My mom celebrated her newest birthday with pizza at Pizza Caboose, and a black and white cake. That would be a chocolate cake with a chocolate fudge filling and vanilla bean buttercream frosting.
As you can see, I could have done a little more planning before I started decorating. Both the sideways day and the numeral one could have come out better.
In good news, it all tastes the same, and it was delicious.
I like the purple in this card.
Sara reports that it has been a rainy weekend in Arcata but that they still got out for a walk.
Such a nice old man!
I stopped by the Starbucks in the Fred Meyer near my house because I needed to buy 6 ounces of coffee to make a cake. Like I usually do when buying coffee to make cakes, I explained that I wasn’t a coffee drinker, but needed a small amount for cake baking. The nice young man working there did some figuring and quoted me the price of $1.77, which was fine by me. I handed over two dollars and was on my way, holding the coffee behind me on the walk home, so I didn’t have to smell it.
The next day, I had another look at the receipt and discovered why the price was so low. I had been elevated to senior pricing!
While I’m still several years away from getting this discount for real, I was happy to take it in my 50th year.
While looking for the age requirement for the Starbucks senior discount, I have discovered that Starbucks does not have an senior discount policy! But! Some baristas might apply one if you ask. So I got doubly lucky. Thanks, Jayden.
Here is our prize!
It’s a magnet, and to see the size of it, look at the next picture.
We had a busy December, and fell behind on our puzzle advent calendar. But February 1 was the day we got it done!
This had the usual combo of fun and frustrating puzzles, this time all were themed to movies. Each room was a different movie set on the “Werner Sisters’s” lot. And at the end we found out who the Werner Sisters were!
*book group selection | bolded means favorite
*Just What to Do by Kyle Lukoff and Hala Tahboub
6 Times We Almost Kissed [and One Time We Did] by Tess Sharpe
*The Wilderness of Girls by Madeline Claire Franklin
*Aisle Nine by Ian X. Cho
The Twelve Days of Dash & Lily by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan
After Life by Gayle Forman
For whatever reason, Forman is at her best when death is involved. A slim book with bits that mesh perfectly.
Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier
Goldenseal by Maria Hummel
A Summer Affair by Elin Hilderbrand
The Strangers on Montagu Street by Karen White
It remains to be seen if the cardboard nature of the characters will outweigh the fun ghost stories and if I will finish this series.
The Five-Star Weekend by Elin Hilderbrand
I marvel at how many points of view Hilderbrand managed while never making the story seem jumbled.
*The Painter and the President: Gilbert Stuart’s Brush with George Washington by Sarah Albee and Stacy Innerst
Stress Resets: How to Soothe Your Body and Mind in Minutes by Jennifer Taitz
Alexandra Petri’s US History: Important American Documents by Alexandra Petri
Black Friend: Essays by Ziwe
The Strip: Las Vegas and the Architecture of the American Dream by Stefan Al
Good thesis, and Sefan Al really won the lottery with the cover. So stylish.
Draw Your Day: An Inspiring Guide to Keeping a Sketch Journal by Samantha Dion Baker
Given that the author is a graphic designer, artist, and has studied typography at Cooper Union, I’d call this “pretty” rather than “inspiring.” There’s no way any sketch journal I kept would come close to looking like hers. There also not much how-to other than “draw every day” (which is good advice).
Brothers by Alex Van Halen
This memoir is clear about one topic: Alex Van Halen really misses his brother. Written in a conversational style (or perhaps dictated and very lightly edited), this book provides insights into the Van Halen brothers (Ed, and Al, apparently) upbringing and their time in one of the greatest bands on the planet. It is not a cradle to grave account, things mostly drift off around the time David Lee Roth leaves the band. But to hear about the scrappy up-and-coming Van Halen, this is your book.
Perspective in Action: Creative Exercises for Depicting Spatial Representation from the Renaissance to the Digital Age by David Chelsea
Chelsea lives in Portland, and on page 97 you can see the Keller Auditorium and the Keller Fountain in a equrectangular panorama. Plus, there are some Benson Bubblers. There are some good instructions too, but first I must master one, two, and three-point perspective.
Battleship Cinematic Universe was a team of two this month, but we had a great movie quiz! We got 12th place! I think that might be a record.
The team names were fun as usual. I enjoyed A Complete Known and also the three plays on Nosferatu: Yesferatu, Nosferatu Fast 2 Furious; Nosfera3 Tokyo Drift
Matt was a big contributor to the score. It turns out the only time travel objects I can identify are the time turner (though I wouldn’t have known from which Harry Potter movie it came; Matt knew) and the magic mailbox that allowed Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves to communicate with each other. Unfortunately, I thought the name of the movie was the Beach House, not the Lake House, so we missed that one anyway.
I did some activity on a holiday I don’t celebrate, and Garmin rewarded me with this pretty badge.
There is also a Lunar New Year’s Eve one; I earned that one too.
I smugly thought that I had earned a badge every year, but I see I missed 2021. January 25, 2020, I did not yet have my Garmin watch.
Here’s to the new year.
Look at this fun postcard! Post boxes are one of those things I’m not aware that are not universal. I mean, I am, because of Postcrossing and travel, but it’s one of those utilitarian things that seems to be more about function than form.
Sara reports that she ordered this set from an Etsy shop (based in Eagle, Idaho!) and that it’s was her first official day of the semester. The semester has started off well.
She also commented that she needed more postcards like she needs a hole in her toe and, looking at my 12 inches of shelf space dedicated to postcards, I can relate.
Hank Green, of the Vlogbrothers, was killing time on a video (for algorithm reasons?) and so played through some of the games he plays. One of them was TimeGuessr. I was intrigued.
In this game, you are given a photo and then must guess when and where the photo was taken. It’s quite fun.
And I did really well my first time out, like here where I was only 241.4 meters off! (Though 5 years off.)
And like this where I was only 4 years off, but amazingly 12.1 miles away even though I had no idea what I was looking at except it was somewhere in Asia that used a lot of English in their signage.
I don’t have a lot of room in my schedule for daily games, but I would like to dip into this one now and again.
