Monday, September 28, 2009
I know I said I'd be blogging about Watkin's Glen next, but I lied. I didn't want to blog out of sequential order, so instead you get this post.
Once upon a time it was August 27th, and I was in NY (notice the lack of "C" after "NY"). I put in a request to go to Palmyra and do a temple session while we were there, and so on that day (the 27th), off we went!
The Palmyra temple is basically beautiful. I loved the stained glass windows. After the session, Dad and I walked around the grounds and took pictures.
We discovered this little path that went around the perimeter (at least part way). I don't know where it actually led to, because after a while we stopped following it.
While we were walking around, we also saw this giant cicada sitting in the grass. It was not dead. It flew away after this picture.
It was a beautiful day and the sky was So Blue!
And, of course, no Temple Trip is complete without at least one picture of the flowers growing on the grounds.
We also went to the Sacred Grove, seeing as how it was close by, and really, are we going to travel 2,000 miles and not go to the Sacred Grove? I don't think so.
I discovered some berries in the grove (and even ate some! Sacred Berries? At any rate, they weren't exactly... ripe.) and also discovered that berries are fun to take pictures of.
On our way out of the Grove, we noticed that the leaves were beginning to change colors already. Probably right now it is beautiful back there. I mean, not that it isn't always beautiful back there, but probably right now it is beautiful in that way that only autumnal colors can be.
Labels: Photography, travel
Friday, September 25, 2009
I have a doctor's appointment pretty soon, so there is not going to be a whole lot of description here. But the same day we went to the cemetery in Jamestown, we hit up the one in Randolph, too, which houses the earthly remains of some of my deceased relatives. (On a side-note, this is posting exactly 1 month after the event. Oops. I lose.)
We are a somewhat patriotic family. Clearly.
Willie Lee* died January 11, 1861 at the age of 6 years, 5 months, and 22 days (very specific). His family's plots are gated off from everyone else's.
While I am not very fond of the potted plant that was in the way no matter what angle I tried to shoot the picture at, I am rather fond of the goggy.
Count the legs on this spider. Enlarge the picture if you have to. Tell me if you find all 8. Legs, I mean.
*Not a relative.
Next up (which we don't actually know when that will come around) is Watkin's Glenn. A place of beauty, lots of water, and another cemetery!
And now, off to the doctor. It's a new one**, so wish me luck!
**A moment of silence, please, as we remember the days gone by where I was still seen by a pediatrician. Those days which are no more.
Labels: cemeteries, Family, travel
Monday, September 21, 2009
Hey, kids.
Remember how
I told you I was selling a calendar over at yonder
Etsy? Well, I've got a second option available now! (But I really need at least 2 of the first option to sell. Just sayin'.) You can preview it
here and see it in my shop
here. Also, my first order of the first calendar arrived to day and I have to say that they are pretty awesome!
Labels: etsy, Shopping
Thursday, September 17, 2009
So remember those really fun times where I went to NY to visit my grandparents? I bet you all thought I wasn't going to finish blogging about that. If so, you have another think coming! Because, here I am. Blogging about my vacation! Yea!
I have a great and abiding love for cemeteries. I do not know why; I guess it's just a part of my morbid personality (as My K once said, "Aww. You're morbid!" I imagine her saying it in one of those voices where an endearing trait is being discussed). Anyway, in our journeying around that part of the state that we call the South West part, we visited 3 cemeteries. One of them was on accident and I HAD NO IDEA WE WERE GOING TO FIND IT(!!!) until it was suddenly just THERE in front of me. I think my exact words were, "Oh, look! A Cemetery! Let's go!" I could be off a little bit, though.
This post, though, because the internets is SO SLOW and I'm tired of waiting for pictures to upload, will only be the Jamestown Cemetery. A place of awesomeness and, also, the now final resting place of Miss Lucille Ball.
Apparently tourists come to look for her grave, so they don't want anyone to miss it. Or something like that, anyway.
Also, there were like a million family crypts! I kind of want one. Like a lot. Something about being laid to rest in a mausoleum is terribly romantic to me and I'm totes in love with the idea. I need to marry someone rich just so I can die and have my own tomb. You know, like these ones. They are SO COOL!
The Jamestown Cemetery was also cool because of this tree. Coolest. Tree. Ever. Just sayin'.
You may or may not need to view it full-size to see why the tree is so awesome. Go ahead, click. I'll wait....
Back? Ok, good. Moving on.
And here is the main reason I wanted to go to this cemetery: The Lady in Glass.
