No Strings Attached

Posted By Kathleen David on March 20, 2010

It has been fun. I met Theresa Mather whose artwork I have admired for years. I met Tanya Huff whose books I have enjoyed over the years. I have seen a lot of people that I don’t see very often or only once a year at LunaCon. I have done 7 of my 11 panels so far. All have been very good and I thank my fellow panelists for making them so.

I put my new art in the Art Show and I need to get pictures of the pieces. I am quite proud of them.

It has been busy but not overly busy. I had time to give blood and have a few meals with a friend.

I am enjoying myself and that’s why I came so it’s all good.

I am grateful for LunaCon,

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Posted By Kathleen David on March 18, 2010

You hear about St. Patrick’s Day in New York. You hear about the parade. You hear about the unruly crowd. You hear a lot but it is nothing like experiencing it first hand.

I wanted to go into the city because a friend that I rarely see was going to be meeting up with a bunch of my other friends to have lunch. I also hadn’t seen the Tim Burton exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art. Then we found out that Riverdance was doing the farewell tour. Peter bought me a ticket since I had never seen it live and he figured I’d have to turn in my Irish card if I didn’t see it, so I found myself going into NYC on St. Patrick’s Day.

Lunch was very nice. I caught up with some people that I will be seeing this weekend at LunaCon but it was nice to have lunch with them. I talked to my out of town friend a little but not much but there were a lot of people vying for her attention since most of them hadn’t seen her in years.

I went up to Midtown Comics and chatted with the people there. Caught up on some news on various fronts and bought some comics. I went to the large Toys r’ Us to look around and found the most clever stuffed animal. It is a stuffed “Perry the Platypus” toy that convert from Perry to Agent P. If you have watched Phineas and Ferb, you know what I am talking about. Considering what I had seen some people price this on E-bay, I picked one up for Caroline because I knew she would appreciate/love it.

I walked to the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) through the crowds in Time Square which were large. The crowds were also drunk and aggressive or rather there were pockets of drunk aggressive people at 1:00 in the afternoon and most of them didn’t even look to be drinking age. And these packs were loud when they ran into each other with lots of hooting and howling. The cops were enforcing the open container laws carefully because they could tell that the crowd would be hard to control if they got out of control. But enforce it they did. I saw a couple young men being led away to the local police station.

Walking up town was rather difficult because of the crowd. I got to 47th and decided to cross to 6th in hopes that the crowds might be a little less. Well that was a bad call because everyone was walking towards 5th. So I muscled my way to 53 and got to MoMA. I bought my ticket and put my bag in coat check which was a weight off my shoulders. The MoMA was pretty crowded too but managable.

I went the wrong direction at first and found myself in the secondary exhibit which was nice but small. A very nice guard set me straight and I went to the 3rd floor for the main exhibit. It was a feast for the eyes and very informative about the director’s process. I ran into my out of town friend who, unbeknownst to me, was seeing the exhibit the same day. We went around and looked at all the art work and the props from various movies and shorts that Burton has done. While looking, we caught up on life and stuff which was very nice.

We parted ways since she had to go downtown and I needed to go uptown. I managed to see some of the parade and worked my way to the Apple Store to get a new antiglare shield for my phone. I wandered FAO Shwartz and ran into a couple of people I know so I got to say hi to them. It was getting late in the afternoon, so I started to look for a place to have dinner. I found myself at the Harvest Brewery which is a very nice restaurant that was about a block from Radio City Music Hall. I got a table in short order and had a very nice dinner that I lingered over to kill some time before the show.

My seat was wonderful. I had a box with a bunch of lighting equipment in front of me so I had a place to put my bag and people could get by. Lots of leg room is always nice if you have long legs. I settled in and read “Heat Wave” until the show started. I didn’t quite know what to expect. I know the show but to know a show and to see a show live is quite different. For one thing the sound is much louder and you can hear things that you can’t on tape. And if there is a mistake, you can hear that too. Penny whistles are not very forgiving. The troupe was very good. The steps were danced with precision and the cast was really into what they were doing. Overall the show is showing its age. Things that were clever tricks for the stage 15 years ago are now considered old hat or quaint. But the music is good and the dancers throw themselves into their roles. I had the good fortune afterwards to run into the composer so I got to tell him how much I had enjoyed his music over the years even though this was the first time I had seen the show live. He said that he found that interesting and appreciated that I had come to the show through the music.

I got home rather late. My feet hurt but my soul felt fed so it’s all good.

I am grateful that I went to see the Burton exhibit when I did.

