Celticangel.org

The Live Oak Nature Trail

So, last Sunday I finally managed to nerve myself up enough to go to that lovely Episcopalian church all on my lonesome. Apart from a severe lack of parking, it was just lovely. Perhaps someday I can get some pictures to show you. The stained glass windows, the curved lines of the ceiling, and the hanging lights were inspirational all on their own. Conveniently, the order of service was very well documented in the bulletin so I didn’t get lost. Overall…it was quite the restful experience. I think I’ll go back.

Later in the day we were out in San Bruno visiting with friends, and when we asked about a place to take a walk they suggested Junipero Serra County Park. And wouldn’t you know it? It was just across the street. How convenient. (Imagine The Church Lady’s voice there.) They were correct. There are some lovely trails over there. The picture at the top of this post is from that walk. (A couple more are over at my flickr phtotstream.) I never knew that Poison Oak could be so…pretty. It brings a nice splash of color to the scenery. You just have to be very careful not to touch it. Next time I’ll be sure to dress for an actual hike, and bring things like…water. Handy thing, water.

I did have my camera. But then, I almost always have it with me. Good thing, too, as I like the pics I took.

Sorry I haven’t updated lately. The Olympics have sucked me in. Well…that and Twilight by Stephenie Meyer, which is Grade-A Book Crack. I’ve finished it, and book 2 will be in my hands on Saturday. Suffice to say…I loved it.

TTFN.

Well…It’s Olympics Season.

Are you all as glued to your television as we are? (This fact should not be too surprising, as I *did* marry Mr. I-Love-Almost-Every-Sport.) I loved the Opening Ceremonies. Now, if only Koshvader and I could make it to the Vancouver or London Olympics. I believe that it would be worth the stress and over-stimulation involved to see an event such as that live. Yes, indeed.

Yesterday, we managed to tear ourselves away from the TV long enough to go for a walk. Not just any walk, mind you. No. You see, when I am commuting home over the San Mateo Bridge, I always wonder about the walking trail that actually passes under the bridge. You can see it as you drive past. Yesterday, we managed to figure out how to get there. The trail is on a levee that keeps the San Francisco Bay from encroaching (too much) along the coastline there. One of the features of said levee is a bunch of big rocks. There are also occasional concrete walkways for those who engage in water sports, or so I imagine.

Why is this important?

Well…on this particular walk we encountered a poor gentleman, who was a fair distance from the usual Kite Boarding area, floating in the water with his kite. His board was a little way further down from where we were. We stopped and waited to see if he was alright. Once he had gotten close enough to the rocks (imagine small crashing waves here) the gentleman deflated his kite (they are inflated along the top edge.) I climbed down the rocks to help him with the kite (I swim. Koshvader does not.) This took a bit of doing as the lines from the kite had gotten tangled in the rocks. Good thing they didn’t get tangled around him! Did you know that those kites cost $1000? No wonder he was being so careful. He told us that his kite had inverted in the wind and bam! Anyway, he was fine and set off to retrieve his board and we continued our lovely walk. (We saw him later with both kite and board under his arms.)

I’ll put up some other pictures from the walk once I’ve finished with them. Hope you’re having a great day and enjoying the Olympics. Lots of impressive sporting ability out there.

Lately I have been working hard to get rid of things, and generally declutter. I have been carrying around many things from apartment to apartment that I never look at, much less use. (In my family, these sorts of things are called “Goat Brassieres.” Dead handy items in the right circumstances, but why hold on to them if you no longer have a goat?) I’ve started getting rid of books, even. Me! Getting rid of books! Surely that’s blasphemy in some fashion or other. Books, clothing, you name it. I’m taking a good hard look at everything I own and asking myself important questions like: Do I use this? Have I ever used this? Do I even like it? Where did this come from again? etc.

But really, that’s just the tip of the iceberg, because one of the things I have a whole bunch of is…magazines.

*Taps microphone and clears throat nervously*

Hello. I am the Celticangel and I am an Information Packrat.

You perhaps think that I joke with you all. But it is the truth. I assure you. With a French accent, even. Vous savez?

It is also interesting to look into my past this way. I mean, why the heck did I feel the need to keep this or that magazine in the first place? In some cases, it’s obvious. (Hello! Travis Fimmel is on the front.) In others…not so much. (Okay…this has one small advert for the Return of the King DVD. Otherwise…I haven’t a clue.) Also…sometimes it’s a little embarrassing. This is only one of the reasons that I have placed the other four pictures behind the cut. The other reason being to make it easier on your computer to load the initial post. (Yeah. That’s it. That’s the ticket.) The reason for the magazine at the top of this post should be fairly obvious. I like Buffy. Do I need to keep it? No.

