Brain of J: picture post.

I FINALLY uploaded photos from my camera into my computer. I have some from as far back as September 9th. I'm usually much more organized about it than that, but now I've got this new computer and I haven't even transferred over my favorites list yet.

I've been playing around with the settings a lot, so bear with me if some of them come out funky or fuzzy.

This was taken at least two weeks ago, when my parents and youngest brother and I went to visit my second-youngest brother at boarding school. (I guess the simplest way to describe that would be to say "Mom and Dad took #1 and #5 to visit #4. Yes, there are five of us. Apparently that's a "ton" of kids?)

I thought this plum looked like a heart.

Cooking with M-- our first time "really cooking" in the new place, since I don't count using a rice maker as "cooking." It was a one-pot Spanish chicken dish with tomato and rice. Not my thing, but it was actually really, really good. Can you tell I was figuring out the filters on my camera? It was so tasty-looking; I wish I'd set the ISO properly.

I hung out with Jen and we made things out of clay. This is her "penguin", which is more of an ambiguous bird (more like a partridge, perhaps) but it looked so adorable and soft and cuddly.

A. decided to be Davey Jones last week. As far as he knows from my explanations and a POTC book with magnets that he has, Davey Jones is a man-octopus who is covered in tentacles, so when A. wants to "be" Davey Jones he requests that I help him tie or tape strings and ribbons all over his body, and then attach small objects to the ends of the "tentacles" to repretsent Davey's conquests.

I did a ton of cleaning yesterday at the new place, so here are some random images that I took to show some of the changes we've made since we've been there.

This is our living room. All the furniture and art you see here is from M's dad. The patterned chairs aren't really to my liking, but we have a goregeous black leather couch (called the "casting couch" by Jen), an old country table with the legs sawed-off for a coffee table, some beautiful brass lamps and some cool artwork. I love that YWCA poster, and off to the right (I think you can see it in the picture; it depends on how it resized) is 17th century European sheet music. We also have a decent volume of "stuff" that we're trying to relocate and sort through...

Our dining room! I bought new curtains and candles, M hung up my old shell... well, I geuss you'd have to call it a "shell hanging." I don't know what else it would be. I bought it when I was 13 in Cape Cod and have never been able to hang it anywhere, so I was all excited about it.

You can't see all of them here, but I hung 6 framed wine labels the other day. You can see two; the other four are on the left wall just out of the picture.

We hung pictures up along the stairway. Left to right-- Louis Armstrong autographed by Dr. John, Rent poster signed by part of the cast, and Garbage poster signed by the band. M is big on autographed stuff. :)

My kitchen! My clean, clean kitchen! My kitchen which is no longer a warehouse for books and random appliances!!!

There's something I need to tell you all... I have a dark secret. My secret is that I am extremely anal-retentive. I try hard to be a spontaneous, fun, young, 20-something who is exciting and artistic and unpredictable... but then I do things like organize our Magnetic Poetry words on the fridge in groups by part of speech.

It was all I could do not to list them alphabetically as well. As it is, I spent half an hour doing this.

*sigh*

I sat and watched the Animal Planet Whatever-It's-Called dog show yesterday while organizing our spices. They need to be in the special glass bottles that go with the spice rack because it is prettier this way. M has learned to let me win my little battles because it makes me feel like I'm in control and it occupies me for a goof hour to do such things.

I have friends in high places, and those friends hooked me up with Buzz Lightyear today. I had the particular honor and privilege to see him up-close loading up his spaceship for a "great adventure," although he wasn't to where he was headed. He certainly made sure to pack everything he might need, including a shopping cart, a fishing pole, some power tools (in case the ship breaks down, duh) and an elephant.

He was able to take a brief reprieve from saving the universe from the Evil Lord Zurg to have a picnic with me at our log cabin house, and then to roast marshmellows over the campfire that we had "lit" to keep us warm during our picnic.