Operation Spygirl II: The Sushi Files

You may have already heard about the big international meet-up of B.L.O.G. (Blog Ladies' Organization for Good) - maybe you were there. It was held in Vancouver, BC, and agents came from all points of the US and Europe. They were some of the big wigs, too - literally. Although there may have been classified meetings held in hotel rooms and thrift shops, the conclave was not top-secret. You can read about it all over the interwebs, for Pete's sake, and I suggest you do.

I was not able to make it because I was assigned to an important mission here in Oregon that required my surveillance. It wasn't top-secret, either. It was the Premiere Party of a documentary made by myself and my agent partner, highlighting some local musicians who are spreading goodness in our local area.

You are now able to watch it yourself on YouTube - unclassified - although your computer will self-destruct five seconds after you reach the end of the program.

While I was on alert here in a garage, and all the major B.L.O.G.gers were living it up in Vancouver, Agent AMB made contact and requested a private meet-up when she was en route to her home base. I was happy to oblige. I had met Agent AMB once before and found her to be professional and discreet. This time she let down her cover a little bit.

I think she was experiencing an afterglow from the successful conclave in Vancouver. She shared a few details with me, although she did not tell me anything I was not cleared to hear. Damn.

After consuming lots of sushi at a ridiculously low price, we took the obligatory facial recognition selfies, made sure Anne had enough fuel (coffee) for her long drive, and we once again said goodbye. Her visit was too short, but duty called. She was carrying important biscuits to Agent Severo, and they had to be delivered before they turned stale.

It was a pleasure to meet Anne again - I mean, look at that smile! She's adorable! Am I jealous that Agent AMB was able to schmooze with the movers and shakers of our organization, eating, drinking, shopping and gabbing in a beautiful city? Hellz yeah! But I am enjoying reading the accounts of so many other agents who were at the event. I know there will be future events, and my goal is to attend one somewhere, sometime, wherever I may be posted.

Val

PS - I'm going to link up with 52-Pick-me-up at Spy Girl - the theme this week is Raspberry/Perfection/Friendship, so I'm going to throw in this gorgeous rose that I saw when I rode my bike home after meeting Anne. It sort of smelled like raspberries, it looks like perfection, and I had just had lunch with a friend!

Je suis Charlie, Je suis Ahmed

Aujourd'hui, je suis Parisienne. Je suis d'accord avec le peuple de Paris, in solidarité contre la violence, la haine et l'intolérance.

Today, I am Parisian. I stand with the people of Paris, in solidarity against violence, hatred and intolerance.

I wish I could write my whole post in French, but my language skills are too-long dormant for a serious post. (I used freetranslation.com to help me here.) To join with the people of Paris, and indeed, reasonable people everywhere, I'm wearing scarf that a friend of mine brought me from Paris several years ago.

scarf from Paris - Pantone color 2013 - Emerald

It's impossible to make sense of what happened in Paris - violence, fear and chaos were the aims of the extremists, so there is no sense. To a generation that grew up in a golden age of progress and enlightenment, this kind of barbarism seems to signal the end of the world. I can't even begin to analyze the various implications of these attacks - and others - to freedom, religion, racism, society, nationalism, multiculturalism, women...

current work-in-progress - a Parisian cafe

Then the stories of the unity of people in Paris, and world leaders setting aside their differences, give me some hope that tolerance will override intolerance and divisiveness.

Source

Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité

Linking up and spreading the love at SpyGirl: 52 Pick-me-up, and Not Dead Yet Style: Visible Monday.

Val

Dust in the Fridge, Sparkles on the Bag

I went on a big ol' cleaning spree yesterday - kitchen, bathroom, cabinets, floors, roof, chimney, subconscious. Today my back is very sore. That should teach me to just hire a maid and then sit back and drink gimlets.

I cleaned out the fridge - not fanatically, but I did wipe all the shelves in the fridge and the freezer. I even wiped the lower shelves on the door, which don't see much use, and therefore, they had collected dust. Dust! INSIDE the fridge!? How does that happen? I was so disgusted I threw in the towel. But it landed in the butter, and then I had to wash the towel - and all the other laundry - so my work was far from finished.

Today I'm doing nothing physical. I'm spending a day on the computer researching how to put watermarks on my photos (done), how to set up a web page in WordPress (for a project Mr. S and I will be working on soon), and how to put one of Mr. S's books in CreateSpace for print-on-demand. I think his children's book might sell a bit more in hard copy.

And I'm also taking snaps of my sparkly purse to link up with SpyGirl's 52 Pick-me-up - Bejeweled.

