Do Not Meddle in the Affairs of Dragons...

Just some wise advice, in case you were thinking of meddling in the affairs of dragons, or anything. ;-)

Larry the Laundry Room and Loo Lizard

Meet Larry, the Laundry Room and Loo Lizard

Larry scooted in my front door one day and made himself at home in my laundry room for a couple of months. Then, just last week he decided to expand his territory to my bathroom. For three days in a row I'd find him in my bathroom sink when I got up to get ready for work. He'd stay in the sink and enjoy the nice bath whenever I had to run the water. Go figure.  I can't imagine what he was eating in my apartment to stay alive, but he managed!

Larry has defied capture this whole time, but, finally, last week, I was able to grab him (gently) and put him outside, which was a relief, since he'd started using my sink as his toilet. Lovely (NOT!). And smelly (truly!). :-(

I imagine Larry is reunited now with his friends and family and is telling them of his exploits as my "houseguest" for the past couple of months. Hopefully this will not encourage other lizards to move in.

Another Lizard Exploit

Today me and a friend went out to lunch, and as I was driving, I noticed a lizard near the window on the front driver's side of my car. He hung there for a few minutes and then disappeared around the driver's side of my car as I had to pick up speed.

I thought he was gone, but, lo and behold, I saw him peripherally on my side window, eyes wide and wild and clinging desperately to the car. I could just see the "WTF!" in his eyes.

As it turns out, we ended up taking a route through a residential neighborhood where we had to go fairly slowly as there were speedbumps along the route for about .09 of a mile. The lizard found his footing and eventually disappeared into the driver's side mirror. I suspect he's still there. Wonder if it's Larry?

Pelican Food

We were down on the Pier this past weekend and spotted this pelican standing hopefully by this sign:

Then we spotted his buddies around the corner to the left of this sign...



...and then when we were leaving, we spotted this gentleman, who had the thankless task of cleaning up after the pelicans after the Pelican Food shop closed. Ick!

3 Cool Things to Kickoff the New Year

For those who don't know me personally, 2010 & 2011 were pretty rough years for me in a lot of ways. Fortunately, I'm happy to report, 2012 has started off with lots of good news!

1) I won a book giveaway recently of Lori Deschene's new book, Tiny Buddha: Simple Wisdom for Life's Hard Questions (see below)

Lori runs a terrific "little" blog over at Tiny Buddha that is jam packed with all kinds of great posts from people from all walks of life who share what they have learned about life's challenges with the Tiny Buddha community. No, I am not being paid to endorse her website or her book, lol.

2)  I found out that my rent is NOT going to go up when the lease expires! W00t!

and last, but not least...

3) My own little "angels on earth" have given me the opportunity to travel to another state to meet up with several friends who are flying in from all over the country and abroad to attend a certain event next month. I can't say more than that right now, but I'll pass along some deets (details) afterwards, and maybe some pictures if you promise to behave yourselves. ;-)

Hope your New Year is also off to a great start! Till later...

Ciao, babies!

My latest jewelry creations

Have gotten into beading and jewelry making of late. One of my many interests as a scanner. Hope you enjoy!

Still need to work on the clasp for this one, but it's done otherwise.

My most complicated piece to date. :-)

Love the colors in this one! Turquoise is one of my absolute favorite colors!

It was fun to put together, too!

Sweet Deal of the Day

Was out browsing at Pier One this past weekend and found a lovely display plate on sale that I just couldn't resist. The original price was $27, marked down to $14, and then when I got to the register, it rang up at $7! Sa-weet!

I just love all the happy and cheerful colors in it and the butterflies and wildflowers! Makes me think of spring and warm, breezy days. Take a look below. You can click on the picture for a larger image.

