Wednesday's Attic

.11ɐ ʇɐ ǝɔıʇou ou ɥʇıʍ sdɐɥɹǝd ɹo .ǝɔıʇou sʇuǝɯoɯ ɐ ʇɐ 'ǝɯıʇ ʎuɐ ʇɐ uǝddɐɥ uɐɔ ʇı .op ı os puɐ ' 'sbuıɥʇ ppo buıop ǝʞı1 1ǝǝɟ ʇsnظ ı sǝɯıʇǝɯos

Aren't these great! I recently acquired a set! I also have this lovely canister which I keep my nightsh. .  er um I mean sweetener for coffee in

Situated outside the entrance to Tombstone's Boot Hill Graveyard ( technically it is a Cemetery as there has never been a church yard associated with it) is an independent gift shop not associated with Boot Hill's own gift shop. In front of this independent shop was this beauty! I was so taken with it, I spent a good 20 minutes photographing it! Here are a few of those photos.  I just LOVE this thing, bullet holes and all!

I just did a bit of needed updating on my myspace page- located HERE and it seems that MySpace is just getting worse in the link blocking and censorship department.  No wonder so many people are leaving there for Facebook and other Blog sites. MySpace is so busy 'protecting' you that they are making the site a pain in the ass to use. The only plus is that you can customize like mad, whereas on Facebook its that plain old blue and white. Hopefully that will change soon.

I bought my husband this book after we saw the movie Julie & Julia ( The blog that started it all is still on line at Salon.com for anyone interested) - which we both loved by the way. He has since made a couple of chickens that were divine! I mean I never knew that roast chicken could be so exquisite! We are rearranging our kitchen to serve better as a. . well. .  kitchen. So out with the bookshelves full of books and knic knacks and in with stainless steel shelves full of all the cooking implements we have but can't get to due to our lack of space!  We have slowly replaced all our major appliances so that part is complete. With tomorrows grocery shopping- which if you have been paying attention you know I will do at either Fresh n Easy or Trader Joes or both- I am buying the ingredients for Julia's onion soup. Dinner will be heaven! Bon Appetite!

Isn't this weird? It was hanging around backstage at the Bird Cage Theatre in Tombstone Arizona. I don't like the dummy, but LOVE the coffin, especially the dutch door effect! Much more to see about the Bird Cage Theatre and Tombstone at my Photography Blog November Obscura I am going to post about Boot Hill Cemetery next- with an added gem that I came across there.

Much to the annoyance of some of my non Christian friends, I love Holiday music! Even the super religious Christmas music. I keep my radio tuned to the local station that plays it annually usually beginning the day after Thanksgiving (but this year as with all other Christmas Creepiage in stores etc. even the radio station started 2 weeks early!) The one song that I can not stand however, and it is because it is sooo overplayed. It is played after every station break, and at least once an hour is The Little Drummer Boy. I mean even my husband now sees that everytime I ask him to put the Christmas music on in his car, when he does it is that damn song!  Not only do I dislike it for its annoyance of frequency especially when it is performed by that boys choir, but the who story is ridiculous! I can not imagine that Mary was any too thrilled to have finally put the baby to sleep for the night when here comes this brat with a drum of all things and starts beating on it!  Gi...

Thanksgiving is a weird holiday. I mean first of all you can be 'Thankful' anytime, and it's odd that we had to set aside a day for it. Second it is a lot of hulla-ballo just for a meal. And once you have had a bite of each thing, well it's kinda over. I eat that particular meal only once a year. And the meal must include a bowl of black olives so I can put one on each finger and then eat them one by one. It is a tradition of at least 45 years now.  It is a good day to talk about family memories and the happenings of childhood with your siblings however. And each time my mom says 'When was that?' or "When did that happen?' or 'You did what!?"  That is the fun part. And my mom is happy that she had no idea about these shenanigans at the time. She would have only worried, as mothers are apt to do about their kids. So now its "Black Friday" a day that you HATE if you work in retail (which I did for many years) Why? It is not so ...

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone.

I would have loved to bring these two beauties home with me as souvenirs from the Bird Cage in Tombstone. The original hall piano and the Towns original Black Mariah. Where would I put them is besides the point! You really should be checking out my photo blog November Obscura for lots more Tombstone photos and much more.

These are my two favorite grocery stores.

