Caught on Film

 

Yesterday I posted a poem by Dorothy Parker and it brought back memories from back in 2003.  I was visiting New York City with a group of friends and we all wanted to have a drink at the Algonquin Hotel where Dorothy Parker and other members of the "round table" met for drinks, gossip and literary discussions.  My little group of friends were all people I worked with and one of them snapped this photo of me finishing off my martini.  The photo quickly became something of a joke among us. So here I am looking a bit like a lush with two empty glasses in front of me and one in my hand.  I might have fit in perfectly with that little "round table" group from the 1920's.  

By the way, those two empty glasses belonged to others.  One martini is all I can handle.  For more about Dorothy Parker and the Algonquin Hotel, check this link.  

The New Driverless Phenomenon

 

I was sitting at a traffic light in the left turn lane with three lanes of traffic to my right. I glanced over at the car that pulled up next to me and noticed that it was one of those driverless cars.  Even though they are all over the city right now, it still seemed strange to see a car with no driver in the lane next to me.

This photo was taken in October of 2022 when Waymo had a car set up for display.  The marketing person insisted that I have my photo taken with the car.  They were promoting the service as a new driverless ride-share service.  So far, I've never ridden in one.  My close friend David has on several occasions.  

Their marketing has been a huge success.  There is never a time when I'm driving that I don't see at least one of these cars.  If I'm in downtown Phoenix, they are everywhere.  

New Year's Day Brunch

 

My friends Julie and Glenda and I had a lovely New Year's Day brunch on Wednesday.  We were blessed with lovely weather allowing us to sit outside.

We were at Lon's at The Hermosa Inn for our little celebration.  I've featured this place a few times before.  We always try to have a meal here in the spring to see the abundance of flowers around the grounds.  It looks like they have an abundance of flowers in the winter too. 

Merry Christmas

One Santa is still hugging that tree and the other Santa appears to be claiming this spot as the North Pole.  Santa might be a little directionally challenged but after his whirlwind trip around the globe, Arizona is a good place to stake a claim.

Here is a little Christmas Card from me to you!

Merry Christmas Everyone!!

Theme Day: Cyclists

 

Here is a couple of happy cyclists enjoying a ride in Arizona.  I pulled this photo out of my archives from way back in 2007.  That's me and my sister Judy one spring day near Judy's house in Prescott Valley Arizona.  I remember this ride.  Judy loaned me the bike and we rolled around the hilly streets.  

The City Daily Photo Bloggers theme for May 1st is "Cyclists".  I didn't catch any local cyclists in the last month so I dug around in my archives to find this shot.  If you want to see other cyclists shots, click here.

Happy Easter!!

 

One of my friends took my photo at the Habitat for Humanity fund raising event last weekend and I took that photo and changed the background to drop me into a fairytale-like "Easterland".

I hope you all are enjoying the day!

I have a new post on Sharon's Sojourns today.  

Caught in the Act

 

Today I have a series of photos of people caught on camera doing something interesting.  First up is the lady at the airport with the dog in her backpack.  That dog looked perfectly happy with the arrangement.

In this particular case, I'm the one caught in the act.  I wanted to snap a photo of the colorful floor in this Scottsdale restaurant and it looks like the guy at the bar caught me doing just that.

I stopped to pick up some dry-cleaning when I saw this guy doing some touch-up painting.  I saw him attempt to stand with both feet on the very top of that ladder and then he thankfully decided it might not be a wise thing to do.  

This lady enjoyed the "Barbie" movie so much she decided to pose in the Barbie box.  

I grabbed my phone quickly so I could capture these colorful sneakers.  They go rather nicely with his pink pants.

This last one isn't a candid shot.  It's just me playing with some of the crazy options in my photo editing app.  I wanted to see how I'd look with this colorful hairstyle.  I like it but I've never had that much hair in my entire life.  I also like how the software made me look young and thin and with a very long neck.  

Celebratory Dinner with Great Friends

 

I enjoyed a fantastic dinner with my great friends David and Riley on my birthday last Saturday.  We went to one of my favorite restaurants called Renata's Hearth at the Arizona Biltmore Hotel.  As you can see, they serve meals "family style".  We had the smoked brisket with some roasted fingerling potatoes and fava beans with a mushroom sauce.  We managed to clean every one of those serving plates.  

