More of my town

Can ya’ll stand more photographs of me walking around my hometown?

I’ve come up with a winter plan to keep myself active during the winter months.  It’s a bit too cold to tackle the walk to work in the morning, so I’ve taken to lots of layers and a roundabout circuit to get home.  Tonight, I expanded into new territory.

There is a leather restoration shop perched mid-way up one of our more impressive hills.  It’s another of Waukesha’s rather unique old stone buildings – and someone took their artistic flair to decorate the…well, I think…basement windows.

There are three mini-murals here…one in each of the window-wells.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is my favorite of the trio:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Waukesha, especially the downtown area, has a serious love and appreciation of artistic expression…coupled with little bits of quirkiness.  I’ve had this store sign shot in my phone for months – it’s about time I shared it, no?

And my last bit of this evening’s walk was this shop.  I’ve marched past it many, MANY times, as it’s right on Main street…this is the first time I’ve actually stopped to capture some shots to share.  Me likey what I see…

Yes, that is a full window display of coffee cups.  And the sign?

yup…we’re a nest of artistic appreciation in this town.

 

 

 

I don’t mean to offend…

Went to Woodman’s the tonight, in search of toilet paper.

 

Ooooooh – what an exciting adventure, no?

 

When I was heading out, I noticed a bin of product that tickled my sense of the absurd:

 

All I could think was:  how incredibly sexist of this egg noodle company to sell extra broads…coupled with ‘I’ll bet this is the best seller in certain political circles and ‘old boy’ clubs.’

I really need to rein in my weirdness at times, don’t I?

 

 

Shopping Madness and Avoidance

Etsy developed a new platform for offering sales for their sellers and their customers – so I decided to offer my first ever sale this weekend.

We’re having a SALE!

So, if anyone out there wants to electronically finger the wares in my shop – I’m offering 15% off with a minimum of $45.

 

No charge for window shopping 😀

In slightly related news – someone put together a compilation video of the Black Friday madness.  Why anyone would think this crush of humanity well-steeped in greed is FUN is beyond me.  You couldn’t drag me to one of these events even if you pressed a gun to my head.

I had a very nice Black Friday – I did abandon my goal to become a hermit because it was sunny and slightly warm.  I took a looooooooong 3 mile walk around the Fox River with my camera and my iPod for company.  Here are some of my favorite shots:

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Happy Thanksgiving

I wrote this out a couple of years ago in the Evil Book of Faces…it showed up in my memories, so I’m gonna share it out here.

 

It Is Time –

Celebrate our home – the Mother Earth – without which we’d not exist.

Celebrate those simple men and women who commune with our Mother Earth daily,bringing forth from her skirts all that is green and growing. They do this not for love of money, but from the simpler love of nature.

Send your praise not to the cold, sterile heavens above, but down, into the rich, warm dirt which gives us our sustenance. Into the rock which supports our multitudes. Spread wide to all those simple men and women who work their labor of love, unrecognized, so that we will not cease to exist.

Celebrate the simple magic of the circle of life.

 

No Thanks to the Bird

People all over the States are gearing up for the gastrointestinal cram-fest known as Thanksgiving.  The day where we gather friends & family around a table groaning under the weight of a metric-shit-ton of food and dine until we are all too full to do anything other than fall asleep on the couch while watching the NFL.

Some Americans further plan on going to the stores the next day, to participate in a public brawl of epic proportions in the hopes of getting a great deal on something that will go under a tree in a month, and in the trash the month after that when it breaks.

I do neither of these things – but who am I to judge…

I don’t do a full bird on T-day.  I’ve done variations – such as just the breast, (which is the only turkey meat I enjoy) and those little turkey-loafs in the freezer section.  You know the ones I’m talking about – turkey meatloaf, frozen in an aluminum tin of its own gravy, that you pop in the oven and bake until the paper lid burns?

I can hear the kitchen-warriors out there screaming in terror as I type this

I cooked a full bird once.

Let me say that again:  ONCE.

 

It was a very scary experience.  First – I’m not a whiz in the kitchen.  Sure, I can make pies (as long as I get store-bought crusts & fillings), cakes and cookies (from a mix), and broil a steak (well done, anyone?).  I can do things with vegetables that probably shouldn’t be discussed in polite company…

Wait…WHAT?

And do have a couple of good family passed-down recipes that make some pretty tasty stuff.  The family never starved or lacked variety in a diet when I was head of the kitchen, although we probably did consume too much salt.

But when it comes to really, REALLY involved stuff – like a full bird?  A baked Alaska?  A souffle?  The best I can do is a stern warning to DUCK AND COVER.

The last time I attempted to cook a full bird for T-Day – I ended up summoning an Elder God…badly.  We managed to get a snapshot of the beastie JUST before it sprang to life, and managed to beat it into submission with the gravy boat.