Nearly every Saturday evening, some of my friends (mostly Witches)  and I get together for Coffee and read each others Tarot. November to about late May we meet indoors, usually my place. May through October we have an outdoor public courtyard that we gather in. It has been going on for years now. It is something I really enjoy and look forward to. Sometimes we don't even get to cards, because there is too much going on and we are all sharing about the latest news or life in general.

I really love a clean home, but I really don't care for housework.  This is Saturday so it is the day I have the most time for cleaning up. It's nice when you start the work week with things tidy. I can not really not imagine having nothing else to do all day but housework, especially Laundry. The older I get, the more I dislike it. I hire help at this point but would not mind a full time maid- there, I said it!

I try to read Dear Abby every morning on line. I am almost always amazed about the things people ask for advice about. So much of it seems obvious to me, and many times tragic or sad. So many of the questions about relationships especially. There is so much denial. Good for her for telling it like it is!

Hard to imagine that 2009 is almost over. It has been a pretty good year, with the turmoil coming at the end here October to December it seems. Jeff and I are making our holiday plans to spend time with family. We will have Thanksgiving here as we usually do. Yule and then a little something on Christmas day. Then we will be off to see the new movie Sherlock Holmes.

Our neighbors Tom and Annie just had their first baby. It's a boy.  His name is Thomas. He is a week old. I met him today, he is actually a fine looking baby, not all squishy and horrid like some.

The layoff process has begun at work. Emotions and tempers are high and it is a little hard to 'go with the flow' as they say, right now. I am about 95% in the layoff crosshairs, so all I can do is sit and wait to see where I end up. But I have come to a certain peace with it. If I don't get laid off I will have a 70 mile each direction commute- which I really don't want but there won't be a choice. If I am laid off it will be the first day of other opportunities.  I should know more by months end.

This is REALLY GOOD! I saw it in 3D on Saturday.  It is also in IMAX. Disney has really done justice to it. It is told as the dark tale that it is.  After the scene when Jacob Marley's ghost visits Scrooge, I turned to Jeff and said 'Wow!' and he replied 'Yeah. .  Wow!" Not for little kids or fraidy cat kids. It is a must see, don't miss it!

I love Cats! Wish my place was a little bigger so I had more room for them since I have 7.

I just can't wait! 3/5/2010

I love this picture. I wish I took it. It was sent to me by a friend who does not know who took it either. I did get a shot of a cemetery cat when Jeff and I went to Colma in June.

Remember these? You hardly see them anymore. The quality of the photos was not the best but the laughter and fun we had as kids taking pictures in a both like this- Priceless!

The fear of Friday the 13th is called paraskavedekatriaphobia, a word derived from the concatenation of the Greek words Paraskeví (Παρασκευή) (meaning Friday), and dekatreís (δεκατρείς) (meaning thirteen), attached to phobía (φοβία) (meaning fear). The term is a specialized form of triskaidekaphobia, a simple phobia (fear) of the number thirteen appearing in any case. Thirteen may be considered a "bad" or "unlucky" number simply because when a group of 13 objects or people is divided into two, three, four or six equal groups, there is always one leftover, or "unlucky", object or person.According to another interpretation, the number 13 is unlucky because it is the number of full moons in a contemporary year, but two full moons in a single calendar month (mistakenly referred to as a blue moon in a magazine article of the 1940s) only happens about every 5 years. Early nursery rhymes stated there were thirteen months in a year because of the natural moon cycl...

Who the hell does not love cupcakes! They are just little cakes of fun! A cupcake or fairy cake is a small cake designed to serve one person, usually made in a small paper cup container. As with larger cakes, frosting and other cake decorations, such as sprinkles, are defining characteristics of modern cupcakes. A simple cupcake uses the same ingredients as most other standard cakes - incorporating butter, sugar, eggs, and flour. The name "cup" cakes or "measure" cakes is believed to have developed because of the use of the practice of measuring the ingredients using a standard-sized cup instead of the previous practice of weighing the ingredients. It is also possible that cupcakes came into being simply as smaller versions of the Victoria sponge cake, as the mixture required is exactly the same.

This is one of my favorite songs. The version by Louis is the very best!   Give me a kiss to build a dream on,   And my imagination will thrive upon that kiss.   Sweetheart, I ask no more than this:   A kiss to build a dream on.   Give me a kiss before you leave me,   And my imagination will feed my hungry heart.   Leave me one thing before we part,   A kiss to build a dream on.    When I'm alone with my fancies, I'll be with you,   Weaving romances, making believe they're true.    Give me your lips for just a moment,   And my imagination will make that moment live.   Give me what you alone can give,   A kiss to build a dream on.

