Christmas Eve timetable. She would not be dissuaded. (That child is both a sweets fanatic and devilishly clever, and if there's a way to finagle some candy, she's on it. I expect soon she'll be googling for candy-providing holidays around the world and demanding sweet corresponding treats on a near-daily basis.) Immediately upon arriving home, she got a pair of her shoes, found a bag of baby carrots, stuffed the latter in the former, and set them outside the front door. Though St. Nick might have felt slightly duped, he couldn't resist the cuteness of the effort, and in the morning, lo! there was candy.

I Pledge...

2011-12-07T10:02:00.001-06:00

Yep. Nope. Still too quiet around here. Let's kick-start things. You know what works for me? Structured repetitive tasks. (Remember our Phone Phauna? A through Z. Picture a day. Structured. Repetitive. Phun.) So let's get repetitive-structurey with it again. (Same yet different.) I pledge to post

1 photo post and
1 text post*

every day for a month. (Note: I don't pledge they'll be good. They might be crap. But they'll be daily. For thirty-ish days.) That should get things moving around here.

p.s. This counts as today's text post. Tricky, huh?

* If you're of a literal-minded persuasion, you might procalaim, "But your photos are near-always accompanied by a textual caption!" for which I have a literal-minded response: A "photo post" is a photo accompanied only by a caption, no big title across the top, no full-size body text. A text post is the other kind, a post with the big titles, full-size body text, and without a photo. And of course there might be "combo posts", with all of these elements: full-size title, body text, and one or more photos, which would count as two-birds-one-stone and would fulfill the days quota in one fell swoop. (Whew! Glad we beat those over-nuanced distinctions into oblivion.)

2011-12-01T15:31:00.001-06:00

Little Miss Rocker June

2011-11-28T10:48:00.000-06:00

Man in green shirt with head colored outside the lines. (Ouch! That's gotta hurt.)

Thanksgiving Weekend

2011-11-27T18:13:00.001-06:00

Thanksgiving weekend—more people around the neighborhood, out on porches, laughter and hugs, Texas and Georgia plates, cousins blown away by the storm but back for a dose of home, bit of drinking, bit of music, bit of late night dancing on the stoop, vigorous handshakes, backslaps, and more laughter—I like it.

2011-11-26T12:28:00.001-06:00

Swan (photograph taken by June)