My birthday dessert was a coconut cheesecake topped with a strawberry jelly and a honeycomb cracker.  The star here was the scoop of jalapeño ice cream.  Sounds crazy, right?  It was delicious.  So delicious that David and Riley are thinking about trying to make it at home.  They are both great cooks so I'm confident they will accomplish that goal.  

The Disney Effect

 

I have been like a little kid with a new toy the last couple of days.  The photo editing application I use had and update and added a new effect.  They don't call it the Disney Effect but that is exactly what it is.  I had a huge amount of fun playing with all kinds of different photos.  

This one is of a little antelope squirrel I photographed last year at the Desert Botanical Garden.

This is the real photo.

This one amazed me.  It's actually a photo of a bronze sculpture of Mark Twain.

Here is that real photo.  

This one is a photo of the inside of a Scottsdale restaurant.  The place has one room with a wild looking skylight.

See what I mean about that skylight.  It gives this room a sort of under-water look.  Notice the parrot on the perch in the upper right of the photo.  The software couldn't quite figure out what to do with that.  

This last one is me!  This is a photo that my friend Glenda took of me last October.  I look like a princess in this one.

I don't really look like a princess as you can see.  I don't enjoy having my picture taken but I have to admit I did like this one.  But I think I like the Disney version even better.  

I'm going to be having lots more fun with this special effect.  I'll pop in a few more from time to time.  

Merry Christmas!

 

Merry Christmas Everyone!

I'm sending special wishes from my home in Phoenix Arizona to all your homes around the world!  Have a great holiday!

Dia de los Muertos

 

The Desert Botanical Garden went all out for this year's Day of the Dead celebration.  They had decorations, food, entertainment and vendors situated all over the garden.

I loved the giant arch they created at the garden's entrance and I had to get a photo of the wonderful greeters.  

There were beautiful costumes, decorative face painting and flowers and music everywhere.  I went Sunday afternoon and enjoyed seeing how everyone was in a festive mood.

I decided that I needed a floral headdress so I would blend right in with the crowds of people.

Theme Day: Rest, Sleep & Relaxation

 

Caught on camera!  My friend Julie snapped this photo of me catching a quick nap when we were in California back in August.  A nap on the patio, that's something I can't do in August in Arizona.  

The City Daily Photo Bloggers theme for the 1st of October is "Rest, Sleep & Relaxation.  Well, I'd say I was pretty relaxed in this shot.  

To see other photos about "Rest", click here.

Another Past Art Challenge

 

Back in 2017, one of the challenges of my Art Challenge Group was "Russia".  Having never been to Russia, I struggled with the subject until I remembered my affection for a certain Russian born artist, Wassily Kandinsky.  I have always loved Kandinsky's abstract and geometric works.  So I decided to attempt a Kandinsky-like drawing in colored pencil.  This was the result. 

Last October when I was in New York, I got to see the actual painting I used as my inspiration for my drawing.  I had my friend Glenda take a photo of me by the painting.

The Guggenheim Museum had an exhibit of Kandinsky's works.  Solomon Guggenheim was a friend and patron of Kandinsky and he owned a very large number of his works, all of which were on display

On Sharon's Sojourns today I've created a post all about that exhibit.  So many beautiful pieces!

9/11

 

Just a few weeks ago, I found this post card that I had written to my Mom and Dad way back in the late 1970's.  I can't read the exact post mark on the card but it was probably around 1978 or 1979.  I took a trip to Washington D.C. and New York with some friends and I wrote mom and dad about my experience of standing on top of one of the twin towers.

In fact, here's a photo of me standing at the top to admire the view.  

That hair is definitely 1970's hair when we all wanted to look like Farrah Fawcett.

As most of you know, today is the 20th anniversary of the terrorist attack that brought these two buildings crashing to the ground.  Finding that post card a few weeks ago seemed very timely and a perfect opportunity to use the card for this post.

I had to do some digging to find the photo of me on the top.

It's hard to believe it's been 20 years since that terrible day.  As with most Americans, I can remember exactly where I was when I heard the news.  I was working one of my contract jobs in San Francisco at the time and I had flown back to that city just the evening before this happened.  So waking up to this news was quite a shock.  I will never forget that evening when I walked to a co-worker's apartment building.  There was not a sole on the street and no air traffic flying over the city.  It was so strangely quiet.