Green Eggs and Hamadeus

 

This CD caught my eye while browsing at Best Buy this past weekend. I loved the Dr. Suess books while I was growing up, and I'm a classical music fan, so I just had to check it out! Rob Kapilow is an educator of classical music, as well as a composer. In this CD he explains how Mozart was telling a story, using only notes, as a writer would tell a story using words. He then proceeds to break down Mozart's "A Little Night Music" into manageable chunks that most classical music laymen can understand and appreciate, although the CD is primarily aimed at a much younger audience. You can learn more about Rob Kapilow and his work on his website at http://www.robkapilow.com/

Guess?

Can you guess what I photographed this leg through? Put on those thinking caps!

2009 in Review

I've never actually written a year in review before, so this should be interesting. I didn't even have anything in particular I wanted to say before starting to write. 

Overall, I would say 2009 has been a remarkable year for me. It had its crappy moments, but it had far more wonderful, inspirational and glorious moments, which are the only ones I will talk about here. A few months from this year stand out for me:

February - I traveled with a friend to Gainesville for a networking meeting and got to meet many, many wonderful, vibrant and intelligent people, and network and brainstorm ideas with them. It was a great opportunity for me to get to know my then relatively new friend a lot better. She's a great southern gal with quite a gift for gab (she calls it storytelling), and she's also got one of the biggest hearts around. I am proud to call her a friend and mentor.

March - My baby cousin gave birth to her first child, a boy, on March 30. She is loving motherhood, and because her husband is a photographer and web page designer, their son's life is well-documented on the family website.

June - During the month of June, PBS introduced me (and millions of others) to David Garrett, a phenomenal violin virtuoso from Germany. I was hooked immediately and have a been a huge fan ever since. I had never seen anyone play the violin the way he did and with such passion! If you've ever seen him perform, you know what I mean. He has truly been an inspirational person for me this year! David's mission is to bring classical music to the younger generations. He was classically trained from the age of 4 until he was about 19 when he left Germany and his wildly successful classical music career, to move to New York to study at the Juilliard School. He also wanted to use this time to find himself and have some semblance of a "normal" life, since his entire childhood had been spent in training/studying the violin, and performing, and not too much else.

While at Juilliard, David was exposed to rock and roll and other genres of music for pretty much the first time. For awhile he lost himself in absorbing all of the new sounds he was hearing and the violin was put aside. He did eventually resume playing the violin, and those other music genres had not only broadened his musical horizons and made him a more well-rounded musician, they had also changed his playing style and repertoire (somewhat,) but I think for the better. 

Through playing classic rock and roll pieces on his violin (such as Kashmir, Smooth Criminal, Thunderstruck, Nothing Else Matters, etc), he has been able to not only show to a lot of people, for perhaps the first time, that a violin can actually be a rock and roll instrument, but, most importantly for him, he has also been able to reach a younger audience and introduce them to his first love, classical music. Not bait and switch, mind you, but just show them what else is out there.

July/August - These two months were kind of bittersweet for me. Several colleagues left us for new horizons and opportunities (of their own accord, not victims of the economy), but all the same, we all got together for two last hurrah's (one party was simply not enough) and to celebrate our friendships, even though we were all going to be "scattered to the four winds" geography-wise. It's a beautiful thing to be so moved by a singular colleague's departure, let alone seven of them.

October - I had the opportunity to see David Garrett perform in person and was blown away all over again! He is a very generous performer and gives 1000% of himself in concert and the audience just goes wild! I also got to meet several of David's fans. We have stayed in touch since then, and I now consider them my friends. David will be back in April 2010 and I will get to see him twice more then! I cannot wait! Here are a few pictures I took at his concert:

 

 

November - My brother lost his job due to a "workforce reduction" on November 4. Interesting day. Yes, my brother lost his job, and he was a little upset at the loss of income, but he was not devastated. He was, in fact, kind of relieved because that was no longer the place for him to be, career-wise. He is now free to pursue another path that he might not have pursued if he had not been "pushed" out of the nest, as it were. It was interesting that it happened on the 4th, because that would have been our father's birthday. My brother felt like maybe it was somehow dad's gift from beyond the grave, to free him from that job since he was afraid to take that step himself. So, not happy per se, but still a new beginning and worthy of being mentioned here.

