AliThinks

As Promised

A photo of some* of our Cricket Press posters above the mantel, as promised in my last entry.

*We have five more framed posters to hang on the opposite wall. The only thing stopping me is fear of fucking up. (Two of the posters in the above photo were hung on nails that had been there for years. It was easy to hammer a nail in the middle to hang the other poster. The five remaining posters are not all the same size and shape and will require some artistic talent to arrange.)

Obligatory Boat-In-Setting-Sun Photo

I had the privilege of traveling to the Florida Keys this past January. I found this photo while I was looking for one to post here. 

Two Three things come to mind: One, that's a great photo. Two, I need to take my camera everywhere. Three, I need to get over myself. My photos, compared to the millions out there, suck. Therefore, I need to get over my hesitancy, and just post them on Flickr or wherever, and not worry about it.

O RLY?

God. I get so annoyed at people sometimes. I know no one can read my mind, but DUH, do you really think I wasn't aware of that?

Anyway. Here's a photo of the ORANGE! wall.

Yeah. It's orange. And the other walls are yellow. And it's BRIGHT, y'all!

Which was, of course, our intention.

I said to look for me in March. Here I am.

Bol de Riz Avec Baguettes

Bol de Riz Avec Baguettes, originally uploaded by Alison.

I'm out of words. Here's an old photo.

Halfway Done

I Promised

...more about the Black Eyed Peas concert, but at this point, I feel like I'm kind of over it. The most important thing was the fact that it was a theatrical arena show, and I haven't seen one of those in ages.

Allan and I have seen a lot of live music in the past few years, but what we've seen has been in music clubs and bars. The last time I saw a concert in an arena, it might have been the Grateful Dead in Pittsburgh's Civic Arena (now Mellon Arena) in 1988, 89? Or it might have been The Who in Three Rivers Stadium (RIP. The stadium, not The Who, well, you know what I mean). Let's just say it's been 20 years since I saw a show in a place capable of holding that many people.

I definitely prefer the intimacy a music club offers. Lexington had a great music club until it didn't, but we have a couple of substitutes which fill the hole nicely. I will admit, it was pretty cool to see a show with such great effects and lighting and performers who own the stage.

Here's a review of the show, if you're interested. And here's another photo:

We were sorry to have missed Will.I.Am's DJ set at Buster's (one of the places that fills the hole, although they could book more bands for sure) after the concert, but it was an 18+ show, and we weren't about to drop the kids off here and go back out. It's okay, though, we had a great evening. If BEP comes to your town, it's worth a go.

Just Photos

It's been a busy day; it was my kids' last full day here. They fly back to France on Friday tomorrow evening. So while I've been thinking about the Black Eyed Peas concert today, I haven't had time to sit down and compose my thoughts about the concert. Here are a couple of photos I took.

This is from the beginning of the show. Each member of BEP had a green cylinder of light to welcome them onstage (they arrived from underneath; it was cool).

I took this early on in the show:

Unfortunately, I couldn't take my Nikon to the concert, but I had a point-and-shoot that belonged to Allan's late sister Jo Ann. It did the job!

You can also look at a slideshow from the local paper, but the photos don't reflect all the costume changes.

More tomorrow about the concert itself.

In Key West

Edit: I'm not actually in Key West. I took this photo when I was there last month.

New News

So we got a new couch today. We ordered it before Christmas, and it was supposed to be delivered around March 1st. The store called us last Monday to tell us the couch was ready, and would we be available on the 13th?

Um, okay, we said.

And so there went our plans for painting the living room before the couch arrived. We've got color samples on the walls and everything. Island Orange*! Persimmon! Chickadee! Field of Daisies! Somebody, PLEASE give me a job naming colors.

We'd planned to paint after my kids went back to France on the 19th. And that's still what we'll do, after much fretting on my part whether we could at least prime and paint the wall the couch sits against—Chickadee it is—but we'll just cover the new couch in about 18 layers of plastic, after we move it to the center of the room.

It's no big deal. (She said, after stressing about it the entire week.) But I'm not going to put the books back on the one shelf you can see below until after we paint (we had to move the shelf so that the delivery guys could get the couch through the doorway. And then they couldn't angle the thing through, so they had to go through the garage). And before I reshelve the books that live on the shelf? I'm going to purge them. Bookcrossing, here I come again!

Here's a photo I took of the old couch when it was new, back in May of 2006:

You're probably all like "Whaaaat? Your couch isn't even four years old and you're getting rid of it?!"

Well, yes. We are. We're relegating it to the basement, where it will live out the rest of its years.

And here are the photos I took today, via PhotoBooth, so they're not spectacular:

Before (but after we moved the old sectional into the basement):

 

After:

 

I really have to take a proper photo with my camera. And I really have to purge more than just my books. Those baskets underneath the cocktail coffee table are driving me nuts.

*This color is painted on a wall I haven't photographed.

At A Loss Again

I really don't know what possessed me to sign up for NaBloPoMo. No, really. Blurg. I have no idea what to write about. So here's another photo.

I Wish I Had Something To Say

That's the trouble with NaBloPoMo. You have to write something every day, and I have absolutely nothing to report. So here's a photo:

Lurve

Lurve, originally uploaded by Alison.

It's Late And I'm Tired

Untitled, originally uploaded by Alison.

...so here's a photo. It's a couple of months old. For a little more info, click on the pic.

Unidentified

Unidentified, originally uploaded by Alison.

Been a while since I've posted a photo. I took this last Friday night at the Green Lantern.

I Done Been Cookin'*

Earlier today I read Loulou's blog post about pasta with salmon and peas, and decided to make it. As I commented on her post, I probably wasn't going to follow her recipe, but she did inspire me.

