Memorial Day

I went to the Mall to see the vets parading on their awesome Harleys. More pics to come, but for now admire this beauty.

Professional Pet Auntie

From a friend’s kitty who stayed with me five or six times (see stories  here, here, and here), to Jackson, another friend’s big golden retriever (stories here and here), and now to Tache (the Romanian name Tache), a friend’s labrador, I’ve become a professional auntie for my friends’ pets.

My friend is in Romania for two weeks, so I’m staying at his girlfriend’s place in Arlington, my old and beloved neighborhood. That’s quite the perk for me, since I’m nostalgic about it after living there for more than seven years, and I haven’t quite taken to Montgomery County, where I live now. The first thing I did was to walk to the Lebanese Taverna to get myself a nice piece of Bulgarian feta cheese, like in the old days. I then went to check out my apartment, across the street, to see if anyone had moved in. And yes, there’s someone new there. There were two chairs and a small table with a flower pot on it in the balcony, the curtain of the balcony door was red instead of green, which is what it used to be, and the blinds are different. I wasn’t sure what I was going to feel like since I loved that place so much, but I actually was happy to see someone seems to be treating it nicely. I hope they’ll enjoy it as much as I did.

I’ll be enjoying my old stomping grounds and a much shorter commute. I’m bringing my bike tomorrow. However, I do want to say that I’ll miss Jinks (and Steve; ha ha!). With Steve at least I can talk on the phone but with Jinks, not so much. I’m hoping Steve will send me pics of Fuzzy Pants every day.

Back to Werk

After more than two months of vacation, sleeping in, and goofing around, it’s hard to imagine that I’ll wake up at 6 am or so tomorrow, so that I can get on the bike at 7, so that I can be at work at 8:30. Wow. It wounds like quite the enterprise. But I’m very looking forward to it. I haven’t done more than a tiny fraction of what I thought I would and, after one month, I started being bored and tired of having too much time on my hands. I never thought I’d say that, trust me.

And, while right before my vacation started I was going nuts at work and was entertaining thoughts of finding another job (I can’t stand this, can’t take it any more, it’s too much) now I’m like, just give me something to do, dude. Filing. I’ll do filing!

But, was really great to get rested. Sleep rocks!

On that note, I’m off to cooking and ironing for tomorrow.

Violet

Portraits

The FDR Memorial in DC is one of my favorites, with its big blocks of granite, the inspiring quotes, and the waterfalls, all enveloping you to transport you back in time. One of the less-noted features of the memorial are these small, gem-like portraits in bronze on several columns. They are carved in the negative, but when I photographed them, they appeared in the positive. I was quite stunned to see the result. In other words, where you see a convex facial feature, like a cheek or a lip, the actual carving is concave. I suspect it turns out convex in my photographs because I used a polarizing filter, which reveals what’s under a reflection. It didn’t occur to me that this was the reason (if, indeed, it was), so now I hope I’ll get back there at some point and try the same photographs without the filter, to see if I get the “negative,” as it were.

Below are a few of them and here’s the album:
http://picasaweb.google.com/simonne.c/FDRMemorialPortraits#.

More Mr. Jinks

Needless to say, one of the perks of me staying at home is having Jinks around. He comes to me every morning to wake me up, with various degrees of success. If I’m too sleepy, he gives up on meowing every half hour and goes to sleep at my feet. Then I wake up because he’s so cute, especially when his fluffy belly is up, and I want to pet him. Not a bad morning routine, I’d say.

Here are a few more pics with Mr. Fuzzy Pants.

Still Here

Just don’t have much to say. Not much going on, at least not of the pleasant variety. Have been biking a lot and got my ride to DC down to 1 hour and 15 minutes, which is pretty much the only thing that makes me happy right now. I’ve discovered this beautiful little trail that makes my ride a lot more direct than I thought it could be. Also, the way to DC is somewhat downhill, and that makes a big difference.

Have been taking pics (lots of them with the cherry blossoms, a few others) but haven’t been in the mood to process and post them, though. Every day I say “tomorrow” and then that never happens. That’s the problem with having too much time on my hands: I tend to waste a lot of it. I did see a few art exhibitions, of which the favorite was a Georgia O’Keeffe.

I wonder how I’m going to be able to get back in the work saddle. ‘Cause if I had a million dollars, I would be very tempted not to.