SkyWatch Friday

I took these the same day as the ones in the post below before Christmas Part I with the boy's family. I do hate power lines, but the vapor trail there fits the theme. So, what the hell. And I really like this picture anyway, power lines or not.

Here's another shot a few minutes later after I walked down the road. What looks kind of like a mountain is actually a cold front and it did get really cold when the sun went down. Which let to my infiltration of the boy's club. See story below for details.

I hope everyone had a great holiday! 

For more shots from around the world, check out SkyWatch Friday.

No girls allowed!!

I went to a Christmas family gathering with the boy for the first time the other day. I've met everyone a few times and felt comfortable going. No problems there.

As soon as everyone was done unwrapping gifts, all the men started running around gathering all the wrapping paper, empty boxes and other trash. I took my gifts and went to put them in the truck and smoke a cigarette. All the guys came out right behind me and headed straight for an old 50-gallon barrel and set all the trash on fire. 

I was standing pretty far away and thought, hmm, I bet it's pretty warm by that fire. I was trying to decide if I should go over or not when the boy looked my way and started walking toward me, so I decided it would be ok. I mean, it was pretty cold. I stood just outside their circle and didn't join in the conversation. 

When I was about to throw my cigarette in the fire, the boy's dad looked at me and in mock surpirse said, "Oh, there's a woman out here! Women aren't supposed to be here!"

"Well, I'm leaving," I said, threw my cigarette out and walked away.

"He was just kidding," the boy called after me. 

"Yeah, I know. I just wanted to smoke my cigarette by the fire."

"Yeah, I was only joking."

"No really. I just wanted to be by the fire for a minute. I'm done."

And I went inside.

When everyone came back inside, I could feel the tension. No one would look at me. I felt like I had done something really, really bad. I sat by myself for a few minutes. After a while, the boy's dad came and sat next to me. A few moments later, the boy sat on my other side.  No one said anything.

I asked his dad, "You didn't really think I was mad at you, did you?"

"Well yeah, the way you stormed off."

"I didn't mean to storm off," I told him laughing a little.

He explained what happened to his sister-in-law, Aunt H. Oh my god here we go.

Aunt H: "Oh yeah that's been a tradition for what, 30 years? When did me and D get married? Thirty-one years at least. Women NEVER go out there. Ah ha ha ha."

Seriously. I took a gulp of my drink.

On the way home, I asked the boy if there were any other traditions I needed to be warned about. Please let me know. We had a pretty good laugh about their "stupid" tradition (his words) and thought about ways to get his dad back for calling me out.

Other than that, I actually enjoyed myself and got some pretty good gifts out of it. I managed to keep a power drill during "Dirty Santa" and the boy got an iced tea maker. Oh, and these pictures:

I love taking pictures of old things. Merry Christmas!

Sunset, streetlight

I don't usually like to have streetlights and such in my photos, but I got home just in time to snap a few before the sun went down completely. And then the battery in my camera died.

Here's another rulebreaker from earlier in the week when the moon was the closest it has been in, what, 16 years I think? 

For more photos of the sky from around the world: Skywatch Friday.

SkyWatch 22

This was taken on a stop on the Turnagain Arm between Anchorage and Girdwood, Alaska. 

More photos at SkyWatch Friday.

Christmahanukwanzakah

I decide every year that I don't want to bother putting up a Christmas tree. As soon as December is here, I change my mind. It makes the holiday season a little more bearable. Not that I hate the holidays or anything, but my brain does. As soon as the time changes every year and it starts getting dark at 5 pm, something changes. I'm pretty depressed off and on until January. Then it's a little better. Not completely better until spring, though. Today, I hated everyone and everything for no reason and I found myself in tears a few times. It would be a lot easier if I would just go ahead and get some seasonal Xanax or something.

But aside from that, I do really like this time of year. It brings back a lot of childhood memories. I love the glow from the lights on my tree and all the things that come with this time of year: festive lights everywhere, bonfires, Christmas movies on TV, warm sweaters, eggnog, pumpkin flavored coffee, peppermint bark. Yum!

