fun – Page 6 – The Hermits' Rest

My Brain-o-meter Is Reading FULL

Usually, I enjoy taking a blogging break each day, because it gives me a chance to stop thinking about work and stuff, and instead focus on fun or fascinating (to me) things. This week, my mind has been so full of other things that there’s just no room for fun. Well, maybe there’s a LITTLE room…

I’m still working on decorating the office, just figuring out what works and what doesn’t. While I’m waiting for my plant stand to arrive, I’m enjoying my plant corner a lot using the old table that’s been hanging around for years.

They’re all getting plenty of light, even with the window down here. I sort of like it this way.

The big change for today is that Chris put up a piece of plywood in my window that looks out into the hall, to dampen the sounds of me in my office, and I assume also to keep noise from coming IN, as well. It’s just temporary, I think, until the actual piece of glass comes. I’m sure the gaudy vase of flowers makes the plywood practically blend in with the surroundings. Sure, Suna.

You can also see my Mercury glass candle holders and a vase I got to go on the glass shelves, when they arrive.

I had a bunch of candles that were just sitting on the shelves, so I got some inexpensive candle holders for them, such as the shiny silver ones above and these extra pink ones for the mantel. They aren’t fancy heirlooms, but they are cheery, and will look good lit up (too bad I still haven’t managed to sneak into an uncrowded store and buy more AA batteries).

They set off the garlic teapot nicely, so I say.

Apparently, shiny things and lights help keep my mood up, and right now, I’ll take all I can get! If they distract me from work challenges, political grumblings, and natural disasters, they’re worth the time, effort and expense. I feel lucky to be able to make myself a haven here at the Pope Residence, and I’ll work really hard not to interfere with the work everyone else is doing, in return.

The other great improvement of the day is my keyboard and mouse tray. Typing is a joy, and I’m glad Chris figured out a good way to attach it to the desk!

When stress is high and change is swirling all around, little things can really bug us, am I right? The little thing that bugged me was that the inexpensive toilet paper holder I’d gotten for my bathroom had turned out to not hold those giant rolls of Charmin that I love. The horror! It was also so lightweight that it tried to fall over every time I touched it. That just would NOT do.

This new one is made of iron pipe and has nothing to restrict the size of the spare roll. Rustic romantic, fits the theme! My bathroom is complete. Hooray. I’ll donate the other one to the thrift shop next time I go over there.

So it’s time to go think about hard stuff again. I’ll be keeping a part of my mind on everyone in the path of hurricanes and tropical storms today. I do hope we can get enough rain to have an effect on the grass from it. The little bit that showed up last night didn’t help much at all!

May you all find something shiny to smile about, and that there’s a little extra space in YOUR brain-o-meter for fun.

Finishing Touches in My Office

Actually, more like goofing off on a Sunday. This is one of those posts that has to be only interesting to me as a record of my projects. But, you can read it, of course.

Last week, Chris asked me what kind of reading light I was going to use for the reading nook/guest area to the right of the “fireplace.” I realized I’d forgotten all about what I had planned for that. So many plans to keep track of (fun plans, hoorah).

For the left side, I have this beautiful hanging lamp that I bought from my friend Jean. While it’s old, it’s actually never been used, and still has the tag on it! It was made in Tyler, Texas. There was even hanging hardware with it, so all I need to do is clear the space and ask Chris to hang if up. Isn’t it cool?

I also put more “shit,” as Chris calls it, in the office. These are some pretty pottery by my friend Pamela, which I got yesterday when I was prowling around her studio. I am especially fond of the pencil holder which is really a vase. It really sets off my fancy pencils. The little candle holder (or whatever) I got because it goes so well with the color scheme.

And What about the Other Nook?

Back to the right side reading nook. I happened to have a floor lamp in my old office that I think came with this building. It was fake gold metal. I’d replaced the lampshade, but the body of the lamp was sad and rusty. I will spare you a “before” photo, because I forgot to take one.

Here’s my begonia re-potted. Hoping it grows!

This afternoon, after re-potting my new plants, I drug the lamp outside and got out my official Suna Colors of Spray Paint (red and orange paint that were laying around) and I turned the lamp into a festival or orange and red spatters. I painted it all orange, then added light spotty layers of red and orange to build depth (or because it was fun, pick your rationale).

I didn’t make a mess or anything, since I assume the color will come out of the weeds once they grow and get mowed (assuming we get some rain from the converging hurricanes of 2020).

Yes, I painted everything except where the bulb goes.

You’ll be proud of my restraint, since I briefly toyed with the idea of winding one of my colorful flower garlands up the stem of the lamp, but decided I have enough gaudy fake flowers in there. That place is not for the faint of heart!

That’s all I have for today. I’m working on something for tomorrow, so stay tuned for something sweet.

PS about the Calves

Since one person mentioned it, I assume others thought it. So, no we are not going to keep the young calves in the small pen (which did get made bigger when the two others arrived). This is a big ranch, even just the parts we own! They will have plenty of room to roam, and to rotate sensibly, and all that.

