Help for my Visitors

I’m here to help however I can, for anyone who asks. However, I’m not sure I have any ideas how to help the person who found this blog by Googling “what to do with whiny worship team member”. I’ve dealt with whiny choir members before, but not too successfully. So, for whoever it was that Googled for help, I prayed for you!

Philly Fun

Another weekend, another adventure! This Sunday we decided to take a trip to the Philadelphia Museum of Art: except that, well, we didn’t actually go into the museum. I was actually there to photograph some of the sights around the museum. I had a great time shooting, since the weather was perfect and the crowds were relatively small. I finally managed to get a shot of Boat House Row (click here to see one of the shots) behind the museum, although, as is usually the case, I got shots that were almost what I wanted, so now I’ll have to go back and try again. I also got some fun shots of some geese on the Schuylkill River, which will be posted on my photography blog tomorrow. That wasn’t the whole adventure though.

Barney Gets a Friend

Anyone who is a long-time reader of this blog probably remembers the Barney sofa and all the controversy surrounding it. If not, you can read the whole story here.  (The controversy can be read here and here.) Well, Barney now has a friend in our house. It’s a ceiling.

If you read my most recent post, you know I’m building a darkroom. The first big challenge was to get a good color. If the darkroom were somewhere that I could just shut the door and no one would ever see it, I’d just paint it black, like sensible photographers do. However, I’m using the basement hallway that leads from the stairs to the game room and powder room. (I know that sounds weird, but it’s a wide hallway, and is easy to block all the light.) This means my darkroom must not only be dark enough to develop and print whenever I want to, but it must also be an attractive part of the house for when we have company. I decided a nice dark teal would be good, but quite underestimated the creativity of the paint designers. Who knew you could have several dozen versions of dark teal?

Anyway, after weeks of agonizing over the colors, I chose something called “Night Scape” for the walls and “Aqua Dance” for the ceiling. Oooo…. Sounds heavenly, doesn’t it? Night Scape is a very dark teal, and Aqua Dance is a slightly lighter version of Night Scape. Now, anyone who has done much painting knows that paint darkens as it dries. Colors that are shocking in the can can be quite nice on the walls. I know this from watching HGTV. They say it all the time.

It’s quite different watching it on TV, though, than it is actually seeing it in your own home. I was totally unprepared for the surprise that awaited me when I first opened that paint can. Rather than being greeted by a nice, darkish, mid-toned teal, I was greeted by a color I recognized from the distant past. I knew right away what the color was, but blinked a couple times to clear my vision, just in case. Surely, what I was seeing was not actually what was in that can! It couldn’t be! However, no amount a blinking or eye rubbing would change what I saw before me. And just what did I see?

Happy 100!

Well, I finally made it. This is officially my 100th post on this blog. Yea, me! In the overall scope of the universe it doesn’t mean much, but I figure any excuse for a celebration is a good one. To celebrate my (not so) amazing feat of reaching a numerical landmark, I’ve decided to tell my latest adventure By The Numbers.

Blob Fest 2008

Anyone who has spent much time around my blog is familiar with Brian’s and my hobby of finding obscure, odd, eccentric things to see and do. We hit the mother lode a couple weeks ago when we attended the opening night of Blob Fest 2008. Just what is a Blob Fest, you may ask? It’s a community-based festival in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania that celebrates the 1958 sci-fi thriller movie “The Blob”. It seems that the theater used in a pivotal scene in the movie is located in this borough, which is apparently as good a reason to have a party as anything else! The festival is in its ninth year, and includes the opening night festivities, a Blob window decorating contest for local businesses, a parade, a classic car show, the “Blob Ball”, and assorted other street fair type activities. It should be noted that the opening ceremonies of the festival are held in the actual theater used in the movie, and include a concert by a local band, a screaming contest, and a tin foil hat contest (because everybody knows if there are aliens or other icky monstery things around, a tin foil hat will keep the creatures from being able to read your mind). It was truly an amazing event! As pictures speak louder than words, I thought I’d include a couple of photos I took that first night just to give you a feel for the evening.