And my most favoritest ornament. No story behind it, I just like having a piggy bank on the tree.

SkyWatch Friday (Well, Thursday for me)

This was taken Thanksgiving day about 5 pm as the sun was setting. Right before my second giant meal of the day.

Check out more shots at SkyWatch.

I'm pretty much in love with roses

It's funny

to watch two men pull a dead lawnmower with a rope tied to another mower, pulling the rope to steer. Good times! Unfortunately, I didn't get a picture of that.

Well traveled and persistent

I have a turquoise ring that really like, but never wear. I don't usually wear any jewelry other than earrings. Last night I had a dream about wearing the ring. In the dream, I decided to look for it and wore it that day. I woke up thinking about finding it and wearing it. By the time I actually got up, I had forgotten about all about it.

Later, I went to lunch with a friend. When we sat down at the restaurant, I looked over and the ring was sitting next to me. We were sitting in a booth and it was on the outside of the seat. I would have had to slide over it to sit down. I couldn't figure out how it had gotten there and if it was my ring. I even asked the waiter if he had seen it there when I sat down. 

What I guess happened: When I got money out of my purse in the car, I must have absent-mindedly grabbed the ring, carried it in the restaurant, sat down and put it down next to me. Without knowing any of it. I didn't even know it was in my purse. I knew it was at one point, but I thought I had taken it out and put it on my dresser with my other rings. I wore it the rest of the day, taking all this weirdness as a sign that the ring wished to be worn.

The boat I've known my whole life

My friend just got back from a month long vacation in Mexico. She brought a few bottles of liquor back with her on the plane. That was fine from Cancun to Houston, but on the flight here from Houston they made her buy a $30 box to put the bottles in and check the box. Then they lost the box during the one and a half hour flight from Houston. She just spent a whole month living out of ONE backpack partly because she didn't want to have to deal with checking bags. Airports are so fucking rad! When she told the person helping her at lost and found what was in the box, she said, "You're not going to get that box back." But guess what? SHE DID. I couldn't believe it. The baggage people were actually decent enough to return a box clearly marked "liquor." Maybe there's still hope for mankind.

If you care at all about the title of this blog, it's something the boyfriend said during a conversation last night. He was telling my friend about us dragging an old paddle boat out of a pond by his parents' house. That's a picture of him cleaning it.

The aftermath of the trampling

Nothing. No bruise. Nothing. It turns out, he got headbutted, thrown into a fence, fell down, got thrown a little, THEN got stepped on. Sure he's sore and it hurts to move, sit down or stand up, but there is no physical evidence of getting his ass kicked (pun?) by a thousand pound creature. If that had happened to me, I would be radiating black and blue from my butt over my entire body.

Don't let the refrigerator door hit you on the way out

Today in a gas station getting a drink, some super scruffy guy came up behind me and, I guess, was waiting for me to move. And if I am calling him scruffy, you know he was really in need of a shower, haircut, etc. I mean, I haven't cut my hair in six months. When I got what I wanted, I felt someone violently grab the door to the cooler and pull it all the way open. I spun around to see what the hell was happening

"Excuse me, ma'am!" he said with an exclamation point and a strange look I couldn't quite figure out. 

I couldn't tell if he was being rude in a passive aggressive, thanks-for-finally-getting-out-of-my-way way or if he just realized that he had kind of freaked me out.

"Excuse me," I said. Weirdo.

I got hit by a ton of bricks shaped like a cow

I got a call from my boyfriend this afternoon when he got to work after helping a friend with some cows. I can't remember what he was doing exactly but it was something like getting cows ready to be inseminated, then pushing them back into the pasture.

W: I just got to work.
Me: Really?
W: Yeah, I've been working with those cows all morning.
Me: Oh.
W: One of them ran over me.
Me: Ran over you?!
W: Yeah. I got hit by a ton of bricks shaped like a cow.
Me: Oh my god!
W: Yeah, she kind of ran over me and stepped on my butt.
Me: Stepped on your butt?!
W: Yeah.
Me: Are you ok?
W: Yeah, just a little sore.

This is really kind of normal for him.