Split down the middle

OK, since it has been food, food, food around this blog lately, I thought it was time for a quick update.

My weekend was actually pretty boring. So this should be short.

I normally am off Sunday and Monday, but due to some staffing things at work, my boss needed someone to work Sunday. So I volunteered.

That meant I had Saturday and Monday off this weekend.

It seemed like a good idea at the time. I did not realize how much it would mess me up.

Anyway...

On Saturday I pretty much spent the whole day doing housework. I cleaned the kitchen from top to bottom, including wiping down all the cabinets and scrubbing the floor. I also cleaned both bathrooms and did some laundry.

Then in the late afternoon I went to Trader Joe's and got all the stuff to make a pizza on the barbecue. I know, not fancy. But that with a little salad was a perfect dinner.

Sunday I had to work. But before work, manfriend and I had planned to go to the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana to see the Terra Cotta Warriors exhibit.

We had tried to go the weekend before, but it was Target Free First Sunday. We had no idea. It was awful. Just too crowded to even move in the courtyard. So we left.

This time we bought the tickets in advance and figured it would be a much better way to see the place.

We were wrong.

The exhibit itself, the contents of it, were very interesting.

The way it was set up was very disorganized and had no flow at all.

And given how much they oversold it, the thing needed better flow.

The deal was you buy a ticket for a set time to go in. A $27 ticket that becomes a $29 ticket when you buy it online. I love the convenience fees.

Our tickets were for 10 a.m.

Fine, we got in by a few minutes after 10 even though the line was quite long. We were about in the first one-third of that line above. There was still quite a crowd behind us also to go in at 10.

On the way in, they give you an audio guide thing to listen to at the various parts of the exhibit.

They also tell you no photos inside.

I hate that.

I checked the Web site before going in and didn't see anything about that. Oh well, maybe I just missed it.

But I was bummed. I am cool with no flash photos, but I wanted to take pictures.

So I did. But just a couple, no flash and no real time to set up for them. So the quality is not great.

Anyway, back to the exhibit...

The thing was so crowded we could not even move past people to see stuff or get to other parts of the exhibit. We are both tall and ended up seeing most of it over the heads of other people because we could not get to the front.

It was not at all the peaceful, zen way I wanted to see this thing. Which is too bad. It really is an interesting story about how they found and excavated these things.

It actually really put me on edge. So after trying to see the whole thing and not being able to really get a good look at anything, we left.

I still had to go to work.

So MF went on his way home and I went on my way to work.

It was a pretty uneventful day at work.

When I got home, MF had made me a dinner of grilled chicken and tomatoes and an artichoke.

That was so nice. I love when someone else makes me dinner.

Monday was another quiet day for me.

I wandered around town looking for photo opportunities since the next Round Robin topic is "your hometown." I was pretty uninspired.

Bummer.

Then last night I made dinner of pork roulade with lemon, garlic and parsley. On the side I made steamed broccolini and white beans.

So that was it. My whole boring weekend.

No diving. Oh well. I have a three-day weekend coming up this week. So the plan is to dive at least one of those days.

My never-ending quest

This is about what I feel like anytime I go shopping for shoes.
Thanks, NatalieDee.com for putting it into Web comic form.




Especially dress boots.

A few years ago I found a great pair of black, leather boots with a simple square toe and not-too-high heel.
They are fabulous with jeans, skirts and dresses.
They are not too short and not too tall.
The leather is soft, but durable.
They also were $200 boots that I found for $70 at Nordstrom Rack in Broomfield, Colo.
It was pure luck and good timing that I found the perfect boots at a store four states from home.
If they'd had more, I would have bought every pair.

Because buying boots is a pain.

And while these are great, they are now about four years old and starting to show it, no matter how much I baby them and take them to my favorite repair guy every summer for an overhaul.

So I am back in the market for boots.

The problem? I am 6 feet tall. That comes with some big ol' feet.

They are not wide, just very, very long.

I have tried every pair of black boots Zappos has, I have tried going back to the Rack here in So Cal, I have tried several boots from Nordstrom.com.

Basically I am on the lookout for great boots anywhere I go and anytime of year now.

In the end, I think it will just have to be another moment of good luck.

How sad

How sad it is that a kid cannot go to a nice neighborhood park to play without having to see grafitti.















How sad that someone, probably also just a kid, feels the need to ugly up a place like a park.




















It's bad enough that the park buildings were tagged, but did they really have to tag right on the playground equipment?

Oh they must have thought it was very clever to tag over the "police" sign on this part of the play equipment. So my first inclination on seeing this was to call the city and tell them about the grafitti. Instead I think I will send an e-mail with these pictures attached. They are pretty responsive when it comes to filling the potholes around here. I hope they are as quick about fixing this stuff, too.