A Bedridden Week in Review

I plugged my phone into the computer tonight and off-loaded my pictures. I was amused at all of the photos from the past week were entirely me, in bed, with my animals.

And that's pretty much the ENTIRE week. After the shot and the flare up, I took to bed, worked from bed, ate in bed, iced my hip all day long, and experimented with how little Vicodin I could get by on just so I would know where things stand.

So, starting from last Sunday, when I was alone, here's the whole week:

 

so I did get out of bed to help Bob get the second window in the dining area covered in the stained glass film to match our other window today. 

And, even though part of me thought I should just call it off, I kept to my plan to go out with Amber this evening. My friend Tanya had alerted me that the Target gorillas had new Easter bonnets, so before we hit up the Arts on Fire, we had to stop and check them out. 

It turns out they are all wearing necklaces with their names, and all are named after the characters from The Big Bang. I posed with Bernadette, my favorite. All their hats had flown off (are are anchored around their legs with fishing line) so we reaffixed them while we were admiring their Easter adornments.

So it was 4:00 by the time we got to Arts on Fire, and by the time we'd looked at all our choices and really gotten going, we only had about 90 minutes to paint them. Amber went for a travel coffee mug (comes with a lid).

And I chose an Owl jar. 90 minutes really isn't enough time to feather detail this little guy in alternating blue and green feathers as well as brown detailing, but I got him in just under the wire. I did 4-5 coats on him like they instructed so his paint would turn into the brilliant, dark colors after his glazing. Sam assures me this will happen, even though he's very pale right now.  I'll go back and pick ours up next Sunday once they've been fired. 

We followed that up with dinner at the place next door, The Landsdowne Arms, which turned out to be a really nice Irish pub.

Now THAT'S fish and chips!

I was telling Amber over dinner how glad we'd made this pact to get out and do something each month. It's so easy to get sucked into being in the sickbed and staying there. You're in pain, so you try to rest, but mostly you just end up thinking about the pain, which is the last thing you need to be doing. It doesn't help. It actually feels like it makes everything worse. 

Add to this reading about upcoming surgery and reports from those going through it, ahead of you, and commiserating, and it really can become a pit of despair. 

Getting out into the world and getting away from all of that for just a few hours was such a relief, even if I was limping around and popping pills. I'll take that over endless malaise and self pity any damn day!

HDR cheats and the Epcot Geosphere

I've been playing around with CS6's HDR tone option on some photographs. They aren't true HDR, obviously, but try to simulate the process. One of the most interesting subjects turns out to have been Epcot's geosphere.  A few comparisons for fun are below. The HDR filtered photo is on the right of the original. Since the first few years these are negatives that were later digitized, the quality isn't the greatest. Also love the permanently imprinted WRONG date on the first one, from 2000. Stupid Y2K camera date system! The filter tends to ove-brighten, to my taste, any shot with people in them. And I have not mastered any night photo with the filter. I haven't discovered the secret of lowering the noise values in them. But some do turn out pretty interesting this way.  

The Spring Swapover

It's Spring Swapover time! That exhasuting task of taking out all the bulky sweaters and hoodies and heaby plaid flannels and rolling them up to put into the tubs that you have to empty of all the tshirts and tank tops and flip flops that need to get back into rotation. 

Never does my closet look better than that one day when I finally accomplish this task. I even line things up by color and style (collared long sleeves at left, collar-less at right.) I debated on whether to separate the 3/4 length sleeves from the full length and decided I'd rather keep them together by color.  It's so pretty I have to take pictures because it will be another 365 days before it ever looks this way again. The Fall Swapover is much less well organized thanks to the bulkiness of the items.

And yes, I definitely have color preferences. I have a single white t-shirt and about fifteen in blue. The out of place colors on the far right are the shrugs I wear over tank-top and not technically shirts. But that strip of pink and blue out of place bugs me, even so. 

Strangely, once start wearing these, doing laundry, and putting them away again, all of this OCD goes straight out the window. It only matter on their inaugural debut each year. 

And, odds are, now that I've accomplished this Herculean task, as with most Colorado Marches, the snow will start to fall tomorrow.