Pondering the world

We won a trip to Key West from the Mermaid and the Alligator Bed & Breakfast!

Sometimes you get lucky.  And sometimes you get lucky because you bought a heck of a lot of raffle tickets.  At the recent innkeepers conference in Little Rock, Arkansas, I had a fistful of tickets. The lovely folks at The Mermaid and the Alligator Bed & Breakfast in Key West donated a whole trip, and I won it! I was so excited about winning, I can't remember what it includes, except a lovely stay in Key West. A dinner? Snorkeling? A tour? I'll love everything that comes with it, because we're going to Key West!

Sometimes you get lucky.  And sometimes you make great new friends along the way.

what does your natural state look like?

I laughed when I saw an Arkansas license plate when I arrived:  "the natural state." The first thing that popped into my head is what MY natural state looks like:

 

automobilish languages

Will today's architecture be so memorable?

Little Rock has some amazing historic homes, especially around the capitol area. On a shorter walk the other day, I came across the Joseph M. Frank House built in 1900.  A house like this today would be incredibly expensive to build. I'm not sure you could find a contractor able to accomplish these kinds of details. (This house is for sale!)

If you really want to see details, look at the original Pulaski County Courhouse. My photo of the upper building from the ground doesn't do it justice.

During my walk I also passed many modern office buildings. A hundred years from now, will anyone stop in their tracks to marvel at its stunning architectural design and details? I don't think so. Will it even be standing a hundred years from now, or is it so nondescript that it will have been demolished and replaced by something even newer?

Happy Chinese New Year--2012 is the Year of the Dragon!

Happy Year of the Dragon! Unfortunately, I'm traveling and may miss any festivities that may happen.

I had a good time making these little dragon cards, and the most exciting thing I did was download a free "Chinese takeaway" font from dafont.com.  Woo-hoo! I've been wanting one for a while but just hadn't gotten around to looking for one. The right font makes all the difference.

Eat a fortune cookie for me, will ya?

fog, mist, rain, downpour in Little Rock

It's not like Portland didn't have the most rain they've had in five years while we were there, but I guess we didn't get enough of that. Little Rock was completely socked in with fog nearly all day today. I decided to go for a walk for a while, which turned out to be a lot like Gilligan's "three-hour tour."

"Heck, it's just fog," I said, as I walked to historic Central High School from the waterfront... and walked... and walked... (see the map photo below. I started at the square by the river.  Now look all the way to the bottom left corner at D.) When I had gotten there, as far away as I was going to get, it began to sprinkle. Fortunately, I made it back before the rain got very heavy.

Later in the day it turned into full-blown rain, and in the evening into a downpour complete with sheets of water beating the windows and thunder and lightning.

 

more downpour and less mist than expected in Portland

Last week was the beautiful week in Portland, of course. This week, while we're here, they've had the most rain in five years. We lived here for 15 years, so we knew to expect that it would be rainy and cold in January, but it's been a bit much even so.

The Pacific Northwest has more types of rain than you might think possible:  mist, drizzle, showers, etc. When we arrived on Monday it was raining hard and turned to snow overnight, creating everything from two feet of snow in towns to the west to ice around town and fast-flowing creeks.  By Wednesday there were areas of three counties with some serious flooding and fatalities. It's pretty much been a downpour for five days.

Today brought a new, special twist--wind. So now we have heavy rain being blown sideways, and a wind advisory through Saturday morning.

I hope the new owner likes kitties

While passing by a chic vintage shop in Portland, we passed by a store with a Victorian loveseat in the front window.... just as the shop cat leaped up and made herself comfortable. The sofa had a prominent "SOLD" tag on it. Let's hope the new owner isn't allergic to cats.

Twins? not quite

This picture didn't come out as well as I had hoped. Steve already had this shirt, and I bought a shirt for me that, close up, looks nearly identical. It's so close that the first time I did laundry, I hung it up in his closet with his other shirts. When he was trying to put it on, he said, "What happened to my shirt??? Why did it shrink so much?" That was not the only time I hung it up with his shirts. Now when he tries to put it on and the sleeves are too short, he just takes it off and hangs it back up with MY shirts. Funny how the plaid does funny things in a photo. It doesn't really look the same, does it?

His father has taken up beading and made us these nearly matching hats for Christmas (mine has a couple of beaded flowers on it).

I thought it would be fun to take a photo of us as "twins," but we're twins just about as much as Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito.

you can't fix "stolen"

Yesterday I was in the Phoenix airport waiting for our connecting flight, and I did a post on how I broke my phone clip and how I fixed it. I had taken my phone clip off my belt, took a photo, and set it down on the seat next to me. I plugged in my phone to download the photo, and when I had finished the post, my jacket was on the floor and my phone clip was gone. I looked all around and under the seats to see if it had fallen off and gotten kicked somewhere, but it wasn't there. The guy two seats over had stolen my phone clip.

There's no fix for "stolen." Now I have to go looking for another phone clip that will fit on my Otter Box or order one online. Dang it.