Other happy occasions: My mom and I both celebrated birthdays in November!

December - The best thing to happen to me in December has been the vacation I am currently enjoying. I return to work on Monday, but much more refreshed and focused than I had been before I took the break. I am looking forward to 2010 and all of its possibilities. I want to stretch myself more and pursue things that interest me much more so than I did this year, but more on that in another post. 

Thank you for reading! Hope to see you back again!

Happy New Year, Everyone!

Spooky pics!

Just playing around with my photo editing software and decided to make some spooky pics using the "negative" option. Enjoy!

This is the oak tree near my place. It's really a beautiful tree and I love it, but the negative feature really makes it look spooky! Below are some more pictures of the same tree from different angles.

 

 

 

 

A spooky arch awaiting a tragic heroine, or slasher movie victim on the run from her attacker...

Okay, these poinsettias are not very spooky, but it still looks pretty cool!

 

Slow News Day

Nothing to see here today. Writer's block is winning. Maybe I'll have an interesting dream tonight...

Technical Difficulties

Well, I was planning to post pictures of some really cool older model cars, but Blogger is refusing to upload any pictures today. I will try again tomorrow, have no fear! So, in the meantime...what's new and exciting with you?

Spirit Splash!!

Today's photos are from the University of Central Florida's Spirit Splash. Spirit Splash kicks off Homecoming Week at UCF with students piling into the Reflecting Pond in front of Millican Hall, which is UCF's administration building. This is the only day of the year that people are allowed in the pond, so the turnout is quite large. Fortunately we had sunny skies and temperatures in the 70's today, so the participants didn't have to freeze their hineys off like they would have done yesterday when it was gray, dreary and yes, COLD!!! Enjoy the pictures!

UCF's brass band gets things off to a festive start.

Just some of the spectators at Spirit Splash.

UCF's Cheer team shows their spirit.

UCF mascot Knightro gets the crowd fired up and ready for Homecoming Week.

More of the crowd and splash participants...

Miscellaneous

Here are today's daily photos!

This is an old pin of mine that I found last night while looking for something else. I think I actually used to have two of them. This guy must still be looking for his buddy. 

These sunflowers look for all the world like they're looking for something themselves. Perhaps more sunlight?

Not a very exciting picture, true, but this was taken back in 2005 when I was out geocaching with my brother and a friend. We kept turning down street after street that had a "No Outlet" sign, and it actually became quite humorous after awhile. We saw this last one on the way home and I just had to take a picture of it so I would remember the day. In spite of our penchant for finding "No Outlet" signs, we did manage to find a couple of caches, including a travel bug named Chester who was trying to get to Germany for a beer festival. I haven't checked on him in awhile, but think he made it!

Doing Something Daily

Greetings One and All! 

Welcome to the first post of my new blog! I have tried to write blogs in the past, but always got hung up when writer's block hit me or the muse seemed to have abandoned me. I felt like I had to write something every single day or I felt like a failure. I know now that is not the case, but in the interest of getting myself off to a decent jumpstart, I have decided to do as Ken Roberts at Mildly Creative (http://www.mildlycreative.com/) suggests, and to do something daily, no matter how small. As a budding photographer, I figured I could manage at least one new photo a day, so here we go. I actually have three to start with...how great is that?

The first picture is of a piece of tile that I painted back in July of 2001. I LOVE watermelon and since July is a pretty darn hot month around here, I clearly had refreshment on my mind. Hope you enjoy it!

The second photograph is of a piggy bank that I found at Pier One on one fine day. I just loved the cheerful colors and pretty floral pattern. It looks like something I would have painted when I was a kid and aspire to paint like again very soon.

The third photograph is of my dog. I just discovered a really neat effect in one of my photo editing applications: Stained glass. So, here is Coxie in stained glass. She's much cuter in person.

 

Pretty cool, huh?

Can't wait to see what I come up with tomorrow!