I pulled down a few old cameras off the shelf to have a look at them. While I was inspecting, I somehow just noticed that one of them still had a roll of film inside. Six photos had already been taken who knows how long ago. I have no idea how old the camera or the roll of film it holds, but I took it outside to use up the remaining exposures in hopes that I may get lucky.

While I was out there, I noticed the evening sky:

It doesn’t take a lot to amuse me and clouds always fill me with wonder. I am glad that I remember to look up once in a while.

Typically, I hate cooking. It’s not that I don’t know how- it’s that normally I just don’t care. However, the fact that I don’t cook regularly makes it more appreciated when I actually do. (Go me!) Here’s what I’ve been up to the last few days:

homemade tortilla chips - I chose to make these on the hottest day of the summer

I was sweaty by the time I was finished, but they were worth it

applefuckingdelicious - an apple cobbler mistake that went SO right

shredded chicken mixed with cheese and homemade enchilada sauce

first layer of rolled enchiladas - I always need at least two layers

and this is why I need two layers - they disappear FAST

Sometimes I forget about the little things I’ve saved over the years. I have a tendency to throw a lot of things in the garbage. I’m not particularly sentimental and hate clutter, so I refuse to keep every card, every letter, or every scrap of paper ever given to me for fear that one day I’ll become that old lady who keeps plastic bins full of shit that she’ll never have time to look through again.

With all that said, I have hung on to a few scraps of paper and little mementos from the travels of my youth:

Last night, (late last night), I took photographs while Terry began work on a very involved sleeve undertaking. Bill has a lot of tattoos he wants covered up on his left arm, seven tattoos to be exact. They spent the first couple of hours of the evening discussing and sketching out the plan. There were be a lot of vividly colorful flowers involved and some shading to help cover and make the flowers pop. Eventually, some actual tattooing happened and the plan began to manifest itself visually.

It was very late and way past my bedtime, but I had to stay up to witness this fascinating process, as well as take some photos.

My one year anniversary in this house came and went a couple of months ago and I scarcely noticed. Life is too pretty, too busy and too chaotic to keep track of dates these days. Now that I have noticed, I have become very aware of the amount of blank walls still in this house.

Some people like to plaster their walls from end to end while others prefer a more minimalist approach with a single painting, smartly designed mirror or piece of art in the room. I am a grouper. I group my photos and my art. My groups tell stories. I have a group of photos from a trip to San Francisco, a group of photos from the botanical garden in D.C., a set of photos that a friend took in India, a prominent “family wall” with randomly hung candids and the odd portrait or two, a series of food photos hanging in the kitchen… and many more groups throughout the house.

First on my list of “to hang” were two wonderful drawings that the talented artist Minnie Romanovich (of womaninthemoon.org) did for me last November. If you’re not familiar with her work, take a look at her children’s illustrations. I think I’ve commissioned at least half a dozen illustrations from her over the last decade and I am always delighted when I receive them. Her keen attention to detail with every thing she draws, as well as every personal touch added, makes each piece exceptional.

These drawings represent their subjects so well, even their older brother commented on the likenesses:

Hope dancing and listening to her iPod by Minnie Romanovich

A animal-eared Savannah, peeking out of the picture by Minnie Romanovich

Today, I received my Unfathomable Octophant print in the mail. It reminded me that I had yet to hang the CephaLovePod that my valentine gave me in February. If you take a look at Phineas’ prints, you’ll notice that they sell out pretty frequently. I’m still kicking myself in the head for not ordering Laika before it sold out. I’ll have to wait for another piece to group with these two that I hung this evening:

Unfathomable Octophant and CephaLovePod by Phineas X. Jones

One particular wall in the house has been bothering me for some time. It had become the wall to hang random seasonal pieces but really those things were simply an excuse to fill up wall space while I decided what I wanted to put there. For a long time I thought I’d put a giant redwood photograph there but that became kind of a costly and complicated idea. For months, I had been stumped on what to put there. That blank space that extends two stories up had begun to make me grumble whenever I looked at it.

Jason Jessee - Sungod (possibly my favorite skateboard artwork ever)

Jeff Grosso - Fangtail (this board is too pretty to skate)

What with the ever-growing collection of skateboarding paraphernalia that has been accumulating in this house, the fact that another board arrived in the mail today sealed the deal. I picked out a couple of my favorite boards and printed out a couple of photos I’ve taken of the man skating, framed them, and then began arranging things on the floor to try different layouts. He went downstairs to grab a third board (Corey O’Brien), which balanced it all out perfectly. I’m pretty pleased with the results.

I included some space around the wall in this photo for scale

Closer up

It doesn’t seem like a lot, but it still took me hours to complete. There are several more walls in the house I’d like to finish, but all in good time. In my experience, some of the best ideas come together after the first couple of drafts.