O, Happy Day!

It’s hard to say definitively what makes one day happier than another, but today there are two things making it a happy day for me. One is that tonight I’m starting a darkroom class. I’ve been looking forward to this forever, and it’s finally here! Yea!

The second thing making me happy is a sprinkler. Yep, one of those little swishing kind with the little arm that goes back and forth making a “chook-a chook-a” noise with each stroke. Our lawn service said they are the most efficient kind, so I went to The Home Depot today and got one. Now, if you had asked me before this afternoon if these little gems made me happy I would have said no. And then I would have laughed at the question! However, as I’ve been sitting at my computer working on a project, the new sprinkler has been chook-a-ing away outside the window, and I’m finding it quite relaxing. I think it takes me back to being a kid and all those long summer afternoons spent with a stack of library books in the shade of a giant red maple. It seems like there was always the sound of one of these sprinklers drifting through the neighborhood, and it just became part of the memories that make up childhood. So, odd as it seems, if you were to ask me now, I would have to answer that yes, lawn sprinklers do in fact make me happy. Who knew? 🙂

Privacy Issues

I thought I would offer a word of motherly advice to all you ladies out there that use cell phones. I’m here to warn you about using your bra as a cell phone holder. I know most of us have done this at least once, and most of the time it works out just fine, but there are times it’s not a good idea, as it might leave you, um, exposed when you least expect it. Case in point: Saturday we went to see a movie. As we sat in the semi-darkness watching the pre-movie preliminaries along with a pretty good sized audience, something caught my attention off to the right and a few rows in front of us. As I turned to look, I saw a beacon of light beaming up into the darkness from a young woman’s tank top. Actually, it was beaming from behind her tank top. I had just a second of confusion about what was going on before this poor woman leaned over to help her toddler get situated in his seat. As she bent forward, so did her tank top, thus exposing her cell phone nestled in her bra, still lit up from its recent usage, as well as a pretty well lit view of, well, you know… Thankfully it didn’t expose more than you would see in a very skimpy bikini top, but still, I’m sure this isn’t what she intended! I think the take-away message from this incident is that we have pockets for a reason!

God is like…

For no apparent reason, Brian and I decided to learn about wine. Up until now my knowledge of the subject consisted of (a) wine is made from grapes, (b) wine can be red or white, and (c) red wine goes with red meat and white wine goes with fish. The first thing we learned on our journey is that letter (c) is actually not a hard and fast rule. Oh, and that wine can be made from things other than grapes, too. So much for knowing stuff…

The main thing we learned is that in discussing wine, “aromas” are discussed rather than “flavors”. Weird, huh? This is not, however, the weirdest part of the whole thing.  

Clean Language Only, Please!

Let me start by saying I don’t swear. I never have; I don’t believe in it. In spite of that, or maybe because of that, I have to inform you, my dear readers, by way of helping keep your mouths righteous, of a truly vile, nasty word. It bothers me that it can be used on TV, even in programs for kids. I think this is mainly because the average American doesn’t even realize how raunchy this word actually is. So please forgive me for using this word one time, just so you can know what it is, and thereby avoid using it yourself. The word?

How Random is This???

Wow. Thanks to some of the cool WordPress features for bloggers, and found out something really random today.

I don’t know how or why, but apparently my blog is on the internet in languages other than English. Well, so all I really know for sure is it’s on the internet in at least one other language. I found it entertaining, and thought you might, as well. Here it is: http://translate.google.com.ua/translate?hl=ru&sl=en&u=https://dorean.wordpress.com/category/my-achievements/&sa=X&oi=translate&resnum=4&ct=result&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dmy%2Bachievements%26start%3D10%26hl%3Dru%26rlz%3D1T4GGLD_ru___UA204%26sa%3DN