judywatt

ggb with carnations

Fri, 09 May 2008 01:06:44 GMT

Today we walked from the Warming Hut at Crissy Field out to Fort Point, which was closed for some reason (I guess it's only open on the weekends until summer).

There is a fence next to the fort now, since 9/11, that prevents people from walking behind the fort and being right under the bridge. Today someone had put carnations all over that fence.

1000 artist journal pages

Thu, 08 May 2008 23:19:31 GMT

weekly moleskine calendar 24, originally uploaded by judywatt.

I just got an email telling me this book is coming out in July with some of my Moleskine pages in it like this one from last summer - yay! I don't remember which ones she chose, so it will be a surprise for me too. :)

I stopped doing them earlier this year, but I really should start up again. I still have a calendar like that and doodle in all the time, but I have not been coloring or painting in it or adding collage items for a while.

almost there

Thu, 08 May 2008 21:03:01 GMT

We had lunch with Rachel in Pacific Heights, and met some of her co-workers at the church, so that was fun.

Now we are cleaning up and getting everything ready to leave in the morning for points north, as in, places that look like the picture above.

We'll do some inland excursions too, if we stick to the plan, which is to come back down through Ashland (spending a couple nights there before zipping down the I-5 back home).

After that we might go to Yosemite or Lake Tahoe for a couple days... not sure.

Ok, back to cleaning and packing I must go...

Thu, 08 May 2008 02:20:39 GMT

Steampunk has hit the big time...
which means it's on its way out, right?

good idea

Thu, 08 May 2008 00:21:58 GMT

carengoodrich has her Blurb book listed on Etsy - which is a great idea!

I must make a listing for my San Miguel photo book on Etsy when I get back. People can buy it through the Blurb site of course, but I think Etsy gets more traffic.

I might remove it from public sale on Blurb, come to think of it, because it takes too long to get paid by them. On Etsy, if someone bought one, I'd get the money immediately and then just have the book sent to them by Blurb - that would work better for me.

I also keep planning to do one on the Mendocino Coast - and I will start working on that when I get back as well. It's just that I must have literally thousands of images to sort through for that and it seems daunting. But I will do it.

I am mainly posting this to remind myself not to forget all about it when I get back!

beachcomber necklace

Tue, 06 May 2008 20:00:27 GMT

I made another necklace last night after Dancing With the Stars...

The crystal drop is more reflective than this picture shows - it was hard to photograph, but some of the images on Etsy are from different angles and different light. I should upload a different one to Flickr I suppose. Anyway it is in my Etsy shop now.

Tue, 06 May 2008 02:27:41 GMT

Here's a cool way to wire wrap sea glass...

I have to start using some of my huge stash from Glass Beach when I get back from the road trip. 'Course I plan to go to Glass Beach again while we are in Westport this weekend and add to the stash. One can never have too much glass from Glass Beach!

Mon, 05 May 2008 22:22:01 GMT

Frida at SFMOMA this summer...

I already ordered three sets of tickets so we can go on three different days during the summer. We are members but even members need appointments for this one, apparently. There are some members only days as well, but those might not be good times for Joe to go with me (they are usually weekdays or at night).

At least as members we won't have to pay $17.50 per person to get in each time, or whatever the charge is going to be for the general public. It promises to be a zoo all summer. I am happy about all the great art coming this year though! :)

Yosemite National Park

Mon, 05 May 2008 16:59:47 GMT

Yosemite National Park, originally uploaded by judywatt.

When we come back from our little road trip, I am thinking we might rest a day or so and then maybe go up to Yosemite for a couple of days. Have not been up there in three years.

May is a great time there - the waterfalls are going like gangbusters, and the summer hoards are not there yet. Finding somewhere to stay there will still be hard on short notice though, so I don't know if this is possible.

chihuly detail

Mon, 05 May 2008 15:51:14 GMT

chihuly at the legion, originally uploaded by judywatt.

Another bit of Chihuly. We will go see the whole shebang at both museums after we get back from the road trip.

