Happy New Year!

It's that time of year to try and bring focus to the days ahead. But for me, closing out last year is a good starting point.

Last years "14 in 14" was good for me. It mostly has to do with learning new things but sometimes it needs to be about getting things done.

• I stuck with Duolingo and my Spanish learning. (they teach a lot of languages and the price is right (FREE) so do check it out.)
•  I am still doing the "Practice" photo class with Katrina Kennedy. It's a year long effort.
• I finished the "Dyeing to Design" class with Elizabeth Barton. It was good.
• I continue with Lightroom and need to step it up this year.

In addition:

• Took a family trip to South Africa to attend our nephews wedding.
• Documented our trip to Spain with a Blurb photo journal book.
• Volunteered time by leading both a geranium and wreath sale for a ladies group to which I belong.
• Organized a small quilt show for the United Methodist ladies group.
• Completed several scrapbooking classes and a number of iphoneography classes. All online stuff.
• Took a trip to Hawaii for some R & R.
• Entered my quilt Heirlooms in SAQA's Food for Thought exhibit. It was accepted and the first venue is the Quilt Museum in Paducah, KY, a place I visited many times when I lived in St Louis. To me, this is the best quilt museum around and I can't believe I will have something hanging there. 
• Got an Eagle (that's a 3 on a par 5 hole) at Pumpkin Ridge...hole #11, from about 135 yards out. It's all luck but then, it's good to be lucky:).
• Attended my 50th grade school reunion. How did we get so old but good that it was a blast and we can still have fun!
• Remain a totally geeky Trailblazer fan watching as many games as is possible. Go Boys!

What are you up to?

Voices: Anne Lamott

I had the opportunity to hear Anne Lamott speak this past week at the Voices lecture series. A 60 year old white woman with dreads might cause one to pause. She is however riveting. She often speaks of loss but in a hopeful way. I have read several of her books. Traveling Mercies is the most recent one.

I left the lecture with three thoughts.

First, there are three kinds of prayer: Help, Thanks and Wow! I do think most fit one of those categories. I certainly applied them to my golf game on Friday. haha
She later added a forth prayer called Whatever. I think that fits the case when you don't get the answer for which you hoped.

Second, there are really only two things that can fill you up. One is giving and the other is solitude.

Third, for writers or artists or anyone learning something new or doing something new, DO THE WORK. Don't wait for inspiration to come. It comes by doing the work.

She was funny, engaging and very honest. I wish you could have joined me for this fun and thoughtful evening.

Twenty-Four

My girl turned 24 last Friday. Here is one of my very favorite pics from her first year.

Look at her now...at work. Such poise, so professional, so grown up. WOW! She is amazing.

Happy, happy Birthday. Love you to bits, my sweet girl!

Storyteller

I am a storyteller. I have a blog by that name. Sometimes I cross reference it here. It is mostly about digital scrap booking and the tools of Photoshop. I am a PS addict. I love it to bits. I am working on stories from back in the day...

In September, 1990, we noticed an unusual caterpillar in our front flower bed. It was lime green, black and white striped. My boys had bug jars and so Drew snatched it up and put it along with some leaves in his bug jar. The next morning, the caterpillar was missing but hanging from the lid was the most amazing chrysalis, bright green with gold studs. Our timing must have been spot on. 

We did some research and thought it just might be a Monarch. We patiently waited and in about 10 days, the chrysalis became transparent and we could see the Monarch within. It gyrated out of the chrysalis and hung upside down, stretching and drying it's wings. We gently opened the jar to release it from it's confines. After a bit, it fluttered away. 

Here is the photo journal story. If you would like to see more stories, set up an RSS feed and follow me there.  www.elainemillarstoryteller.blogspot.com
I would love to have you on board.

Life List Additions

I wrote this post in January. It is the beginning of my life list rules. Since then I've added a few more.

• If someone offers you a breath mint, you should probably accept it.
• Sixty year old arms are not long enough for selfies. 

The last discovery came in a photography class where I was to take a selfie. Close ups capture a lot of bad stuff. So I cheated and used my tripod. Well who defined selfie as hand held. It allowed me to capture more than my teeth, in this case, my bike too.

I scrapped the effort.

Buzzer Beating - Game Winning - Series Clinching"

Excerpts from Media Row reports on the win of the century for the TrailBlazers...

"The Basketball Gods looked out for us," Wes Matthews said. "I don't know if they blew the coverage or what."

"We got as good of a look as we were going to get," Lillard said.

There was no panic. He didn't waste any time, but he didn't race either. The catch became the turn and the turn became the square up and the square up became the release and the release became the flick follow-through.

"His demeanor was never that of a rookie," Matthews said. "His age, he always played with a swagger or an edge. It speaks for itself."