Self Care and Pottery

I had nothing on my agenda today, so rather than lounge around the house, I decided to do whatever I wanted to.

I went over and visited the calves, and got to feed Rip while the new guys were worked on. Then I just sat and watched the chickens. Why not? It’s fun. I got a few more portraits. Because it’s fun.

After that excitement, I drove off and daringly went to the local nursery all by myself. I wanted a few more little plants for the office. Instead I got two small plants and a monster. Meet Eduardo!

He’s a basket plant, I think. He will be spectacular in the window with the spider plant.

A tiny angel wing begonia and uh, a succulent rounded out the plant fun.

Look to the right of those plants and you’ll see I brought my stained glass windows over, too. I cleaned them all up so maybe Chris can hang them next week, if there’s time. I also brought down the hanging lamp to put up in the reading nook. It’s all clean and ready to go up, too!

I didn’t take pictures of those, so here’s the pothos I put in Tubby Jr. with some wandering Jew I found on the ground at the nursery. The guy laughed when I asked what it cost.

As if that wasn’t enough fun, I next went to my friend Pamela’s studio and had fun with clay. It’s hard to concentrate, though, because she has such cool stuff.

Anyway, she’d made some soap dishes large enough to hold those huge Posh bars I have. She asked what colors I wanted, then suggested I come select my glazes. That sounded fun.

Little did I know that she was also going to let me glaze them myself! It’s been so long since I got to do that. So, I made one orange and gold and one red and pink. I did a bunch of layers, so we will see if they show up or not.

This is orange and gold, believe it or not.

In the past, I have failed as many times as I succeeded in my glazing, but I always do it that way, anyway. Besides, the soap dishes Pamela made are so pretty that my glaze won’t mess them up.

This is two shades of pink with red under it. Hope it comes out!

Well that’s self care. I got to see someone but not too close! The studio is open to the air, too. Fun times. Good for the soul.

Fun or Else

Starting today, I’m gonna have fun all day long OR ELSE. That means, even at work! So what if I had Zoom meetings at 10,11,12,1,3, and 4 today? Fun times shall occur at 2 pm. It’s 2:30. I’m blogging. Thankfully, I consider blogging fun.

To start that fun off right, I made myself Zoom backgrounds so it will look like I’m in my new office. And I wore a cheerful shirt, plus lipstick!

Now, doesn’t that make meetings fun? Sure!

And to paraphrase Lee, I “get” to have a lot of meetings today. But, it’s true. I get to talk to a lot of interesting people. It was work book club day, which meant lots of fun.

Such a nice bunch of blurry people to chat with over lunch!

I did “get” to run over to the new office building, sign in to swear I am not sick, and get some pretty pictures of the completely finished stairs. Ahh.

The while trim looks great.
Going downstairs will be a treat every time.

Fun is how you define it! No wonder I surround myself with things that cheer me up. It makes whatever I’m doing fun. I’m extra glad for the happy keyboard and mouse, since most of my “fun” is typing!

What fun have you been having? Do you define your own fun, like I do?

New Stuff! Why?

I’ve always loved getting new stuff. I didn’t get a lot in my early years, and in my twenties I spent a lot of time being creative with tables made of boxes and furniture rescued from the dumpster. It was fine. I had fun, and all my new stuff was new books and records.

In grad school, I would have re-used an old mirror left in an apartment, just like we did at the Pope house.

I’m positive my extreme enjoyment of new things made me look like I was bragging. I know that, because my beloved high school sweetheart told me so. I was so mortified that I over-reacted and tried real hard to play anything I acquired down. I’ve had my car since 2017 and never wrote an ode to British Racing Green. That took a lot of restraint.

All the remodeling we’ve done over the past decade or so has let me get shiny new things, then pass them on. I think that’s ideal.

I’ve got to pick a lot of shiny sinks, but I don’t have to own them all. It’s still fun to open the box.

Still, nothing cheers me up like a tiny indulgence. So, back in April I ordered this extra cute keyboard and mouse off a Facebook ad. Now, I could tell it was coming from China. So I didn’t buy the most expensive one.

I waited and waited. The tracker kept saying it was in the same place. I finally contacted the company, expecting no response and a chance to write a bad review. But no, they said they’d look into it.

A week later I got a note saying it was lost somehow. Did I want my money back, or could they expedite me one? Sure, send it. By this time, I’d forgotten what I ordered.

It only took ten days to rush across the ocean and get to me, after a wee customs delay. Look at all those stickers.

Ooh, the box was pretty!

And look at that hilarious Candy keyboard! What was I thinking? On the other hand, it will add a jolt of pink to my new office when it’s done.

It came with a little brush to clean the keys and some cute little Chinese stickers.

Thankfully, the cute and clacky mechanical keyboard is fun to use, once you get used to it. And the mouse is just fine.

In conclusion, that was fun. And I can use the old keyboard at the ranch, where I have a giant, awkward keyboard I’ve never gotten used to. So yeah, I got a frivolous keyboard and it brightened my day.

Guess I have to give that company a good review.