“It’s nice to look at something on that wall, finally.”

— Em, the 11 year-old

More colorful leftovers for this week’s iPhone photo gallery purge. This week there were nearly twice as many as last week, so I put them in gallery style. I clearly have too much fun playing with my iPhone apps.

Originally posted on Buttershug.com on February 12, 2003.

So, I go to Lex’s class once a week with a friend and we listen to the kids read and then help them take the computer quizzes that follow. I’ve learned a little something over the months I’ve been doing this: kids like to talk.

You’d like to think they’re talking about their cute puppy, or their new jump rope, or the trip to the zoo last weekend. Nope. Huh uh. They’re telling your top family secrets and they’re not sorry they’re doing it.

I now know whose dad has a hairy butt, whose little sister likes to smear feces on the walls, and that time somebody’s mom fell down the porch steps because grandma said she’d been drinking too much beer.

Now, don’t worry, I’m not about to go repeating this information. But now you know why I have a grin on my face when I pass by you on the sidewalk.

The girls went through a period in which they did not stop moving through the air. Maybe it was all of the Florida sunshine, maybe it was the swingset that made for a perfect launchpad. Either way, I must have taken hundreds of photos of them jumping, twisting and levitating. Here is a set that I posted on my site a few years ago:

It took multiple attempts to come up with a fried rice recipe that I am really fond of. The magic ingredient that really makes it delicious is the Dynasty oyster sauce. I ran out a few weeks ago and foolishly bought a substitute (Sun Luck) when I found my local Kroger no longer stocked the Dynasty brand. The flavor just wasn’t the same, so I ordered some bottles of Dynasty online. They arrived yesterday, just in time, as the eldest of our brood was strongly requesting it.

garlic and onion powder, Jane's mixed up salt, soy sauce, and Dynasty oyster sauce

double the cookers, double the rice

sesame oil for the wok

light swirl is the soy sauce, dark swirl is the oyster sauce

I usually add in the scrambled eggs near the end

this was a full dish about five minutes prior to this photo

I can’t begin to express my fondness for the Myst games. It began some time in the mid-late 90s and continued for almost a decade. I think I stopped playing after Myst IV: Revelation when they began to switch from live video to CGI people. A computer-generated Atrus just felt so wrong.

After explaining the magic of the Myst games to one of the kids recently, I suddenly had the overwhelming desire to play it again. In comes the magic of Amazon.com but to my dismay, my order arrived with a DVD version instead of CD-ROM.

For those familiar with the DVD version, it’s not exactly compatible out of the box with Mac OS X. In fact, the DVD doesn’t even install. And once it’s on your hard drive, you’re still very likely to get the below m3t error.

m3t error $M3dataTEXTENGLISH.m3t

I searched page after page for any fix, any hack, any help at all in getting that game to work. I tried everything everyone suggested until finally I seemed to get the magic formula that brought up the game screen and let me into the Myst worlds again. I can’t guarantee this will completely fix everything for anyone else trying to install, but I had to at least post the things that allowed me to replay my favorite computer game of all time.

My method was as follows:

1. Create a folder in Applications called Myst 3
2. Copy the contents of the Myst III English folder from the DVD into your new Myst 3 folder
3. Also copy the M3Data and Data folders into the new Myst 3 folder
4. Rename M3Data folder to M3data (case sensitive) and change the Data folder to data
5. Create a folder inside the Myst 3 folder called Exile DVD and drop the data folder into it
6. Download the Myst patch from Apple and copy the Myst3 OS X US and Bink Carbon Library into the new Myst 3 folder
7. Delete the old Myst III Exile for Mac OSX file, it’s now obsolete
8. From your hard drive, navigate into Library > Application Support > HWPrefs and click the CPUPalette icon. You’ll need to turn one of your processors off so the sound isn’t choppy. (Remember to turn it on again when you’re through)
   1. Don’t have the HWPrefs folder? You’ll need to grab your Mac OSX installation disk and click Optional Installs to install XCODE. You might want to make sure you have Rosetta installed while you’re in Optional Installs because you’re going to need that, too.
9. Click/open the Myst3 OSX US file and enjoy your game.

Even after you do all of this, you may still get that m3t error I mentioned earlier. Make sure you’re not launching the game from a shortcut or from Quicksilver. For some reason, you need to directly click the icon in the Myst folder.

You might be thinking to yourself that this seems like a lot of work to get a game running, and you’d be right. It took me hours to find the right accumulation of fixes in order to get the game to operate. Of course, I think it’s totally worth it.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to get some rest so I can solve more puzzles and save more worlds early in the morning.