Information I found elsewhere about the Lady in Glass: "The Lady in Glass, Grace Galloway (1871[2]-1898) was an accomplished opera singer who passed away from Tuberculosis at the age of 26 or 27. Her untimely death was a shock to her family, especially her father, who commissioned and built the most well-known monument in Lake View Cemetery."
Here is another picture for you where you can see the statue a bit better.
Apparently at one point in time she used to be wearing a REAL wedding dress, but now she is not. Still cool, though.
Something to be said for OLD cemeteries: they have character! Utah cemeteries are none of them old enough. I guess they have
some character, those cemeteries here in the "younger" states, but the ones in Utah, at least, lack cool statues like these ones:
The Jamestown (or Lake View, I guess?) Cemetery is also the final resting place of James Prendergast, founder of Jamestown, NY. His monument was GINORMOUS and totes impossible to miss. Also kind of hard to take pictures of with my not wide-angled lens because it was SO STINKIN' TALL. But I managed.
And, OK. Last picture, but I couldn't help taking it. Isn't this just the most perfect spider web you have ever seen? It was even more perfect right before I took the picture, but then a fly or a mosquito or some other sort of icky bug landed in the web, and People, I saw that Spider eat the Bug and it didn't even gross me out! Also, it happened quick as near-lightning. That was one quick spider. I told Dad to find it another bug to eat so I could watch it devour some more food, but he did not comply. Poor Spider.
Anywhos, I'll try to get the rest of this vacation blogged soon, but I'm headed back to Happy Valley for the weekend on Friday, and who knows if I'll feel like blogging tomorrow!
Labels: cemeteries, travel
Wednesday, September 09, 2009
For those of you looking for that Perfect Christmas Gift (I know, it's a little early, so maybe you don't know you're looking yet. But, trust me, you are), please consider ordering from yours truly! I now have a 2010 Calendar available for pre-order at Etsy. It will be shipped early December to your address of choice.
You can preview it in its entirety here: [
link] and pre-order it here: [
link]
Labels: etsy, Photography
Sunday, September 06, 2009
Because I'm difficult, I didn't want to just sit around at Grandma and Grandpa's house while we were in NY. Rather than doing things that we've done a million times (less a few thousand, because, let's face it, I really haven't been back there as much as I'd like) we ventured out to do new things! One of the new things:
Letchworth State Park, often called the Grand Canyon of the East. I didn't actually get any really awesome shots because I just didn't, so you can't really tell how amazing the canyon is. I guess we'll have to go again!
There wasn't too much hiking to do, but there was a nice little walk that Dad and I went on to get to the fall itself. Anyway, pictures. Some more internet ready than others and some eventually going up on Etsy.
"God wrought for us this scene beyond compare
But one man's loving had protected it
And gave it to his fellow men to share"
Tree fungus. Cool! You don't get that in Utah.
A centimeter! I mean, Centipede. It was kind of huge and at first I thought it was an earth worm, but then we say it had lots of legs, and. Oh. Centipede.
Picture Dad took. I'd like to lay claim to it, but that would be dishonest of me.
Labels: travel
Wednesday, September 02, 2009
Last night I had this really bizarre dream. It was so bizarre that I don't even know how to put the great majority of it into words, but one of the weirdest parts was about my car. I'm basically going to skip to that part, because that's actually the only part I know how to explain, anyway.
Background, though, is that I was, somehow, the one driving and I was with a bunch of Russians. Well, Ukrainians, actually, because it was my old roommate Oksana and her family (in my dream it was her, her mother and father, her sister, and 2 other ladies that I assume were aunts, and then every once in a while there was this random guy that was somehow related to her, too- a brother, I think).
So, we're at some social function, but then it was time to leave. Oksana and the rest of the party minus her sister were going to meet me at her car, but her sister and I were walking down to the parking garage together. And we're searching and searching for my car, but we can't find it! This isn't entirely unusual, because I lose my car in parking garages all the time. It just happens. I get the brilliant idea to push the panic button on my keys, and the car next to us starts to beep in response. Only it's a BMW (in name only, I assure you). I tell the sister who is now the random boy "That's not my car," but (s)he gets in it, anyway (in the driver's seat), and the windshield wipers start going off. Finally we find the rest of the group (and the boy is now the sister again, but the boy is still there with the rest of the family), only there's a big, metal box around where my car is. Turns out this metal box is a boot, only the boy somehow gets the box open and there's Lola. In a bunch of metal sheets. And we have to build her into a car again, by hand.
Now, Oksana used to have this "dream dictionary" and she'd tell us what her dreams/Nicole-ay's dreams meant. It was all very entertaining. Part of me wishes she were around so I could ask her what this means, because it would be interesting to see what she had to say about my dream.
