Monday, October 24, 2011

skyride 2011

This is the view that made me fall in love with Northern Arizona half my life ago:


It's also the view you can see from the Skyride chair up at Arizona Snowbowl in the summer and fall, just as the aspens are turning to gold before your eyes.


So many beautiful sights to behold, so much wonder. And then you look up and see what's keeping the chair attached - ever so precariously - to the cable  (yipe!). Kinda like life, in a way (am I right?):


I love this particularly helpful reminder (uh, yeah, I'll keep that in mind, kay?):
And then there are those crazy, off-season snowboarders, always leaving evidence behind in the trees to remind us of the - er, uh - fun we'll all be having come winter:
If it was March and we were getting close to St. Patrick's Day, I'd go ahead and say something witty, like, "Erin go bra!" But it's October, so I'll refrain. Oh, wait.

Saturday, October 15, 2011

fun with templates (or, get a life already)

So, you know the opening scene of the movie Jaws? The scene where the teenagers are all partying on the beach, and then two of them - Chrissie and some useless drunk guy trying to keep up with her - go running off toward the water? And the guy goes, "Where are you going?" (pant pant), and Chrissie is all, "Swimming! Come on!" And before you know it, that chirpy little teenager dives into the water, and you're all Uh-Oh. Because you've been hearing the nuh-nuh, nuh-nu, nuh-nuh shark music while the opening credits have been rolling. You know the scene I'm talking about? The one where she gets violently pulled under the water and EATEN while the useless drunk guy naps on the shore? Yeah, that one.

Well, that's pretty much what happened to me recently when I discovered the new Blogger templates. Okay, so there was no drunk guy, no shark, and I was wearing my clothes. But the general tone was the same, because I don't even want to think about how much time I lost trying out first one and then another and then switching up the background colors and font and...

Am I made of free time? Heck no. But it's a stealthy, powerful thing, that Blogger template collection, and it'll pull you right under if you're not careful. Anyway, for now I've chosen the wildly swirling one you're experiencing while reading this post. Too much? Perhaps. But there's nothing that says I won't decide to change it again soon. I think I picked the swirls because they remind me of some soaps I batched recently called "Snowdance." Here they are in "tray" form before I cut them into loaves and then into individual bars to be packaged up for my upcoming holiday shows:


And here are a few of the finished bars, not yet packaged.
Hmmm...dare I say...they look a little...ocean-like.
Nuh-nuh, nuh-nuh, nuh-nuh.....

Thursday, October 13, 2011

Bartleby the Scrivener

is not a cheerful story.

That is all.

Sunday, October 09, 2011

terrible roars

Where the Wild Things Are was never one of my very favorite childrens' books. Oh, I liked it all right. But I suppose I always had a sneaking suspicion it was written for other children, boys especially, whose lives were much harder than mine was in 1970's Marin County where people worried mainly about the temperature of their hot tubs and the scarcity of peacock feathers on their blocks (if social legend is to be believed, anyway).

Don't even get me started on the recent-ish movie version of the WTWTA, though. What a nightmare, and one from which I wasn't totally sure I'd ever wake up. I didn't think it did the book justice. At all.

Anyway, this interview with Maurice Sendak  (which I found thanks to the good folks over at DGLM) is something else entirely. He's no doubt a crabby curmudgeon indeed, but I admire his frankness.