Yesterday all we did was shop in Marin for a few things that Joe needed. I did not take any pictures. The outdoor malls were nice - it was sunny and warm and there were gobs of flowers everywhere.

Now Joe just has to make it through three more days of work and we can GET AWAY. :)

chihuly is here

Sun, 04 May 2008 23:47:06 GMT

Big Chihuly show coming to the Legion and the DeYoung.

and check www.thinker.org for more info as well.

crissy field afternoon

Sun, 04 May 2008 18:36:25 GMT

crissy field afternoon, originally uploaded by judywatt.

After a short trip to The Legion of Honor, then grocery shopping and doing the laundry, we went for a walk on the beach at Crissy Field around six pm yesterday. It was perfect. :)

Today, not sure... we might go to the mall in Marin because Joe has a Macy's gift card, and it's faster to go to the one in Marin than to go downtown. Plus I would rather be outside in the sun in Marin with fewer people around than downtown with the hoards of tourists in Union Square.

i know there are more than 25

Sat, 03 May 2008 03:28:22 GMT

HowManyOfMe.com

There are
25
people with my name
in the U.S.A.

How many have your name?

westport

Sat, 03 May 2008 00:19:15 GMT

westport, california, originally uploaded by judywatt.

Got the directions for the house in Westport from the owner. He sounds so nice - it turns out he is a just-retired art and photography teacher in Mendocino. How serendipitous is that? The house sounds perfect for a very quiet retreat, yet close enough to civilzation (Fort Bragg and Mendocino) so we can do things in town when we feel like it.

Joe sounds like he can barely stand to wait another week to leave. The job sounds pretty hideous right now, but that's pretty much always the case the past five years. Yada yada, you all know the scoop on that. One more week until we get a little break from all that.

pretty things

Thu, 01 May 2008 23:59:53 GMT

Ooooh, this one is so pretty.

Very inspiring. I don't think I can make much jewelry until after we go away and come back though... but I must start making little drawings of things I am thinking about making anyway!

faves

Thu, 01 May 2008 22:23:31 GMT

I don't know what possessed me, but I started going through all my pics on Flickr - all 3490 of them - looking for some faves to put in a new set.

I didn't start out meaning to go through ALL of them, but that's what I ended up doing, which took a couple hours.

So I ended up with a set of faves. I could have added more, but 199 seemed like a nice number for now. :)

Now I should play the set as a slideshow and see how that looks.

And then I really must do some actual housework of some kind. Or maybe not.

Edit... the slide show tripped me out! It's like zipping through ten years of my digital pics but only a small percentage of them. Fun though.

tiny white flowers

Thu, 01 May 2008 19:20:34 GMT

I don't know what this flower is called, but I like the macro I managed to get of it!

I was supposed to have lunch with Rachel today but she is too swamped with work, so I think I will go tomorrow perhaps.

I went for a walk on Lake Street instead for a bit, and it was so nice and sunny, and there are so many flowers everywhere. They bloom all year round here, but are especially good right now.

greenwood pier inn

Thu, 01 May 2008 17:07:15 GMT

elk, california, originally uploaded by judywatt.

Whenever we are up the coast, we stop in Elk to eat at Queenie's and stroll in the gardens at the Greenwood Pier Inn. For years I have been thinking it was too expensive for us to stay there, but suddenly I realize it isn't! :)

I've already made reservation for the house in Westport though, and after that, we will head further north... but next time we go up, I think we will stay at the Greenwood Inn for a few days. That would be very very nice indeed.

PS to dead_terrapin

! The Greenwood Inn would be a great place for your anniversary, yes? :)

westport

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 22:01:44 GMT

Now I am leaning towards three nights in this house in Westport, then up to Arcata for a few days in the redwoods, then either up the Oregon Coast a ways, or maybe over to Ashland for a couple days... not sure after Westport. Wish we could just BUY that little house!

The house in Westport has no phone or web connection and is in a very quiet little hamlet north of Fort Bragg - so it would be like a short retreat, which would be great.

May 8th cannot come soon enough though, that is one thing I am very sure about.

