Sunday Afternoon Notes

A cell phone photo with a timely message:
Take time to refresh your spirit.

Notes:

--I added a couple of blogs to my blog roll, and used the Blogger tool to make it where the newest posts and post titles would show up at the top of the list (Thanks, Mindy!). Check some of them out. You might be missing something interesting!

--Some of you expressed curiosity as to why the gator looked like he was shoved in the corner guarding the trash can, stacking chairs and the snack machine. The gator used to stand under the open stairs in the administration building before Hurricane Rita (three years ago this September, I think, I lose track.) This gator was one of the survivors. Several were destroyed by the storm. The school doesn't have the building repairs completed and many of the classes are still being held in temporary buildings. This area is the temporary student lounge area. The main lounge was a free-standing building that was destroyed, and there was another lounge area in the administration building.

There are many people who know exactly how long ago the storm was, as they are still dealing with rebuilding and recuperating. I heard on the radio the other day they are predicting another rough hurricane season. It starts again in June. The good thing about a hurricane is that you get enough advance warning to get away, if you are inclined to do so. That is not always so with tornadoes and floods.

--I am so excited to have the day off tomorrow, don't know exactly what I will do, but I am happy not to be going in to work! This reminds me, I have an idea for a creation in my head and needed to get a photo from my mother's house for it. Maybe that's what I will work on tomorrow!

An Award and a Late Response

Linda chose my blog as one of the recipients of the "Arte y Pico" blog award back on May 10th and because I am grateful for her continued encouragement and because I sometimes think we may be long lost redneck cousins, I am finally going to acknowledge the award and follow the rules of receiving the award. Thanks Linda!


The Rules Are...

1) You have to pick 5 blogs that you consider deserve this award, for creativity, design, interesting material, and also contributes to the blogger community, no matter of language.

2) Each award has to have the name of the author and also a link to his or her blog to be visited by everyone.

3) Each award-winning blog has to show the award and put the name and link to the blog that has given her or him the award itself.

4) Award-winning and the one who has given the prize have to show the link of "Arte y pico"blog so everyone will know the origin of this award.

5) To show these rules.

There are a couple of disclaimers I'd like to mention first. The Arte y Pico blog is in Spanish so you might not understand too much of what is written there. Secondly, it is always so hard for me to make choices like this. If you've never checked out some of the links on my sidebar, you should. All of them are blogs I read and enjoy regularly. I chose the blogs listed below mostly based on the creativity aspect. --

Here are a few of my choices, in no particular order:

SpookyRach is the proprietess at Skewed View who loves tooling around in old cemeteries and taking photos of tombstones. She is also very creative at coming up with stories that relate to the names and sayings on those tombstones.

Mindy, at Bits and Odd Pieces of Mindy's Kingdom claims to be "the Princess of Everything and Then Some". If she is not, she ought to be! She's a very generous crafty blogger who is single-handedly responsible for the invention of the great Pantipalooza project which takes place in February.

Jules, over at The Way I See It has several blogs going, and all of them are lovely to read and see. Her newest blogs is an ongoing tutorial on photography.

Simple Words I Understand is a recent discovery for me. She lives in New! York! City! and often has photographs of her surroundings but always has interesting overheard conversations to report. I enjoy her style of writing.

If Linda had not already received this award, I would have awarded it to her myself. Check out her drawings and watercolor art too.

Enjoy the links, and the long weekend!

Graduate Gator

This is a "not so great" cell phone shot of a forlorn gator in the lounge area of the local community college where I have been taking a class in Microsoft Excel. The class is offered to local businesses through some kind of state grant program. The bookkeeper in our office and I were the only two people to take advantage of this opportunity so we are the teacher's pets and will "graduate" as the top two in the class. Of course, we will also be the bottom two in the class. I suppose it is all a matter of perspective! I'm still putting in applications for civil service jobs and hoping eventually to convince someone to hire me. I am so ready to move on from the environment I am now in.

For SpookyRach

Rach, I think I found your long lost cousin! She graduated in nursing, with honors, apparently, judging by the gold and blue cords around her neck. The odd thing is the pink bow on top of the skeleton's head (which you can see better by clicking in the photo.) The only thing I can figure is that she must have been raised by Mindy's long lost maiden Aunt Barbie.


My own daughter was going to put "Hi, Mom" on her cap, but they stressed in Friday's rehearsal not to do that. She is a good, rule-following girl, so she did not do it. Someone else did do it, and I got a picture, but it was too blurry to use. There were several "rule breakers" in the crowd. Some of those caps must have taken a lot of work to decorate. They were entirely covered with sparkles and sequins.

I don't know if many of you are familiar with the "Boudreaux-Thibodeaux" jokes that get told, but when they announced that Sarah Boudreaux-Thibodeaux had earned her degree, the whole crowd cracked up! Poor Sarah Boudreaux-Thibodeaux graciously took a bow and went on to receive her diploma. Other than that, the graduation ceremony was a bit boring.