Snapshots of Life in Austin

So much has gone on this week. It’s great when there’s lots of fun things to do, because time just flies.

Anita and I enjoyed the movie Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice on Tuesday night. Here’s a review, if you want to know more. I pretty much breathed along with her during the whole movie, thanks to having completely memorized every album of hers up to Pirates of Penzance. And both Trio albums.

She made such a huge contribution to music, got so many songwriters famous, and has done so much good work in her life. I also feel a kinship with her, since we both no longer can sing well (I don’t have Parkinson’s, just “broke” my upper range). The film is very enjoyable, anyway.

Yesterday was a LOT of fun. I’ll pretend it’s a totally typical day when I’m in Austin. It started out with the company where I work launching a new brand identity. We got some merchandise, and hooray, they replaced our name plates so you can actually read them! That’s right, my cube has a picture of a Marine playing the tuba. Yours should, too.

Then, the excitement continued as I finally got to take my green car in to get repaired after the thing attacked it from the sky. The repair shop is so efficient and coordinates so well with the rental place that it took less than an hour in total. And I got a nice rental, an Audi SUV or whatever it is. It was easy to figure out and has most of the things I want in a car, so I’m really pleased. Last time I got a Jeep thing that was not fun at all.

It’s cute and peppy. And black. It’s Rowdy the Rental Audi. Get it?

I worked from home for a while, then made a nice dinner using my fancy red sauce from the Italian restaurant. I got fresh linguine, shaved parmesan cheese, a nice salad, and some bread. Then I set the table in our breakfast room, which we call the sun room. It looked so cute!

Such a cheerful table with the Fiesta ware and old tablecloth.

My son and his girlfriend joined us, and we had a most pleasant, relaxed meal full of laughs and stories. That’s the way it should be.

This morning, Anita and I went out to walk the dogs and ran into most of the neighbors. We had a dog party! What a great start to the day.

Plus, lunch with a coworker reminded me that we have some cool pink Turk’s caps in the courtyard. Wow!

I’m choosing to savor all the good times as hard as I possibly can.

Fun with Scraping Things

Well, that doesn’t tell you much about what I did last night, does it? I’ll explain. Everyone who’s ever driven between Cameron and Temple will have noticed a couple of very cute shops in Rogers, Texas. One of them, the Vis-a-Vis Galleria drew me and my sister in a few weeks ago. I discovered that, not only do they have fun clothing and a really tasteful collection of consignment items, they do classes on decorating furniture.

I managed to rub all the transfer off and it stuck to the wood. Also pictured: wine.

So, I signed up for a class, just to have some fun on a random weekend. I’d hoped to get someone to go with me, but I was fine with going alone. Since I’ve been channeling my dad, I’ve gotten better about being friendly with everyone I run into. It turns out that everyone has an interesting story, somewhere in there!

Is This Thing On?

At work, we got access to new video hosting platform, and I saw that they have a free extension for Chrome that lets you record short videos, with your webcam embedded, so you can talk to people and show them things on your computer. It’s called Vidyard GoVideo, and it’s Canadian!

I had some fun trying the software out, and found it easy. It gave me LOTS of ideas, too.

If you’re on Facebook with me, you’ve already seen this (be my friend; I don’t yet hate Facebook!), but I’m sharing this for others who might find this technology useful in their work, or to publicize their blog or other projects. It’s got branding on it, so it isn’t perfect for all business uses, but you can see how many people view your videos and other basic statistics, so it’s potentially quite useful.

Check out this video: https://embed.vidyard.com/share/SudUdPsXyxuqsU4ikurAZN?

You can turn the camera off, and just talk about what’s on your screen, or just use the webcam to do a video blog. Best of all worlds, especially if you aren’t trying to be a professional video blogger who wants to be on video blogging platforms.

You can’t embed in your blog page, at least as far as I can tell, so that’s a downer. I’ll have to explore this simple tool more.

The Champion Is…

Today we did a rare and lovely thing at work: we had a relaxing team building activity! Our fearless leader, Craig, loves to barbecue and smoke meat, so he decided to cook for our team and have a traditional cookout.

Craig says he is very happy. Maggie sets out food.

My friend Maggie, who is a party planner extraordinaire, put together the side dishes, and we got out some lawn games the company had.

Rachel supervises competitive gaming. What’s this game called?

The day was perfect! Everyone had a delicious meal, then we tried all the games.

It was so nice to see the group relaxing and chatting. It reminded me of paintings of the past, with people picnicking and playing croquet or something.

The highlight of the day was when Maggie and our colleague Jon started game of big Jenga. As the stack of blocks grew taller and taller, more of the team gathered around. The stack would wobble, but keep growing!

More than once, we declared that HAD to be the end, but no! Maggie and Jon were really steady and smart.

Boom! The tallest stack any of us had ever seen finally falls.

When it finally fell, we erupted in cheers! Dipu got a Live Photo, and the one below is from it!

I wish we could all have a pleasant break from the work day in the spring when it’s neither hot nor cold. I’m so grateful to our group at work for pulling this off.