Okay. The rest of the mug shots are under here…

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I’ve mentioned my Random Access Brain before. On any given day when it is on Shuffle, my RAB can provide me with a most astonishing variety of music. Most of it can’t even be explained away as being triggered by my seeing a book title or something. So this morning when I woke up with J Lo’s “Jenny from the Block” playing in my head it occurred to me that I’ve never tried to keep track of all the songs on random play in my head during the course of one day.

Impossible? Crazy idea? Needlessly obsessive?

Perhaps. But darn amusing I’ll warrant.

And so I did. I actually managed to note down all the random songs playing in my head. And here is the list. In order of the first appearance of the song.

Be afraid.

Just singing in my head…
1) J Lo - Jenny From the Block (video)
2) Amy Grant - El Shaddai (video)
3) Fanny Crosby - Blessed Assurance
4) Do You Hear the People Sing from Les Miserables
5) A medley of songs from Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog.
6) A random theme song that I don’t know the name of. Sorry.
7) Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band - Urban Spaceman (video)
8 ) A song that I made up about a puppet…today. No idea how it got stuck in my head so quickly.
9) Kylie Minogue - I Just Can’t Get You Out of My Head (video)
10) En Vogue - My Lovin’ (You`re Never Gonna Get It) (video)
11) Dazz Band - Let It Whip (video)
12) The Goops - Build me Up Buttercup (video)
13) Rogers & Hammerstein - In My Own Little Corner (video)
14) Evanescence - All That I’m Living For

And there you are! Frankly I’m astonished that I manged to note it all down. Now you can see for yourself how very random my personal song shuffle can be. I have no idea why I started the day with J Lo of all people. Oh well. *shrug*

Is your Random Access Brain as random with its song choices?

My favorite photographic subject seems to be Koshvader’s back.

I’ve been experiencing a great deal of stress and anxiety lately. It’s the usual cocktail of money/job/relationship stuff with a heaping side of can’t-seem-to-get-pregnant. Meh.

All of that is really annoying and makes it difficult to sleep/concentrate/wake up, you know? Plus, with my nervous system, it also means that any tiny little thing makes my cry. For like…two hours if I’m not careful. Things like a balloon popping (which makes me cry all of the time anyway. What is it with me and popping balloons? For some reason the noise just goes right through me. All sorts of fun in social situations, let me tell you.), missing a phone call, or making a mistake. This, in and of itself, is really annoying and stressful.

So, what I want to know is, what do you do to relieve stress? I mean, obviously there’s “have lots of sex” (fun, but hard to work into one’s schedule on a daily basis) and “have a nice cup of tea” (the pause that refreshes, but one must stick to decaf or herbal is one wishes to sleep at night. Have I mentioned that I drink a lot of tea?) What has been working best for me lately is photography. It forces me to try and think creatively. It also forces me to get out of the house, which is not my preference when I’m feeling like this. I’m a hermit at the best of times. An interesting side effect of all of this photography-based travel has been my gut opinion of places. (Sometimes being an HSP can be a bit entertaining. Who knew?) For example, I love this one beach in Pacifica. There’s just something about it that I connect with. But I went to Stinson Beach the other day, and I found it to be not soothing. Easy to walk on, yes. Soothing, no. The parking lot for said beach in the evening? That was soothing. No idea why. *shrug*

Oh. And petting cats is nice too.

What do you lot do to relax?

relieve stress, relax

Apparently you have to visit Wordle to see the big one…

This weekend’s attempt at an Anniversary Photo Safari Trip didn’t really work out like we’d hoped.

1) We were a bit later in leaving that we’d hoped to be.
2) We needed 3 things a)a 72mm multi-coated professional UV filter, b)a pair of AA batteries specifically for Digital Cameras, and c)air for the tires of my car.
3) We manged to get exactly none of these things before we finally gave up and left.

Yeah. It was a bit…sucktastic. We finally got the air taken care of on the 3rd? 4th? attempt over in San Rafael after dinner at the only place we could find/reach. That would be IHOP. Which if fine for me, but Koshvader is not that fond of the place. On the bright side we made it out to Point Reyes on the first day, which was nice. On the downside was the frustration, general grumpiness, and lack-of-food induced growlies. It kind of overshadowed the whole proceedings. That and the sudden explosion of humanity on many of the places we’d been thinking about photographing. We will attempt Anniversary celebration number two on our actual anniversary by going out for a nice dinner. Here’s hoping that we end up in a more romantic room at La Fondue this time.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

Enough about the Anniversary weekend of frustration. What I really want to talk about is underwear. More specifically, Back-of-the-Drawer Underwear. You know what I mean. Those pairs of underwear that you keep for emergencies. When all your other underwear is in the dirty clothes pile, these are the undergarments you resort to.

This is not a female-specific thing, either. One of the advantages of being married is that I have discovered that men do the same thing. Their underwear may not literally be located in the back of the drawer, but they are the not-quite-comfortable ones or novelty items that we have.