This gorgeous bag of bling was a gift from my lovely stepdaughter a few years ago, and I don't use it often enough. I worry that the sequins and beads will start to fall off, but so what? I should use it and enjoy it, and resew when necessary.

The bag has two faces.

It's my Janus bag, which is perfect for the end of the year, looking to the future and to the past.

Happy Sparkly Days to you all!

Val

PS added on Dec. 29 - I'm linking up with the lovely goddess Patti at Visible Monday!

Smells Like Crone Spirit

It's Grunge week at Spy Girl' 52 Pick-me-up.

I lived in Seattle from 1987 to 1995, the grunge capital during the grunge era. The days before Tiffany's came to town, and when I could still rent an apartment for $500 a month (honest - and it had a view, too). So I had to get in on Grunge week.

Faded jeans, boots, plaid men's shirt over an undershirt, garage bands. And I look just like I did in 1990.

 Oh denial, oh denial, oh denial, oh denial, oh denial.

It's also Third Thursday (T3) at My Closet Catalogue and A Bibliophile's Style, and the prompt this month is to let your outfit be inspired by your best or worst high school read. I can't even remember what I read in high school (it was HIGH school, man). Seriously. I remember reading Herman Hesse books, and Carlos Casteneda, and some science fiction, but I'm not sure how many of those were read for school. I do remember wearing clothes that were pretty much the same as the grunge outfit. Paleo-grunge. So I'm just dressing like high school, not like a book.

Hey, far out! I get to hit two link-ups with one outfit! I love it when that happens.

Sunday update - third link-up at Visible Monday!

Peace.

Val

Toop Arties!

This is the most unplanned post I've done in awhile, but I want to go to Visible Monday and 52 Pick-me-up. Nothing gets me motivated like a party - unless it's two parties! *

The theme for 52 Pick-me-up this week is Orchid. I would have thought of the usual Pantoney Radiant Orchid, but Anne is breaking the mold and wearing YELLOW! And PAISLEY! It's her party so she can do what she wants to, but I thought I could probably get away with being a rare blue orchid.

Sort of.

This is my business attire on a hot day in the middle of summer in my home office - cotton shirt (old) from Walmart, denim skirt from JCP.

I don't subscribe to the idea that you have to dress professionally when you work from home. I'd much rather be comfortable, although I do draw the line at wearing my PJs to do work. Unless I have to get something done super early, like before 8:30, but I try to avoid that anyway. I love not having to use an alarm clock!

I don't wear shoes in the house, so I spend my day in my moccasins or barefoot. But if I'm barefoot it just makes me aware of how crunchy the kitchen floor is and then I feel like I have to clean it. So, moccasins it is!

And further to my last post about my home office space, I really did optimize my Craft Cave, without even throwing much away. Voila my new office! This desk is so much more comfortable and sprawling.

The lamp was a wedding present to my parents in 1951, and yes, it's pink! The wooden bowls and the clock came from the thrift store.

Thrift shop china on the wall - cabbage rose pattern, which I love.

The craft area (which includes the long end of the desk) is freakishly neat and unsloppy - for now. I can't wait to see how things work out when I need to spread out with glue and paint and more glue.

I keep water for paints in the old coffee pot. I did the red and green painting about 87 years ago.

The frogs are Djim (on vocals) and Django (on bass), and I got them from a co-worker who got them from a friend who found them in a VW van he bought. God knows what their life was like before that! I've had them since 1993, usually keeping them in my office because that's where they started.

Time to wrap it up for the day and get a nice cool drink at the party - which one should I start with (party, I mean, not drink)?

Val

* Post title inspired by the legendary Two Ronnies and Four Candles. 

Heroes and Villains

SpyGirl's 52 Pick-me-up this week is Fairy Tale. It ties in perfectly with Maricel and Selah's T3 prompt to dress like your favorite literary villain. So I'm wearing black and white to represent good and evil, and I'll tell you my own fairy tale that transpired this week.

Once upon a time there were a boy and girl who went to visit a little cottage in the country. They walked up to the porch, which was piled with old boxes and plant pots, and they pulled the clapper on the brass bell hanging by the door. A little troll opened the heavy wooden door and led them inside, then down into the cellar. The room there was piled high with books and boxes and shelves and tools. It smelled horrible, and there were cobwebs covering the windows as thick as curtains. The troll asked them what they wanted, and when they told him he said he could grant their wish for eighty pieces of gold. They left their computer with him and went away.

The troll is the hero in this story. He loaded Windows 7 onto my computer so I can work on my new client's cloud server.