I just posted a few more goodies on the Etsy shoppe. One of them is this Day of the Dead Shadowbox. I really like this and was tempted to keep it. I like all the stuff I make and would like to keep it all but I just don't have the room! Hopefully this and everything else will go to a good home.

I have been on vacation for two glorious weeks. I always save up my days and take them over the 2 weeks that is Halloween as well as my wedding anniversary. Even though I found out that I am in the crosshairs to be laid off come December, I took my vacation anyway. I really needed it. So it's back to the office today to see what is next there. Unless something changes I have a job till December 18th. Then I will have to begin looking for something else. I have been with Verizon for 19 years and it doesn't amount to crap. Well. .  Onward as they say!

This is a photograph that I took on our trip to San Francisco last June. Actually this cememtery is in Colma. This and a select few other photos are now available at my Zazzle store. There are a few T- Shirts, and some greeting cards as well. I also have a vintage carousel horse tote bag available. You can visit the zazzle store HERE The Store features Things from November Obscura as well as The Gothic Tea Society- both endevors of mine. You can find links to those in my side bar.

We arrived home on Thursday late afternoon, and it has taken a few days for Jeff and I to resettle after having been like gypsies for the better part of a week. I am still thinking about Tombstone, so much so that we are planning to go back there again, as a long weekend sort of thing. I am going to read up on it more before we go. We also are going to go down even farther south to Bisbee. Another long weekend road trip we are planning is Virginia City NV. Alas I don't see any ghosties in my digital prints, but Jeff did say one of his B/W shots from the Bird Cage looks like it might have something. He developed the film last night, and until we actually print the photo we won't know. Tonight I am having my friends over for Coffee and Tarot. There should be enough of us to play Tarot Rummy.

We left Flagstaff after breakfast, stopped briefly in Williams Az.  We made a planned stop in Ludlow Ca, because we had been through 2 years ago and taken some photos but had missed the cemetery. We had an approximate idea where the cemetery was but it was not accessible by car so we had to park and then walk a ways and cross the double freight train tracks to get to it. It is a small and forlorn little cemetery, but it looks as if one of the towns 10 or so residents is caring for it, replacing the crosses that once stood, but there are no names save for 3 stone monuments. After capturing these photos, we made great time to Needles, then Barstow. After fueling up just outside Barstow it was fairly smooth sailing home.  More traffic then we had seen almost all the trip of course. These two photos are from my photography blog November Obscura, where I will post the photos from our road trip. The trip was wonderful, we made some great memories, but it is good to be home. ...

Early this morning we left Roswell. Actually we couldn't wait to get out of there. Mostly because you know that no matter which way you go it is so far from anything, and will be hours before you are anywhere. Also of note- in the outskirts of Roswell, the farmers grow their crops in huge circles, not the huge rectangular fields we are so used to seeing. We all saw this at the same time and in unison exclaimed "Crop Circles!" We set off toward Albuquerque, and it was a little over 85 miles until we came to the next town, or what was left of it anyway. A tiny near ghost town called Vaughn. Incorporated in 1919 it was at its heyday in 1920 with appx 888 residents. In the 2000 census it had 539!  Most of the things along the main drag were closed down, I guess we were lucky to find a little store and a flush privy! Just when we thought that was bad we went through Encino, New Mexico. Population- 94. If you sneezed you would have missed it. Finally we arrived in the big ...

We left Las Cruces early this morning and headed straight for El Paso Texas. It was only about an hour and fifteen minutes away. Our destination was Concordia Cemetery. With internment's as early as 1856, I really wanted to see it. It is really quite large, with a separate walled Chinese section and Jewish section. But there was also segregation for other skin colors and a Catholic section as well. There is not a blade of grass in the whole place. Lots of monument damage and some are but chunks of rock or concrete. You have to watch your step cuz there were these huge red ants everywhere and it was hot enough that snakes could have been out sunning. Concordia sits right next to the 10 freeway and is in a largely hispanic neighborhood with a view of Mexico across the freeway and train tracks. El Paso reminded us all of Sun Valley, CA. It was rather unremarkable. Our next stop was to be Roswell New Mexico. But on the way we stopped in Alamogordo NM to eat lunch and then drove thr...