Spring Fever

Blossoms are blooming,the trees are leafing, the wildflowers are rampant, and along with that come the Spring allergies as well. My favorite Sunday afternoon activity is to take a nap, being lulled to sleep by the sound of lawnmowers in the neighborhood, through the open windows, and a cross breeze blowing through the house. It was 80 degrees. You see, all too soon for me, it will be hot and humid again and the windows closed and the sounds of A/C throughout the neighborhood. Every spring I have these mixed feelings about another impending summer in Texas. I long for the Pacific N.W., the Forsythia, the Azaleas and Lilacs. I'm trying to enjoy as much outdoors as I can before I begin my summer hibernation. You know, where I go out of the A/C house to the A/C car, to drive to somewhere else that is A/C. Yes I am a real grumble puss about heat and humidity. The only good thing about humidity,IMHO, it makes your skin feel nice. LOL

Have you seen the new Spring stuff at Target? Everyone is talking about the Liberty of London promotion, so had to go there to see it myself. I am not a real girly-girly, flowery type, but I loved their bright colors, so took a few shots of the displays, and even bought a couple small things.
Like this set of bowls, because of the color, they match a bright fuschia tray that I have. Because I love paper, I also got a couple gift bags and some file folders.



Sorry about lights in the ceiling. I couldn't find anything to climb up on to get a straight on shot. HaHa



These cute little fellows are a combo of Liberty of London and Easter. ( I guess) Don't know why folks always look at me so strangely when I am taking photos of things like this.



Oh and then there was this one.. I had to wait quite awhile while people stopped going in and out the sliding door, and to get him with no peeps in the photo. My friend was cracking up laughing. We are both very easily amused. I like how he looks like he is sitting on the sidewalk. This is my Easter card!

SouthXSouthWest-ing

I haven't had much time to work with my new computer, because the Big One..the SXSW conference has started, and been going on all week. It's big, really big, folks. Like Texas Big. International Big. I do like to avoid the crowds of 20,000 or more, but feel comfortable in rooms that hold 100 to 500 peeps. Have been to a few of the broadcasts in person, watched a lot of it on the internet, and some on T.V. It's definitely the place to see folks and hear amazingly good music and see new film. I won't even mention all the famous peeps that strolled through the lobby of the Four Seasons the few times I was there this week. Musicians, actors,writers, etc. That is just the ones I saw personally. I heard mention of a few I didn't see, but might not have recognized anyhow. But I will tell you this,I came eye to eye, face to face, up close and personal with John Hiatt, as he made his way through the crowd to get into the filled to capacity Music Lounge. I was standing right by the door, helping the manager try to keep folks from sneaking into the crowded room if they hadn't already been granted a seat or a standing spot. He said Hello and I think I grinned and mumbled Hello back. Some guy behind me said, Wow, do you know who that was? Yup..I sure did.

Things are winding down tonight and tomorrow and the city can get back to normal. These festivals are a double edged sword. They bring tons of money into the local economy, but for awhile the traffic is almost unbearable.

It's a lot of fun to live in such a city, where we are exposed to so many performers on a regular basis. There is always a movie or two being filmed around here so there are many stars who are in town on any given day. You never know who you will run into. I am always pleased to find out that the majority of them are just as nice as we think they are. However there are some who are just as nasty as we've heard they are too. That's amusing as well.

Early on before the crowds get so packed, you can see some fine costumes. I got a few shots of some great boots and outfits. These floral ones were my favorite boots. After it gets so crowded you'll only see heads if you are standing or behinds if you are sitting.


Boots everywhere.

Cute cowgirl jacket.


T-Bird and The Breaks. Good local band.

Damn Crappy Lemons!

Just got off the phone with Justin, the repair guy. My hard drive is fried/defective/fatal/etc. etc. CRAP! I had such hopes. Just went through my camera card, not much there, I used to be afraid to delete anything even after I downloaded it to the computer Recently I have gotten into the habit of deleting it from the camera each time I get it onto the computer. Well, I have lost some of my photos, a LOT actually, a lot of BIRDs, Trees, AND Clouds that I have taken lately. Plus, I haven't even dared to think about "remembering" all the trips lately and the around town artsy stuff, stored in several files on the desktop. I lost most of my San Francisco photos, except for the ones I put on Flickr, but I still have my photos from Savannah and Charleston, so I have to be grateful for that. Justin said they can send it off, but the cost starts at $200. and can get as high as $1200. for that kind of recovery. Not prepared to go to that extreme.

