WOW

I have a friend in Spain so I thought I'd check webcams.  Wow!

How gorgeous!

My Christmas Village in 2016

Here's the entire village; I broke it down into sections.

Christmas Village

My family

When I'm back home, especially January and the rest of winter, in the cold, this will be one of the moments I will think about.

Disney Christmas Village

Here's the rest of the Disney section (I posted Fort Wilderness earlier). Same disclaimer as before about scale etc. Plus, parks and resorts are not in their regular spots (on the plus side, it means the monorail serves all four parks). There’s no such things as scale because they were never meant to be together: the Contemporary is ten times the size of the Castle. But! If you can put that aside, we can have some Christmas fun. Wanna come?

Disney's Fort Wilderness Resort Christmas Village!

My whole Christmas Village is up; I'm working on getting photos for all of it done. Meanwhile, I'm very happy with how the Fort Wilderness section came out. (Although I've got expansion plans already for it if I can figure out how to get a bigger table into that space.)


Here's a slideshow of the whole section. Click on an image to go to its page where you can see it larger:

This is one clever company.

I'm sure someone griped at their firm, but if I was working in a pressure time, this would be something to pick up my mood.

A true sequel to Aliens?

I love that movie; someone pointed it out to me as a great study in women's aggression and volatility compared to men's.

By the way, I fell in love with Michael Biehn here; of course, I had a start from Terminator but Biehn's Hicks really got to me. I would follow Michael Biehn off a cliff like a lemming.

If you've seen Aliens 3, you know they kill off Hicks and Newt (plus Bishop) immediately and then killed off Ripley, I refused to see it. I have seen 4 to see how Ripley was back. I hear it's better than 3, but I agree it's not equal to 2.

Then word spread everywhere that fans and her own wishes led Sigourney Weaver and a director to say they wanted to make a fifth movie, one that somehow circumvented 3 and 4 to give a true sequel to Aliens. Including Hicks and Newt alive with the girl now being around 27.

I would be all over that! I don't know how you do it, but do it!! Word is Weaver wants this to be Ripley's ending -- hopefully NOT killing her off IMO -- and rumor has it that Newt would take over the franchise for her second mother.

Concept art is on the web with Ripley and Hicks first, then a grown Newt:

Biehn says he thinks the grown Newt looks like Jennifer Lawrence; I think she looks like a take off of Weaver herself. Don't get me wrong; I love Lawrence and would be thrilled if she came into the franchise.

The problem is Weaver is tied up with the Avatar movies, so people think the new Aliens won't get made. Biehn disagrees and the film does have James Cameron's praise and backing. That helps.

My fingers are crossed!

Getting my geek on

The men who made these did a phenomenal job. I had to get a picture. I love how great they look!

But I do notice how much weight I've gained back which makes me sick.

Bad translation video

Someone sent me this link awhile back of a woman who takes song lyrics, puts them through several languages on Google translator, and then back into English. I checked it out half-heartedly; oh, I'm so glad I did.

But hype can ruin things, so maybe you'll enjoy this too:

Bad Translation: Let it Go

Look! It's the brown truck!

It's like Santa Claus coming to your house!

I ordered something last week and tracking shows it's out for delivery! So I'm staring at the page, reloading it periodically, to see if it's at my house yet. So right now I'm like this:


But soon -- soon! -- I will be this person:

Of course, it would be better if I was home to get the package right into my greedy hands instead of having to wait the long drive home. Who knows? Maybe I will; it says arrival by the end of the day. What's that?

The fun thing is that I ordered something else and THAT arrives tomorrow! Right now, I'm greedy and want it all today! But it does give me something to look forward to. Whee!!

This is a great sight to come home to!

World traveler!

My friend Amy toured 10 countries. Here are the photos she sent me.

More Steve Hanks

I posted years ago about a print by Steve Hanks my mother got me:

I had found it and printed it out to show her because, believe it or not, the girl in it looks just like me at that age.  I even had a similar bathing suit.  And at the age, I kept asking Mom to show me how to make castles like that where you drizzle the sand with some water through your fingertips.  I couldn’t do it; clumps would drop down like bombs onto the castle and she tried to show me again, until I’d basically do the body and she’d do the towers.  I felt so triumphant the day I finally could do it myself.

Once I lost my mom, the memories and feelings the print represents has a whole other layer.  Which is why this one floored me:

I don't know how I missed this one when I found the other. But there I am again, this time playing with the edge of the waves. My mom would stand in this spot while she watched us; the water would bury her feet in the sand. That fascinated me for some reason, so I'd stand there too and watch my feet disappear further and further. If I had to really pull at them to unbury, it was some kind of triumph. I don't know why. Because I stood so long? Because they were so deep, deeper than anybody around me?