Theme Day: Right Under Your Nose

 

Well, right under my nose are my lips!  In this photo it happens to be my wax lips.  I dug this photo out of the archives.  It was taken a couple of years ago after my sister had sent me a packet of old fashioned candy.  Some of you might remember when candy cigarettes and wax lips were sold along with those little wax Coke bottles and Necco wafers.  My sister found a store selling those things and packaged up a few and sent them to me.  I put the wax lips on as a joke one evening and a friend snapped the photo.  I never thought  this awful photo would ever see the light of day but it turned out to be perfect for this obscure theme.

To see other City Daily Photo Bloggers takes on this subject, click here.  

Impromptu Dinner

 

Given the rise in COVID cases, my friends and I are starting once again to limit our exposure to large groups.  My friend Glenda decided instead of going to a busy restaurant we would have dinner at her house.  She invited Dave to join us.  (Julie is out of town.)

Glenda made a delicious Caprese salad and I tossed together a pasta dish.  It was all very delicious

After dinner we went out on the patio to enjoy the cooler temperatures when this handsome fellow stopped by for a visit.  He "chatted" for a while and then was on his way.

The evening turned out to be every bit as good as any restaurant experience.  

Theme Day: April Fools

 

It's April Fool's Day and for City Daily Photo Bloggers it is also Theme Day.  And, today's theme is exactly that "April Fools".  

I chose a photo from the archives of me being silly with a Liza Minnelli face mask.

Three years ago I took a tour of the historic Arizona Biltmore Hotel and at the end of the tour they handed out these hand-held face masks representing some of the famous people who have stayed at the hotel.  I got Liza Minnelli.

I'm also fooling you into thinking it is cold enough to wear a jacket.  It's not.  This photo was taken in early February.  It's in the 90's (32C) today so no coat is necessary.

To see the "foolish" posts of other daily photo bloggers, click here.

Remembering a Christmas Eve of the Past

 

I found this old photo of me and my sisters on Christmas Eve a very long time ago.  Mother had made us each those Christmas tree skirts and Dad wired them with real lights powered by a battery hidden in the pocket.

That is my sister Judy standing on the left and my sister Pam in the middle and me on the right.

We always spent Christmas Eve at our grandparents house and that is where this photo was taken.  I can even tell you what we had to eat because grandma always made the same thing for Christmas Eve, her version of sloppy joes.  

My sister Pam texted me a few days ago asking if I remembered those skirts.  So I dug around in the photo box a found this photo.

Theme Day: My Response to Covid-19

 

First of all, I know I said that theme days were ending last month but it turns out that they have been resurrected.  So the City Daily Photo Bloggers theme for October 1st is "Your Response to Covid-19".  I had to give this some thought because my response has evolved as I'm sure it has for all of us.  At the beginning, I stayed home all the time and only left the house to buy groceries.  Now that we've learned more about the virus, I find that I'm doing a lot more like getting my hair cut, seeing doctors and this week having my car serviced.   The photo above represents a new activity I've indulged in.  My friend David and I have been sending each other post cards ever since this craziness started.  We both seem to have quite a collection of post cards from travels and other sources and what started as a bit of fun has turned into something we both enjoy and look forward to.  The photo above shows a few of the cards that David has sent me.  We never know what location or work of art we will see in our mailbox next.

It should be noted that I'm doing all of my outside the house activities with my mask on.  And I've decided that if I have to wear a mask, why not make it a fashionable one.  I've got eight masks in various colorful fabrics so I can mix and match them.

The things I haven't been doing is traveling which I'm not happy about.  I just heard yesterday that some international flights are going to start again in October but with the infection numbers ticking up again in so many places, that doesn't seem to be a wise decision.  

I also have not eaten at any restaurants in six months.  That's a long time for someone who managed to eat out once or twice a week before.  I have picked up a lot of take-out food but that really isn't the same as being served freshly prepared food in a great environment. 

I'm very thankful for technology like Zoom!  At least I can meet up with friends virtually.  And, I do meet them via Zoom on a regular basis.  We've even had Zoom dinner parties.  They have involved multiple kitchens but at least we get to eat together.  Thank goodness for Zoom!

National Dog Day

According to the "National Days" calendar, today is national dog day.  In honor of man's best friend, I dug out an old photo of me and my two dogs Buffy and Jody taken sometime back in the 1980's.  We were visiting a state park in southern Utah called Coral Pink Sand Dunes.  I remember that the dogs loved running a kicking up the sand.

The photo is scanned and is pretty faded.  The sand really was a lovely pink color.