EDIT... YAY, we got the little house for May 9, 10 and 11. The owner sounds very nice - they bought the house in 1972 from an 80 year old man who was born in that house, in the kitchen, in 1892. I can only imagine how remote Wesport must have been in 1892. It's still so small, it's almost not there.

book meme

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 16:21:27 GMT

These are the top 106 books most often marked as unread by LibraryThing’s users.

Bolded the ones read.

Italicized the ones I never read but saw the movie!

Ignored the ones I tried to read but stopped because they were too boring. :)

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi: A Novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
The Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian: A Novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible: A Novel
1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes: A Memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States: 1492-Present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-Five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake: A Novel
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita (read it and saw both films)
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye (three times)
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood: A True Account of a Multiple Murder and its Consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers

tiny wildflower

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 22:32:50 GMT

Best snap I've ever gotten of one of the tiny wildflowers that grow all over the place up on the North Coast.

sunset in fort bragg

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 21:20:33 GMT

I think maybe we will got back up there for a few nights after vacation begins. Then maybe come back to SF for a day or two. Then maybe go visit old friend in Sacto for one night. Then maybe go up to the mountains for a few days, straight from Sacto to the Lake Tahoe area. Not sure, but it could be a plan. Waiting now for details on the house in FB, where to send deposit, etc.

arghh

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 17:59:54 GMT

I noticed two weird fraudulent charges on one of my cards this morning - someone got my number somehow and ordered things TWICE from some store in Seattle called YOU CHOPPER CITY or something like that, to the tune of over $400.

So I had to call and explain I did not buy anything from such a business, never heard of it, yada yada, and there is no other authorized user on that card.

So they had to cancel the card and are sending a new one in a few days. What a hassle though.

I was just about to pay the whole bill online, which was $600 something, and then I thought, I have not used that card very much so why do I owe $600+ on it this month? Good thing I looked at the list of transactions.

I hope they catch whoever did it and prosecute them.

I have lost cards before, but in 30 years of having credit cards, I have never seen bogus charges like that appear - guess I have been very lucky that way.

Knocking on wood right now of course.

joe on the right

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 02:17:42 GMT

mcbg, originally uploaded by judywatt.

Joe looking so tiny over there on the right gives you a good sense of the scale of this place.

We had such a lovely day on Saturday, hiked 6 or 7 miles all tolled in various locations, then had dinner at a favorite place in FB. After that we went out again, walked around Mendocino some more at dusk (good light), then drove back to FB and walked across the trestle at Pudding Creek at sunset. Shortly thereafter we collapsed and went to sleep.

Got up earlyish on Sunday because we had to check out. Met up with Rachel and Ricky in Mendocino, drove down to Elk with them following, ate at Queenie's Roadside Cafe in Elk (again) - where they happened to meet up with some people they know who live in Elk, who also were eating at Queenie's (it's quite the hub). So that was a fun coincidence.

After chowing down at Queenie's with them, we headed south and they headed back to Mendocino for another night (lucky them).

We drove home the long way down One, stopped at Pt. Reyes Station to eat around 3, and were home by 5:30 or so.

Today we both felt really tired. Joe came home tonight saying he has to do all kinds of EXTRA work before we take some vacation on May 8th to the 26th. So he will probably end up working 10 hours a day from now till then and being totally burned out by May 8th.

And of course no one can cover his position when he's gone as far as I know, so his work piles up in his absence... nothing new there, but I hope he can put all that crappola out of his mind while he does have some time off.

So that's the scoop for now.

Only now I am not sure where we are going in May. I had wanted to go to Death Valley but it's already very hot down there and past the time when there are any wildflowers.

So we might go north instead. I still kind of want to go to the Eastern Sierra too though. We shall see.... I'm checking out various things on Expedia.

cows on cliff

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 20:33:37 GMT

cows on cliff, originally uploaded by judywatt.

There were cows on the cliffs above Jenner, but at least there were none on the road when we were driving down that part of Highway One yesterday.