Watch Damian Lillards buzzer beater here.
Go boys!

In the end the entire team, bench included, had a role to play and played it well. Damian's shot sealed the deal.

Time Together

It's always really special to spend some one on one time with just one child. Mine are all adults now, each living in a  different city. Such time gets harder to find as they are about the business of building careers and relationships with others. So when the opportunity to visit Nick in Huntington Beach presented itself, I was excited.

Nick was a wonderful planner. We ate in, we ate out. Nick cooked. I did not. We walked the neighborhood a bit. We spent the day at the beach. He treated for lunch :) at Fred's Mexican Cafe (Yummo!) and bought tickets for a play by a local theater group. What a special weekend. The best was just being with him chatting it up.

I wasn't thoughtful enough to get anyone to capture a pic of Nick and I or just Nick  So these will have to do.

For your beach fix:

 

The Ac-Cord War

Do you have a station that resembles this? Or more than one of them?

There's the I-phone fighting with the I-pad for a plug-in and the Bose and the laptop and the house phone and the Garmin and the camera batteries and the STOP!

Are we here yet?

Heard on the street...well not really.

• Man will atrophy all his limbs but the push-button finger.                                                     Frank Lloyd Wright
  
• Technology… the knack of so arranging the world that we don't have to experience it.         Max Frisch
  
• Men have become the tools of their tools.                                                                                 Henry David Thoreau

Just saying...

Hope and the Humana

I play golf here. For a long time they have sponsored a golf tournament. It used to be called The Bob Hope Classic. It's been taken over by Bill Clinton's foundation The Humana. So now they call it The Humana. Wouldn't Hope and Humana have been good or Hope for Humana or Humana and Hope. With a name like Hope there are so many possibilities. I wonder why they dropped the best part. Maybe the young people don't know who Bob Hope was. Such a travesty.
 

That's me standing in front of the Humana sign. I asked a bystander to snap the pic. I have no pride. LOL

There remain elements of Bob Hope such as his golf cart. Isn't that priceless.

There were a lot of his saying posted as well. Here are a few of my favorites:

 "Arnold Palmer told me how I could cut eight strokes off my score. Skip one of the Par 3's."

or:

or:

You gotta love the humor but if that's not enough then try the view.

It just doesn't get any better.

Nine Reasons Why I Play Golf

There are really more but here goes...

• beautiful sunsets
• becoming acquainted with the elbow trees, the basis of She Art
• sharing the tee box with Rams and watching them hoof it up the rocks so easily
• pausing to notice a tree framing an egret
• sharing the day with friends
• perfectly coiffed landscapes
• reflections in the water hazards
• a desert landscape
• getting more than the days allotment of water

Did you notice none of them had to do with swing, distance, putting, scores or handicap!

YES!

How Great Thou art

brought to you by the Piano guys at Iquazu Falls. For me, there is nothing better than listening to this rich, beautiful music on this equally gorgeous morning. Enjoy! Yes, please enjoy!

Sun Salutation

The other day, a tennis friend told me she got up, made some coffee, turned on the yoga channel and then went back to bed and watched it. I think that's called "Stretching the Imagination". Gotta love it! How funny!

Sun Salutation 

modified in the Distressed FX app

I Wish It Would Rain...

I never thought I would say those words out loud but I just did. I've been holed up for 4 days and getting mighty tired of it. Thank God for the Olympics and the art work I am readying for a show in April. And, OK, the wine helped too! Otherwise it would not have been good at all. I'm so sick of soup and seriously looking for some kind of junk food.

Here's my take on the last four days.

It's supposed to rain sometime today. Got my fingers crossed.

Move More

Moving more is always a goal of mine. Definitely one of the 14 in 14.
But I'm a game girl which means I prefer to play tennis or golf rather than go to a gym and "work out". Maybe I like the social aspect of games or maybe it's the competitive aspect. I am not really sure. Sometimes I think I should stretch and do something like yoga but it hasn't gone beyond the "I think I should" stage. Maybe it's because this seems humanly impossible.

Whoa! Really!

No, my sights are not set too high. This just seems kind of creepy. Just move more!

Life Lists

Last year I broke my finger. You know, just can't walk and chew gum at the same time. Several friends broke ankles trying to do things like put on a coat while walking down the stairs. It prompted me to begin a list of good habits/rules for living safely. I call it my Life List.  The first few are obvious...

• Always wear a seatbelt
• Always wear a bike helmit

But new additions...

• Always look in the direction you are walking
• Hold a handrail when walking down the stairs. 

The other day I heard the funniest story. A friend's friend had taken a shower and wasair drying when she decided to get something in the garage which required use of a ladder. Yeah, you know what happened. She fell off the ladder and broke her leg. She was lying on the garage floor absolutely naked trying to figure out her next move or lack thereof.