On a weird whim, I decided to broadcast my cooking. It's been six months since I've used USTREAM, so I dusted off my login and started a broadcast. Allan helpfully posted a link to my broadcast on Twitter and elsewhere, and pretty soon I had a few viewers. Woo-hoo!

I stopped the broadcast while I was waiting for the pasta water to boil; the salmon and peas and cream were ready to go. Mari was watching, and she asked me to post a photo of the finished product. This is for you, Mari:

Because you can't go wrong with Loulou's recipe, I'll just tell you what I did differently:

• I only used olive oil. (Lexington locals, I buy my olive oil in bulk a refillable bottle at Lexington Seafood on E. High.)
• I used a medium-sized onion instead of shallot, because I had no shallots.
• I used half and half instead of whipping or heavy cream.
• I forgot the chèvre. (And we had some lovely goat "cheddar" from a Ozark Hill Farms, no linky.)
• I used eensy-weensy farfalle instead of little shells.

Something tells me that Loulou's recipe turned out better than mine did. But! I had fun cooking, and it was tasty. And! I made a salad of romaine hearts and homemade vinaigrette.

Here's the recipe for my vinaigrette, with full props to my ex-husband, who taught me how to make it:

1 part dijon mustard
1 part vinegar (red wine, white wine, rice)
2 parts olive oil (or canola oil)

Whisk the mustard and vinegar together in a bowl until homogeneous. Add sea salt to taste, and blend. Add olive oil drop by drop, then in a thin stream, whisking the entire time (pretend you're making mayonnaise) until the oil is incorporated into the mustard/vinegar. Taste, and add more oil or vinegar if needed. Add a few grinds of pepper to taste, and mix. Drizzle onto salads, steamed vegetables, avocados, or whatever strikes your fancy.

So. Mmmm, yeah. Bon ap! Next time I broadcast my cooking, I'll storyboard it (okay, maybe not) and record it so I can post a link here.

*It's not as if I never cook. I just don't blog about it.

On Perfectionism

If you looked at my Flickr stream, you'd never guess I've taken over 1000 photos in April alone. I've posted exactly 36 37 to Flickr. This weekend I've taken 350 photos. A lot of them are crap, sure. But that's a lot of photos to look through and decide what's worth processing and posting online. (Fortunately, my new camera takes both hi-res JPEG and RAW photos — the D50 took low-res JPEG + RAW — so sometimes I can use the JPEG straight out of the box.) Still, it can be overwhelming when you've taken hundreds of photos in a short amount of time, and I have two strikes against me to begin with.

First, I have a major inferiority complex about my photography. Sometimes it's hard to be married to the guy who took this photo, or this one. Sometimes we actually take the same photo without even realizing it, and I'm pretty sure his photo is better than mine (whether it is or not). Yeah, I need to get over this. I know.

Second, I'm a perfectionist, and not just in the realm of photography. Perfectionism leads to procrastination which leads to paralysis, at least in my case. If it won't be perfect, there's no point in doing it, whatever "it" is.

This has kept me from a number of creative endeavors; writing and photography come to mind. It is my hope that admitting my fear of not producing something perfect will help me get over it.

So in that spirit, here is a photo I took yesterday, with no post-processing done on it. This is Ben Sollee:

He participated in Record Store Day at our local shop, CD Central, and was just one of several very talented artists there. I will post more of my photos to the Flickr set, but not just now. I need to get ready to go see The (English) Beat at The Dame.

I'm taking my camera.

On Tea Parties

I'd heard about the Tea Party thing, because there was one in Lexington a couple of weeks ago, and the Tea Partiers were upset that our local paper didn't cover their event. I thought that the Herald-Leader probably didn't have enough reporters, seeing as how they'd just laid off a bunch of staff.

This past Saturday, Allan and I were walking around Pittsburgh's North Side Shore Side Shore, when we happened upon a Tea Party. Alan Keyes was the keynote speaker, and while we didn't stick around to hear his speech, we did get to see him dump tea (or some facsimile thereof) into the Allegheny River.

I took a few photos, which you can see here. We did hear some words from the man who organized this particular Tea Party. I didn't catch his name, but he did say that Congress passed the stimulus bill without even reading it. The crowd cheered, and I said "What about the PATRIOT Act?" No one heard me except Allan and maybe the woman with the Sarah Palin button on her hat; we were on the Roberto Clemente bridge, and the speakers were on Allegheny Landing.

And then the man said, "There are laws, laws we have to obey. Can you imagine that I had to get a permit to exercise my First Amendment rights?" The crowd cheered, and I said "Maybe because it's a question of public safety, and no one is infringing on your First Amendment rights?" He went on to say that the government was above the law. I'd say it is, because no one challenged George W. Bush's decimation of our Constitution.

I can't say I didn't understand some of the sentiments I witnessed on Saturday. I did. But most of the signs the folks were holding had me saying "Really?" à la Kyle (or Stan — I can't remember which one said it, in which episode, but it was a high-pitched, head-tilted question) from South Park.

I also can't say I'm happy about the whole stimulus thing, but I'd like to know what the opposition has in mind, and I want them to spell out how it will be better than what the Obama administration has done so far.

While I Ruminate About My Next Post

...let me share a link to the Apostrophe Catastrophes blog. Go on. Click it.

I Should Have Taken A Photo Of My Boots

Oh wait, I did.

I love Pops Resale.

A Bit Of Red

A Bit Of Red, originally uploaded by Alison.

I took this photo on Tuesday afternoon. My friend Jeorg has a theory about the freezing rain, but it's not safe for work, so I won't post it here unless things get really bad.

On the other hand, things are bad; we didn't go to see Alejandro Escovedo at The Dame.

I still won't post what Jeorg told me without her permission. Just know that all this freezing rain has something to do with the debbul.