7 Quick Takes (Vol 191)

Greetings and salutations. Here we are gathered together AGAIN for another dose of “Deb’s things that she cannot make an entire post out of”. That is just so special. You know the regulations. When you are done covering yourself in the blather you need to click on the picture above to be whisked, at the speed of my Christmas carol overload, over to Conversion Diary to see what everyone else has accomplished better than me.

Blather bell. Blather bells. Blather all the way.

1.
Here at Chez Knit the Christmas decorations are finally done.

That sounds like I have been decorating all week which is very far from the truth. Pretty much everything was up on Tuesday. My philosophy on Christmas decorations is that if it takes longer than one day to get everything up then you have WAY too much stuff to decorate with.

I will admit that I did put up one thing yesterday but that was just because I hadn’t gotten around to it. It is a particular string of lights that I always put up over the kitchen sink area. The lights themselves look like lighted Starlight mints.

But the kitchen sink area needs to be clean and clutter free to do the “putting up”…..

and it hadn’t been for a couple of days.

So sue me.

2.
HHBL and I attended a holiday party this week at the newly opened

Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland

I had to make small talk with loads of people I didn’t know, including people like the editor of The Cleveland Plain Dealer, all while balancing a glass of wine and a plate of food. A situation that is ripe for disaster.

I will say that it is a kick to be able to wander around a museum in the evening even if it is one without a single piece of artwork that I can connect with. I am not really a modern art fan. I look at some of the contemporary paintings and art installations and I think, “Heck I could do THAT!”, even though I know that I really couldn’t.

HOWEVER, there were some canvases in one of the rooms that looked like large paintings done with gray metallic paint with flecks of white and black. I looked at them and thought

1. What was in the mind of the artist?
2. Is there a particular theme or inspiration behind these?
3. Who REALLY thinks these are art worthy of hanging in a museum?
4. I COULD do these, just hand me the paint brush

You know, I do have to be honest. There was one piece of art work that did intrigue me. It was this thing….

I did not take this picture, I pulled it off the MOCA website. But I could have looked at this installation for a long time. It was very intriguing.

And I would have taken the picture from a slightly different angle. The photographer needed to take a slight step to the right.

Not that I am criticizing…..much.

3.
I am working on a longer post that is really a composite of pictures taken on my almost daily walks around Sunny Lake.

This was from this morning.

I happened to turn around and saw this. Beautiful.

4.
Still not missing cable TV in case you were wondering. My instant queue for Netflix is growing by leaps and bounds. And I still have 70+ movies in the DVD queue.

Well I will say that we sort of wish we had cable today. We are wishing that we had ESPN tonight because The Kent State Golden Flashes are playing Northern Illinois for the MAC Championship. This just means that HHBL and I will have to go some place, like perhaps Buffalo Wild Wings, so that we can eat and drink and watch the game.

GO GOLDEN FLASHES!!!!

5.
The Annual Stealing of Ornaments is Monday night and I am still playing with the menu. There are some old standards. There are some new additions. But this year I decided that if anyone asked if they could bring something I would say, “YES! Bring a dessert.” That is the thing that I always seem to forget until the last minute and then I scramble around trying to make something.

Not that I am not scrambling around now trying to get stuff done as it is.

Look for the theft report some time next week. We do have one “newbie” this year I think and so inevitably she will be the one who has an ornament appropriated more than anyone else. It always works out that way.

6.
I am going to admit that I haven’t done a single LICK of Christmas shopping yet.

Not one bit.

No siree.

When the progeny were younger I was completely diligent about getting it all done before Thanksgiving rolled around. But somewhere in the past few years I have become a Christmas Shopping slacker.

I will get to it next week.

I hope.

7.
Do any of you set “goals” for yourself for a year. I have talked before about the fact that I am not all that great about setting goals for myself. But I am thinking about next year and what I want to accomplish. I always start out full of fire and then slowly die down to embers.

But I will give it a try again.

I am sure I will tell you later.

Maybe.