My question is…why do we keep these? Why don’t we buy more underwear or do laundry more often? I suppose that we like to be prepared. To have those pairs of underwear of last resort. Just in case. Just make sure that you are not wearing a white novelty thong with the word “bride” on it when you get in a car wreck. Your mother probably cautioned you to wear clean underwear just in case you found yourself in that situation. I’ll bet she didn’t mean clean novelty bride thongs.

Do you have an order in which you wear your undies of last resort? I have a whole gradient system. In the front of the drawer live my newest, best-fitting knickers. In the middle of the drawer are the okay-but-not-quite-as-good undies. In the back of the drawer lurk the undies-I-would-rather-avoid. Of those, there is also an order indicating the level of laundry emergency. The granny undies come before the one pair with the little hole in the side, and so forth. And I do own that bride thong. I should never wear a thong. My behind isn’t designed to look good in those things.

What insane pairs of undies lurk in your drawer?

Anniversary, Underwear

This evening I went back to my Great Stack of Notebooks and pulled a red notebook out of the middle. Let’s investigate it together, shall we?

This notebook seems to date from my Master’s Program. The date on the first page is 4/24/00, though I did find some pages from 1999 as well. I found all sorts of notes from my classes, but some of the notes are a bit difficult to figure out. They’re more along the lines of Mysterious Utterances.

A few examples:

“Make 19 photocopies of Planet Biblio.”

“Luddites with bandwidth.” (Sounds like a band name)

“The Day the Earth Didn’t Move Around Too Much.”

“In sometimes painful detail.”

“8,000 Libs 1 door.”

See what I mean? The rest of the notes are boring. So, I’m going to share my doodles with you instead…

It would appear that I needed to purchase a hamper at this point. Check out the little Viking helmet. And yes, hearts are my all time favorite doodle. Do you have favorite doodles?

Here we see another perennial favorite, the combined sun/moon. Eventually the nose would become part of the moon. Hmm…I wonder what future archaeologists will make of the evolution of doodles.

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doodles, doodle

The Truck

Are you familiar with the term Big Dick Truck? No? Well, generally speaking it connotes a large truck, often with extra bells and whistles, with the subtext that said truck is…er…compensating for a lack of size elsewhere.

With me now? On the way to work the other day I found myself behind one such truck. It was a very large black thing that must run through gasoline like water. Also…it sought to extend the “Big Dick Truck” metaphor one step further.

You can see why I had to dig out my camera at the light. This Big Dick Truck even has testicles! Dear Heavens. Makes one wonder about the driver of such a vehicle, doesn’t it?

The Ghost

Have you ever experienced that thing where someone you know dies, and then you start seeing them everywhere? I have. When my friend Kathi died right after graduating from High School, she seemed to be everywhere I looked for weeks afterward. This phenomenon tends to be restricted to the following couple of months in my experience. (Actually, I’d be interested in input on this. When my kitty-girl passed on I saw/heard her for longer than expected.) Anyway, I have a friend whose partner died back in November. I went to the memorial service and everything. (She was such a bright light.) A couple of days ago, I saw someone who was the spittin’ image of her walk by the Reference Desk while I was working. Her hair is a bit longer, but she even walks the same. The especially creepy thing is that I only ever saw E. in the library. Mind you, this young lady has yet to come talk about films and literature with me, but still… It’s kind of eerie.

Still life of my shoes with party hat.

I went to a birthday party for a friend’s 2 year-old this weekend, and even though it was outside I had a great time. (The sun and I don’t get along…but we were nicely shaded.) There were 3 other small children there apart from the birthday boy. They climbed all over me like a jungle gym. At one point, the youngest tried to eat a dime, deciding, I suppose, that the penny wasn’t worth her time. Once I removed said dime from between her teeth, her father stuck his finger in her mouth to be sure that the dime had been the only piece of change that she’d tried to eat. The look she gave him afterwards was pure affront with a side of “Heavens, Man! Your finger tastes terrible! Begone from our royal presence.” No, her name isn’t Victoria, but she certainly has a queenly demeanor. Attempts to teach her a royal wave have so far met with failure, but these things take time.

Is that a water balloon in your hand young man?

Yes, that is the Birthday Boy himself, following after the family cat. Don’t worry about the water balloon. I’m not too sure that he knew what it was for, beyond the fact that it was sturdier than the balloon filled with air.

Anyway, I had fun talking with people I don’t get to see very often. There were two others there with shiny cool DSLR cameras. A Nikon D70 and a Nikon D200 as I recall. I brought a book for the Birthday Boy. Too bad that I didn’t get a chance to read it out loud, but everyone was busy playing in the water. I spent most of the time playing with the little Queen in training. Really, the whole thing was heavenly.

A Lantern or a window to another world?

This lantern is my favorite photo from the hundred and some I took during the party. I am really enjoying this new camera. It’s a good thing that I seized the opportunity to take pictures while I was there. With gas prices going up like they are, I may not be able to travel very far for a while. Le Sigh. Oh, well. Just another reason to find things to photograph around here.