Tuesday, September 01, 2009
So I was going through pictures (again) and came to the sudden realization: Holy Snot! I never blogged about San Fransisco! To rectify the situation, I now blog. About San Fransisco.
Once upon a time it was June and my soul was owned by Disney. The Scheduling Gods smiled down upon me, though, and allowed me to purchase a plane ticket to San Fransisco, where I would be meeting Chillylint at the airport (it took a while; we were lost from each other and I started to have panic that I'd never find her). Somehow it had fallen upon my shoulders to reserve a hotel room, so I did, but I think Chilly learned her lesson and, on our third honeymoon (because this was the second, the last one being in October last year when we went to Disneyland together- Oh, the irony), I think I will not be booking the room. Our hotel was very far from BART and all other modes of public transportation, and it wasn't even in the city. It was in a totally different city. However, the hotel staff were very nice and, dood, at least it was inexpensive and basically Brand New, so everything was in working condition and I think the beds were decent. Despite the fact that I developed a nasty rash that weekend that lasted for nearly 2 months. Awesome.
Anyway.
Many details are a little fuzzy to me now that it has been so long, but as luck would have it, Chilly was totes on top of things and blogged about our little adventure basically right after it happened. See
[here].
I do, however, have a few more pictures and details to add, assuming I can find where I put the pictures, which we hope I can because I've been organizing them and they weren't in my To Organize Folder. I'm guessing this means I already put them where they belong.
Ahkay. Here we go.
So, Friday, the day we flew in, was spent wandering the streets of DownTown while we waited for bismark, our escort/taxi to arrive. He was awesome enough to drive up from Sacramento (I think?) and cater to our every need the whole weekend. What did he get out of it? Well, not much, I'm sure, other than the fact that he got to have two of the most amazing females on this enter PLANET for company. Chilly got my camera all of Friday (she forgot hers. How? I still don't understand that one), so I have no pictures of China Town, which is where our end-goal was and where we eventually ended up.
Saturday, Chilly and I went to Alcatraz! I love that place So. Much. and thought it was worth every penny spent on getting over there. The picture above is us at the sign. Obviously. Sad hearts, though, the white balance was off on my camera the ENTIRE WEEKEND, and somehow I didn't notice/think about it/realize this was the problem, so most of my shots are way blown out. Sad. Especially considering the fact that we got a picture with a really, REALLY sparkly man in Ghirardelli Square for 2 dolla later in the day (btw, if you ever are in San Fransisco and see Sparkly Man, it's totally worth the dollar tip to get your picture taken with him. He's hilarious).
We got this kind of behind-the-scenes tour of the island, as Chilly noted on her blog, by a guy who grew up there. His dad was a foreman/engineer/something like that, not a prisoner. Good to know our tour wasn't being given by a Dangerous Criminal, right?
Inside the doorway, you can just make out the bathtub where the Bird Man of Alcatraz would shave his ENTIRE BODY (he was one creepy guy). This, to me, is disgusting and reason enough to Avoid the Tub, but Chilly, being braver than I, got her picture in it. As well as several other people who were in the tour with us. I was good with a distance-shot, personally. I mean, hello? Germs? Yeah, gross.
After the tour, we wandered around the island and ruins for a bit before taking the ferry back to the mainland where we met up with bismark again at Fisherman's Warf. This is, of course, after Chillylint spent mega bucks on jewelry that she didn't need (but it was beautiful and I totally supported her in this investment) and a Glinda Nutcracker (from Wizard of Oz!), which I'm pretty sure I was the one who told her she HAD TO BUY THIS!
I wanted to see Japan Town, too, (big surprise there), so we walked up 50 million hills and down a hundred thousand stairs on Lumbard Street to get to bismark's car (San Fransisco is not a parking/driving friendly city, we learned). Once we reached Japan Town, we took a little breather and just sat for a while. I guess. I don't actually remember why it was we sat down, but we did.
Next thing I know, weird things are happening.
Somehow we decided I needed a picture, too, but it just resulted in a fit of giggles and, well, you can see how much less-awesome it is when I try to be like Chilly.
And so we see that no one can be as cool as Chillylint no matter how they try.
Shortly thereafter (in fact, I think it was like immediately after this picture was taken), bismark got fed-up with our sillyness or something, and decided it was time to stop taking pictures, so we went inside the shopping center where I wanted basically EVERYTHING but only spent $15. Go me!
So, the end. That was this year's San Fransisco trip. Hopefully someday I can go again and get a better picture with Sparkly Man and have more money/time for things like Japan Town and other such awesomeness.
Labels: Chilly, Friends, travel