Fear.  The.  Cthurkey.

Thank (Insert Supernatural Being of your Choosing) I’m not a better kitchen witch, eh?

Sir Spam-a-lot

I have officially been ‘threatened’ with spam.

This would have shown up in the comments on my Adventures in Goodwill post had the spam filters not caught it:

This means YOU, personally, really should weight your words SERIOUSLY f z f, and I strongly advice you to delete this written defamation i c v c of both characters and a huge group of people who do not take slander and character assassination like this easily l b y t s. I do not know which organization you have got to back you up, but if you do not care about lawsuits in the multi-million dollar range, fine, just keep on what you are doing c b n c x. If you DO care about spending x-amounts of money to try and defend this CLEARLY written libel, then take my DELETE-advice. Your “Post” is now officially taken both copies and screen-shots of and digitally stored for later use and evidence. This is just a warning. We are antifa, we do not forget.

 

I wonder – did they

1. Find the leather pants in my size as horrific as I did?  Imagine the blowback if I’d posted of picture of me actually WEARING them?
2. Become jealous over my acquiring black & orange striped socks?
3. Rush down to their local Goodwill in search of Twister pants, and not find them?

 

The world may never know?

Is it Cold in here?

Imma go on record, here…

I miss my back fat.

Not that I miss the back PROBLEMS that went along with the 80ish pounds I’ve managed to displace – or the knee, hip, feet and various other complaints that went with the weight…but…

HOWINHELL do skinny people stay WARM in this Gods-forsaken climate???

Right now, I’m wearing 4 layers

• an undershirt, tucked into the waistband of my pants.
• blouse, red/black floral pattern heavy velveteen
• the hooded vest I wear under my winter jacket
• a button-down sweater for those chilly times

And I’m STILL COLD.

I think I understand now why, a month or 2 ago, appetite reared its ugly head, and I wanted to eat everything in sight – my body was trying to fatten me up so I had some insulation against the cold.

Wake me in the spring, OK?

Winter is Coming

the river has started to ice up just a bit

I’m in a quandary, here.  It’s been really, REALLY cold in the mornings.  Too cold to hoof it in to work.

But I miss my walks.  I miss all the little landmarks – the river, the Big Sky, the rubberized ground on the playground.

THIS is what made me name my new landmark Big Sky

I also miss the solitude of that afternoon walk.  It’s a perfect break between work and home…35ish minutes where I’ve got the iPod blasting in my ears and I can ignore the world while moving around within it, lost in whatever song I’m pounding the pavement to, or working out whatever shit is currently rolling around in my brain.

More importantly, I’m concerned that, if I spend the entire winter in my car, I’ll lose some of the stamina that got me all those miles over the summer.

So, what’s a chilly girl to do?

 

I’ve decided to take … the long way home.  I park the car, and go up the street instead of down toward the front door.  I get to float past some of my favorite storefronts, down to the highly decorated river walkway, and all along the river behind the main downtown area.

So far, the path I’ve sketched out is about 3/4 of a mile…nowhere near the 3+ I was doing in the summer, so I plan to extend it out a bit.

And, as a bonus, I get some pretty cool dusk shots.

Fox River Walkway

I got mooned 😦

 

All for Maggie…

 

This has to be, hands down, my favorite black & white shot.

 

The SQO and I were out walking the tracks on a spring afternoon.  Why?  ‘Cause it was something to do…a way to leave the 4 apartment walls behind, and amuse my photography muse.

Actually, I think there was a bit more to it.  He might have been looking for a new backdrop for photos of the band.  He might have seen the photos I took of the graffiti in that area.  He might have even been just ‘in the mood’ for a walk.

Anyway….

 

I do remember taking a bunch of shots.  Somewhere in that photo session, I inadvertently set the camera to greyscale, and squeezed off – among other things – this shot.  When I got it off the camera?

 

Yea…shocked…but very, very pleased.

 

This shot has gone all the way to Amazon.  It’s the cover for the SQO’s book:

 

 

 

 

 

7 Days of B&W Photography

A new challenge popped up on Facebook recently…and it was one of those that I jumped at.

7 days in a row.  All black & white photos of your daily life.  No excess wordage, no cutesy phrases or long-winded explanations on why the photo came about…just the photo.  No people, no selfies, no pets.  Just scenes or situations or objects.  Of course, with most of these social media things these days, the request was ALSO to tag a person to join in.

Well, I didn’t do that.  I generally don’t do that.  But I did go through the 7 days, and actually added an 8th.

I’m gonna share out my week of B&W now, for your viewing pleasure…and if anyone feels the need to do a shot-a-day, I’d love to see the results 😀