I need to get this print at some point and put it next to the other. But I really wish I could call my mom and tell her.

Now that's a motorcycle!

I have never seen anything like it before.  We were at Toni's Treats in Malaga and I saw it parked there. I had to take pictures!

Eight years

Eight years with no mom.

Eight years.

That doesn't sound like a big deal, if you haven't lived it yourself. If you have lived it, you know.

It's more than a big deal. It's huge and painful and sad.

It's hitting me harder this year than last year; it hurt then too, but it's more of that hollow ache that drags you down this year. I don't know why.

Whatever the reason, I hurt. A lot. I want everyone and everything to go away. I can't think of the work I have to do, which makes it harder and adds to the urge to shove it all away. I just keep thinking about it and wishing.

What if the doctor was right and she wouldn't have died if she hadn't taken me out for my birthday?

And why didn't I take a few seconds to kiss her goodbye before running out of the car?

Why didn't I understand what the other doctor was telling me?

Why? Why? Why?

I hurt.

MST3K REUNION!

10 years! RiffTrax is 10 years old! Can you believe it? Not to mention here we are for the Mystery Science Theater 3000 Reunion show! They have the theme playing with the RiffTrax slides that use backgrounds from MST classics like Mr. B Natural. Now a song fro Werewolf and then a Patrick Swayze Christmas!

I miss when my friends used to come to these with me, but I'm here! I would never miss it! And I'm already enjoying myself.

Sad

Something happened and I need to talk about it.

I have this geese family where I work. They even come up to the windows the other day.  They’ve been living by this other pond so they hadn’t been here to my windows until this week.

Last night, on my way home, this guy in a pickup truck deliberately ran over the dad. I think it was the dad, based on his position as they walked.

Deliberately ran him  down.  The little family was almost across, it would have just been seconds, that’s all.

And the dad didn’t die right away. He kept struggling to get up, but kept failing. He called to his family and his mate kept being torn about going to him. When he was nearly gone, and cars were moving, she finally left and moved the babies back out of the way. She kept calling to him.

A few of us moved our cars in so no one else could run the remaining family down.  Then I pulled my car over to get to him, but someone else did too and picked him up. He died in her arms.

I keep seeing him struggling and calling to them. The terror in the mom. The babies all upset and confused.

I keep thinking that I should have cut into the other lane to get past the cars in front of me, and gone after the guy. I don’t know what I could have done, but something.

Kudos to Sesame Street!

To take on making a spoof of Game of Thrones, when you are SESAME STREET, and you pull it  off brilliantly? That makes you gutsy, clever, and a lot of fun.

Kids will see a cute story involving counting, music, and Grover being Grover.  Adults who are fans of the books and show will laugh and do spit takes.

So here it is. Sesame Street's Game of Chairs. Be sure to notice the fantastic details like the Iron Throne being made of golf clubs instead of swords. It even has the map!

Who is that behind those Foster Grants... and scarf and hat...

Someone at my office just joked that it's getting hard to recognize me being all bundled up and the sunglasses on.  ☺

Missing my friend

I had a friend, a very close friend. We were friends for nearly ten years. Then one day, she simply disappeared. She didn't answer emails or phone calls; it was like she simply no longer existed. I have tried to figure out what happened; I looked back at our emails, I've gone over things that were said right before she "took off", and I can't find a thing.

I found out she was Mormon; I always knew she was religious and how important that was to her, although I didn't know exactly what church she belonged to. I have no idea why she hid it or if it has anything to do with her no longer talking to me. I don't see how it could be about faith since we were friends all those year, and differences in spirituality had nothing to do with it.

It wasn't just me. She disappeared from two other friends and they don't why either.

I've only heard from her once: last year, out of the blue, she contacted me because she wanted something and then she disappeared again once I helped her out.

I miss her so much.

I obviously miss the person I was friends, not this new person who only talks to me if she needs something and can't get it any other way. I could tell her anything, ANYTHING, including the darkest parts of me and she did the same with me.

And then there was the part of the friendship that dealt with our writing.

No one fills that place. Putting aside the friendship, she told me what worked -- in detail -- and what didn’t. She strengthened me. Her feedback and discussions were amazing just from her knowledge and literary degree alone. I couldn’t have written Cain without her. Just her even keeping me going when I didn’t think I could made things happen; some of the ideas in all of my stories came from her ideas and helping me with the development.

Now I get from friends: "liked it. When’s your next one?" And I have to drag even that out of them. I just asked each of them a question as I wrestle with something. Neither of them got back to me and it was a couple days ago, but I know they're okay. It's not that keeping them from answering. It's just not what they do.

If my other friend was still around, I would have gotten a detailed answer.

If she was still around, Heroic Era, my original novel, would be finished instead of sitting there as a dusty, first draft.