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Posted By Kathleen David on March 15, 2010

Now that the field is so bloody big, the final game won’t be played until Monday April 5th. Does that mean that there will be games Sunday? And what are the Jewish kids going to do about Passover? The Christian kids do about Easter? It was stupid to expand the field because so many teams were complaining about being outside looking in. Guess what is happening today, the same number of teams are complaining that they are on the outside looking in.

Have I mentioned how much I dislike Daylight Savings Time? And how much more I dislike it that it was expanded? The high school students have to go to the bus in the dark until school is almost out for the year. There are not many farmers out here anymore and this is BEFORE the planting season. I am betting that auto accidents are up because people are driving to work in the dark. It doesn’t save power because everyone has their lights on in the morning probably more than they would in the evening. So lets get rid of Daylight Savings Time because IT SAVES NOTHING!

Wind picked up again. There is a wet mist in the air which does make it feel like I am walking through water. Another good day for working inside.

I am going to experiment with a painting idea to see if I can create the look I want with cloth.

I have bowling tonight. We did OK last week and hope we do better this evening.

Caroline got up this morning late, which would have been on time if this had been last Friday. She made the bus but it was a near thing. She even went to bed on time last night but had a hard time getting to sleep.

I am grateful that Caroline move so quickly this morning so she could catch the bus.

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Posted By Kathleen David on March 14, 2010

We had 60+ winds last night. You could feel the house move. The wind was howling like a Banshee and the rain pounded the house. We heard sounds of trees cracking but none of them were ours that we could see.

This morning there are crews out clearing a couple of large trees that had fallen in the street about a block down from us. In the backyard we have two trees down. One was totally on our property and the other I am going to have to check the boundary marker to figure out which property it is one since we don’t have a fence between us. With the neighbor we do have a fence with, a couple of sections of the fence fell onto our property so we are going to have to give him a call and see what he wants to do about it. It did miss the garage so that’s good.

We have roofing tiles in the yard but they aren’t ours. We have a rather distinctive color and pattern to ours. Nor are they the neighbors on either side so I am going to take a look and see if I can figure out which house they came from. My look at the roof on both the garage and the house seems to indicate that we are still intact but I have to give it a better look later.

The ground is very soggy and we are going to have to watch the trees if we get another stiff breeze through here before the ground stops feeling like you are walking on a sponge. Over all the usual flooding areas look OK and it seems all that we lost were two garbage cans which will probably wander back to us since I have already returned the garbage cans that were in our yard to the houses a couple of houses down. We just do that around here. If you know whose cans they are, you just put them back.

We do have a lot of sticks and branches in the yard. That is going to take some time to pick up but I think I’ll wait until it is a little drier to work on that.

Peter is off taking Ariel back to school. Caroline and I are going to find ways to amuse ourselves in the house today since outside is so yucky. We are down a phone line. The office line is out and the home line is pretty broken up with static. We are given them 24 hours to repair the problem because there are so many lines down around the place. I am surprised we have power right now.

So we are fine and I really hope everyone else is too. This was a pretty vicious storm. At least it happened this weekend and not the next.

I am grateful that our damage seems minimal.

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Posted By Kathleen David on March 12, 2010

I know that I am liking this season much better than last season but it is starting to show its age a bit. I will say that the challenges this season are much better than last season but I miss the WTF challenges like using part of a car interior to design a dress. Hardware store was more thinking outside of the box and figuring out what could be used. They have been doing a lot of unusual materials challenges but it is missing the oomph. And the designers are more clued into what the challenge might be based on previous challenges.

I’m liking Seth Aaron’s fashion sense. He understands the different challenges very well and his sewing skills is probably the best of the bunch. His personality hasn’t registered with me other than slightly annoying but not that annoying. Mila is another that thinks fashion forward but I am concerned that she is a one trick pony with lots of angles. I am sorry that Ping Wu went so early but she wouldn’t have survived the last couple of challenges. Jonathan surprised me last night. I loved the look and the dress was excellently tailored.

Final Three I think with be Jonathan, Seth Aaron, and Maya. I don’t know who will take it yet but those are the most versatile of the group left.

So the new thing in reality TV seems to be hoarding. I guess addiction is so last week as are bounty hunters and deep-sea fisherman. This is a subject that hits a little close to home for me because I do have some hoarding tendencies and I can tell that Caroline does too. I guess we are both going to have to work on that. I get a little scared watching the commercials and seeing the piles of stuff. I have piles of books and papers that need to be sorted and put away. I need to find the time to do it and that can get shuffled to the low end of the cleaning totem pole until it has to be done.

I am grateful that Project Runway is still going.

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