So another life rule...

• Don't climb ladders naked. Sorry for that one but who knew?

I'm sharing a favorite nature photo I took recently. What is that cactus flower doing?

Ha-ha!

14 in 14

Over the past few years, I've heard all kind of schemes to bring focus to a new year. Word for the Year is about using a single word on which to focus.  Capture Your 365 is about taking a picture a day. New 52 is about trying something new each week. I can't say that I've tried them all but if they help one to bring focus to what they want, I say go for it. The most recent one I've heard mentioned is "14 in 14". That can be a list of things to do, accomplish, fix, change...just whatever in the year 2014. Should  I start down this path...I can't imagine figuring out 14 things at the beginning of January for the entire year. What if a new opportunity shows up. I have a start but think I prefer to see how the year unfolds.

My word for the year is a repeat because I wasn't good enough with "Encourage".

I would also like to view the world with more humor. sort of like this:

I like learning new things. They keep me mentally nimble.

• I'm learning Spanish compliments of the folks at Duolingo. Try it, its absolutely free.
• I'm taking a quilt class online through Academy of Quilting. It's being taught by Elizabeth Barton. She is top drawer.
• Next month I start a year long class with Katrina Kennedy called "Practice." It's about choosing a subject and photographing it in depth over the course of a month.
• I want to continue learning Lighroom. Last year I learned the cataloging feature. This year I will catalog my photos and learn to process them in batch.

And that clearly seems like enough for me for now. Maybe my word should be "Pare Back" but then that's two words.

This year, have more fun!

The Piano Guys

Angels We Have Heard on High (Christmas w/ 32 fingers and 8 thumbs)

This is so cool!
I hope it is the first of many Christmas videos that come my way this year.




Enjoy!

11-12-13

Today is 11-12-13. I love when the month, day and year align in some interesting way. Seems like a celebration is in order even if rather ordinary.

So today I am celebrating...

• that Drew is here from Amsterdam
• the house is clean
• taxes are paid
• my errands are finished
• it's not raining
• and there will time left for the studio.

And just so you have something to look at, here is a picture from our recent and glorious fall and a reminder of just why I play golf.

Voices: Elizabeth Gilbert

Elizabeth Gilbert of Eat, Pray, Love fame was the speaker at Voices on Wednesday. WOW! is the word that comes to mind. I loved her voice, her ability to tell a story and her thoughts on just where ideas really come from.

She spoke about the creative process through numerous stories. The first one told was a story her Brazilian husband told her about a corporation who wanted to build a highway through the Amazon. They started the work and then the rainy season required a halt. When they returned to work again, everything they had done had been completely absorbed by the jungle. There was no sign that anything had ever been there. She thought this had the makings of a book and so developed the story line and characters, applied for funding with her publisher and it was accepted. Then life got in the way and the book was put on hold. When she returned to it, the story was gone. She could not bring it back. Some time later she met Ann Patchett, whom she had always admired. They became good friends, sharing their friendship through letter writing. They had another visit with Ann telling Liz about a book she was working on about the Amazon. Liz conveyed that she had started a similar story but the idea had moved on. Ann asked her to tell her story. In the end, Ann's story was almost identical in theme and character to the idea that Liz had originally. Ann's book has been published and is State of Wonder.

From this, Liz suggests that ideas are not really ours. Rather, they are in the universe looking for a vessel, someone who will act on them. If you do not act on them when they present themselves, then they will move on and look for someone who will. I am sure that I am not doing justice to her ideas but listen to this Ted Talk by Elizabeth. It is good.



She closed with the idea that people often tell you to follow your passion however, many people don't know their passion. She suggests that we follow our curiosities.

What a lovely way to spend and evening.

Portland Center Stage: Fiddler on the Roof

One of my favorite musicals of all time, Fiddler on the Roof, continues to make me laugh, cry, dance and wonder. Tradition is set aside but not lightly. "One the one hand, you can see in her face how she loves him...but on the other hand, a father makes the match". Tradition.

The PCS rendition did not disappoint.

 Tevye, played by David Studwell, was superb. What a voice! Such joy in the singing.

 

One thing that I always watch for when at a stage show is how the stage sets are accomplished. PCS is truly amazing in this regard. From the image below you can see a rough wooden back drop that was the back half of an elliptical shaped wall. It was made of a series of panels. These were opened and closed to give the effect of  being inside a home, a saloon, the wide open air or a series of houses in the village. The lighting on the wall behind was manipulated to help with the scene. Simple but oh so effective.

If you have never been, you should try a show at Portland Center Stage and see for yourself just how wonderful live stage presentations really are. Love 'em.