Head on over to Perspective's Blog

I have been tinkering with this year's Ivan Allen pumpkin contest entry over the past few days and have the whole story over on the other side... http://perspectivearchitecture.blogspot.com

Another Skywalker?

John was very clear about what he wanted to be for Halloween...Luke Skywalker. I ordered the costume even though the reviews about how shotty it was were prevalent. After some repairs with velcro and some stitching to get the legs to be the right length, we were ready to go. I try to get some good photos of the Halloween costume since it also is a good marker of him turning a year older. This year we ventured over to the UT Gardens for photos. Here were a few of my favorites.

Art Wall

As some of you know, my office is a work in progress. I have a ton of frames drawn on two walls for when inspiration hits. Everyone is welcome to draw on it. John has taken this opportunity to show his budding art skills. A couple of weeks ago he drew in numerous frames and is now in the process of painting some of them. Here is what has been created thus far. I am quite proud of the little guy.

Up up and away

This past weekend, John and I spent some time outdoors at the Pellissippi State Hot Air Balloon Festival. I had passed by it years ago when I was taking a ceramics class one fall and made a mental note to go someday. This weekend was my someday.

I picked John up from daycare on Friday and we trucked on over for the festivities. We did all sorts of things like watching the dog show, coloring hot air balloon pictures, visiting the lego table, and grabbing dinner at a couple of food vendor booths. We procured a funnel cake for dessert and went to find a spot on the lawn for the "balloon glow".

I had packed like we were going on vacation so I had pretty much everything we could possibly need. We spread out our blanket and our spread and chowed down. It was John's first funnel cake so I captured the moment with the camera. We couldn't finish it. I tried really hard though.

The balloon glow was cool. They had all of the hot air balloons lined up and played a series of song snippets and it was up to the balloon pilots as to when they would light up their balloon. It was random but still very cool. The funniest thing to me was that most of the out of state balloon pilots refused to light up during the rocky top medley. Ah, football.

As if that wasn't enough, we went back for more ballooning fun Saturday morning. John didn't necessarily want to go and see the balloons again in daylight but I figured if he was going to wake me up at 5:58am on Saturday then he deserved to go out in the cold and watch hot air balloons. The win/win part for both of us was that we went to Long's Drug Store for breakfast afterward.

So the morning was spent mostly inside a car waiting for the balloons to take off. What none of us knew was that the balloons escaped and went down the road to take off and that they were then suppose to float back over a field on campus and toss two colored markers near a pin to win a prize. I am assuming this is what happened because no one was allowed at the top of the hill to see the pin or where the markers actually landed...but my theory seems pretty solid to me. Some were close and some were way off the mark and one just floated above my head. It was all in all a pretty cool way to spend a crisp fall morning.

How you feelin' ?

Hot hot hot! That was the theme song to the weekend at the England abode. The A/C went out Friday afternoon sometime and the temperature kept climbing on Saturday. By about 9:30pm it was 89.5 degrees in the house. It was in the low 80's outside. It is amazing how many people will tell you to open the windows at that point in time. Windows were open and ceiling fans were in high gear. Poor little John endured the heat with me.

I am evil and decided to follow through with the plans we had made to make cookies as well. We couldn't decide on just one so we made 3 kinds...oven...no a/c. I know, not the brightest idea I have had. We did it though and I have all sorts of cookies to prove it. I even gave some to the HVAC repair guy that came yesterday to fix the problem. I am now with cooling capabilities...for a little while at least. My heat pump is 18 years old. It was suppose to konk out years ago. Here's hoping it decides to try to break a longevity record.

New post over at Perspective

Oh, you know you are jonesing for a new post to read...head on over to my other self at Perspective Architecture and see what silly thing I did today.

Core Values

Yesterday when I was visiting my Mom in the nursing home, the employees asked me a few questions about Mom's background. They wanted to know what she had done for a living. They figured it had to be something dealing with kids or being outside since she seems to respond best to both of those stimuli now days. I filled them in on the fact that she was a bookkeeper/receptionist for a union for 35 years. She did always like to garden and she had to put up with three kids.

It is funny how when you strip away all of society's pretenses you are left with the core principles and values that make you you. It makes me wonder what things I would pick to carry through to the end of my days.