The thing is, heroes look like ordinary people. (Although computer nerds who work out of their own homes are generally a little, shall we say extraordinary. I wasn't kidding about the smell and the cobwebs.)

My own knight in shining armor had already spent hours trying to install Windows 7 and then reloading all my other programs. As day turned to night, we found out that the copy of Windows 7 he had bought from eBay was counterfeit, sold to us by an evil villainess in North Miami Beach!

I imagine her with a bald head, bad skin and snaggly teeth (the bitch!), but she could just as easily look like a cheerleader or a soccer mom. Because villains can look like ordinary people, too, like Bob Ewell in To Kill a Mockingbird or Mrs. Danvers in Rebecca or Tom Ripley in The Talented Mr. Ripley.

Villains suck.

If you want to know the ending of my story, the evil bitch, I mean the seller, responded after about 36 hours with a poorly typed message saying she's sorry for our "bad experience" and she'll refund the money in a few days. Doesn't matter what she does now, we've reported her to eBay and Microsoft. They can throw her in a dungeon for all I care.

Because good always triumphs over evil.

Val

What a long, strange month it's been

First, thanks to those who read my last post, which was kind of long, but hopefully not boring. I just wanted to get that story written down, especially after I found the news articles about La Professoressa. It was all true, and no, I'm not going to put in a link to the news stories because I think it's best if I don't reveal her name!

Second, if I haven't been around to visit your blogs, I apologize. Who knew being unemployed would be so time-consuming? Besides registering for Unemployment Insurance, and Job Search, and checking out health insurance, and applying for jobs, I've also been dealing with long-distance family stuff, and looking at options and possibilities to go freelance with editing/proofreading/writing. I feel pulled in a lot of directions at the moment! I need lists, lists, lists or I'll never survive!

For now though, I'm posting my Scavenger Hunt photos, plus hanging out with some of my other favorite link-ups (because I aim to be efficient). So without any further ado and in no particular order, here we go!

10AM
This is the good side of unemployment - totally casual.

Linking this up with Visible Monday (I was visible riding my bike to run errands) and 52 Pick-me-up, where the theme is Minimalism.

B is for BEACH

I got a few pictures on my last outing.

HABITAT

WATER (too easy, really) 

MANMADE

CALM

OPEN

I used this photo in the last Scavenger Hunt and once before that, so it also fulfills the prompt  
YOU AGAIN!

SPOON

A gift from my brother- and sister-in-law. On the back it says C. Boyes, S. Africa.

STEAM

Making my latte in the morning - and taking a picture at the same time.

SOCCER

The best I could do was take a picture of the TV in the lead up to the World Cup. 

PUPPET

We bought this to use as a prop when my husband recorded some readings of one of his books. You can see part of the puppet in this video (viewer discretion is advised), and there's a gadget on my sidebar that should take you to The Prisoner's Tale on Amazon.

Does he make you nervous? I don't like being alone with this guy. And he's been drinking the expensive vodka!

Come and check out the link-ups - the laundry can wait.

Val

I watch the ripples change their size

Ladies, thank you so much for all your wonderful comments! Since I found out I lost my job my mind has been elsewhere, and I haven't been consistent with reading and commenting on blogs, but I appreciate all your thoughts and support.

Turns out I wasn't completely finished with work - I'm working some days this week to make the transition smoother. Hah! It's not smoother for me. I went from euphoria last week to limbo and lethargy this week. Can't wait until the break is clean and complete and I can really relax (an abundance of alliteration there!). Oh, and try to make a living.

I've missed a lot of my favorite link-ups lately, so this outfit will make up for lost time.

Today - 52 Pick-me-up - '60s
Friday - Secondhand First 
Sunday -Visible Monday

Here's my pseudo-'60s, secondhand and visible outfit. I'm sort of like Shelley Fabares meets Susan Dey.

Not exactly bell bottoms, but flared dungarees, along with a top tied at the waist and a button-up cardi thrown over my shoulders. The top, belt and jeans are thrifted; the cardi is Target and the sandals Clarks, and they're both at least five years old.

The top has a sort of mod pattern, and colors like 1960s kitchen appliances - avocado green, coppertone, and almond.

And I'm wearing my locket, previously seen here, which is from the '60s.


Hey, if you didn't already know, Joni James is doing a new blog! Check it out - An Artful Closet.

Thanks again for your lovely comments. Be sure to visit and join the link-ups!