Here are a few corny Boudreaux-Thibodeaux jokes:

Boudreaux and Thibodeaux decided to go fishing one morning at the pond in back of Boudreaux's house. It was dark and when they reached the pond they realized they wanted to cross to the other side. But they couldn't walk around and had no boat or pirogue to cross in. Thibodeaux turned to Boudreaux and said, "Mais Boudreaux, how in the heck we gonna get across." Boudreaux said, "No problem, I'm gonna shine this here flashlight across the water and you gonna walk on the beam of light all the way across." Thibodeaux then says, "Mais, Boudreaux, you must think I'm stupid or something, cause just when I get halfway across you gonna turn off the light."

Boudreaux and Thibodeaux were taking a trip to Baton Rouge. On their way they saw a sign that said Baton Rouge Left. So Boudreaux and Thibodeaux went home.

One day Boudreaux saw Thibodeaux and asked him why he was so bruised up. Thibodeaux replied that he had been riding a bull, and his foot got stuck when he fell off. The bull kept dragging him around until the Wal-Mart manager came and unplugged it.

Boudreaux and Thibodeaux had bought their own airline. On their first flight from Lafayette to Jamaica, they ran into motor trouble. Thibodeaux came on the speaker and said, "We are going to have to make an emergency crash landing. We are over the ocean so all of you that can swim please move to the left side of the plane, and all of you that can't swim, please move to the right side. As soon as the plane hits the water I want all of the people on the left to swim for shore. All of you on the right, well, Captain Boudreaux and I would like to thank you for flying Cajun Airlines.

I Believe She's Done It!

"Really, it was a piece of cake!"

All the finals have been taken and it looks like she will be graduating May 17th with a degree in Criminal Justice, with almost enough hours for a double major in Sociology. She hopes to work for Probation and Parole. Statistics class almost did her in. She's a smart young woman, but she has always had a bit of a mental block about math. It took a little hard work and a teary-eyed talk with her young Chinese professor for her to make it through the class--and maybe more than a few prayers. We're glad she did.

She's been under a great deal of stress, and has not been feeling well the last few days so when an older man at the gas station told her she'd better stop talking on her cell phone or else she was going to blow herself up, she politely told him that was an urban legend. And when the old man would not let it go, she pulled up the Snopes website on her phone and walked over to the man and let him read for himself that she was in no real danger of blowing herself up. I think she might have been a little less patient with him than I would have liked, but I guess someone had to straighten the old fart out! Where she got her chutzpah, I do not know, but she certainly has it and I believe it will serve her well.

I'm very proud of her and we will be busy celebrating for a few days so I will be scarce around here.

Happy Mother's Day to All

Mother's Day lunch--fresh barbecued goat. Yumm, yumm. Want some?

Ginger Lily, from my mother's garden.

Actually, we call this flower "Sharon" because that is my friend's name who shared the bulbs with my mother.

I got a new cell phone today with a camera on it. Things are about to get interesting around here! Now I will have a camera handy almost all the time. I've been playing with the phone all day, putting goofy photos of my loved ones on it that will pop up when they call. I also downloaded one ring tone. It plays "Crazy Little Thing Called Love." I am still trying to decide whether I should have gotten myself the unlimited text option. Before now, I have only had a very basic cell phone and it suited me just fine. In fact, just last night I was saying to my youngest daughter that I did not know if I was going to like this new phone or not. I think I'm gonna like it. It's pink! I don't know what has happened with me and the color pink. I used to shy away from pink. It was just too girly-girly for me. I've always been a bit of a tom-boy, but now that I am older, I seem to be embracing my pink side (but the tom-boy in me is still rolling her eyes about it)!

Now, do you want the truth about the goat? We did not barbecue the poor fellow. We were at Academy Sporting Goods and when we came out, this pickup truck was parked next to our car. About the time I saw the cage in the bed of the truck and was wondering "what the heck?", the goat moved his head. I would have been so mad at myself if I had forgotten I now had a camera just for moments like this so I grabbed my phone and snapped the photo.

04/04/08 Sunday Morning Collage

I have neglected my journaling habit for several months now and I'm trying to get back into the habit of writing a bit in it every day. Sometimes if I have nothing in particular to write about I throw a quick collage together like this one. I scanned it and manipulated it a bit in Photoshop and now it looks totally different than the one in my journal.

BTW, the video in the previous post was filmed in Andalucia, Spain. The walkway was originally built in 1901 and "now serves as an approach to Makinodromo, the famous climbing sector of El Charro." I think they call the walkway El Camino del Rey. Here is a link that gives a little more of the history of the trail. Jenny, don't be booking your flight yet. People have been prohibited from using the trail for over 15 years.
http://www.bamjam.net/Spain/Chorro.html