Well, this is one of the days I can feel thankful that I am on anxiety meds. For I am just reasonably frantic, not having a total meltdown. On my way out to pick up my new computer, get Hub to install it, then I will move on to making crappy lemonade out of my crappy lemons! Will be spending all my extra money now, buying little flash drives to store my photos on. I sure as heck won't put anything on the desktop. I know....this thing that happened may never happen again. But I sure as heck will take time to back EVERYTHING up from now on.

Crash and Burn

My hard drive crashed a few days ago. I've been attempting to use the laptop to check e-mails and post. Where is the darn CURSES key????? I am not good with a laptop...Hub has a superfast computer and sensitive. I barely breathe on the keys and they take off on their own! I should find out today if they are able to retrieve the data from my hard drive. Thankfully I had stored a lot of stuff on an external drive. However....TONS of my photos were stored on my desktop with no backup. NOT a smart thing to do. But the repairman told me not to feel too bad, that he stores his on his desktop too. I am keeping my fingers crossed that it can be retrieved. They told me if they could not do it, there is a company that they can send it off to, but it would most likely be very costly. The time has come to buy a new computer, and I knew it was overdue. Sure wish I'd done it last week though, instead of this week. Although, like I've said before, most of us don't replace things until the old one breaks.

Green Grows the Lettuce

I realized I haven't made a food post in quite some time, so here is one. Hub did the Sunday shopping today, while I stayed home and sorted and moved art supplies around. Besides supplies for dinner and the coming week, he brought home this totally beautiful bunch of lettuce. I know most people don't get this excited about greens, but I sure do. We love salad around here, and eat a lot of it. So I really like to use the best ingredients I can get my hands on. That usually means the Farmers Market, but haven't been able to get there in awhile. No, this came from the grocer, the plain old grocer. I did not have to toss ONE leaf or morsel. So along with our petite steak and baked sweet potato, tonite we dine on a huge green salad, with all kinds of additions...soy nuts, olives, some bits of Asiago cheese, and vinagrette. I could just bury my face in the lettuce and be perfectly happy. Hub needs the steak and potato.
Look, it fills the entire sink.


After our steak dinner, we'll settle in to watch the Academy Awards. Every year I say I am not going to waste time with these, since they seem to go on forever. But I do like to see what ridiculous costumes people decide to put on, so that is the fun part for me. I've only seen a couple of the movies that are up for awards so I don't really care who wins what.

Monday Night Movies

I am not a movie critic/reviewer by any stretch of the imagination. In fact I pay little attention to any reviews, because usually if a movie gets really good ones, it is a movie I dislike, and ones that get not so good reviews, it will turn out to be one that Hubby and I like a lot. We don't go out to the movies much, in fact the last one we saw in theatre was Sherlock Holmes. Haven't seen Avatar yet, even though we may. Next theatre movie on our list will be Alice in Wonderland, which comes out in a day or two. But, back to the reason for my post.... We rent a lot from RedBox...it is so convenient and simple. First Monday of the month, we get a free one, and even tho it is only 99 cents...Hub likes to take advantage. So after the Olympics being over, we thought we'd enjoy a movie last night. My first choice was Amelia, then we moved on down from there. Our first 4 choices were already gone! Nothing left but violent action flicks, and insipid comedies. We almost walked away empty handed, then I spied one that had no appeal at all, except for the actors listed. Liam Neeson, Antonio Banderas, Laura Linney. It was called The Other Man, about a wife's affair and the husbands search to find the guy she had the affair with. I find infidelity movies usually pretty distasteful, and Hub turned his nose up as well. But we decided with such good actors to take a chance. After all, it was free, and we didn't have to watch if it turned out to be a dud. Never heard of this movie, it must have been one that went directly to video. Anyhow.....this movie had us on the edge of our seats from the get go. The music was suspenseful, the filming done very well. Suffice it to say, NOTHING in the story was as it seemed. We both liked it a lot, and it may be on our list of ones to re-watch sometime. I like obscure, low budget movies most of the time over the hyped high budget extravaganzas.