Val

T3 - Plaid and Paisley

I'm struggling a bit to come up with something for Thoughtful Third Thursday. It's all about books, and although I've been reading almost constantly, I've only finished a couple of books in the past month. I ditched two books before I even got halfway through. Funny, they were both set in Washington State - my old stomping grounds. They were recommended by a colleague with whom I share lots of book and movie recommendations, but we don't actually have the same taste at all. Except I turned him and his wife on to Donna Tartt and Kate Atkinson, and they turned me on to Tana French and Gillian Flynn. Other than that we haven't been having much luck. I'll tell you more about the rejected books at the end of the post, for anyone who's interested in my sweeping and subjective opinion.

Right now I'm reading Kate Atkinson, One Good Turn. It's the second in her series of Jackson Brodie crime novels, and it's pretty good. I'm not a huge crime fiction fan, but I generally like her writing, although not always. She tends to throw in lots of characters and their musings and history while they're doing other things. It's easy to lose track sometimes.

The book is set in Edinburgh, so I decided to go with tartan for an outfit. Here's a quote from the book:

"The hotel was surprisingly cheap and unsurprisingly awful. Anything that could be decorated with tartan was, even the ceiling had been papered in a funereal Black Watch. On the walls were hung framed prints of Old Edinburgh and heraldic clan insignia mounted on wooden shields."

I mixed the tartan with paisley - another Scottish association. The design is Indian, but when it became popular in Great Britain quite a lot of paisley patterns were produced at mills in Paisley, Scotland.

The style of the book is kind of sardonic, wry, and self-deprecating. There's a bit too much death and blood for my taste, but I do like Jackson. The BBC has made a series of three Jackson Brodie books, and the character is played by Jason Isaacs - aka Lucius Malfoy of Harry Potter fame.

My shirt is a Michael Kors men's shirt, the scarf is Ray Strauss, which I bought from Bella at The Citizen Rosebud on Etsy. The yellow jeans are thrifted Shylo, and the suede leopard sneakers are Born.

Now, about the other books.

I started reading The Orchardist by Amanda Coplin, and I didn't like it at all. The style was very aloof and pseudo-poetic in a spare kind of way. Lots of sentences seemed very clunky and immature, and I just didn't get into the characters. Glad it was only a library book.

I read two books by Jonathan Evison, well, one and a bit. The first one I loved - The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving. It was a funny, sweet, heart-wrenching tale about a man's life being put back together (in spite of himself) after a tragedy. I definitely recommend this book, as well as another Evison book, All About Lulu. But the one I didn't finish is West of Here. I think it's more of a man's book, long descriptions about wild scenery and men moving through it. And mud. Just not enough human interaction to hold my attention.

Come on over to My Closet Catalogue or A Bibliophile's Style and see the other visual book reports!

Update April 30 - now linking up to 52 Pick-me-up for Yellow Fever.

Val

Forwards and Backwards, maybe Sideways

Thank you for all your comments the last few weeks – well, all the time actually! I've enjoyed sharing some of my past exploits and reading about yours. I'll share more adventures in the future, but I can't tell you everything – I have to save something for my memoirs.

I've been feeling really inspired and creative lately – the muse is making fondue! I feel myself stretching my mind and thinking outside the box, and I owe a lot of credit to my fellow bloggers. I've mentioned Melanie, who gave me the idea of the paper dolls, and there's also Maricel, who has mentioned artists and authors who have stirred some of my creative juices. (I might even read a vampire novel.) And all you sewists and upcyclers have led me to my current phase of trying to customize my wardrobe. I've also been inspired in this regard by Suzi Click, who I found on Advanced Style, so now I have a big pile of unworn clothes in pretty fabrics that I hope to make into unique, wearable pieces. And Sue Kreitzman is also an amazing inspiration for her clothing and assemblages and use of color.

But at this moment I especially have to thank Anne of Spy Girl for her 52 Pick-me-up challenges. The prompt this week is to wear something back to front, and this has led me to wear an old dress in a new way.

I know, right? I love it!

And it was so easy! I bet a lot of you have done this with t-shirts, but have you tried it with anything else?

The dress is from Target, previously seen here and here (the same boots are in the second one, too, but you have to get past my rant to see the outfit). It's polyester so it's easy to wear and pack and wash. I wore it with leggings on the plane to Texas last summer (first link above). The tights are also from Target, and the boots and belt are thrifted.

The back/front puckers a little bit, but I could probably fiddle with the belt to make it look better.

Cowlicks all over my head

 Or just wear a jacket.

This suede jacket (previously seen here, also thrifted) reminds me so much of a similar jacket I had in my early 20s. Same cut, same pigskin suede, slightly different color. When I first bought this one I kept having déjà vu! Do you ever get that?

Come on over to Spy Girl for a pick-me-up!

Val